Localized category search

[nicolas-raoul]

Less than 1 in 4 persons in the world can understand basic English.
Only 36% of the world population use the Latin alphabet.

So, for most people the search bar does not return the right things, for instance typing "España" in our app's category search bar does not make the "Spain" category appear.

This is a core problem of Commons, where categories only have an English name. Structured Commons (a project spanning from 2017 to 2019) might solve this, though that might require some input and stearing from us.

A workaround for now is to take the appropriate label from the category's Wikidata item, for instance "विकिपीडिया:श्रेणी" from https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6741108, but it only has labels for very famous things. This workaround does not allow for fuzzy search though. I am not sure whether we should implement the workaround, or just wait for Structured Commons to be deployed, which might happen in a few years, or might never happen since there is some opposition to this big change, as well as serious technical challenges.

(also posted at Structured Commons' discussion page)

[johnnyrev]

Hey, is this issue still open? And if so, could it be assigned to me and my colleague @dafnith?

[nicolas-raoul]

@johnnyrev It is still open, but:

1. It is super hard, would probably take a month at least
2. Newcomers should take issues with the "bug" label, as explained at https://github.com/commons-app/documentation/blob/master/android/Volunteers-welcome!.md#developers
   Thanks! :-)