Indeed, HotCat is the go-to solution for this. The only barrier is that it's a gadget that must be installed on your wiki by a local interface admin. However we can help make it into an extension, or even build it into MediaWiki itself. I'm quite in favor of that, actually. @Bli231957: Questions for you: (1) are you familiar with HotCat, and if so, (2) would you like to reword this proposal to be about promoting HotCat into a native feature? MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The category system is ostensibly reader-focused but in practicality viewed often by editors. This combination makes it one of the worst places for prioritizing reader needs. I'd love to see HotCat improved (it has a very bad habit of mysteriously dropping some categories when I click save), but should be opt-in, not visible to all readers by default, as many may have no interest in category editing. {{u|Sdkb}}talk00:37, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
+1. Side-note, I also noted the common bug that categories get mysteriously dropped during HotCatting, but I couldn't reproduce situations so far, or I would have made it a ticket already. --Enyavar (talk) 11:51, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
i agree with promoting Hotcat into a native Feature, however it shouldn't be visible to all users, users whose interest in editing/improving categories should be able to Enable/disable the feature on Preferences. 🌸 Sakura emad 💖 (talk) 18:24, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]