Talk:Community Wishlist/Wishes/A tool to copy Wikipedia categories to another language Wikipedia

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Usability?

@Prototyperspective: Sorry, but I have to disagree with this wish. I see your point (It is difficult to synchronize a category that already exists on English Wikipedia to another language Wikipedia – one has to do all the categorization manually by hand and that's very time-intensive and not feasible for categories with many pages; it's not being done. I think the main reason is that it's not worth the effort/time. ), and it probably would be useful for large wikis (like dewiki), but some kind of discussion before large implementations of category trees are needed.

Another concern are smaller wikis where such a large category tree import would cause unnecessary categories that'd likely remain empty for a very long time. Example: you translate w:en:Battleship Missouri (BB-63) from enwiki to xwiki where that's one of few battleship articles. If I understand correctly, this tool would then create the xwiki equivalent of categories 1944 ships, Battleship museums in the United States, Cold War battleships of the United States, Existing battleships, Gulf War ships of the United States, Historic American Engineering Record in Hawaii, Iowa-class battleships, Korean War battleships of the United States, Maritime incidents in 1950, Military and war museums in Hawaii, Military history of Japan during World War II, Museum ships in Hawaii, Museums established in 1998, Museums in Honolulu, National Register of Historic Places in Honolulu, Naval museums in the United States, Ships built in Brooklyn, Ships on the National Register of Historic Places in Hawaii, Surrender of Japan, World War II battleships of the United States, World War II museums in Hawaii, World War II on the National Register of Historic Places in Hawaii and World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument? That seems like a suitable categorisation for enwiki, but it's definitely an overkill for an xwiki project. Much more honest approach and putting the xwiki article into ie. Battleships of WW2 and American battleships would work better as there are less article to work with on the xwiki. Thanks for your thoughts. Best, A09|(pogovor) 17:52, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

I suspected that this wish would be somewhat controversial to some and I'm glad you make coherent reasonable points and saw the main point of it.

• but some kind of discussion before large implementations of category trees are needed. This is not implying that such couldn't or shouldn't exist. The requirement to create a discussion about the cat first could be part of it and even built into the tool.

It would be boring to set up a new cat with limited usefulness like Category:Software using the MIT license. However, it's still a valid cat that is useful and the outcome of the prior discussion could be that it should be a hidden cat. Thereby users with hidden cats enabled could still see the cat but separated from the more important categories and thereby the useful category page exists (inside a cat like Category:Free software by license which has very diverse uses like massview scans, GLAMorgan scans, etc etc).

• On smaller wikis with not so many articles per subject it wouldn't be as useful but there are still many categories for which these also have many categories.
• a large category tree import would cause unnecessary categories that'd likely remain empty for a very long time usually it would be used to create a single category at a time. Creating categories that are empty or just contain one or two articles would have to be avoided.
• If I understand correctly, this tool would then create the xwiki equivalent of categories [many cats] The whole wish is about a single category at a time. The only exception to this is when I noted or ideally even multiple categories but I just meant to make a note about this for later consideration. Just in specific cases it would be useful to create multiple categories in one go and that may need various things to e.g. avoid the creation of way to granular categories and categories with no or very few items. It may be best to consider this wish to be about one category at a time things and save the multiple categories at once such as (and not necessarily) a category including all or several layers of subcategories for a separate later discussion/consideration/development.

Prototyperspective (talk) 18:59, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanations! I'm happy now :P Best, A09|(pogovor) 19:05, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Wishlist in Progress

Hello @Prototyperspective,

We’re currently working on identifying the responsible product manager to evaluate this request. Once we have their input, we’ll follow up with an update here.

Appreciate your patience in the meantime!

--ARamadan-WMF (talk) 13:44, 20 May 2025 (UTC)