tool for finding categories for your state/province

[ka3jjz]

We have so many categories in our wiki that it's nearly impossible to find one for your specific county or province. I've written a quick and dirty template called findcat that make it easy-peasy to do. The coding looks like this...

{{findcat
|entity=Illinois}}

Now once you enter the desired state or province under 'entity' and store it, it will generate a URL. Click the URL and voila, you are now seeing all the categories for it.

Notice the pipe symbol (|) to the left of entity - that's required. For those that don't see it, it's the shift of '\'

You can use this in your user page to make your searches very simple

HTH..Mike

 

[QDP2012]

We have so many categories in our wiki that it's nearly impossible to find one for your specific county or province.

Ever since the set of standardized categories were created, there have also been "Standardized Categories" pages which list all of them for each province/state/country, etc. Simply navigate to the primary category for your state (example: Category:Illinois), and scroll down to see the list of pages in that category, and choose "Standardized Categories for Illinois" page. You can also start at the top of the list by visiting Standardized Categories.

Hope this helps,

 

[ka3jjz]

That's interesting, but it doesn't show you every category for a state. You would need to drill down to see the other sub-categories that are beneath it. My method makes that unnecessary; it shows everything for a state, regardless of whether it's a sub-category to something else or not.

For example, if you wanted to see the Maryland Army National Guard category, it's a sub to Maryland Military. Fair enough, but someone who is new may not think to reason that way.

Just a different way to get to the same result...Mike

 

[QDP2012]

...it doesn't show you every category for a state.

The list of standardized categories for a specific state lists all of the standardized categories for the state, in alphabetical order. Across the entire Wiki, there are very very few "state"-specific non-standardized categories.

...You would need to drill down to see the other sub-categories that are beneath it.

There's no hierarchical-style drill-down involved with the "Standardized Categories in (State)" pages. Example: Standardized Categories for Maryland lists all of the standardized categories/subcategories for Maryland in alphabetical order. No drill-down involved.

...For example, if you wanted to see the Maryland Army National Guard category, it's a sub to Maryland Military. Fair enough, but someone who is new may not think to reason that way.

The sub-category relationship is not a navigational factor when you look at Standardized Categories for Maryland. (It is when you look directly at Category:Maryland, or any of its subcategories, as expected when looking directly at any actual category page.)

If you go to the Standardized Categories for Maryland page, you will find Maryland Army National Guard category listed alphabetically (10th in the list).

Hope this helps,

 

[ka3jjz]

Interesting; the code is still in your user area, though. Something like this should probably be on each of the state and province pages - maybe as a template?

I can't look at the coding at work (where I am now) - how did you build the list of categories? If that was done manually, that could present a small maintenance headache, as adding a new category in one state might have to be manually propagated across everything else. If you were to incorporate the functionality of the findcat function, no manual intervention would be necessary.

Mike

 

[QDP2012]

Interesting; the code is still in your user area, though.

All of the "Standardized Categories for (state)" pages invoke the same templates as the "Standardized Categories for Maryland" page, which are in the normal "Template" name-space (see bottom of this list), not my "QDP2012" user-space, as of 2015. (As expected, "state" values vary according to page viewed.)

View Source: Standardized Categories for Maryland:

{{Text_CatListIntro|State=Maryland}}

{{Text_CatListState|State=Maryland}}

{{Text_CatListStateUSFedMil|State=Maryland}}

{{Text_CatListFooter|State=Maryland}}

Something like this should probably be on each of the state and province pages - maybe as a template?

The template-generated list is too long to embed into a typical State/Province primary Wiki page, but I will certainly add to each State/Province's primary Wiki page a link to the corresponding "Standardized Categories for (state)" page. I will work on that this evening.

I can't look at the coding at work (where I am now) - how did you build the list of categories? If that was done manually, that could present a small maintenance headache, as adding a new category in one state might have to be manually propagated across everything else.

No worries on this point; maintenance of these lists/templates has not been a headache since they were created in 2015, nor do I expect it to become a headache, because the entire set of "Standardized Categories for (state)" pages are all template-driven (using the templates listed earlier in this post).

If another (as yet unnamed) "standardized category" is needed beyond the ones that exist now (like "(state) Buses and Taxis" or something we have not yet considered), then it is a fairly simple process to update the templates listed earlier in this post to include that new "standardized category". This will cause the new category to appear on all "Standardized Categories for (State)" pages, without having to touch each page.

If you were to incorporate the functionality of the findcat function, no manual intervention would be necessary.

Even though no manual intervention seems to be needed now with the "Standardized Categories pages", I will investigate this option also, and implement accordingly.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions,