Meta talk:Categories

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Chatter[edit]

If you create a new page or edit an old one please add it to one or more matching categories to facilitate navigation. Please do not create new categories (especially not ones with only one entry) unless you are sure they really will be used. A good criterium may be if it fits well in the hierarchy below. Try to keep the number of categories on Meta-Wiki as low as possible - categories are useful only if people can remember which categories exist and what their purposes are. If you have to look into three almost equal categories to find the page you are looking for, something is wrong with the system. Categories without a description, with too few member pages or which are not listed here may be removed. (or rather, merged with a more general category).

On the converse, categories shouldn't get too large.


Categories provide automatic indexes, that are usefull as table of contents for large bodies of work. Categories are one type of glue that allows small pages to work. Other types of glue are templates, and anything else that organizes small pages into usefull groups.

Please try to find an appropriate category to add your page to. Pages can be added to more than one category, however, try not to duplicate pages between general categories and specific categories. As always, this depends on how the navigation of the wiki is affected, so it will be tollerated if the greater good is served.

Category names are case-sensitive, so be ware that you might be creating a new category if the capitalization is not the same.

Language Categories[edit]

I think it's more convenient to use language categories like es or Es, because are the same for MediaWiki, but different from ES. I'm trying to organize catalan and spanish pages like:

Meta:Conventions for multilingualism

What do you think? Peleguer 20:17, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Propositions of new levels for user language template[edit]

now, we have 4 different levels,

  • language-1 = basic
  • language-2 = intermediate
  • language-3 = advanced
  • language = first language or mother tongue

what about a language-0 level for people willing to learn the basics of the language and a language-t level for people willing to teach the language ? I'm pretty sure there are people willing to teach a language they know, and people who are willing to learn that very language. these levels would help them find each other. In my case, I'm willing to learn japanese, hebrew or hindi, but learning these languages by myself is too much time consuming as I don't have a guide to show me the right direction. Izwalito 00:32, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"Try to keep the number of categories on Meta-Wiki as low as possible"[edit]

Do we still want people to do this? I think we're doing the opposite now. I suspect that having more specific categories just tends to make finding pages you're interested in easier. Using only a few categories would result in a few large, almost useless categories. PiRSquared17 (talk) 01:25, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This very old statement (from ~2005 year). In my opinion, this statement is obsolete and should be rewritten based on actually practices. --Kaganer (talk) 07:47, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]