Project: Categorization

How to Join

Are you interested in the Categorization Project?

• Project Leaders: Roy Walmsley
• Coordinators:
• Answer our G2G welcome post to join the Categorization project and get a badge.
• Add Categorization to your followed tags.
• We use Google Groups for communication.
• View the Categorization Project Member List and see what our members are working on.
• Project Type: Full Project
• Team Liaison: Steve Harris

For a full list of all project members, see the badge report.

Goals

The Categorization Project is a functional project that exists to bring together WikiTreers who want to help manage the category hierarchy and encourage the use of categorization through teams that are aligned with the project's goals:

• Category maintenance:
  • Assisting Projects with correcting errors in category names and structures;
  • Adding wanted categories to the hierarchy;
  • Adding uncategorized categories to the hierarchy; and
  • Correcting DBE Categories Suggestions.
• Category planning, oversight and collaboration:
  • Facilitating category oversight and collaboration between Projects and interested Wikitree users; and
  • Ensuring that the whole category structure from top to bottom is coherent, easily accessible, and that guidelines are published, documented, updated and accessible.

Start here to learn more about Categorization!

Categorization Help Links

• If you're not sure what categories are or why to use them, see Help:Categorization.
• It is very important — and often very difficult! — to follow the naming conventions that have been established by the community. Help:Category Names provides a style guide on naming conventions for categories, as well as the procedures for developing and publishing category name rules.
• Help:Category Creation and Removal contains instructions on how to create, rename, merge and remove categories.
• To learn how to create your own personal category structure, see Help:Personal_Categories.
• For an informative series of lessons on categories and the use of our category hierarchy, see the Category School Page, run by our resident expert Natalie Trott.
• If you would like to use a category but can't find it by searching or browsing ask in G2G using the '"categorization" tag to alert the members of the Categorization Project about it.

Other Useful Pages and Links

• Category:Categories: Top-level categories.
• Location Fields: Style guide on naming locations, including basic principles that apply to geographic categories.
• Personal Categories
• Most Linked Categories
• Maintenance Categories: There are multiple subcategories here for categories.
• History_of_the_Categorization_Project
• DBE Categories Suggestions

Frequently Asked Questions

• Should project and category pages adhere to style guidelines? Yes! Advanced styling is troublesome for all the reasons listed at Help:HTML and Inline CSS. If it's allowed on categories and high-level projects, people will assume that it's OK or even proper. Then it will end up on lots of categories and project pages. The basic style rule on HTML and inline CSS is: It's not recommended unless it's specifically recommended. For a quick reference on which tags are recommended, see Help:Recommended Tags.
• Should there be content on Category pages? Yes; however, the only content that should be on the category page is a brief description (no more than a paragraph or two) on the intent and purpose of the category. For example, if a category groups people buried in a particular cemetery, you would add a brief description of the cemetery, such as where it is located, to the category page. Any other general information about the cemetery, including the history, detailed cemetery information and notable interments, should go on a free-space profile and the category page should link to it.