On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 10:10 PM, Rayson Ho <[email protected]> wrote: > Seems like it is no easy way to display all the media files under a > wikimedia category -- for example if someone wants a picture of a > library, he or she will need to go into each sub-category under > "Libraries": > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Libraries > > While Wikimedia is not yet the most popular stock photo source, IMO > having this flattening functionality would be useful to those who are > looking for stock photos.
This is a regular request. There are two major problems: 1) Our database schema is not set up to handle this efficiently for large result sets. At least I don't think so, off the top of my head. 2) In practice, collapsing categories like this can often lead to crazy stuff being included, because subcategory relations aren't used strictly in a "everything in category A is also in category B" sense. It's easy to come up with examples. For instance: [[Category:Punishments in religion]] -> [[Category:Religion and capital punishment]] -> [[Category:People executed for heresy]] -> [[Category:Joan of Arc]] -> [[English claims to the French throne]]. Thus, if you try to get all articles in [[Category:Punishments in religion]] or subcategories, you'll get results like [[English claims to the French throne]]. However, this is definitely on the long-term "it would be nice if someone did this someday" list. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
