Commons:Categorization requests
Please create a new subsection for each request and explain which categorization you'd like to request with as much detail as possible or needed. To add a request, click the [ edit ] on the section for the section of the type difficulty/scale you estimate your task to be and append your new subsection to the bottom its requests.
- For categories getting added automatically, see Commons:Bots/Work requests/Archive 18#Auto-addition of inferrable categories.
- For many files (unsorted) that need categories, see Category:Files needing categories by year.
- For categories that need categories, see the reports in Category:Uncategorized categories
- For cases of cyclical categorizations that need to be fixed, see Commons:Database reports/Category cycles
- For bot categorization requests, see this search (note that it includes already-solved requests and only shows a page once when it includes multiple sections about such requests)
- For categories that need discussion, see Category:Categories for discussion by month
See also: Commons:Picture requests, Commons:Audio and video requests and Category:Unidentified subjects.  |
SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 1 day. |
Categorization requests
[edit]Large-scale / difficult
[edit]OWID charts by latest datapoint and maps by year
[edit]Please add categories for the years of the data maps by Our World in Data as well as OWID charts by the latest data point into Category:Charts by year of latest data.
This is useful for many reasons such as making things in the image explicit as metadata, making things queryable (for example combining cats using petscan), statistics, search (see the search box in the category), better enabling people to find the latest version for some data, better WMC search engine results (often there's outdated at the top of MediaSearch results), and (probably most importantly) updating outdated/old datagraphics that are in use (the tool GLAMorgan can be used for that if the files are categorized as described).
- Here is the petscan query for OWID maps with unspecified year (798 items)
- Here is the petscan query for OWID charts with unspecified year of latest data (2222 items)
- I suggested that the OCR tool is adapted for that so it reads the text in the files and then retrieves the latest year number to allow you to add categories based on that. A problem is that sources specified in the image can also include a year number so one would have to differentiate between years in the title or Y/X axis and years somewhere in the text at the bottom of the image. In any case such a tool doesn't exist – only https://ocr.wmcloud.org/ and the request was archived after some discussion so it's unlikely to be implemented any time soon and there are probably more important issues to work on currently. Please also comment if you have some input in regards to such an OCR-categorizer tool.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 16:30, 19 September 2024 (UTC) updated counts --Prototyperspective (talk) 23:15, 14 May 2025 (UTC) updated --Prototyperspective (talk) 22:06, 30 May 2025 (UTC) updated to exclude charts showing data of just one year --Prototyperspective (talk) 22:41, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
- Currently, I sometimes work on these two by exporting the petscan results as described in (mainly) the bottom tile here and then dragging many urls into the browser so it opens them all in new tabs and then go through them manually to add the year. Maybe the OCR would make mistakes sometimes and it could be difficult to develop. I still think it would be useful. If I ever finish adding this metadata to the files, there could also be many more OWID files. If they are imported with some OWID importer tool like this, they may (and should) have the respective cats by default but people could also upload them otherwise without adding these. Sometimes cat-a-lot can be used from users' Uploads pages when they uploaded many files in a row (e.g. maps showing the same year). Prototyperspective (talk) 23:44, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Resolving videos by language contradictions
[edit]Please resolve contradictions in categorizations of videos by language which are very useful and quite of self-explanatory. People don't understand videos in languages other than the one(s) they understand, especially if there also are no subtitles. Categorization by languages enables people to more easily find videos in their language or selectively search them (also the deepcategory search operator may work with that category since it's more flat than other cats). This is also useful for finding videos to redub or add subtitles to and many other things.
Contradictions can be found by combining languages. There probably is a better way but one could for example search for deepcategory:"Videos in Spanish" deepcategory:"Videos in English" (link) to find videos that seem to have contradictory categorization: these should go into either Category:Multilingual videos or into a category that has Category:Categories with contradictory categorization set. In this example, files would be in either the English or Spanish language videos branch, and creating new subcategories like Category:NIOSH videos about respirators in Spanish are usually required for that (one can use cat-a-lot).
