Community Wishlist/Wishes/When searching Commons, under "Categories and Pages" show the category for the search term
Description
The search results when searching on Commons and going to the MediaSearch tab "Categories and Pages" are not good.
When searching for something for which there is a category with exactly the same name as the search phrase it often still doesn't show the category except far down at a place the user may not scroll to.
It even shows file talk pages far up in the results instead of what is far more likely what the user is searching for and which is certainly more useful than file talk pages.
- Lots of results for galleries but not one for the category
Also galleries on Commons are usually of pretty low quality, e.g. extremely outdated and just what one user at some point threw together instead of necessarily containing any particularly representative or useful or high-quality files that are well-maintained and up-to-date. It's fine that the galleries are shown in those search results, but currently they are somehow prioritized by the results so even old galleries with just four files are shown at the top and the whole page often is just flooded with galleries while the category – even if it has the exact same name – is pushed out of sight far down.
The category page also has all kinds of subcategories that make it easy to find what one is looking for (including any galleries which are in the category either directly or in a galleries-subcategory) and is usually the most useful thing when the user is not searching for some meta/help page.
One example is searching for roses – in that case, those galleries maybe aren't as bad as they usually are on Commons, but the category of the same name (redirected from it) is not findable. That's just an example. And of course while the issue exists even when there is a category of the exact same title as the search term or when there is a redirect of the exact same title as the search term, it should also show categories likely relevant to the phrases which are just similar to the category title – for example camel doesn't show the category for the animal either despite that it's quite similar (c:Category:Camel is a redlink but c:Category:Camels exists). And also searching for "lifespan charts" should bring up c:Life expectancy charts etc.
Assigned focus area
Unassigned.
Type of wish
Feature request
Related projects
Wikimedia Commons
Affected users
Wikimedia users and potential users
Other details
- Created: 00:28, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
- Last updated: 00:39, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
- Author: Prototyperspective (talk)