Category Guidelines

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A category is for grouping profiles that share something in common.

Contents 1 General Guidelines 2 Category Content 3 The Category Tree 3.1 Landing Level Categories 3.2 Top Level Categories 3.3 Mid Level Categories 3.4 Creating Sub Categories 4 Help Pages

General Guidelines

1. Always select the narrowest applicable category. That is, choose the most-specific, lowest-level category you can find.
2. A category is not intended to be a research page, instead, it can link to a free-space page, Wikipedia page, or other website for additional information. See Category:Robert_Henderson,_Arrived_25_Dec_1849 and Category:Coromandel,_Arrived_7_May_1804 and Category:Tellicherry,_Arrived_15_Feb_1806
3. Unlike a profile, a category cannot have a manager, it is not "owned" by any member or Project. The Categorization Project manages the category structure, using guidelines developed by WikiTree. However members and projects can and do, collaborate with the Categorization Project to make additions and changes to the existing category structure. The Categorization Project also manages the category error lists.
4. Adding a category to a profile should not replace the information referring to the category on the profile page. A category should be added after the information and any sources, are documented on the profile page.

Category Content

1. A category should contain a brief description of the purpose of the category. See below for types of categories and examples of content.
2. Category content can include: text describing the purpose of the category, a Category Info Box (CIB), where one is available, internal links to free-space pages, external links to a website eg Wikipedia.
3. Category content should not have: less than 50 characters, headings, horizontal lines, reference tags, div, span, or blockquote tags. All of these will cause the category to be listed on category error lists. Again, all information containing those items can be put onto a linked free-space page, and can be added to, edited etc without affecting the category page.

The Category Tree

Landing Level Categories

1. A Landing level category is the lowest level category in the category tree, the one that generally contains only profiles and no sub categories, (an exception to that is a location category which is a landing level category, but may have a cemetery, school or church as a subcategory).
2. A Landing level category is the most common category created by members, to add to a profile. It may be for a location, cemetery, church, occupation, military unit, etc.
3. Eventually, all Australian location and cemetery categories will have the relevant CIB, which has parameters for free-space page, links to Wikipedia, and another website.
4. Locations: Any newly created locations can have content added at the time of creation, similar to Category:Ellerslie,_Victoria, to prevent an empty category error.
5. Ship Voyages: See Adding a New Category for Voyages to Australia
6. Others: Other types of landing level categories can have this text, or similar as content.
   

Landing level category

This category is for profiles of people associated with this church/school/occupation etc.

Top Level Categories

1. All categories above the landing level categories are container categories, that is they "contain" other categories, rather than individual profiles.
2. The same guidelines on content, free-space pages, etc, outlined above also apply to higher level categories.
3. The majority of categories above landing level categories will generally be considered "top level", that is, they should not contain individual profiles, they can and often do, contain free-space profiles.
4. A category may be specifically designated "top level"' with the {{Top Level}} template, or from a CIB, for example, see Category:Immigrant_Voyages_to_Australia and Category:Queensland. Categories with this designation will not appear in the category picker in edit mode on a profile, and will generate a data base error (suggestion) if used on an individual profile. More and more categories will designated as such to avoid confusion, and to assist with profiles being added to the lowest category possible..
5. "Top Level" does not mean, at the top of the tree, many top level categories contain landing level categories, see Category:Queensland, Places and Category:Queensland, Cemeteries
6. Example content:
   

{{Top Level}}
Container category

This category contains categories relating to convict transportation to Australia.

Mid Level Categories

1. Occasionally, a category above the landing level will be designated as "Mid Level", that is, the category may have individual profiles added until they can be put into the correct landing level category, eg. if it has not yet been created. An example of this type is the ship parent category. See Category:Navarino_(1808), this should be seen as a temporary placement, until they can be categorized to a lower category. The category will have a {{Mid Level}} template.
2. Example content:
   

{{Mid Level}}
Container category

This category contains landing level categories for voyages of this ship.

Creating Sub Categories

1. To avoid unnecessary layers of navigation, these points should be observed when creating sub-categories of higher level categories, to divide them into narrower categories:

• What is the purpose of the sub category, what will it contain, ie. is it Mid level or top level, will it contain other higher level categories or contain only landing level categories?
• If a category could only potentially contain a few people do not create it. Use the category above it instead.
• If a container category would be empty and only have one subcategory do not create it. (Exception: Ship category may only have one voyage sub-category).
• Generally, individual profiles should not be in a landing level category, as well as in categories above that one. (Exception: Cemetery and Location categories)
• Avoid duplicating sub categories that lead to the same landing level categories, but have no extra categorization benefit. For example, Category:Queensland is followed by Category:Queensland, Places then by the Queensland place name categories, so we wouldn't divide category Queensland into hypothetically, North Queensland and South Queensland, as a member can go directly to the place names from the Queensland category.

Help Pages

• Australia Project Categories Team has various help pages relating to Australian categories.
• Categorization
• Category Creation and Removal
• Category Names