Help:Categories

Categories are used to organize information in the Theosophy Wiki by grouping articles with some common characteristic.

At the bottom of most articles, there is a box listing categories with which the subject of the article is associated. Here is an example from Henry Steel Olcott, whose colorful life can be categorized in many ways:

Category's own page

Each category has a page of its own, preceded by the special word "Category" (called in Mediawiki a "Namespace" - see terminology used in Mediawiki). That page has a description of the category, followed by a list of articles associated with that category. In this case Category:Attorneys lists people in that profession:

On the main page of the wiki, there is a portal entitled "Categories in the Theosophy Wiki". It provides links to categories in groupings that we hope are helpful. To see a complete list of categories specific to Theosophy Wiki, in alphabetic order, see Category:TSWiki categories. A demonstration is available at Sunshine Review video on YouTube: Adding categories to a wiki page.

Creating a category

Go to the Search box and key in "Category:" followed by the name of the new category, such as Category:Dog lovers. Most category names are plurals, such as "Writers", "Organizations", and "Sanskrit terms". Alternatively, you can add the desired category to the article first, and click on the red link that has appeared in the "Categories" box. You will get a page that says "Editing Category:New article", and you can add text as you would in any other new article. A few words of description is usually all that is needed to explain the purpose of the category. Add the following line to the new category article, as well, to distinguish this new one from categories that support the technical infrastructure of the wiki:

[[Category:TSWiki categories]]

Please work with the administrators if you are adding a new category, so it can be incorporated into the Categories portal on the Main page.

Adding a category to an article

To add a category to a Theosophy Wiki article, Key in an intra-wiki link in this format: [[Category:Categoryname]].
For a demonstration, see Sunshine Review video on YouTube: Adding categories to a wiki page.

Changing the sort sequence of article in the category

Use the format: [[Category:Categoryname|preferredsortsequence]]. Examples are

• [[Category:Writers|Barker, A. Trevor]] so that A. Trevor Barker will be listed under "Barker" rather than "A."
• [[Category:Periodicals|Light Bearer, The]] so that The Light Bearer (periodical) will be listed under "Light" rather than "The".

Suppressing a category from appearing

If you want to categorize an article, but do not want the category to appear in the box at bottom of the article's page, place a colon before the word Category. For example, [[:Category:Disputed information]] would place the article in the category "Disputed information". The article would appear on the category's page, but the category would not be on the article's page.