User blog:Love Robin/Be a Sub Commander

There is some confusion about HOW to Properly and Correctly make Sub-categories.

This is understandable because UNLIKE PAGES, adding a category to a category does NOT make the added cat a Subcat. Let me expalin that.

Say we have as categories Houses, Rooms, and Closets and you wish to arrange them in a proper and correct (sub)Category Tree. It should take the form of: That makes sense because ALL Rooms are in a house and ALL closets are in rooms, and even though closets are also in houses they are nonetheless a subset of rooms so you don't make Closets a subcategory of Houses. It is a sub-subcategory.
 * Houses
 * Rooms
 * Closets

Now to properly and correctly make a sub-category tree. You do NOT do the same as you would for pages. To include a Page in a Category, you open the Page and add the Category. Simple.

BUT to make a subcategory, you MUST OPEN the intended subcategory and ADD TO IT the category it is to be subbed under.

So to make the Houses, Rooms, Closets tree, you would…
 * 1) Open Rooms and ADD TO IT Houses. Now Rooms is a subcat of Houses.
 * 2) Open Closets and ADD TO IT Rooms. Now Closets is a subcat or Rooms.

How to confirm you've done it Properly and Correctly? The category page will tell you if you have. Open the category you've just added a subcat to and look for the section  ==Subcategories== , usually just underneath the initial images if that feature is enabled.
 * In the Subcategories section it should say "This category has the following [number] subcategories, out of [number] total." and you should find listed there the category you intended to be a sub to that category.

IF YOU DO NOT FIND THE SUBCATEGORIES SECTION -OR- FIND THE SUBCATEGORY LISTED THERE… YOU DONE IT WRONG

Proper Structuring
Sub-Cats should be subsets of their parents.

For example Category:Stranglers [used to have] Category:Telekinetics as a sub-Cat. I'm sure the reasoning is due to Darth Vader and other Force Initiates using the Force to do this act. However, it really should not be. Not all Telekinetics are Stranglers. Or vice versa.

It should not be "because this character can do This&That, so because they are in Cat-This, then Cat-That should be Sub to it."

Instead, when viewing Categories attached to Categories, you NEED TO ASK "Is EVERYTHING in the attached Category ALSO IN this Category?" If "No", do not add it.

For example, Category:Pedophiles. You may think it a good idea to add to it Category:Perverts and Category:Rapists. But you'd be WRONG. Why? Because NOT ALL Perverts are Pedophiles. NOT ALL Rapists are Pedophiles. So the answer to the qualifying question for these is "No", thus you do not add it. Mind you, the *reverse may be true*. In this example legally all Pedophiles are Perverts and Rapists.


 * The only exceptions would be Categories auto-added by Templates. For example  . In addition to adding the Mature warning banner, it also automatically adds the page into Category:Mature. This is done more for Site Administrative purposes than actually making sub-cats.

Substructure
Sub Categories should make sense in their progression. For example a Category:Vehicles should have as sub-cats something like Aircraft, Watercraft, and Landcraft. Then under Landcraft Wheeled and Hover (or Wheelless), etc. Then under Wheeled, Automobile, then under that "Trucks", "Cars", and "Cycles", etc.

See? Progression which makes sense. Something in a Sub-Cat usually should be applicable to every Cat-level above it. And in this example then, a jeep should ONLY be Tagged with "Cars" as every cat above should be understood as applying. We know a jeep is also a "Wheeled", "Landcraft", "Vehicle". We don't need ALL tagged to it.

Of course, there will be times a page may fit more than one subcat at the same level. For example, the Back to the Future Delorean would also fit somewhere under "Aircraft" since it has undergone a conversion enabling it to fly. Possibly even "Railcar" since in the third movie that is all it was capable of being; long enough to Define it as such for 1/3rd its existence, not counting the animated series and related other media.