Community Wishlist Survey 2015/Categories

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Add checklist/filter functionality to articles/categories

Consider a category, for example en:Category:United States company stubs, plagued with spammy articles. Currently there is no way to collaboratively (or for oneself) mark which articles have been reviewed for, let's say, notability or such. It would be much easier to do clean up drives and such if we would have a way to quickly toggle on and off some filters. For example, each article could have a checklist of "has been checked for notability/neutrality/etc." (the community should be able to create such assessment categories, probably tied to common cleanup issues). An editor with some flag/permission (or just an autoconfirmed editor, perhaps) could check the article after a review. This could be made visible to article's readers, increasing their trust in it (see my proposal above), and would be very useful for cleanup drives, as I could try to filter the category for not-reviewed articles. It would be in essence a non-invasive pending changes feature, but more nuanced. --Piotrus (talk) 05:34, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Earlier discussion and endorsements
Endorsed --Edgars2007 (talk) 05:52, 10 November 2015 (UTC)  Endorsed I can see this being very useful in backlog-clearing and maintenance categories. Fluffernutter (talk) 17:25, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Votes

1.  Support with a similar implementation to patrolled pages on English Wikipedia. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 16:04, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
2.  Support Tryptofish (talk) 18:14, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
3.  Support Shoiulddefinitely help in trying to find articles that need further looking at. It fills a important gap.
4.  Support Prof tpms (talk) 23:55, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
5.  Support Casliber (talk) 05:06, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
6.  Oppose This seems overly complicated when we already have New Page Patrol built into MediaWiki and already being used in the English Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. These patrollers are already supposed to go through a similar checklist to OK an article. What might be really useful is something simpler -- in categories, show new page patrollers which articles/pages haven't been patrolled yet, with some kind of new visible signal. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 15:09, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
7.  Oppose I would support seeing what pages have been pagetriaged in categories. Marking an article for each wikipedia policy on the other hand does not make any sense to me.--Snaevar (talk) 16:39, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

   It would probably be less distracting to see what pages have not been pagetriaged, but I think we're on the same page. I wish others would consider our thoughts instead of opting for a needlessly complicated approach. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 17:21, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

8.  Support --Usien6 (talk) 18:58, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
9.  Support Eman235/talk 21:05, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
10.  Support--Manlleus (talk) 15:05, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
11. Neutral I believe it would be easy to implement this if each wiki would have local Wikibase Repository for storing articles metadata --AS (talk) 09:27, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
12. Neutral fr:Catégorie:Article au ton publicitaire/en:Category:Articles with a promotional tone is already a category users could clean.--Sammyday (talk) 07:23, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
13.  Oppose Per Stevie. Support Stevie's simpler alternative - either (1) indicate unpatrolled pages in some way (perhaps only for editors who've opted in) in category listings, (2) have an option to only show unpatrolled pages in a category listing, or (3) change a category intersection tool to have a "Patrolled: either/none/only" setting (like they currently have for hard redirects). The 3rd option (which might be the simplest to implement) would have the advantage of looking in subcategories. DexDor (talk) 18:57, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
14.  Oppose. I could not see how to prevent sockpuppets from trolling the checklist.--MisterSanderson (talk) 01:36, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Category suggestions based on filename, description and location

For many users and especially for beginners it is hard to quickly find appropriate categories for files. To support the user i suggest to develop an algorithm that is suggesting such categories by checking the filename, the description and location of the file against already available files, categories and galleries in Commons. Even Wikidata and Wikipedia could be included. Having such an algorithm the UploadWizard could be enhanced to suggest categories for uploaded files. Furthermore, we could generate a maintenance list or even a game to enrich already uploaded but uncategorized files. --Aschroet (talk) 18:56, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Earlier discussion and endorsements
Endorsed -- the wub "?!" 00:03, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Votes

1.  Support Lugnuts (talk) 12:03, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
2.  Support --Arnd (talk) 14:44, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

    Oppose I would rather have the editor do the search and determine the right categories. The problem with suggesting is that it encourages people not to think and not to explore the category system. I'd rather have only people who understands categories adding them. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 15:21, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

