=Concept====What are Categories?=Introduction=='''Categories ''' are a an effective, useful and simple system of easily putting to sort articles into useful logical groups through which visitors can . This allows readers (and of course also [[Warhammer_40k_-_Lexicanum:Editor|Editors]]) to find related articles and related information easily. They Think of them as folders on your computer or other device where you gather all files that belong together or as drawers in pre-digital age filing cabinets containing paper files on a certain topic or that are simple pertinent to a specific use. To stay in the latter image without ''categories'' all those papers would simply be lying around in one big chaotic pile and effective nobody would ever be able to find anything again. At least not if they were not knowing exactly what they were looking for. ==Use of categories in the Lexicanum==The ''Lexicanum'' (like other comparable projects) needs a highly-organised system to keep at least some semblance of order and required to be able to carry out for example maintenance work or updates. As of January 2021 there are close to 30,000 content pages in this ''Lexicanum'' alone (i.e. in the English language [[Warhammer 40,000]] ''Lexicanum''). If you also count other pages such as [[Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum:Discussion pages]], [[Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum:User page|User pages]], [[Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum:User talk page|User talk pages]], [[Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum:Redirect|Redirect pages]], and others this number is almost 65,000. Plus over 15,000 media files. Given the vast amount of pages and files it should be fairly obvious why without proper organisation this would be one big mess. Therefore every page in the so-called ''main system'' and also every single file ''must'' be categorized.===What should be categorisedcategories are there?====Categorization Categorisation in the Lexicanum is carried out flexibly. Given the constant changes and reorganisation of a game system first published around 1987 with countless [[Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum:Accepted sources|sources]] and almost infinite possibilities to create new articles with yet another tidbit of information any other approach would simply be madness. This means that categories can be created, deleted, merged, moved, renamed and other things when necessary and appropriate. Therefore there is no static complete category ''tree'' that lists all currently existing categories at a glance. Apart from the problem of a constantly changing "landscape" so to speak this problem would also be massively compounded by the fact that any category can be a sub-category of not only one, but theoretically quite a lot of different categories. And as of January 2021 there are somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 different categories in existence in this ''Lexicanum'' (you will find an alphabetical list of all ''categories'' [[Special:Categories|here]], but there is really not that much that you can do with this information apart from probably get a bad headache). Basically all this means that one would need a ''massive'' three dimensional model that would have to be adapted every single time there is a change somewhere in the category system. And this is simply beyond our capacity and also not necessary from a practical point of view. This does obviously not mean that there is no logic and system behind the categorisation in the ''Lexicanum'' (if there weren't categories would be not that useful). This logic has basically not changed much since the founding of the Lexicanum which means that as it seems to somehow have worked out for 15 or more years it can't be ''that'' bad. In the following we try to give you a broad idea how this logic looks like. Generally speaking there are two big general categories: one for [[Category:Background|"Background"]] (you can also call this "lore" or "fluff" or whatever you like) and one for everything else, not very creatively baptized [[:Category:Other|"Other"]]. Each of these is then subdivided into more and more specific subcategories. The following "category tree" can (reasons see above) only give you a general idea of this, but it should suffice. *[[:Category:Background]]:**[[:Category:Characters]]**[[:Category:Equipment]]**[[:Category:The Galaxy]]**[[:Category:Species and Factions]]:***[[:Category:Chaos***[[:Category:Dark Eldar***[[:Category:Drukhari***[[:Category:Eldar***[[:Category:Extinct Species***[[:Category:Human Civilizations***[[:Category:Imperium***[[:Category:Kroot***[[:Category:Minor Alien Species and Factions***[[:Category:Necrons***[[:Category:Orks***[[:Category:Squats***[[:Category:Tau***[[:Category:Tyranids***[[:Category:Warp Entities***...***... **...**...**...  *[[:Category:Other]]   What should be categorised? This means that technically any article can go in any category, or even make new ones. To prevent a mass of loosely related categories, a list has been set out by moderators at [[Categories]] in an easily read format. This means that if an article needs a category which doesn't exist, the user should ask an admin/sysop to create it for them.