User:Wombat~commonswiki/SpecialCats

Some ideas for special categories to help in the never-ending battle for correct categorisation. I assume categories/articles have been merged. I assume writing the code is easy.

• Auto-inherit categories

Categories who are children of a auto-inherit category assign the parent category to any sub cats placed in them. For example England/Symbols/Flags would be a child of categories Symbols/Flags which is marked as a auto-inherit category. So any subcats under England/Symbols/Flags would automatically be also included in the Symbols/Flags category. Stops user having to link to every high level category by hand.

• Auto-list categories

Some categories are just divisions of a main category based on a list, for example Centuries, Decades, Years, Countries, Counties, States, etc. This kind of list-based categories could be auto-generated by the software (with a little bit of meta-data) so the user only has to worry about adding the image to the main categories. E.g. A C15th Viking map of America would automatically be put into the categories Maps/By Century/15th, Maps/By Country/America, (even Maps/By Country/America/By Century/15th and v. versa if you like), so the user only has to add it to Maps/America (and possibly Maps/Forgeries...)

• View categories

This kind of category would not have images added to it, but would be a view onto various other categories. (not sure if this much use)

• One way categories

This kind of category would only have one way links, for example if you looked in the category you would see a image with the weak category name, but if you looked at the image from another category the weak category name would not appear. Lets image be placed in otherwise totally unrelated category without causing user to think this is a common categorisation.

• Strong categories

Used in generating Browse by categories view, only strong/main categories would be shown, to avoid drowning user in details.

• Hidden categories

Used to save meta-data (see my post on structured information on Village Pump), without appearing in the categories list for the image. For example Category:Photographer, Category:Date_Year, Category:Date_Month, Category:Camera_Model, etc. Would allow for searching on this fields, creating photographer galleries, etc, without having to abuse the category list (which should just show image based categories in my opinion)