Commons talk:Categories

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to Commons:Categories.
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Permission to add "(disambiguation)" to DAB categories to help preventing them to be used[edit]

I would like to be able to rename some disambiguation categories (DAB categories), adding "(disambiguation)" to the category name, even when there is no category with the same name that is a primary topic. As I understand, Commons does not have a policy regarding "(disambiguation)" in category names, but uptill now follows W:WP:DABNAME (according to Crouch, Swale on Commons:Categories for discussion/2022/06/Category:Decoration).

  • The problem: DAB categories are not recognizable as such when you add a file or another category to one. And you do not get a notification in all cases when you add a file or category to a DAB. (See Commons:Village pump/Archive/2022/10#How to make a structural solution for not empty disambigious pages?, item 2, for the discussion about this problem.)
  • One of the proposed solutions is to allow "(disambiguation)" in the category name, even when there is no category with the same name that is the primary topic. Then at least people will see that the chosen category is not the right one. The original category should be deleted to avoid misunderstanding.

So my question is: Would it be allowed to rename DAB categories, adding "(disambiguation)" to the category name, even when there is no category with the same name that is a primary topic? JopkeB (talk) 05:58, 21 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The problem is that in this case too many people still choose "Category:Mercury" instead of one of the others. I do not want a redirect from "Category:Mercury" to "Category:Mercury (disambiguation)" because that indeed would cause a lot of trouble. I'd rather have "Category:Mercury" be deleted. --JopkeB (talk) 09:53, 21 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Oppose. I don't know if it would be allowed, but it would be a bad idea. My viewpoint is that here on Commons no dab categories should have "(disambiguation)" on them, and we shouldn't be looking at anything here as being a primary topic. A primary topic situation works for Wikipedia, because they are text-based and their dab pages are in article space; you can tell by reading an article whether it's about the thing you're interested in.
On Commons, where things are media-based and our dab pages are in category space (except for some gallery dabs that I think serve no purpose), it's different. You can't always tell which thing a file belongs to by looking at it (or watching, listening to, etc.). Let's say someone is uploading an image of something nondescript in Paris, Texas. It could be a generic street scene, an image of children playing, or whatever. Different things could go wrong:
  • An automated process categorizes based on individual keywords it sees in the file description. It sees "Paris" and puts it in Category:Paris, which is for the French city.
  • A person who doesn't understand how to categorize here uses HotCat to categorize the file. They enter "Paris" and choose the first category suggested which, again, is the one for the French city.
  • The file is now incorrectly categorized. How will anyone notice that? With many images, there's nothing to indicate what continent it's in, much less what country or city. Many pages have been renamed to avoid the unqualified title being for a "primary topic" because so many incorrect things got categorized there. (One I can think of is Category:Choir, Mongolia, but I know there have been others.)
And that's only taking into account use of only English when categorizing. Not everyone knows that category names here are supposed to be in English, so we get wrong things categorized under English terms that have other meanings in other languages. An example of this is Category:Lagos. Because we don't use that for a primary topic, when people put images of lakes in it (because lagos means lakes in Spanish), we can recognize that and fix it. If that category were for, say, the city in Nigeria, how would someone looking at the category know that those lakes weren't in that city? --Auntof6 (talk) 09:25, 21 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Dear Auntof6, Your viewpoint is that no dab categories should have "(disambiguation)" on them. What do you think would be a solution for the problems you describe after your viewpoint? How could it be prevented that files for Paris, Texas end up wrongly in Category:Paris (capital of France)? Or files about Spanish lakes end up in the DAB Category:Lagos? --JopkeB (talk) 09:53, 21 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@JopkeB: The solution would be for categories like Category:Paris to be dab categories, and for the category for the French city to be qualified -- Category:Paris, France or Category:Paris (France) or some such. This has been discussed before, sometimes rather heatedly.
