Make category browsing multilingual using Wikidata
Problem: Although Commons is a multilingual project, MediaWiki categories can only have a label in one language. Wikidata changes this: when a category is linked to Wikidata (which over 3 million of them now are), you can define labels for it on Wikidata in many languages. The Wikidata Infobox displays those multilingual labels within the category, so you can see the topic info in your language when you are within the category. However, subcategories only appear in the language they were created in (normally English), which can make it difficult for people that don't know that language to browse them.
Proposed solution: Use the Commons <-> Wikidata sitelinks to Wikidata to display a category label in the user's requested language. This would be best done within MediaWiki itself rather than having Javascript or similar trying to rewrite the labels after rendering.
Who would benefit: Commons editors and readers who do not know English
Support As a part of a larger goal of making our "multilingual" projects actually multilingual. They're unilingually English now and that problem needs to be solved. Meiræ 11:27, 29 January 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Oppose @Mike Peel This proposal would involve creating Wikidata items for every single Commons category. What should happen instead is Commons categories get their own structured data per-category. This works just like how Files on Commons have their own structured data. Files have their own structured data and not Wikidata items for good reason: Wikidata is meant to store data about the universe, not every little thing about Wikimedia. Wikimedia projects should aim to store data about themselves as much as possible, just as Structured data across Wikimedia is planning to do with Wikipedia. Additionally, this would be better than using Wikidata because Commons editors could translate categories from Commons itself and would not have to create a Wikidata item and navigate to Wikidata. Lectrician1 (talk) 20:22, 29 January 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Lectrician1: Except none of that exists, and this is a solution that would work now? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:23, 29 January 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Your proposal requires work as well. We have also already set up page-based structured data on Commons before so it shouldn't be hard to extend that to Categories and having the translations Commons-based is a plus. I'm just asking that we evaluate what solution will work best for editors and Commons in the long-run. Lectrician1 (talk) 20:29, 29 January 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support only if it does not mean creating WD item for every Commons category. Wostr (talk) 23:54, 29 January 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I can't imagine it would ... something like, say, "Stone houses in London" could be keyed to those three WD items. Daniel Case (talk) 23:24, 1 February 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Daniel Case How is that supposed to work? This would require MediaWiki to correctly inflect virtually all nouns and know which case to use with which preposition, which I doubt is in any way close to being implemented. ~~~~ User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 19:03, 11 February 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Oppose If it is not guaranteed that it will not interfere with Commons categories linking to Wikipedia articles. If this could lead to a drive towards forcing linking Commons categories to Wikipedia categories, something quite disrupting to who does categorization on Commons, then Strong oppose. - DarwinAhoy! 21:10, 4 February 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@DarwIn: That's a long-solved problem through the inclusion of the Wikidata Infobox in the category, which links to articles over categories where the articles exist. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 08:39, 5 February 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Mike Peel no, its. not. It was only partially patched to try to circumvent the disruptive connections that have imposed from Wikidata, forcing Commons categories to be linked to the (mostly useless for Commons) Wikipedia categories, while Wikipedia article mainspace is still linked to the Commons gallery namespace, which was never designed for that. Bringing even more stuff to work over that broken framework only worsens the situation. Just no. - DarwinAhoy! 13:51, 5 February 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support --Crazy1880 (talk) 19:52, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
Oppose @Mike Peel This proposal would involve creating Wikidata items for every single Commons category. What should happen instead is Commons categories get their own structured data per-category. This works just like how Files on Commons have their own structured data. Files have their own structured data and not Wikidata items for good reason: Wikidata is meant to store data about the universe, not every little thing about Wikimedia. Wikimedia projects should aim to store data about themselves as much as possible, just as Structured data across Wikimedia is planning to do with Wikipedia. Additionally, this would be better than using Wikidata because Commons editors could translate categories from Commons itself and would not have to create a Wikidata item and navigate to Wikidata. Lectrician1 (talk) 20:22, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
14:38, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Strong oppose. - Darwin Ahoy! 21:10, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