For Categories with contradictory categorization, there probably should be a way to resolve these contradictions, for example through changing the categorization since files are not categorizable in the way of "all of these files belong into the category except exceptions CYZ". Lastly, at some point people may want to write the video language to the structured data of the file according to the categories set but I doubt it would add much since there already are categories for that and structured data on files is barely seen or used – just something to keep in mind.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 11:01, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
Adding missing categories to "…by name" categories
[edit]For example one could query items in Category:Screenshots of free software but not in Category:Screenshots of free software by name or somehow categories that should be in but aren't in Category:Free software by name. Many subcategories of Category:Products by name for example are very incomplete. It would be helpful if infoboxes set these by name categories automatically depending on what is set on the Wikidata item. The cats are at Category:Categories by name.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 13:26, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
Fixing self-categorization (cat-cycles)
[edit]The category cycles of this report need to be fixed: Commons:Database reports/Category cycles. These are categories that contain themselves. If you fix them (by changing one part of the category chain), you could strike or remove items from the list so others going through these don't go over already-solved cases. Maybe some tool(s) – possibly AI-based – for fixing these are needed as there are really many.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 16:16, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
Adding missing video language categories
[edit]Maybe a bot could be used to detect the video language. Other than that one could use categories like so to identify videos that miss their language category.
See Category:Videos by language. Note that these categories can then also be used to en-masse set the language qualifier for the uses of these videos on Wikidata which in turn could be used for further things like suggesting use of the video in Wikipedias.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 14:09, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
Moving xy-language diagrams to xy-language charts
[edit]Many of these categories contain data graphics that aren't diagrams, mainly charts like pie charts and line graphs. Please move these from categories like Category:Italian-language diagrams to categories like Category:Italian-language charts. This would also remove charts from a deepcategory view where is filtering for diagrams. So far, I only fixed files directly in Category:Spanish-language diagrams. There, about 4.9% of files were charts. See Category:Diagrams by language.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 15:01, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- This is part of an even larger effort to distinguish consistently between diagrams and charts / other information graphics. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:28, 30 October 2025 (UTC)
Charts/Data graphics by country
[edit]Category:Statistics by country also contains media about statistical institutions. It also contains data graphics that aren't charts such as choropleth maps. Then there also is Category:Charts by country and its parent cat data graphics by country. Those categories are very incomplete.
- There are cats like Category:Statistics of Greece and Category:Charts of Greece where the latter should but currently isn't a subcat of the former
- Often there are chart files in e.g. subcats of the country's statistics subcat but not in the Charts category; things are pretty dispersed and not findable/browsable from one place
- These cats miss many files – for example there's many data graphics about countries in Category:Our World in Data that aren't in these by country cats
--Prototyperspective (talk) 16:47, 30 October 2025 (UTC)
- To make it clearer, only a fraction of the charts in e.g. Category:Statistics of Germany can be found in the respective charts category, here Category:Charts of Germany (plus the same issue may also exist the other way around). Prototyperspective (talk) 14:03, 6 November 2025 (UTC)
Medium
[edit]Recurrent cleanups
[edit]PD-algorithm
[edit]Files with the PD-algorithm license that were allegedly generated by AI need recurrent cleanup. Mainly, files that aren't AI-generated need to have this license removed or replaced and AI-generated media need to be subcategorized into Category:AI-generated images by software or similar subcats of Category:AI-generated media. One can use the thumbnail view of this PetScan query. --Prototyperspective (talk) 13:53, 30 September 2024 (UTC)
Please copy and maybe subcategorize videos as described. I think such time-lapse videos are the most interesting ones when it comes to time-lapse videos of cities. --Prototyperspective (talk) 16:30, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Missing items of Category:Tutorial videos by language
[edit]Deepcategory search could be used for that. --Prototyperspective (talk) 12:56, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
Subcategories of Category:World statistics
[edit]Could also be large-scale. Note that for every new subcategory created one should also search for files not yet within that category that belong into it. --Prototyperspective (talk) 12:11, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Subcategories of Category:Categories per capita
[edit]Could also be large-scale. Note that for every new subcategory created one should also search for files not yet within that category that belong into it. --Prototyperspective (talk) 12:11, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Illustrations by year
[edit]Adding many or most of these diagram files into subcats of Category:Illustrations by year. This could be done automatically if one can simply read the Date field in the file Information template. Note: it would be best to go through them to include cases that are not illustrations. --Prototyperspective (talk) 22:21, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
Energy by country to Energy statistics by country
[edit]Moving files from Category:Energy by country subcats into the Category:Statistics by country subcat-branches by moving them to Category:Energy statistics by country subcategories. Currently they are very dispersed and not in statistics of country branch.
