Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Categories/Automatically suggest categories when creating a new article

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Automatically suggest categories when creating a new article

Problem: It is often difficult to think of what categories a new article should be part of, leading to many categories being incomprehensive and many articles harder to find.
Who would benefit: Editors and readers who value categories.
Proposed solution: Add a function to the process of creating a new article which automatically suggests categories for it to be included in.
More comments: The way the suggested categories would be chosen could be for example by searching the article title in category titles, or by taking a sentence in the article that fits a generic categorizing pattern ("[article title] is/was X"), and then searching for X. Or perhaps there could be some kind of an algorithm that can look for similar articles (something like the one used for 'suggested articles' on mobile), and then showing the categories those are in.
Phabricator tickets: task T360189
Proposer: HappyMihilist (talk) 03:16, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

ORES already is capable of suggesting categories (see mw:ORES#Topic_routing), which I've taken advantage of in my draft sorter script, so the hard part of the technical work is already done. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:29, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Support Stryn (talk) 18:25, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Good idea —Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 18:26, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Sgd. —Hasley 18:29, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Owleksandra (talk) 18:43, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support ValeJappo 【〒】 18:45, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Sagivrash (talk) 18:55, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Waddie96 (talk) 18:56, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Wikiusuarios (talk) 19:03, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Movses (talk) 19:06, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support --NGC 54 (talk / contribs) 19:17, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support only if it is not only made for Wikipedia. Noé (talk) 19:29, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Pmau (talk) 20:05, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Thryduulf (talk: meta · en.wp · wikidata) 20:12, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ssstela (talk) 21:16, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 21:18, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Barcelona (talk) 22:48, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support YFdyh000 (talk) 23:26, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support UncleMartin (talk) 01:32, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support BugWarp (talk) 01:37, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Keepcalmandchill (talk) 02:00, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Shizhao (talk) 02:49, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support ✍ Janwo ^Disk./_de:wp 02:59, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support TrudiJ (talk) 04:34, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Getting an algorithm to do this task well enough to be useful might not be easy, so this seems like a high-effort request for only medium benefit. Less significantly, I'm also a little concerned that editors might start relying on this and stop adding categories once the bot runs out of suggestions. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:38, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Omda4wady (talk) 07:22, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Abubiju (talk) 10:03, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- Triple C 85 ^|talk| 10:38, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support This will be very problematic in different languages. But some algorithm should compare categories in different language versions (via Wikidata) Another solution should be suggesting via infobox and some parameters, JAn Dudík (talk) 10:53, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support 1Mmarek (talk) 11:42, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Great for new editors, and hopefully an opt-out function for those who wish to Lugnuts (talk) 12:28, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support another approach could be a better search function on the category search for some frequently used categories rather than having to get the precise title e.g. 'women' could also pull up 'female'? Kaybeesquared (talk) 13:34, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose generally opposed to sinking resources into this system that should just be replaced by Wikidata. It's hard to find categories because people have to figure out what we've called things and what currently exists instead of relying on uniform Wikidata properties, which can be combined and don't depend values pre-existing. Instead of trying to guide them to what we call the categories, just have a form with dates, fields, societies, birthplace, etc. without figuring out whether this category has the country first or country last, or whether it uses "in" or "of," etc. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:02, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support But there are same better things to do. Ján Kepler (talk) 14:47, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ponson13 (talk) 15:25, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Clerkon (talk) 15:31, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support ForzaGreen (talk) 16:30, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is a great idea. I sometimes pick a random category when creating, then have to search for the correct one and replace it in the article after creation. Oaktree b (talk) 16:35, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Pechristener (talk) 17:31, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support dwf² (talk) 22:47, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ahuskay (talk) 23:04, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support Potentially useful but I feel this could become an expensive use of resources to make it work satisfactorily. // Lollipoplollipoplollipop :: talk 05:19, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support ··· 🌸 Rachmat04 · ☕ 06:42, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support - yona B. (D) 07:22, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Nonahg (talk) 08:50, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support--IP Man (talk) 14:29, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Titore (talk) 23:11, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Rhododendrites. I'm also highly unconvinced that such a tool would successful rather than laughable/annoying without a significant investment of resources on higher-priority tasks. Our categorisation system is high-effort for low-reward, with it not having a particularly large benefit to readers (who scrolls past the prose/images/text/navboxes to read the categories?) — Bilorv (talk) 01:05, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Higa4 (talk) 05:10, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Very strong support. It can be based in the page name. BoldLuis (talk) 11:22, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Rhododendrites and Bilorv, particularly Our categorisation system is high-effort for low-reward. