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In Commons category deepcategory view mode (wall of images), allow easily filtering offtopic subcats Submitted

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Commons category deepcategory view mode (wall of images) that allows easily filtering away offtopic subcats (proposal illustration)

On Wikimedia Commons, many categories have their contents dispersed into many often pretty specific subcategories. If one wants to browse them one would have to browse through the many different branches of subcategories, instead of just being able to scroll through.

Use of deepcategory search operator to see a wall of image files in a Commons category and its subcategories

Let's say you're just looking for some interesting bio microscopy images, in that case one wouldn't want to browse through subcategories about all the different things shown in such files. Or looking for some good-quality image of the Milky Way seen from Earth, possibly with sth specific in it like an illuminated tent but regardless of the specific country the photo was taken in (how these are currently subcategorized). In the former, one could use deepcategory:"Microscopic images relating to biology" as shown in the image on the right and in the latter deepcategory:"Milky Way Galaxy and a place on Earth". If one was looking for an image showing New York City, doing so would be difficult or inconvenient just browsing categories, one could however use deepcategory:"Views of New York City".

So a modern scrollable wall of images view of a category's contents, including files in all its subcategories, is very useful. In fact, it was the 2nd most-supported request of Commons' technical needs survey (after showing file categories on mobile). The easiest way to achieve it is by using the deepcategory search operator (which by the way if there's no button to use it most WMC users don't know about).

However, there is a big problem with deepcategory for a wall of images viewmode of the category: categories often contain fairly offtopic files and often so many of them that the viewmode is rendered useless.

For example, deepcategory:"New York City" shows countless images of birds and building interiors; deepcategory:"Maps of the world" shows many images that aren't actually maps of the world like this. This can sometimes be solved or the problem be mitigated to some degree by using the deepcategory instead on some subcategory (e.g. "Views of New York City" or "Maps of the world by year"). However, it's a hassle, inexperienced/normal users may not know which subcategory to pick, and it often doesn't solve the problem or can't be done.

What it needs, is one or two ways to filter out subcategories:

  1. Default-provided filter(s) for various types of subcategories that usually contain offtopic files that can be enabled with just one or two clicks when viewing the deepcategory results. Examples of such categories are "xyz in fiction" and "xyz in art" categories and c:Category:Named-after categories. An example is c:Category:Maps of the world in art. These categories are named in always-the-same standardized ways and are in the same category and one could exclude them for example by appending -deepcategory:"the relevant subcat found in this branch". There would be filters to select from and people could add more of these filters
  2. At the top of the search results display a box with an expandable list of categories through which files in either the overall results or the displayed results are located in the category. It would be sorted by number of files and would display the category that is closest to the category that deepcategory was used for. So for example it could display a box like this for deepcategory:"Videos in English":

1. CDC videos in English (3503 files) x
2. Videos in English (2700 files) x
3. Wikimedia videos in English (980 files) x
[show 50 more; 214 categories in total]

where clicking on the x button would just exclude all files in that subcategory. This way one can easily filter out largest sources of offtopic files so that the results display mostly useful relevant files.

First outlined the concept in a somewhat-related code issue at phab:T376440#10354943. This would be even more useful than already if phab:T395348 "An option to load more files for deepcategory searches with partial results (larger depth)" gets implemented. This functionality could also be used to more easily identify miscategorizations, related wish A way to see why a file is somewhere underneath a specific category (tool to show cat-path).

Note that ultimately, this could be used for a button that is displayed on category pages to switch viewmode to a wall-of-images mode implemented via deepcategory so it isn't just about improving usefulness/UX for those using this 'trick' using the Commons search but about drastically improving the usefulness etc of Wikimedia Commons, the 2nd largest Wikimedia project after the Wikipedias.

Assigned focus area

Unassigned.

Type of wish

Feature request

Wikimedia Commons

Affected users

Commons users

Other details

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