What is the difference between a list and a category?
Grouping articles into a category is not the same as making a list of articles. To make a list of articles, you edit the list directly; but to place articles into a category, you edit each article and insert a category tag by placing [[Category:category_name]] in the body of the text. This automatically adds those articles as a list on the category’s page. Despite the difference in how they are maintained, it is sometimes convenient to think of a category as a list of articles. While an article may be in multiple lists, the goal is that browsing downwards from a list parent category, e.g. Category:Cities, should only arrive at articles that are about cities, e.g. London, and not related articles e.g. History of London. See the John Lennon example. There are some natural hierarchies of lists. One example is the scientific classification of organisms, which would only place an article in one category. Other systems use multiple listings, e.g.
Grouping articles into a category is not the same as making a list of articles. When you make a list of articles, you edit the list directly; but when you place articles into a category, you simply edit the articles, and a list of articles is automatically created on the category’s page. Despite the difference in how they are maintained, it is sometimes convenient to think of a category as a list of articles. While an article may be in multiple lists, the goal is that browsing downwards from a list parent category, e.g. Category:Cities, should only arrive at articles that are cities, e.g. London, and not related articles e.g. History of London. See the John Lennon example. There are some natural hierarchies of lists. One example is the scientific classification of organisms, which would only place an article in one category. Other systems use multiple listings, e.g. Wikipedia could be in Category:Wiki and Category:Encyclopedias. List categories are likely to also be subcategories of to
Related Questions
- Where is there a list of all the plug-ins arranged by category? How am I expected to remember the difference between Swirl and Swish?
- BrianGa said:Added hotel category. Just to confirm, this thread aims to be an exhaustive list of cards with benefits/rewards?
- Why doesn a particular city/category/etc show up on the list but comes up fine on the Craigslist website?