3. Neutral I have decided to soften my vote as this may have some value on Commons (and any damage is limited), but I really don't want to see this on any of the Wikipedias unless there is a community consensus for adding it and if it's limited to only files and not other namespaces. On Wikipedias, it should be piloted narrowly before wide release. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:41, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
4.  Support, althrough I would like to know the technical details.--Snaevar (talk) 16:39, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
5.  Support we do need to revamp image categorization process. HotCats is great but some intelligent suggestions based on use on wiki, links, geolocation, filenames, description, other categories, etc. would be great. --Jarekt (talk) 17:21, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
6.  Support Learning the category tree in every project that you work on is really difficult. We should have an algorithm to suggest categories, and tell people to add an appropriate and distinguishing file title along with location and other info, so the user has a first impression of what categories should add. I am really kept away from uploading sometimes with the categorisation of the file being the only reason. -- SucreRouge (talk) 17:46, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

   I would support something that makes learning a project's category tree easier (like some kind of explorer tool), but I think actually suggesting categories could end up being a real mess. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 18:53, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

7.  Oppose --Usien6 (talk) 18:59, 1 December 2015 (UTC) // Not worth the programming effort --Usien6 (talk) 18:59, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
8.  Support I explore the category system, but I think this tool is worth the programming effort. There is too much work to do on commons, newbies and some users too don't use the cat system correctly, we need to speed up the process.--Alexmar983 (talk) 00:18, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
9.  Support Extracting the GPS coordinates from pictures and showing nearby Commons categories (or categories of nearby existing files) would be a huge boost to category accuracy, and would not cost much development. Actually the bulk of the algorithm is currently being developed under my supervision as an Outreachy project at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T115101 (for Android) Syced (talk) 03:58, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
10.  Oppose, c:User:CategorizationBot is your friend — NickK (talk) 10:09, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
11.  Support--Manlleus (talk) 15:05, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
12.  Support why not ? On Commons it will be usefull.--Sammyday (talk) 07:24, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
13.  Support It seems like it would help - SantiLak (talk) 10:31, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
14.  Support MOs810 (talk) 11:27, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
15.  Support --Urbanecm (talk) 12:32, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
16.  Support - ƬheStrikeΣagle 16:22, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
17.  Support Killmeyle
18. Neutral for Commons.  Oppose for Wikipedia - we don't want spammy "articles" (e.g. "His so cool should get nobel prize") being semi-automatically placed in categories based on picking out keywords. DexDor (talk) 19:08, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
19.  Oppose Beagel (talk) 15:06, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Contains this text but not in this category or its (n-level) descendants

I'd love to have a way to search for file pages (and category pages) that contain a particular piece of text but are not in a particular category or its n-level descendants. These would, of course, be likely candidates to add to that category or one of its subcategories. It would be especially nice if it would somehow feed into VFC; for that purpose, if it can't be worked out from the VFC end, it would be possible to add a temporary maintenance category to the pages found in such a search, and then VFC could be triggered off of that category.

This would benefit people trying to categorize poorly categorized photos. Right now, you typically have to look through an awful lot of correctly categorized photos in the course of doing work like this. - Jmabel (talk) 23:03, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Earlier discussion and endorsements
Endorsed I do quite a bit of categorisation and would welcome this. WereSpielChequers (talk) 19:36, 10 November 2015 (UTC) Comment: very recently we got „Deepcat“, developed by Wikimedia Deutschland, at de-wiki (details at de:Hilfe:Suche/Deepcat). It’s still in beta status AFAIK, and somewhat limited to max 70 sub-categories and n_max=15 (levels) for performance reasons. Can be prefixed with “-” to invert. I don’t know whether it is or will be available on other wikis as well, but it looks as if it might already serve the functionality you ask for. —MisterSynergy (talk) 20:57, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Votes

