At present, where there is a Commons page with the same name as a category, a reader searching on Commons for the term is taken to the page, not the category. Most readers will not realize that there is a category at all. The average Commons page is terrible; most have not been edited for several years. Hardly any relect the choice of images in a category adequately. Johnbod (talk) 19:14, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
When typing to search field in comons, suggester suggest names of files and galleries, but not categories. ALso after search there are in results on the first place galeeries and then files. Categories are on the n-th page, when there are more than 20 results
Who would benefit: All Commons readers/users, especially those less used to Commons
Proposed solution: Just display the category screen from a search. No idea of the technicalities, but it shouldn't be too difficult.
More comments: I think the current situation must be giving inexperienced users of Commons a very misleading impression of our contents.
This is gonna sound harsh, but it comes from place of love for Commons... I honestly find 'categories before pages' a very unimaginative view of how Commons can be a better media repository. Commons needs much more substantial work than just making image pages harder to find in favor of categories if you ask me. It's like putting the bike shed in front of the house in an effort to hide the ugly house. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:41, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It might make categories more visible. Though I am skeptical: There is much more information on the top, already. Maybe as an option, but not as standard?! --Matthiasb (talk) 21:22, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Including categories in the default search results sounds good, I was surprised that this wasn't already the case. A *lot* of improvement has taken place to the categories over the last few years, including improving multilingual search results for them, so this change should have a seriously positive impact. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 08:23, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am fine with the idea, as long as it is optional MW feature and not forced on you by default. I don't like to distract people from the real content (no category, no warning templates, no sitenotice, no centralnotice above the contents) so I cannot support this to be a default behavior. — regards, Revi20:43, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As I interpret it, this is about search results, not about having the categories section at the top of file and category pages — which is already possible, optionally — see c:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, where two options exist: «Place categories above all other content.» or «Place categories above content, but below image on file description pages.» Any serious Commons editor/curator should have one of these ticked. Tuvalkin (talk) 21:15, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Tuvalkin: But this wish is about searching results. Searching "foo" should display at first places gallery Foo, image foo.jpg and category:Foo. And then all things containing foo in name and then things containing foo in descriptionn. But now category:Foo is displayed after all files and galleries containig foo in name or description. JAn Dudík (talk) 08:49, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@JAn Dudík: Okay, so the o.p. is indeed about search results, or at least we both think so. What to say? Raw text search is always a rough tool to locate things and having categories prioritized or not in search hit rankings is eitherway a non-ideal option. As someone who started using computers in the mid-1980s, I always found “fascinating” how subsequent latecomers used search engines, just like in the old 1970s movies about computers — with wholly unrealistic expectations etched even in the way search queries are worded, which would develop in “human interface” monstrosities like modern day’s Alexa. I am no less “fascinated” today by the fact that the very same people who are riding the “structured data” horse — which in itself harks back to Middle Ages’ flawed philosophies about discovering (not creating) a fanciful universal classification of platonic ideals — are also invested in raw text search “optimization” and keep sneering at Commons’ categories — which are human-generated, organically developed, non-teleologic, and ever-improving — in a word, Commons’ categories are wiki, while Wikidata (and its outgrowths in other projects) essentially and fundamentally is not. Tuvalkin (talk) 14:58, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Pmau (talk) 20:07, 8 December 2020 (UTC)