Topics

Topics are categories that denote that a given article is about a given topic. They’re similar to concepts like “Tags” in other contexts.

Topics are distinct from flags; whereas flags denote temporary work-items to complete on an article, Topics denote permanent properties of content that will help people find it easily.

Most articles have a form section for Topics that can be checked off. This form section is automatically generated based on which categories have the Topics category on them.

You can see which topics there are either by viewing that part of any page editing form or this list: Category:Topics.

Topics differ from “Topic Clusters” because Topics are designed to be wide-ranging “tags” throughout the site that end users may use to find content, whereas Topic Clusters are used very specifically to auto-generate portions of the See Also sections, and nothing else. See Topics and topic clusters for more information.

Steps to add a new topic

1. Create a Category:Foo page. Add [[Category:Topics]] to it to make it a sub-category of the Topics category.
2. Add the topic name (exactly the Category name, minus Category:) to Property:Topics. This property is how the Topic form section’s checkboxes are automatically generated.

TODO: Document guidelines for when a new Topic is warranted.