Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

Categories, Lists, and Navigation Templates

Categories are not the only way to provide readers with an organized approach that ties a group of articles together. Lists and navigation templates (such as series boxes) both can do the same thing. For example, Figure 17-10 is a list that essentially does the same thing as the category shown in Figure 17-1 (page 324).

Figure 17-10. If this list of economists looks familiar, it’s because it’s also Figure 14-6 (page 259), and because Figure 18-1 earlier in this chapter, showing the category page Economists, has almost the same set of links in it. Lists and categories can overlap considerably, but each has strengths and weaknesses.

You’ve probably seen the third option—navigation templates—but you may not be familiar with the label. Figure 17-11 shows a series box for winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.

Figure 17-11. Shown is the series box titled Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics: List of Laureates. This series box appears in an article when the template {{Nobel Prize in Economics}} is added to the article’s wikitext. Series boxes are appropriate for relatively short lists (the one shown has about sixty links). Series boxes are also appropriate only when membership in a list is very clear. Prominent British politicians ...