User:Multichill/Next generation categories

Here at Commons files are organized by using categories. Categories are generally named in English. Most files will contain two kind of categories

• Topic categories (Category:Churches in Amsterdam)
• Tracker categories (Category:CC-BY-SA-3.0-NL)

The current category system doesn't scale very well. The next generation system should have the following improvements:

Multiple languages

A next generation category should be an object with the possibility to have localized names. Now we have Category:Churches, this should be the same as "kerk, "église" or "Kirche". This would make Commons much more accessible for non-English speakers.

Efficient intersections/searching

When a category contains more than 200 items it becomes a bit crowded with the current interface. To overcome this problem we intersect one topic category with another topic category to create a new (intersected) category. For example Category:Churches + Category:Amsterdam = Category:Churches in Amsterdam. This is a lot of tedious work and doesn't scale. Next generation categories should be atomic (as in, not intersected) and the interface should help the user by generating intersection on the fly. For example when browsing Category:Churches the interface should give the option to browse the category by location.

Enrich relations

In the current category system relations between categories exist. For example Category:Amsterdam is a subcategory of Category:North Holland or Category:Churches is a subcategory of Category:Buildings. We just know that there is a relation, but not what kind of relation. The next generation category system should have the ability to enrich these relations.

See also

• User:Multichill/Commons Wikidata roadmap - A roadmap how we can achieve this.
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Category intersection
• Commons:Structured data - Project to implement this