1. Neutral This can be done today using AutoWikiBrowser's "List comparer". People should try using that before asking for this to be built into the wiki software. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 15:30, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
2.  Oppose this can (almost) be done today in mediawiki, using the "incategory:" search words, as explained in my long comment above. the only missing piece is the ability to extend it to sub-categories, and it makes zero sense to limit such an extension to "negative filtering" only. adding a new search filtering that will extend "incategory:" to "insubcategory:" will be a very very welcome enhancement, with or without the "to the n-th level" addition. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 17:12, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
3. Comment for the category itself, this capability already exists (though, not well advertised), at least for Cirrus search: all the search keywords (and specifically, "incategory") support both positive and negative filtering, so if you want to look for "abra-kadabra" in all pages *except* the ones in category "Magicians", you search -incategory:Magicians "abra-kadabra".

   so this request boils down to "extend existing search negative-filtering of categories, to sub-categories also".

   this does not make sense: search filtering to sub-categories is long-desired feature, but it doesn't make sense to support it for "negative filtering" only.

   i would rephrase this request as "add a new search keyword to search in category and all its sub-categories, and make sure the new keyword supports negative filtering (like any other keyword)". sorry for butting in in an inappropriate place, but this request was not vetted enough, and as it is, makes no sense. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 17:12, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

   search for sub categories exists as a script, you need to add the following to your common.js and search then with deepcat:Magicians. --CennoxX (talk) 22:58, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

   mw.loader.load( "//de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Christoph Fischer (WMDE)/Gadgets/DeepCat.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript" );
   mw.loader.load( "//de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Christoph Fischer (WMDE)/Gadgets/DeepCat.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css" , "text/css" );
   

Create a tool to auto-populate categories through Wikidata/other wiki comparison

Currently, when a new category is created, even if it is linked to Wikidata and other language categories, there is no easy way to generate a list of articles that exist on a given wiki that should be populated with it. And even when someone has a list of such articles, they have to manually tag them. I'd like to see a tool that generates such lists, and allows populating categories with as much ease as Commons commons:Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot. See also a related discussion at w:Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_141#Is_there_a_way_to_auto-populate_categories_through_Wikidata.2Fother_wiki_comparison.3F. --Piotrus (talk) 05:15, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Earlier discussion and endorsements
If we add articles to categories based on wikidata properties then we have the job of continuing to synchronise wikidata and the category and what do we do with manual changes to the category. Better to go to dynamic lists (i.e. generated on-the-fly each time) based on wikidata queries instead. This allows much more complicated cross domain lists than we would ever want to do with a category. Filceolaire (talk) 06:15, 10 November 2015 (UTC) I do not know of any tool that could create such a list, but if somebody wants to move articles from one category to another, this person could use the Category Master. At the moment the tool only has a user interface as input channel, but it could surely be made to work on lists of articles. There are screenshots, showing its usage here. Borislav and V111P can help with the technical details. --Lord Bumbury (talk) 10:53, 10 November 2015 (UTC) Different Wikipedia languages have very different needs for categories, and not just based on size of Wikipedia. English language wikipedia has categories for churches in particular English counties, Wikimedia Commons has individual categories for thousands of English churches. Xhosa language Wikipedia might not even need a category for churches in England. WereSpielChequers (talk) 19:05, 10 November 2015 (UTC) And then comes the category depth... Xhosa language Wikipedia could probably create category "Churches in United Kingdom" and take enwiki category with depth=10, lets say. --Edgars2007 (talk) 19:32, 10 November 2015 (UTC)  Endorsed The key to this, I think, is the use of a property such as d:Property:P360 to describe in Wikidata terms what a category contains, similar to the way that if the wikidata item for a list article has a description coded in this way, then Magnus's Reasonator viewer for Wikidata can automatically show a list of corresponding Wikidata items -- see eg Reasonator's presentation of item Q15832361 (List of female engineers). There are a couple of wrinkles that would need to be added for a Wikipedia category version: firstly, only include items for which there are actually articles in that language. So the category for English churches in Xhosa wiki might not be very long. Secondly, exclude any items that match the criteria for subcategories that exist on that wiki. So for an English county on en-wiki there might be sub-categories for churches in each of the major towns in that county -- the top level category would exclude churches in any of those towns. On a different wiki, with fewer English churches, there would probably be fewer subcategories; so the tool would therefore be putting more of the articles which did exist into the county-level category. All this would follow solely from what subcategories were defined for a particular wiki, and the wikidata description of the inclusion criteria for those categories. The tool should probably be human-assisting, rather than fully automatic. I could see it highlighting a list of possible additions to the category, but giving the user to check or uncheck any of them before finalising the process. A second mode could suggest possible removals from the category, for any of the items that matched subcategory criteria. This would give a powerful tool for splitting categories, assisting the user to appropriately populate newly created subcategories. All of which I think could be very useful on Wikipedia right now; and the same system in future might be even more useful on Commons, once the structured-data machine-interpretable description of the topics depicted in images starts to become possible. Jheald (talk) 01:09, 11 November 2015 (UTC) If this is being worked on it'll need a thorough product-level discussion about how to do this and how it interacts with other efforts like structured data for Commons. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:20, 13 November 2015 (UTC) Comment There is a bot, namely User:Rezabot, in Persian Wikipedia that does the same task based on categories on English Wikipedia. It's an old bot and seems to be stable right now. I ping the operator User:Yamaha5 himself to explain more. 4nn1l2 (talk) 15:39, 18 November 2015 (UTC) Comment I discussed more than one year ago this idea with a user on itWiki. We agreed it was possible, but not really urgent. it was not worth the effort to be implemented on that local level. On a platform such as itWiki I would say it is something that it is better to wait until it is stable before adopting it. That does not mean it is useless, I am just saying that there are platforms that will take bigger advantages even from a beta versions, whilst others with higher maintenance activity can simply wait. If there are really many platforms that are lacking a proper categorization structure, than I guess it is an urgent tool.--Alexmar983 (talk) 18:44, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Votes

