Is "Uncategorised" a Category?

Question

While editing the articles tag, I read about articles on the Joomla! Documentation site, and noticed this:

It is also possible to have Uncategorised Articles. These articles exist without being associated with any Category.

My question (maybe not important but nevertheless interesting), is this:

In the Joomla Article manager, is the Uncategorised category that can be found in all new Joomla installations a normal category item (simply called Uncategorised), or is it a special item that is different from normal categories?

Answer 1

As best as I've been able to tell, it's simply another category. I've used it as such in the past with no ill consequence, and there doesn't appear to be any core code that does anything special with it. The database structure for it, and any contained articles seems to be identical, and appears on any pages as such.

Answer 2

'Uncategorised' is the default article category. There's nothing special about it, it behaves like any other category, and you can rename it or delete it (providing any articles it contains are re-assigned) if you want.

Answer 3

Uncategorized is a category item like all other categories. I can remember it since Joomla 1.5 (no sure about Joomla 1), when an there was an uncategorized section / category, and it was the recommended way to create static content pages for Joomla. You had to simply create an article and assign it to the (default at that time) uncategorized section, then link the a menu item with this article and voila your page.

Years passed since then and uncategorized category still exists in Joomla. It is a sample category and probably can be used in the same way as in Joomla 1.5. Sometimes it is always helpful to have a general category for any article that can't be fit to any other category, although I usually rename it to something more meaningful or delete it.