Better category handling in Timeless
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Description

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

Limit number in sidebar, select out more likely to be useful ones: T198026: Sort and prioritise categories in the sidebar
Put full list, including hidden categories, at bottom of page as usual
Don't put categories in sidebar at all all unless in 3-column view

Details

Related Gerrit Patches:

mediawiki/skins/Timeless : master

Fix display of categories in the sidebar

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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

Event Timeline

Isarra created this task.Mar 16 2017, 4:07 PM

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.

Isarra mentioned this in T181344: HotCat compatibility for Timeless skin .Nov 25 2017, 9:47 PM

Evad37 mentioned this in T193921: Timeless: Use standard category output instead of (or as well as) unique sidebar approach.May 5 2018, 4:23 AM

Evad37 mentioned this in T193923: Timeless: avoid doubling up on categories in the html.May 5 2018, 7:06 AM