Template:Category described in year/doc

This is a documentation subpage for Template:Category described in year.
It may contain usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

This template is used on approximately 6,200 pages and changes may be widely noticed. Test changes in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

This template uses Lua:

About

This template is used to automatically create a standard category structure throughout Category:Taxa by year of formal description.

Related discussions include, but are not limited to (oldest to newest):

WikiProjects

Decadal CfDs

Non-decadal CfDs

2014 November 26#Category:Invertebrates described in 1896 (and arthropods)
2018 October 5#Category:Vertebrates described in 1771
2018 October 12#Category:Lepidoptera described in 1758
2018 November 4#Category:Mites described in 1959
2018 November 4#Category:<Animal>s described in <year> with very confined scope and small size
- Anemones, ants, aphids, bees, caddisflies, centipedes, cicadas, damselflies, dragonflies, fleas, flies, lacewings, mantises, scale insects, sea cucumbers, stink bugs, termites, ticks, urchins, & wasps.
2024 August 9#Category:Ants described in 1758

If you wish to make significant changes, please discuss at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life first.

Creating new category trees

Avoid creating overly-specific categories, especially those where all years contain a trivial number of pages. These categories do little to aid the overall structure, causing more disruption and ambiguity than order. These may be CFD'd, or even CSD'd, after some grace period for initial population; for example, if only several years have been created out of potentially several hundred, or if many years have been created but all contain a trivial number of pages.
Chances are, there is already an appropriate category structure in place, which should be considered before creating new trees/branches.
To create a new tree, copy an existing, similar tree in Module:Category described in year/config, and paste it in an appropriate spot in that table, following the same general table format, and updating any group-specific values.
If/when a new category tree is created, make sure that any red-linked parents categories are also created. You can find categories with red-linked parents here.

Usage

{{Category described in year}}

No parameters are needed. Instead, the name of the calling category is used to determine its place in the tree.

If the calling category name is not recognized, then the default category tree is applied, which is configured for groups under animals, since animals have more sub-groups than non-animals.

Sitelinks

{{Commons}} links are automatically produced if either the Commons category (P373) property and/or an "Other sites" sitelink to commons exist at Wikidata. See Category:Plants described in 1753 (Q9757156) for both uses. Duplicate values are ignored.
{{Wikispecies}} links are automatically produced if the appropriate sitelink exists at Wikidata. See Category:Species described in 2017 (Q28467553) for an example.

Testing

{{Category described in year|Spiders described in 1901}}

When placing this template in non-category space, i.e. for testing purposes, a category parameter is required.

Tracking categories