Wikipedia:Gallery namespace

This is a proposal about a new namespace similar to categories but only suitable for images. It acts and could be linked to like categories, but its used only for images.

The proposal was originally named Album namespace, then it was renamed to Gallery namespace after a proposal by User:Ulayiti

Please discuss this proposal in its talk page.

How this namespace works

This namespace, as I stated, is similar to the category namespace, so its use is familiar to all users. The categorisation of Images is done by adding [[Gallery:NAME]]. All other features are similar to categories

Benefits

• We take example of pictures of French people. We could put articles and images about French people in the category [[Category:French people]]. But the use of images in categories would load the image and make it hard for users to search for an article. Though we could create the [[Category:Images of French peoples]], but with a new namespace, it would become [[Gallery:French people]], neater and better.
• The many Unused files put into Galleries, won't be lost and forgotten.
• The Image namespace could be finally organised.
• Finding an image, even if it's not used, could be easily done by browsing.
• An image not used is never lost, though it could be located in a "Gallery".
• You could add benefits if you find ones...

Actual Problem with the Image namespace

Wikipedia is a repository of thousands of images, and unlike articles, they aren't organised by categories and doesn't have descriptive titles. It could be compared to a backyard full of autumn leaves: the Image namespace is chaotic, which makes it very difficult to browse through the site and find a particular image.

Previously proposed solutions for the Image namespace

By searching through the different Wikipedia pages and policies, I found that there were small attempts to organise the Image namespace or to give ways to find an image in Wikipedia:

• Wikipedia:list of images: It's a page with some categories that invites users to put all images on corresponding categories.

Problem: Including all images is a long process. The categories tend to grow rapidly, and splitting and moving images to subcategories is not practical. That's why this page has drawn little attention and is inactive.

• Wikipedia:Finding images tutorial#Check Wikipedia: It's a tutorial on how to find images on the internet, but it contains only one paragraph about finding images in Wikipedia.

Problem: The tutorial specifies that finding an image begin by searching into related articles. That could be possible if there wasn't a lot of pictures that aren't currently used in articles, or have been removed or replaced from articles for some reasons but are suitable for using

• Categories: There's some categories that contains images.

Problem: Putting images into categories is not very popular. Most of these categories are by license and not by topic. Mixing images an articles is also not very aesthetic, it loads the page, and makes it hard for users to find an article (see section above).

Procedure

1. Discussing the proposal in the talk page.
2. If it turned out well, a vote should be conducted.
3. If the vote had a positive turnout, developers must be requested to create this new namespace.
4. If the namespace is created, all categories containing images should be deleted and replaced by Galleries.
5. The creation of Galleries and the categorisation of images should begin.

Final technical notes

The MediaWiki software accepts easily new namespaces. But could it be created like a category namespace? A question for developers.