1.  Support I can see the time-saving value in this. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 15:37, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
2.  Support It would be particularly useful to have a bot that could be summoned to populate categories (or sort big categories), based on structured data, Sadads (talk) 15:46, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
3.  Support --Wesalius (talk) 18:53, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
4.  Support Rhadamante (talk) 19:27, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
5.  Support Trizek ^{from FR} 22:03, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
6.  Support--Alexmar983 (talk) 00:20, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
7.  Support, excellent thing. We do need to have a tool for this, and it can be very helpful for a lot of issues (e.g. watching recent deaths that are reported in one wiki but are not in another) — NickK (talk) 10:11, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
8.  Support--Barcelona (talk) 11:51, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
9.  Support--Manlleus (talk) 15:05, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
10.  Support —Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:13, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
11.  Support --AS (talk) 09:28, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
12.  Support.--Sammyday (talk) 07:25, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
13.  Support It would save time - SantiLak (talk) 10:31, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
14.  Support --Jane023 (talk) 16:22, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
15.  Support Halibutt (talk) 00:20, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
16.  Support --Urbanecm (talk) 12:33, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
17.  Support --Yeza (talk) 16:33, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
18.  Support Useful. GenQuest (talk) 17:14, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
19.  Support - ƬheStrikeΣagle 16:22, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
20.  Support Oh, god, yes. I've done this a lot -- create category, create list of articles that should be in that category, then realize it's 1,500 articles. 10 minutes curating the list; three hours+ to finish the tagging. Courcelles 08:19, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
21.  Support --ESM (talk) 16:03, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
22.  Support --Davidpar (talk) 14:23, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
23.  Support -- AshLin (talk) 18:44, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Making categories more friendly: enable HotCat by all, but with pending revisions

New editors often, in my experience, remark how difficult it is to tag (categorize) things on Wikipedia compared to Facebook and other modern sites. We have a useful tool, en:Wikipedia:HotCat, but there is no consensus from the community to enable it by default, as people are afraid of newbies messing up categories. The best solution I have, therefore, is to try to use some form of pending revisions with HotCat: enable it by default, but with pending revisions for new editors/anons. --Piotrus (talk) 05:11, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Earlier discussion and endorsements
Seems impossible to me to get community consensus for anything related to pending revisions really.. As much as I would like to see it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:39, 10 November 2015 (UTC) A somewhat related request is to have such a thing in VisualEditor (phab:T52239). Orlodrim (talk) 22:07, 13 November 2015 (UTC)  Endorsed Anything that would make categories less mysterious. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:45, 19 November 2015 (UTC)  Oppose In reference libraries, the categorization of books is made only by the most senior librarians, because it is hard. Categorization on Wikipedia needs experience and it does not have to be "easy". Making HotCat a default for everyone would cause various problems. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it's not Facebook. --Pxos (talk) 01:54, 20 November 2015 (UTC) Concur with Pxos. Wikipedia categorisation is a surprisingly deep and complicated topic. HotCat is powerful and useful for experienced users, but perhaps not good to expose so prominently to those who don't know what they're doing. I would also point out that the VisualEditor now has some much improved categorisation tools (if slightly buried in the top right menu). the wub "?!" 23:56, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Votes

