User:Chuck Entz/Category considerations

=Introduction= Wikimedia categories are primarily a navigational tool for linking pages that have a specific thing in common. Although they should be arranged in a logical structure, the logical structure is not their primary purpose.

Wiktionary standard categories
Arranged in a language-independent structure that is mirrored in each language: each master category can have a language-specific counterpart for any language, and the relations of the language-specific counterparts parallel the relations of the master categories. The language-specific category names are derived from the master category names according to very strict rules so everything is standardized.
 * Master categories are defined in data modules, and must be added there before the category pages are created.
 * The page for any standard category can be populated using auto cat. The standardization of names means that auto cat can derive all the information it needs from the category name to get the data from the modules.

All other categories
The system will allow you to add any category you want to entries, but these aren't in the data modules and you can't use auto cat for them- the category page will have to be populated by hand, unless someone has created a specialized template for the purpose.

Syntax

 * , where {category name} follows the system's rules for page names
 * Adding this to any page puts it into the category in question without any display in the text of the page.
 * Category: + {category name} +
 * {code for other wiki}:Category: + {category name} +
 * Either of the above will display a link to the category without putting the page itself in it