FlightGear wiki:FlightGear screenshot categories

The FlightGear screenshot categories contains image files with in-sim screenshots of aircraft, scenery, the user interface etc. uploaded primarily for the purpose of illustrating wiki articles.

The categories main purpose is to group together screenshots of related subjects and to encourage and facilitate browsing between those subjects. They purpose is also to facilitate browsing between article and screenshot categories.

General structure

See also Special:CategoryTree/FlightGear screenshots.

In short the files are categorized in a structure resembling several trees with intertwined branches sometimes with webs between them.

To facilitate looking for a specific screenshot subject, the categories are structured a bit like trees going from more general categories further out the branches to more specialized subjects, for example screenshots of details of the cockpit of a specific aircraft.

To further facilitate browsing, categories with a similar type of content are also linked together resulting in that some category trees appear intertwined. As some category trees are closely following each other they are also more tightly coupled and intertwined with each other.

In particular article and screenshot categories related to each other are intertwined and closely coupled with each other. Two examples of such structures are Category:Aircraft by type and Category:Screenshots of aircraft by type, and Category:Airports and Category:Screenshots of airports.

Making files easy to find

Good file description

The best way to make a file easy to find really is to use a descriptive file name and add a good file description. That way it can much easier be found, whether that be with with the wiki's search function or with external search providers (like Google search).

Good use of categories

The categories are not tags, but a group of similar items that can be browsed by traversing related groups through links between the categories.

By adding a few categories that are as specific as possible, a file can be found easier. Conversely, adding many "tags" would clutter the category pages and make it harder to find a specific file on a category page.

To find a good category either use the category tree or the blue triangles in the Subcategories section on a category page.

Specific category structures

Aircraft related categories

See also Special:CategoryTree/Screenshots of aircraft.

The aircraft article and aircraft screenshot category trees are closely coupled to and intertwined with each other to simplify browsing them. Both the article and the screenshots categories have a subtree by aircraft type. The screenshot category structure follows the article category structure, which in turn follows the Wikipedia category structure (Category:Aircraft by type This is a link to a Wikipedia article).

Some aircraft have a subtree like below:

Aircraft screenshot category
Cockpit screenshot category
Cockpit details screenshot category
Custom dialog screenshot category

As of July 2015 there is no aircraft screenshot category by manufacturer.

Scenery related categories

See also Special:CategoryTree/Screenshots of scenery.

Similar to the aircraft category structures, the scenery and in particular airport related categories are intertwined with each other.

Both the scenery and airport article categories as well as the scenery and airport screenshot categories are divided into continents, countries and airports. All the four category structures are closely coupled and intertwined with each other.

Dialog categories

See also Special:CategoryTree/FlightGear dialog screenshots.

This category subtree mainly consists of screenshots of dialogs and also contains aircraft specific custom dialog screenshot categories.

Creating new subcategories

Creating new subcategories, category diffusion, by splitting off related files into new subcategories will help finding specific files, if it is done in a consistent and logical way.

As a rule of thumb a new subcategory could or should be created when there is somewhere between three to seven files that are strongly related to each other, for example by being screenshots of the cockpit of the same aircraft.

Subcategory page contents

In order to make a subcategory useful the category page should contain:

  • A good category description, either using {{fg screenshot cat}}, the {{en}} or another language template.
  • Links in the description to any related articles
  • A category link to the main category
  • Maybe category links to some related categories (including article categories)

It is often useful to use category sorting in the category links

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