1.  Oppose I am against automated tools for editors who do not know how to use them, even with pending revisions. Debresser (talk) 12:57, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
2.  Oppose I am against pending revisions. Tostarpadius (talk) 14:43, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
3.  Oppose People who don't understand the category system shouldn't have it made easier to fudge up an article's categories, even with pending revisions. Pending revisions are in limited use for a reason -- experienced editors really don't want the additional workload. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 15:48, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
4.  Oppose really it is up to each project wether they want to have default enabled gadgets or not. IMO out of scope.--Snaevar (talk) 16:39, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
5.  Oppose --Usien6 (talk) 19:06, 1 December 2015 (UTC) // Let the projects discuss it by themselves...
6.  Oppose StevenJ81 (talk) 21:53, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
7.  Oppose, not within the scope of this initiative. If a project does not want this, do not ask WMF to impose it. And I do no at least one very experienced user who received a ban on using HotCat as he used it for adding really strange categories, so it definitely should not be mandatory — NickK (talk) 10:13, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
8.  Oppose Per Debresser - SantiLak (talk) 10:32, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
9.  Oppose Easy enough for each community to do as they see fit already. Courcelles 08:20, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
10.  Oppose Beagel (talk) 15:08, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
11.  Oppose. This would require more work, because instead of 1 "expert" categorising, there would be 1 noob categorising and 1 expert doing revisions. And revision of lots of wrong categories.--MisterSanderson (talk) 01:47, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Numerical sorting

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T8948

Names containing numerals (or with numeric sort-keys) are presently sorted in alphabetical/ASCII order, apparently being treated like any other character: for example “100” comes before “17” but after “10”. This makes a mess of categories for things with serial numbers, like asteroids and street addresses, unless they’re given sort-keys with zero-padded numbers—very tedious. Would it be possible to parse names for sorting by reading any consecutive numerals as digits of a decimal number, instead of just character-by-character, so as to sort by numeric value instead? Even my antique Mac’s Finder does something like this with file and directory names, so it can’t be that hard! ;) Odysseus1479 (talk) 05:12, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Earlier discussion and endorsements
Afterthought: this could also be helpful in sortable tables. Sorry not to have mentioned this before the suggestion was put in the category section. But I guess a low-level sorting module could be invoked by various different higher-level ones.Odysseus1479 (talk) 08:20, 20 November 2015 (UTC)  Endorsed --Klaus Eifert (talk) 13:34, 18 November 2015 (UTC)  Endorsed -- Juetho (talk) 13:25, 19 November 2015 (UTC)  Endorsed--Alexmar983 (talk) 22:53, 21 November 2015 (UTC)  Endorsed -- the wub "?!" 00:06, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Votes

