Putting categories in the sidebar results in a lot of clutter on more categorised projects. Also categories are often not things readers would even want to see. See: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_is_scary_joan_of_arc.png
| Status | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | None | T160645 Better category handling in Timeless | ||
| Resolved | Evad37 | T197852 Don't sort categories alphabetically | ||
| Declined | None | T193923 Timeless: avoid doubling up on categories in the html | ||
| Declined | None | T193921 Timeless: Use standard category output instead of (or as well as) unique sidebar approach | ||
| Open | None | T181344 HotCat compatibility for Timeless skin | ||
| Resolved | Evad37 | T175713 Timeless red categories appear as blue links | ||
| Resolved | Evad37 | T186089 Timeless does not display categories removed since a historical revision | ||
| Resolved | Evad37 | T175716 Categories change need extra edit for update | ||
| Open | None | T175714 Show during page editing the categories on the page instead sidebar | ||
| Open | None | T198026 Sort and prioritise categories in the sidebar | ||
| Invalid | Isarra | T203212 Add a way to display hidden category with the Timeless skin |
Generally: reconsider TimelessTemplate::getCategories. What is the point of this, really?
I don't think it would be that good to remove the categories from right sidebar, as they provide valuable information and navigation utitlity in my opinion that is moved into periphery by the standard skins. While it's true, that some pages have a huge category count, this is only true for a minority of them. Furthermore, the right sidebar doesn't need the space for anything else, if you remove the cats you just get whitespace instead.
That's why I think you should go with the second option, but choose a quite high threshold like 20 or anything like that. If you want to select some specific categories – I really don't know how you would do that – you should provide a link All Categories at the bottom of the category sidebar section.
Nevertheless, I think your third and fourth are really valid, but I wonder if you really should remove hidden cats from the sidebar if there's only a small number of categories on that page.
Change 442021 had a related patch set uploaded (by Evad37; owner: Evad37):
[mediawiki/skins/Timeless@master] Fix display of categories in the sidebar
Change 442021 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/skins/Timeless@master] Fix display of categories in the sidebar