Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Archive/Namespace for image sets

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Namespace for image sets

NoN Requires community consensus

  • Problem: Categorizing image sets is inconvenient.
  • Who would benefit: Everyone who uses categories to find images (because category pages would become clearer), especially users who look for images consistent among each other
  • Proposed solution: Own namespace Set. When there are many images of the same kind in a category, it should be possible to bundle them. But the result should ideally be a group of thumbnails, and not just another subcategory link. I described the problem and possible solutions on Commons:Image sets.

    The following example shows in a simplified way how Category:Penrose tilings would look with Sets between Subcategories and Media:

Discussion

@Watchduck: Aren't these sets (sub)categories again? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 15:41, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

They would be specialized categories. A set would typically be in a category (designating its subject) and might be in a bigger set (of more images in the same style). But a category could not be in a set. The Own namespace section on Commons shows a second example: Set:Octahedron with direction colors is in Category:Octahedron (the subject) and part of Set:Octahedral Platonic solids with direction colors. (The root set is Set:Polyhedra with direction colors.) Watchduck (talk) 18:02, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Watchduck: If a set is a "specialized category" and "a set would typically be in a category", to me it still sounds as if a set is sub-category. :) --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 03:47, 7 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Did you look at Own namespace? Maybe it becomes clearer in OOP terms:
The class Set extends the class Category. It inherits most of its behaviour, but has special features and restrictions on top of that.
There is the main feature that a set is shown as a collection of thumbnails, and not just as a link (see example in the collapsed box above).
And there is the restriction that a category can not be in a set.
For comparison: The class Pickup extends the class Car. So a set is a special kind of category, just like a pickup is a special kind of car.
The semantic difference between a set and a subcategory is that the subcategory narrows down the topic, while a set just bundles many files of the same kind.
Technically Set would be closer to Category, but semantically it would be closer to File — just that it is a bundle of files and not just one.
(For the sake of simplicity I sometimes wrote is instead of would be.) Watchduck (talk) 21:28, 7 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Archived

We decided not to move forward with this proposal because it's mostly about creating a new namespace and this is something the Commons community should decide for themselves. If they reach consensus on this matter, they can just request it and we will create it, you don't have to make it a wish in our survey for that. MaxSem (WMF) (talk) 20:34, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]