1.  Support Jenks24 (talk) 10:18, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
2.  Support --Tobias1984 (talk) 11:19, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
3.  Support Long overdue. Debresser (talk) 12:58, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
4.  Support TeriEmbrey (talk) 15:56, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
5.  Support - numbers at the beginning of a page name are intended as numbers, not as sequences of digit characters. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 16:06, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
6.  Support Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:33, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
7.  Support Daniel Case (talk) 17:20, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
8.  Support --MGChecker (talk) 19:25, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
9.  Support Dalba 20:10, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
10.  Support Orlodrim (talk) 20:17, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
11.  Support Makes sense. Armbrust (talk) 22:32, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
12.  Support --Yodin^T 02:02, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
13.  Support Casliber (talk) 05:07, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
14.  Support--Kippelboy (talk) 05:32, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
15.  Support--Gbeckmann (talk) 09:16, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
16.  Support —Ynhockey (talk) 09:28, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
17.  Support-- suggesting to do that by auto-suggesting a {{DEFAULTSORT}} key on contents of categories by a bot. --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 10:27, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
18.  Support --Arnd (talk) 14:44, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
19.  Support --Continua Evoluzione (talk) 15:00, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
20.  Support tufor (talk) 15:21, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
21.  Support JohanahoJ (talk) 15:36, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
22.  Support Sadads (talk) 15:45, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
23.  Support --Andyrom75 (talk) 15:53, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
24.  Support Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 15:56, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
25.  Support Cavamos (talk) 11:20 1 December 2015
26.  Support Just one of those minor annoyances.--Snaevar (talk) 16:39, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
27.  Support Goombiis (talk) 16:40, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
28.  Support Blue Elf (talk) 17:00, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
29.  Support Rupert Clayton (talk) 17:13, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
30.  Support ~ Moheen (talk) 17:15, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
31. Neutral I do not see it as a big issue. Order of pages in a category is not that essential and if it is than just use "|sortkey" to order them properly. --Jarekt (talk) 17:29, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
32.  Support--SucreRouge (talk) 17:49, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
33.  Support--Calak (talk) 18:22, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
34.  Support --Wesalius (talk) 18:54, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
35.  Support --Usien6 (talk) 19:15, 1 December 2015 (UTC) // Long overdue. Correct sorting is fundamentally important for categories big enough to have their indexes paginated. Placing zeros in the sorting keys is not a solution when you can't predict the length (in decimal digits) of the biggest number possible.
36.  Support Rhadamante (talk) 19:26, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
37.  Support Gap9551 (talk) 19:56, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
38.  Support Eman235/talk 21:10, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
39.  Support Good idea, it would be useful. Regards, Kertraon (talk) 21:39, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
40.  Support StevenJ81 (talk) 21:54, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
41.  Support Trizek ^{from FR} 22:03, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
42.  Support --Oriciu (talk) 22:46, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
43.  Support--Alexmar983 (talk) 00:19, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
44.  Support --Chaoborus (talk) 02:20, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
45.  Support --Rosiestep (talk) 02:39, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
46.  Support RoodyAlien (talk) 02:54, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
47.  Support Popcorndude (talk) 03:26, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
48.  Support Risker (talk) 03:42, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
49.  Support Johnbod (talk) 04:02, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
50.  Support - Shubha (talk) 04:53, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
51.  Support Amir (talk) 06:43, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
52.  Support Litlok (talk) 08:12, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
53.  Support, long overdue. It is very difficult to arrange sorting when 1 is categorised under 1, 2 under 2, 9 under 9... and 10 under 1 again, so you have to be creative and add defaultsort:A or something like that for the right order — NickK (talk) 10:15, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
54.  Support This is the way human expects it. ...Aurora... (talk) 10:34, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
55.  Support Juetho (talk) 10:43, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
56.  Support --β₁₆ - (talk) 11:41, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
57.  Support --Renessaince (talk) 14:26, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
58.  Support --Winstonza (talk) 19:55, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
59.  Support Sounds a useful idea. PamD (talk) 21:31, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
60.  Support -- Dave Braunschweig (talk) 21:50, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
61.  Support Thémistocle (talk) 21:58, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
62.  Support Rzuwig^► 08:18, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
63.  Support -- Peter Flass (talk) 08:34, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
64.  Support surprised this isn't a thing yet. --SuperJew (talk) 14:52, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
65.  Support yes this will help our readers and our editors. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:04, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
66.  Support Sounds useful - SantiLak (talk) 10:33, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
67.  Support - Wieralee (talk) 17:09, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
68.  Support Bináris ^{tell me} 18:30, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
69.  Support --Urbanecm (talk) 12:34, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
70.  Support Overdue. GenQuest (talk) 17:05, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
71.  Support - ƬheStrikeΣagle 16:22, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
72.  Support - good use of this space - straightforward problem with a straightforward solution (well, conceptually speaking anyway) — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:21, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
73.  Support --Waldir (talk) 13:00, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
74.  Support - obviously useful. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:58, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
75.  Support beter than present way Mpn (talk) 18:17, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
76.  Support Courcelles 08:22, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
77.  Support Matěj Suchánek (talk) 20:51, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
78.  Support Therud (talk) 09:18, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
79.  Support Abyssal (talk) 16:54, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
80.  Support → «« Man77 »» ^[de] 17:50, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
81.  Support Beagel (talk) 15:09, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
82.  Support --Sphilbrick (talk) 17:46, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
83.  Support --ESM (talk) 16:05, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
84.  Support --Davidpar (talk) 14:24, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
85.  Support -- AshLin (talk) 18:46, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

