Helping with categories
Hi Balqis,
When I first joined the categories workgroup, and when I first started to edit/create resources on WE, I spent a lot of time studying policies and procedures for how to do things. I studied policies and procedures available on WE, but also on wikipedia and wikiversity (as well as other wikis).
When working in categories, it is useful to understand how categories work. I've been working to improve the WE Help:Category page. This may be a good first page for study.
The WE guidelines for categorization is still in draft mode. I suggest also studying wikipedia's guidelines for categorization, as this is a resource for our own work.
Another aspect less related to categories, but useful in understanding the possibilities in structuring our wiki pages is to study guidelines related to style. For example
- WE's proposed style guidelines
- Wikipedia's manual of style
Hope these help. Let me know your thoughts on ideas for how to proceed with the category work.
Best, Alison
Hi Alison,
I'm so grateful to you for your support .So the first thing I have to do is to learn about these categories from the link pages here .Can I know one more thing please ? Is it necessary to link any content page we create on WE to its parent page on WE by adding the category link like this Category:Mathematics on that page ? For example ,If I made a learning material related to Applied Psychology /Educational Psychology ,can I link that page to the category page on Educational Psychology which comes under both Teacher education Page and the OERu page for General and Applied Psychology ? Is it advisable or necessary ?Could you clear my doubt regarding this ?
Thanks in advance
Balqis
Hi Balqis,
Yes the way categories work is to add one or more categories to a page and then that page is added to the categories listing. How to structure the categories so that useful resources can be found by browsing categories is the main challenge of the categories workgroup.
But note that in your question you used the idea of parent page...that is more related to the idea of subpages. We don't often use the term "parent categories". Rather one category is a subcategory of another....and the structure can become quite complex, although there is always an expanding flow in the downward direction. The following image from wikipedia demonstrates this trend.
As to your question about how to categorize a particular resource page, if you create a single-page resource in educational psychology, it should be categorized in Category:Educational Psychology. For a multi-page resource, I would suggest creating a category specific to the resource and then categorizing that category into the more general category. The OERu Gen and App Psychology is not yet a category. I would recommend that all pages related to this effort be put into a category specific to the effort, which would then be categorized into the applicable field-related categories.
I see that WE has both Category:Teacher Education and Category:Educational_Psychology. I would think that the second should be a subcategory of the first, as ed psych is a core component of most teach education curriculums. If you agree then go ahead and try your hand at making that link. Use the hotcat gadget (displayed at the bottom of your page), or add the code [[Category:Teacher Education]] directly to the Category:Educational Psychology page...at the very bottom, which will then display "Teacher Education" in the categories listing at the bottom of the page.
Hope this helps. With a little study and practice, I trust you will get the hang of it.
Alison
Hi Alison , Thanks a lot for your quick support and appreciate your timely guidance :-) Now I feel like getting a grip on the elusive topic ! I will start categorizing work from my own pages which would be an easy practice lesson before entering the main pages . Yes,Educational Psychology is a subcategory of Teacher Education like other sub categories namely Educational Technology ,Educational Sociology ,Educational Philosophy etc.I agree with your ideas here .I have now added the code[[Category:Teacher Education to the bottom of these pages .Could you please check them here and here to see if I have done it properly . I couldn't find the hot cat gadget :(.However the other code worked well. Hope that I didn't mess up things
Thanks in tons again for your support and encouragement
Balqis
To use the HotCat gadget, visit your WikiEducator Preferences and under the Gadgets tab, make sure the HotCat gadget is enabled.
Hi Jim ,
Thanks a lot for your guidance to the HotCat gadget page and letting me know how to change my preferences !This was a great piece of advice . It was just now that I noticed that you were answering my doubts along with Alison.It's a pleasant surprise to be guided by the geek Guru on WE.I'm glad to be guided here by you all .
Thanks you again Balqis
Hi Balqis,
Your additions of category codes for the two pages you included above are correct. Well done. The only thing I would like to clarify is that the codes do not need to be separated by a lot of space from the content of the page. I think I may have miscommunicated when I said that the category code should be "at the very bottom". What I meant by that is that the convention is to put the category code(s) last, after all other content and page code. I revised the two pages to take out the additional space. You can check the edit versions and see what I mean by placing the category code last (but without the extra space).
Well done. Hope you have the hotcat working (thanks, Jim).
Talk again soon, Alison
