Galleries can be numbered like categories. Idealy no Gallery should have 200
images. A [[Cats]] isn't really useful. [[Type cat species here]] would be
more useful. [[Cat]] would have links to individual cat species (preferably
in a tree-like manner) much like how categories are now. Categories are nice
but very useless when it comes to looking for something you need
specifically. Problem with categories is their unsorted nature.
- White Cat
On 6/12/07, Ayelie <ayelie.at.large(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/11/07, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
On 6/10/07, Ayelie <ayelie.at.large(a)gmail.com> wrote:
They are for separate purposes, something people
don't often realise.
I realize that. I just think that a combined view of both might have
advantages.
Not every image should be in a gallery
as that would make pages rediculously long and take far too long to
load for
some people. Categories are a dump you can add
all images relating to
a
subject into, and it only shows a certain number
of images at a time.
Every
image should be categorised and the best should
be added to a gallery.
There are currently >17000 category/gallery pairs on commons. I was
thinking especially of low-volume category/gallery pairs. Large volume
categories could be automatically ignored (e.g., don't show the
"merged view" if the category or the gallery have >200 images), or
through a magic word, as suggested.
Well, 'twas just an idea.
Magnus
Oh, don't get me wrong, Magnus - I think your idea is a good one, and very
interesting. I was more replying to White Cat ... and stating "truths not
always universally acknowledged". We do get people from time to time who
*remove* categories from images saying "but it's in a gallery!" - I'm
not
sure if we have a policy on galleries/categories or just a guideline, or
perhaps nothing official at all. I shall have to look into that.
The only problems I see with your idea is that we will have the "too long
to load" issue again; you would have to have some kind of limit (say, 100
images compared to the category limit of 200 - since there will be gallery
images as well) and a "next 100" link. Now, something that would be
interesting is if you had some way of sorting the images according to how
often they are used wikimedia-wide, or how often they are linked
to/viewed/etc. and had those images at the top of the cat section on
galleries.
Another point is that category/gallery pairings are for the most part both
rather small; it would make more sense to have a magic word to *add* the
category section to a gallery page than it would to have a word to *remove*
it. We have (unfortunately) a lot of galleries with one or two images, and
the category may only have one or two more. These are often created by
newbies or anons who come from wikipedias where they are used to very
specific, small cats. There are also the species galleries, which are
created very frequently by people I assume coming from wikispecies or who
create pages for all species under a certain class. These "galleries" more
often than not have quite a bit of information and then maybe one or two
images.
The opposite is also true: There are some categories with more than 100
images that have no galleries. They aren't always needed, but it is nice to
have a page you can go to see the "best images" at a glance. For these,
galleries will probably be created eventually - my initial thought of "why
not have a gallery in the category" would cause more problems than anything
else, with people doing that everywhere. IMO categories should stay the same
and Magnus's idea for having a "category preview" on some gallery pages
could be interesting.
I'd love to see a test version if this gets written; it would certainly be
helpful for some gallery/category pairings :)
--
Ayelie
~Editor at Large
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