Help:Categories
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One thing that all Judgepedia users can do is help sort articles into useful categories.
What is a "category"?
Categories are tags at the bottom of articles that will help the reader of one page find other articles that are in a similar category. For example, this article is tagged at the bottom as belonging to two categories, Category:Editing Help and Category:Judgepedia basic information. When a reader of this article--a reader who is clearly looking to discover how Judgepedia works--clicks on one of those category links at the bottom, he or she will be directed to a collection of other articles that are about learning their way around Judgepedia.
Assigning an article to a category
If you're writing an article and want to attach a category, check Portal:Categories for style guidelines so you can be reasonably sure that you're using categories the way other contributors do. This increases the odds that your article will go into a category that others are already using.
You can also browse through: List of all Judgepedia categories.
You can also check to see if the category tag you added already exists by clicking "preview" before you save your article. If the category you've typed in appears as a blue link, then you've guessed right about there being such a category.
Obsolete categories
As this encyclopedia grows, some of the categories used earlier on may become obsolete. In that case, obsolete category tags can always be removed, so don't worry about creating categories that might not be useful or become outdated.
How to put your article in categories
Once you have decided to put your article into a category (or categories), follow these steps:
- On the "edit" page for the article, place your cursor at the end of the article.
- Type two initial square brackets: [[
- Type the word "Category" followed by a colon, as in: Category:
- Type the name of the category, which can be a new category or a pre-existing category. For example: Judgepedia basic information
- Type two concluding square brackets: ]]
- Preview your work and then click "save page".
- You're done.
Category names are case-sensitive. If you're trying to put an article in the category "Louisiana district courts" and you type "Louisiana District Courts", your article will go into a category called "Louisiana District Courts" which won't be good because all the other articles on Judgepedia about Louisiana district courts are in the "Louisiana district courts" category. By default, all words in a category should be lowercase. Exceptions are made for proper nouns only.
Example of an article with useful category tags
The Alabama Supreme Court is an example of an article that has been sorted into some useful categories.
How to remove category tags from an article
If you think an article has been mis-categorized, go to the "edit" screen of that article, scroll to the bottom of the edit screen where you'll find the category tags, and delete or edit category tags you believe are obsolete or unhelpful.
If you do decide that an entire category is obsolete, visit that category's page and note the articles it includes so you can move all articles to a new category. Otherwise, they will end up orphaned in an obsolete category.
Linking to a category
There may be times when you want to refer to, or link to, a Judgepedia category in an article, without putting the article in that category. The way to do this is by inserting ":" as in this example:
You can insert any wiki-link you wish, as in this example:
- [[:Category:Federal judiciary|federal judges]], which looks like:
Subcategories
Categories can be designated as subcategories of other categories. This allows you to artfully create a hierarchy of categories, so that you can nest one category within another, which may in turn be nested within other, larger categories.
The reason to do this is that it prevents large categories from becoming so full that they lose their value. For example, if you put all articles that had anything to do with Maine into Category:Maine, that category would soon become functionally useless. Rather, you want to create useful subcategories that are part of the Maine category, such as:
- Category:Maine courts, which is a subcategory of Category:Maine.
Then, within Category:Maine courts, you can have several smaller categories, such as Category:Maine Supreme Judicial Court and Category:Maine Superior Court.
The way you make one category a subcategory of a larger category is to click "edit" when you are on the page for the category, and then add the category designation as usual.
- Look at Category:Maine courts for an example.
The word supercategory refers to the larger categories within which smaller subcategories are listed.
- "Maine" is a supercategory for "Maine courts" and "Maine judges".
- "Maine courts" is a supercategory for "Maine Supreme Judicial Court" and other Maine courts.
