Rules/Categories

This explains how you should use categories when editing this knowledge base. This is a work in progress. Discuss these rules on the talk page.

Be sure to also read Rules and Rules/Templates.

We're now in the process of categorizing articles. See Talk:Rules/Categories/Firefox and Talk:Rules/Categories/Thunderbird.

Categorizing articles

• Each article in the knoweldge base must belong to one or more categories. To categorize an article, insert one or more category tags into the article and save it. A category tag has the form [[Category:Category name]], such as [[Category:Profiles]] or [[Category:Issues (Firefox)]]. As a rule, put category tags at the very bottom of the article.
• Put articles into the most specific categories you can. This means that Category:Firefox will only contain those articles that couldn't be categorized better.
• Each article should be put in all categories it belongs to (as many as possible). In particular, all articles categorized in one of the "Issues" categories, should also be put in a "non-issue" category. E.g. Lost bookmarks goes to both Category:Issues (Firefox) and Category:Bookmarks.
• Generally, however, when an article is put in a category A, it shouldn't be put in "parent" categories of A. E.g., if you put an article in Category:Issues (Firefox), you shouldn't also put it in Category:Firefox.
• Avoid adding development and other non-support articles to user-support categories.

Creating and categorizing categories

• Each category except Category:Top level must be a subcategory of one or more other categories. To make one category a subcategory of another, edit the subcategory page and insert the category tag for the parent category. E.g., the page Category:Extensions (Thunderbird) has been edited to include [[Category:Thunderbird]], making it a subcategory of the main "Thunderbird" category.
• Names of user support categories should follow the article naming conventions. In particular, most subcategories should include application name in parentheses, e.g. Category:Extensions (Firefox).
• Avoid creating/using generic categories. Use the most specific category. E.g. instead of putting an article in "Category:Miscellaneous (Firefox)", put it directly in Category:Firefox.
• Make sure that, in a given category, the immediate subcategories have an approximately equal level of specificity (e.g., we don't want "Category:Cookies" sitting next to "Category:Settings", since cookies are not as general as settings.
• "Issues" categories shouldn't have a deep subcategories tree. In other words, don't create a subcategory to a subcategory to "Issues".
• In general, avoid creating a new category when there are very few articles to go into it.

Using links and redirects with categories

• To link to a category, simply put a colon prior to the word "Category" in the category tag. E.g., [[:Category:Privacy and security]] will produce the link Category:Privacy and security. Like with regular internal links, you could use [[:Category:Privacy and security | this link]] to produce this link.
• This version of MediaWiki (1.5.0) doesn't seem to allow redirecting to a category. [1]
• Likewise, categorizing redirect pages also does not seem to work well. [2]

Other

• Eventually, the "listing" pages (like Firefox : FAQs) are to be replaced with categories. We may use the editable part of category page to provide a manually sorted listing of pages that belong in that category. The advantage here is that when we put an article in a category, we get a link to the category page for free.