Add option for WIKICATEGORYMEMBERS to list all subcategories too

[Samwalton9]

It would be super useful to be able to list all category and subcategory pages. Since different language pages are common on meta wiki we would need to list the category members for every subcategory of The Wikipedia Library (e.g. Category:The Wikipedia Library/de) individually. If WIKICATEGORYMEMBERS could optionally list all pages in the specified category and its sub categories in one step that would be great.

[tomayac]

I considered this, but it simply doesn't scale in the general case. It is dangerously easy to shoot yourself (and the Wikimedia Foundation) in the foot by unconsciously firing thousands of requests with one innocent-looking formula. Unless you have a smart solution to this issue?!

[Samwalton9]

One solution could be allowing WIKICATEGORYMEMBERS to take a list of categories to list the articles for. This would allow the user to use WIKISUBCATEGORIES to list out the subcats, which could then be fed into WIKICATEGORYMEMBERS if the user sees that there aren't an absurd number. Would that help?

[tomayac]

We probably agree that there should be some sort of recursion depth limit. I am on vacation at the moment, but happy to get technical feedback from the API admins on the best way to do this.

[Samwalton9]

Hi - just remembered about this. Did you manage to make any progress? :)

[tomayac]

Sorry, no progress yet, but I haven't forgotten about it.