Help:Categories

This page explains what categories are, why they are important, and how you can create and use them. For more details, see Wikipedia's Help page on Categories.

What are Categories?

Categories help keep Coppermind organized by grouping pages with related content. Every article, template, and file should be categorized. It is important to categorize everything correctly, as categories are one of the primary ways that an article can be found. Articles should be able to be found from the main series categories (as listed on the main page), or through the main content categories on the sidebar on the left.

The categories for any given page are listed at the bottom of a page in a box. Note that categories are more like tags than folders. Pages will belong in multiple categories--usually at least three, as we'll see below. The more, the merrier!

Creating Categories

You shouldn't have to create categories very often, as most of them you may need already exist! But a category is created just like an article. You can navigate directly to the page by entering a URL or you can follow a red link to a nonexistent category. Create the page and you have created the category.

Note that you can use a category name even if the page doesn't exist. It will simply show up as a red link, and somebody else can come along later and create the page.

Category Pages

Category pages are titled Category:NAME, where NAME is the specific category name. A category page should begin with a description of what the category incorporates. The rest of the page will fill in automatically with any subcategories, followed by all articles, files, and templates that are tagged with this category. Create subcategories by categorizing a category page--for example, Category:Elantris is categorized into Category:Books.

Categorizing Pages

Using Templates

Many templates will automatically categorize the article they are placed in. This includes infoboxes, navboxes, and many other commonly used templates. For example, the {{book}} infobox template, used at the start of any book article, will automatically put the article into Category:Books. No need to do it manually.

Manual Categorization

A page can be manually categorized by putting the names of any desired category page(s) in double brackets: [[Category:NAME]]. These tags should be placed at the very end of an article! They should be the last item in the Notes section.

Required Categories

There are three types of categories that every article should be tagged with:

Book/Series Identifier

The book/series identifier notes which book or series the article is related to. This is a wiki about Brandon Sanderson's books, after all, so most articles are related to one book/series or another. Note that some cosmere-related articles may not fit with a particular book/series at this time--these are put into the "Cosmere" category.

The book/series identifier is automatically added by the navbox template which should be located at the bottom of these articles.

High Level Content Categories

There are ten, mutually exclussive high level content categories. Every article belongs in one (and only one) of these ten categories. They're the ten categories you see listed under "Categories" in the sidebar at the left. They are:

The high level content category is automatically added by the infobox template which should be located at the very top of these articles.

Quality Tags

Quality tags indicate the quality and completion level of every page. These are very useful to editors, because they are an easy way to determine which articles need more attention.

Quality tags must be added in the Notes section of an article, directly between the <references /> tag and the navbox. They are added using special templates; the four you should know about are:

Stub {{stub}}: Stubs are articles that have barely any information. If it's very short and needs a lot of work, it's a stub. Use {{stub}} to categorize.
Partially Complete {{partial}}: Partially complete articles are off to a good start, but need more work before they can be considered complete. Use {{partial}} to categorize.
Nearing Completion {{complete}}: Mark an article as nearing completion when you believe the article is content complete. Use {{complete}} to categorize.
Complete {{complete}}: The admins will review articles that are "nearing completion" and mark them as complete when they agree, adding a |~~~~ signature to the existing {{complete}} tag. This helps us know when the article was last reviewed.