When searching Commons, if there is a category with same or very similar title, show a hint/link (Community Wishlist/W471)
There categories for nearly every concept imaginable on Commons at this point, finely subcategorized and usually containing many files / fairly complete.
However, many users do not use these categories or aren't even aware they exist. The search results can be suboptimal as they often show lots and lots of offtopic files or do not include many files about the topic because e.g. their file-titles are in another language or undescriptive. The image on the right should explain it all but read on for additional information.
More info: Many visitors/users aren't aware categories exist or rarely use them in part because W225: Show categories on mobile is still not done and because if they're shown at all, they're just small hyperlinks at the very bottom of the page (instead of well-visible as tags directly beneath or above the image). Thus, many users only use the search and don't go to some fitting search result(s) to check whether there it has a fitting category.
The problem is made more severe by the default search for pages usually mostly showing galleries (usually containing just a few files, not useful, and last edited a decade ago) and all kinds of pages other than categories (W369: When searching Commons, under "Categories and Pages" show the category for the search term is about that). This is unless you manually edit the namespaces searched (expert knowledge + too much time required) or know about the trick to search cat:search term which even most active editors don't know about. So most often, users don't search categories and don't benefit from them and all the hard work by thousands of contributors that goes into populating and (sub)categorizing them.
Even if all these problems didn't exist, it would be very useful if there was a hint above the MediaSearch search results that told you there is a category for the concept you're searching for.
You could then decide whether you want to check it out. I outlined some of the benefits of categories over search results earlier and some of the additional ones are that 1) these pages often contain the Wikidata infobox - with all kinds of data and links, 2) that they have parent categories which may also be useful, 3) and that they organize the contents via subcategories which one could navigate to to find more precisely what one is looking for or to find/explore interesting subtopics. Note that if you thought the search has a better UI because it shows large images in a wall-of-images view, one can do the same with categories (see here for an/the example).
- The basic version of implementation would simply check whether there is a category page (redirect to a category or category) that matches your search phrase exactly 1:1.
- A more useful version of this, which could be developed later on, would also check highly similar category names. For example, if you search "Primate" (singular, no category or redirect), it would still suggest the category "Primates" (plural, existing category). Eventually also synonyms (not just redirects), typo-correction, and just heuristically similar things would be suggested in the hint.
Unassigned
Users searching Commons who aren't the 0.2% most experienced Commons users
- Created: 20:05, 21 November 2025
- Last updated: 10:48, 8 April 2026
- Author: Prototyperspective (talk)
This wish currently has 6 supporters. Voting for this wish is open until it is completed.