User:Gaia Octavia Agrippa/Adoption/Categories

Categories are very important and help editors to find similar articles. They are similar to internal links, but they link to a special page that contains links to the articles/pages that have had that category added, instead of directly to an article/page.

The basics

• The categories section features at the very bottom of almost all pages within wikipedia and all articles.

• Some articles do not have categories, because they have not been added. Feel free to add the appropriate categories to those pages.

• Categories are there to make searching for similar articles. For example if you go on the page dog, and scroll down to the categories you will see some examples. If you click on the first category, titled Domesticated animals you will find a list of the articles of all the domestic animals and other things concerning them.

• Categories are there to make both the reader and editor's life easier. They make navigation and searching much easier.

• Categories need to be as accurate and as full as possible and should not to overlap.
  • For example for an RAF squadron article you wouldn't add Category:Royal Air Force and Category:Royal Air Force squadrons. You only need to add the latter.

Adding categories

• Categories are added to the very end of an article after everything, including external links and references.

• You add categories to articles by placing [[ category name ]] at the very bottom of the page.

E.g. [[Category:Royal Air Force]]

List of categories

The lists of categories can be found here.

The easiest way to add categories

You can add categories manually, however there is a gadget that you can use that will help you add categories to articles and other spaces on wikipedia. To activate this gadget:

1. Click on my preferences
2. Click on the tab labeled Gadgets
3. Scroll down to the heading Editing gadgets
4. Check the box next to HotCat
5. Scroll down to the bottom of the page
6. Click on Save