For example, moving files from Category:Energy in Canada to Category:Energy statistics of Canada.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 19:36, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Greenhouse gas emissions by country to Statistics by country
[edit]This is very similar to the above request.
Moving files from Category:Greenhouse gas emissions by country subcats into Category:Statistics by country subcats.
For example, files in Category:Greenhouse gas emissions by the United States are mostly charts but those are missing in Category:Statistics of the United States.
Note that it would be best to subsequently do a short search for further charts that belong into an eventual new subcat of the latter like Category:Statistics of greenhouse gas emissions by the United States which would be better than just copying those files into that cat directly.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 18:15, 10 May 2025 (UTC)
Electron microscope images and Scanning electron microscopic images into subcats
[edit]Diffusing these (each ~400 files) mainly into the …relating to biology subcat of the latter.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 12:43, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
Videos in "Photos by xyz" user categories
[edit]Many user categories are called "Photos by xyz" but include videos. However, videos are not photos. This means they are factually false and undermine the accuracy of Commons and that they put lots of videos into various Photographs categories. I think they should be renamed to "Files by xyz" or "Photos and videos by xyz" for example or videos to be moved out the respective category into a separate Videos-specific category that could link to the Photos category via a {{See also cat}} and vice versa. Currently, there's no policy on this. Users who created the user categories for them may not clean this up if you ping them. Would be good if this could get solved via somebody going through these cats. I did it at Category:Photos taken with WMMX drone. One could get far by going through the files in this scan but one would have to narrow it down further to make deepcat show all results.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 16:26, 30 October 2025 (UTC)
Explanatory videos by language
[edit]Categorizing files in Category:Explanatory videos by language (including subcategories) into Category:Explanatory videos.
I think explainer videos are particularly important and educational and subcategorizing them by language can be very useful; for example for translation and to have more useful overviews of relevant files.
Could also be a large task depending on whether English videos are also accurately subcategorized there.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 15:47, 6 November 2025 (UTC)
Videos about the human body
[edit]There are lots of videos about the human body and lots of categories about biological bodies but things haven't been narrowed down to human body. It would be useful if a Category:Videos about the human body (or similar) was created with just and more videos about the human body.
Most of its files can be found in Category:Videos of anatomy, especially subcat Category:Videos of organ systems. I added two subcategories that aren't in these.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 17:20, 6 November 2025 (UTC)
Consumption statistics / by country
[edit]Files in Category:Consumption and not yet in that cat (searches needed) into Category:Consumption by country and Category:Consumption statistics (now just Category:Consumption statistics by country).
--Prototyperspective (talk) 22:57, 6 November 2025 (UTC)
NASA videos from unidentified year
[edit]Moving files out of Category:NASA videos from unidentified year into the specific year cat via the year already specified in the file description in the date field.
The insource search operator could maybe be used for that but it would be better if one could search files via data in the Information template – see How to search fields of files' Information template?.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 21:55, 9 November 2025 (UTC)
Small
[edit]Wikipedia-specific videos should be there, not only a random subset. --Prototyperspective (talk) 16:30, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Missing items
[edit]The following categories miss many items. If you find a category both valid and useful but to be quite incomplete (you are quite sure there's many more files on this site) you can add it here. Find more… See also {{Underpopulated}}.
Including a subcat for audio files of music.
(Of and about software development.)
(Especially files about media coverage of science.)
See List of Spoken Wikipedia files without specified subject. If this category is to not be deleted, it should probably contain most or nearly all of the audio files somehow. Moreover, subcategorization by language is probably needed (both of this would need to be done using tools like cat-a-lot and good queries).