In case anyone on this list isn't aware of it, we have a very large
categorisation backlog on Commons. The Geograph load of UK images alone
includes hundreds of thousands of uncategorised images, and as many only
categorised by bot.
However there are some recently improved tools out there that people may
not be aware of, so I thought I'd email the United Kingdom and Commons
lists to make sure everyone knew about the changes. The UK mailing list is
relevant because we have a very large part of the Common categorisation
backlog, and it has come up as a problem for our Wiki loves monuments plan.
There have been two major enhancements to Catalot in the last few weeks.
It now has an autoprompt/complete feature similar to Hotcat to make it much
easier to add categories, and crucially for our Geograph backlog, it is now
possible to use Cata a lot on uncategorised Geograph images such as in the
categories in
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_the_Geograph_British…
you have to copy rather than move as you are replacing a template with
a category rather than moving from one category to another).
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help_talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot
The other big change is that Rillke has written some code to change the way
that Hotcat works, so that if you open an a Geograph image that needs its
categories checked you can confirm the categories eiter with one click or
by using Hotcat to ad or remove a category. Previously Hotcat would remove
the Geograph uncategorised template but not the partially categorised
template, so if bots had added some categories you couldn't remove the
cats need review template other than by editing. The Rillke's js code can
be accessed by installing importScript('User:Rillke/checkCat.js');
Details at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:HJ_Mitchell#Check-categories-au…
I've been using it, it works well and is many times quicker than confirming
categories manually. If everyone who is active on Commons installs it I
think we'll see the backlog reduce quite noticeably.
Regards
WereSpielChequers