Script/tool to add Commons category links to articles (Community Wishlist/W445)
I created many new categories on Wikimedia Commons. I noticed that even years after I created the categories and even when they're full of interesting high-quality media, the English Wikipedia article as well as the ones of the other languages don't contain a link to the category anywhere.
Commons categories often are very useful for readers because many articles can't possibly include all the useful media files directly in them so there's some the user may find interesting or educational or otherwise useful that are only in the Commons category. There, there may also be some further subcategorization of the files that enables narrowing down what kind of file one may be looking for and one can also just browse it discovery style and see what's there (some say images say more than thousand words).
The link to the Commons category is usually done via the w:Template:Commons category.
- There are probably many thousands of articles without the Commons category link but more files than used directly in the article.
- Please create a script that enables and if possible also does the addition of that Commons category template. This would probably be a volunteer effort, not something for WMF.
- It could for example exclude categories where all the files it contains are already used in the article or if the category only contains ≤ 1 file.
The template is usually placed beneath the References section. This means most readers will never see it, especially if the References section is long which is often the case. It's basically shooting in one's own foot by making sure many people will never learn about and visit Commons. However, adding it instead to the See also section instead was also discussed and has also been done for many articles. If it becomes standard practice to add the template more visibly to the See also section instead of the bottom of the article – if that section doesn't exist it could for example be created – then the template should probably be moved up from the "External links" section across many articles by some bot / script so for this wish it doesn't matter so much where the template is added initially.
Wikipedia readers looking for more media like more charts about the subject
- Created: 16:55, 17 October 2025
- Last updated: 16:25, 21 October 2025
- Author: Prototyperspective (talk)
This wish currently has 4 supporters. Voting for this wish is open until it is completed.