ayg wrote:

Why not to the new page form too? Or for that matter every edit page?

robchur wrote:

(In reply to comment #1)

Why not to the new page form too? Or for that matter every edit page?

Because we already have a perfectly good mechanism for doing it in one step in
those cases?

while it would be convenient, i'm pretty sure it would lead to many images
ending up in non-existing, misspelled or very high-level categories. In theory,
CategoryTree could be hacked to create an Ajax-Based category selector. But that
wouldn't help people without JS.

ayg wrote:

(In reply to comment #2)

Because we already have a perfectly good mechanism for doing it in one step in
those cases?

How is that different from upload? Can't you add categories manually to the
upload summary?

(In reply to comment #3)

while it would be convenient, i'm pretty sure it would lead to many images
ending up in non-existing, misspelled or very high-level categories.

Better than none at all, especially with category redirects.

In theory,
CategoryTree could be hacked to create an Ajax-Based category selector. But that
wouldn't help people without JS.

Well, of course, but 95% of readers probably are using JS, so that would be much
better than nothing.

robchur wrote:

(In reply to comment #4)

How is that different from upload? Can't you add categories manually to the
upload summary?

I'm of the opinion that it should be possible to upload with different summaries
and initial description page content; the current behaviour is confusing and has
been discussed in other bugs before this.

Better than none at all, especially with category redirects.

wrong - uncategorized images are easy to detect. miscategorized images are not.

Well, of course, but 95% of readers probably are using JS, so that would be much
better than nothing.

You are forgetting that many companies, schools, libraries, etc hav JS disabled per
default, for security reasons. But anyway - as long as the selector is only used to
fill in a field that can also be edited manually, there's no problem.

I'm of the opinion that it should be possible to upload with different summaries
and initial description page content;

Oh yes PLEASE. On a related note: the fact that the license selector is ignored,
and the page content not changed, when an image is overwritten, is also a
frequent cause for confusion. But this is the wrong place to discuss that I guess.

ayg wrote:

(In reply to comment #6)

Better than none at all, especially with category redirects.

wrong - uncategorized images are easy to detect. miscategorized images are not.

Touché.

le.korrigan wrote:

wrong - uncategorized images are easy to detect. miscategorized images are not.

I disagree: [[Special:Uncategorizedimages]] is useless on Commons as images with
a license and no other categories are not included in. One has thne to rely on a
tool like OrphanImages
(http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/OrphanImages.php) which is not 100%
accurate.

The "category field" could actually contain a default category (e.g. "Unknown")
which would allow to easily spot "uncategorized" images.

yonatanh wrote:

Can't a mechanism be added to check if a category exists when one is entered in
the field and if it doesn't either notify the uploader or tag it accordingly?

le.korrigan wrote:

I bring to your attention a user JavaScript which does the job, but every user has to activate it so far : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:HotCat.js. It does auto-completion as well, which is quite handy to avoid misspelt categories.

brianna.laugher wrote:

Another user JavaScript is http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Tgr/catinsert.js
It adds a "select category" button to the edit toolbar, and you browse the category tree to select a category. (I actually prefer HotCat, but for a small wiki maybe Catinsert is better.)

Thank you Brianna for pointing out that https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard offers users an option to categorize images when uploading them.

For what is worth the Commons mobile apps for iOS and Android are also including this feature as we speak.