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:25, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | enwiki} 16:38, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Gereon K. (talk) 17:30, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose generally opposed to sinking resources into this system that should just be replaced by Wikidata This 1000x. Haste the day. czar 17:33, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support FabianHorst (talk) 17:44, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Theklan (talk) 17:54, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Implementing a user interface for mw:ORES#Topic_routing is a good idea. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:30, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support The proposal is important to facilitate the inclusion of categories in a created article. WikiFer ^msg 18:45, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Anaxial (talk) 18:49, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Would be very useful even if the suggestions were limited. So long as they are accurate and relevant. --Mathieugp (talk) 18:54, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support ONUnicorn (talk) 21:18, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support DGG (talk) 00:53, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Alaa :)..! 01:12, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Fixer88 (talk) 09:04, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Tom Ja (talk) 12:22, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 14:31, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support That would be nice. Conny (talk) 15:45, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Snaevar (talk) 16:13, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Imetsia (talk) 16:43, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ziad Rashad (talk) 18:35, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Vincent Simar (talk) 22:24, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Lalviarez (talk) 22:47, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This would only create a mess, that would have to be later sorted out by manual labor anyway.-Darwinek (talk) 23:54, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Wikibenchris (talk) 08:47, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for dewiki, we have a complex categorization system with thematic and object categories in which I don't see an automatism getting useful results. -- hgzh 17:02, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:50, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support ♥Ainali ^talk_{contributions} 20:47, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per the risks and problems discussed in previous oppose comments. --Ita140188 (talk) 03:07, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Tgr (talk) 06:56, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Sadads (talk) 11:44, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Michel Bakni (talk) 13:59, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose agree with (esp 2nd) point by Sdkb [who needs to fix signature code ;) ]: potential over-reliance on this feature. Anyway, interested parties can add new categories later if obvious/relevant ones were omitted upon initial post. Philiptdotcom (talk) 14:24, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose --WTM (talk) 00:48, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Jurbop (talk) 07:24, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support if it's possible. Shalomori123 (talk) 11:18, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Rzuwig^► 14:19, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Thanks, EDG 543 (message me) 15:41, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support GiFontenelle (talk) 18:48, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per the concerns brought up by other opposes. I don't believe this is worth the time or energy to develop, especially for the categorization system which is already debatably subjective to any reader or editor (i.e. there's more than one right answer to categorizing pages), and enforcing a standard for categorization at this point in time could be a nightmare. And I know that they're only suggestions, but they would be the only suggestions being offered. Utopes (talk) 19:44, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Cryoclaste (talk) 08:04, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Joalbertine (talk) 14:40, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support It is good to learn that ORES already has such a capability. It could be a good incentive to train it to support more languages when there would be a UI using this underlying thing Base (talk) 20:13, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support VKG1985 (talk) 17:56, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support It may be helpful when I wonder whether I should add the category or not --Gustmd7410 (talk) 17:46, 19 December 2020 (UTC).[reply]
Support Reh man 03:06, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Luiza1202 (talk) 08:16, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Anomlia (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support USI2020 (talk) 18:14, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Fringilla (talk) 19:50, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ahmad^talk 03:42, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support :JarrahTree (talk) 08:54, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support David1010 (talk) 13:03, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Nachtbold (talk) 16:25, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support — Baidax ^💬 17:54, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support this would be great to add categories with ease. On small wikis there are many articles or pages that are without categories. So it (gadget, script etc) can suggest or can import (categories that are present in other language, through wikidata) in one click. (Sorry I'm talking about to add categories on existin garticles) KuldeepBurjBhalaike ^(Talk) 01:37, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]