Wikibooks:Categories
From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection
Wikibooks uses several methods of page organization, the easiest of which are Categories. This page discussed how to categorize pages properly.
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Step 2. include subject categories related to the book. Step 3. after saving you'll see this. |
[edit] Categories
Categories achieve three main goals in the organization of books.
- Categories serve as "book binders". Holding all pages or chapters of a book together in their own category.
- Categories sort books by subject matter. Thus, the "book binders" of all books on a subject will appear in a particular category. This allows navigation through all books from general to the most specific subjects.
- Categories serve to identify problem areas so that people can help improve books and the Wikibooks project.
Categories also allow automated lists of related pages to be compiled, because any changes to a category will cause any lists depending on the category to be updated as well. The most common example of this is in the construction of subject pages.
The sections below explain how to categorize books using the different methods to ensure books can be easily found.
[edit] Books
A book category is a category that indexes all pages, templates and media of a single book. Each book should have its own book category. Book categories should use the same name as the book itself. For example, the book category for "My Book" book should be "Category:My Book". Books and book categories should be categorized by subject using all the same subjects categories (see below).
A common practice is to place "[[Category:{{FULLBOOKNAME}}|{{FULLCHAPTERNAME}}]]" inside any template intended to be used on all pages of a book. In this way, pages can be added to a book category simply by adding the appropriate template to all the pages.
[edit] Subjects
A subject category is a category that groups together books on a related topic. Subject categories should use sentence casing to prevent conflict with book categories. For example the subject category for fine art is Category:Fine arts. Subject categories should only be created when there are multiple books that can be added to the category.
To add a book to one or more specific subject categories you can use the {{subject}} template on a book's main/title page. Books should only be added to subject categories as subject specific as possible. For example the book Music Theory is located in Category:Music theory, but not in Category:Music, because musical theory is a more specific topic than music. Cross categorization should only be used to aid in finding books that are legitimately important to several subject areas and not used to simply advertise new books. Sub-pages of books must never be included in subject categories (if you use {{subject}} on sub-pages, the book category will be added, but subject categories won't).
Subject categories are used in conjunction with subject pages to help make finding books easier, so proper categorization is important. For instance Subject:Mathematics lists all books located in Category:Mathematics.
[edit] Projects
A project category is category for associating several related books with a particular project. For instance, all books written for a single course curriculum (science, math, and language books). For these situations, you should add all the related books into the necessary project categories.
[edit] Organizational
Wikibooks uses a number of other organizational schemes such as the Dewey Decimal system, the Library of Congress system, an Alphabetical listing, and a Reading Levels system. Each of these organization systems use categories to produce lists of books.
[edit] Subcategories
A subcategory is a category that links to one or more other categories through the use of the category system, effectively creating a parent-child relationship. All categories should be a subcategory of one or more other categories, except for the root category. By using subcategories, we can all navigate through the category system faster and more effectively find the book, page, image or template we are looking for.
Subcategories should only be created as needed, such as dividing a large subject or book category in order to find books or pages quicker. Any new categories created for this purpose should have a good descriptive name that shares some common characteristics with the larger category name. For example Category:Music theory is a subcategory of Category:Music and effectively describes a common relationship between the two categories. Another example is Category:Algebra and category:Mathematics. Book subcategories are also sometimes used, for instance, the template "Template:My Book/Stub", which marks a page as being a stub, will add a book's pages to the "My Book/Stubs" category.
[edit] How categories work
Pages are listed in categories by adding a category link on pages (usually at the bottom). For example, this project was listed in Category:Categories by adding:
- [[Category:Categories|{{SUBPAGENAME}}]]
The subpagename magic word helps organize category pages by sorting pages by name. This can be particular useful for books since all pages begin with the book name.
Now say you were looking for information on animal behavior. In this case, there is only one distinct path to find books on the subject:
- Category:Categories (organizational category)
- Category:Books by subject (organizational category)
- Category:Science (subject category)
- Category:Biology (subject category)
- Category:Zoology (subject category)
- Category:Biology (subject category)
- Category:Science (subject category)
- Category:Books by subject (organizational category)
If you wanted Animal Behavior to be found here, you would need to add [[Category:Animal Behavior|{{FULLCHAPTERNAME}}]] to the bottom of each page, and add {{subjects|zoology}} to Animal Behavior and Category:Animal Behavior. By now you should be starting to understand how Zoology is added to Biology, and so on.
In general, categories go from the most general to most specific category.
[edit] See also
See Help:Category for a description of categories in WikiMedia projects in general.