UI to display category members by timestamp

fr.wikipedia.org has hundreds of pages that contain lists of recent articles by portal (all these pages, plus some updated by other bots). This is the main way new articles can be reviewed by users interested in a specific domain.

Each portal has a tracking category, so this is certainly something that MediaWiki could support in a generic way. Ideally, there would be a special page to list the last n members of a category that can be included into others (like Special:PrefixIndex).

Note: MediaWiki already tracks these timestamps and makes them available through the API, but this request is not as simple as providing a UI for this. Based on the feedback received for bots, two additional constraints are that:

• changing the defaultsort should not reset the timestamp ;
• a quickly reverted removal of the category should not reset the timestamp.

Orlodrim (talk) 18:45, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Earlier discussion and endorsements
NB: Lists maintained by bots are used in different ways. Some users read the wikiproject page from time to time, while others the lists to there watchlist. Thus, a complementary feature request is #Add a Category watchlist, but both features are needed to replace bot-maintained lists of recent articles (for very large portals, not all users would want to watch a category with tens of new articles every day). Orlodrim (talk) 19:30, 10 November 2015 (UTC)  Endorsed Toto Azéro follow the guide ! 17:53, 11 November 2015 (UTC)  Endorsed and see below. Jheald (talk) 12:49, 13 November 2015 (UTC) Options to show categories sorted in further different ways Developing from the above, it would more generally be good to be able to show categories ordered in ways other than their default sort-ordering. As well as sort by "last modification" date suggested above, on Commons it would be nice to be able to sort by date of upload, or date of underlying media creation, or date depicted in media, or by an extensible mechanism to be able to specify per-category that media in that category might have a particular sort key or keys (eg original page number), different from the original sort order. Jheald (talk) 12:49, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Votes

1. Comment Timestamp of what? Article creation? Addition to the tracking category? A template might be able to do what you want, plugging in the relevant timestamp as sorting key. --mfb (talk) 12:15, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

   The timestamp of the addition to the tracking category (although article creation was also proposed as an option in "Earlier discussion and endorsements"). Orlodrim (talk) 21:08, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

2. Comment Assuming you mean the timestamp of when a page is added to a category, a solution of sorts is already in the works. On watchlists and recent changes pages, you'll be able to see when (and what) pages are added (or removed) from categories. Will that fulfill the needs expressed by this proposal? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:11, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

   I think this is a complementary feature but this may not be the most practical way of doing some maintenance of new articles in the largest projects (see "Earlier discussion and endorsements"). It's hard to know in advance, in fact. Orlodrim (talk) 21:08, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

3.  Support --AS (talk) 09:31, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
4.  Support.--Sammyday (talk) 07:27, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
5.  Support per Orlodrim's reply and further review. The general idea of being able to sort category members in different ways should definitely be explored, and sorting by when they were added to the category sounds very useful. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 18:41, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
6.  Support - ƬheStrikeΣagle 16:22, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
7.  Support if it can be done without complicating category pages for readers (i.e. the new buttons etc are only displayed to editors who've opted in). However, at least one category intersection tool already has an option to select pages in a category (and subcategories) based on when they were created/edited so it might be best to put effort into improving those tools rather than the MediaWiki UI. DexDor (talk) 19:25, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
8.  Support -- Llywrch (talk) 19:02, 11 December 2015 (UTC)