As for the lakes, the best way to prevent that wrong categorization is to make sure people and processes that assign categories understand how to categorize correctly. However, that's probably not 100% feasible, especially in the case of automated processes, and the second best solution is what we currently have: the "Lagos" category is a dab cat. And it's not only Spanish lakes that show up in the Lagos category; it's potentially any file for any lake when being categorized by a Spanish-speaking person. -- Auntof6 (talk) 10:14, 21 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Why may a category not have "(disambiguation)" in the name, why is this a bad idea? What would go wrong? Uptill now I see no valid arguments, only opinions. --JopkeB (talk) 02:31, 23 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It could be worth a try. The problem would be clear to all users. Unless we redirect existing disambiguation categories, people may reuse them and the problem starts all over. Enhancing999 (talk) 10:57, 23 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
This has been discussed many times on Wikipedia but the problems I mentioned above would be an additional reason not to. Commons categories just like Wikipedia articles should generally use just the page's name rather than add additional information to the title and the same applies to disambiguation categories for example we use Category:Hagmore Green not Category:Hagmore Green, Suffolk. One user namely User:SmokeyJoe has advocated this on Wikipedia over the years but has never gained consensus and I doubt it would here for the additional reasons I mentioned. See also the essay at w:User:Born2cycle/Unnecessary disambiguation. Crouch, Swale (talk) 14:09, 23 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Perhaps there is a misunderstanding. With a "disambiguation category" I mean a referral page. In my opinion such a category is not a real category, but it gives a list of categories whith a similar name. See for instance Category:Cars (disambiguation) (which has, by the way, "(disambiguation)" in the name, which is what I here propose for other problematic disambiguation categories/referral pages to make possible). It is not my intention at all to rename existing normal categories that do not offer such a list. JopkeB (talk) 14:26, 23 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
(English) Wikipedia may have other uses, likely not directly relevant to Commons image categorization. Commons categorization is done on every upload, by all users, multiple times for thousands of new images per day.
As an example: I'm fine with using Category:York (disambiguation) as the list of categories with a redirect from Category:York. Enhancing999 (talk) 14:48, 23 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks, Enhancing999, your example is exactly what I mean. My proposal would be to reactivate categories like Category:York (disambiguation) or make new ones for problematic ones if they do not exist yet, and remove Category:York and the like.
And yes, I learned many times on Commons that Commons is not (EN-)Wikipedia, here we have and make our own rules. And for this subject Commons differs very much from a Wikipedia, as you pointed out. JopkeB (talk) 05:34, 24 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@JopkeB: Removing categories like Category:York would not stop things from being categorized there. It should at least be a redirect so that anything there gets moved to the disambiguation category. I know you're trying to avoid having anything in dab cats, but I don't think having things categorized in non-existent categories is better. -- Auntof6 (talk) 05:39, 24 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, perhaps you are right, I indeed am trying to avoid having anything in dab cats, at least as little as possible; and perhaps that is not realistic. But if we keep categories like Category:York with a redirect to a dab category, then it is useless to have categories like Category:York (disambiguation); then the situation might stay just as well as it is now. JopkeB (talk) 04:42, 25 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks Crouch, Swale, Auntof6, Enhancing999, for your contributions to this discussion. --JopkeB (talk) 10:28, 12 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Conclusions about "(disambiguation)"[edit]

No, the majority of the reactions say: it is not a good idea and not allowed to rename DAB categories (= referral pages) adding "(disambiguation)" to the category name, because then:

  • people may still add Category:X (if it still exists) via Hotcat to files, and that would redirect to Category:X (Disambiguation), so the problem would not have been solved at all
  • automated processes still would add wrong categories to files
  • we do not easily see that files have wrong categories with a similar name, while now we can recognize that in the DAB category and fix it.

Auntof6 thinks it is better to keep DAB categories as they are and correct the files (and subcategories) that wrongly are put in those categories.
--JopkeB (talk) 10:28, 12 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

An additional advantage of using "(disambiguation)" could be that it could fit as a parent category to anything listed there. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:36, 22 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
You mean like categorizing Category:Mercury (planet) under Category:Mercury? We should definitely not do that. The disambiguation categories should be empty as much as possible, containing only things that we don't know which item they belong in. -- Auntof6 (talk) 10:42, 22 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
No, Category:Mercury (planet) under Category:Mercury (disambiguation). There would still be no files. Enhancing999 (talk) 10:45, 22 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I was using the current name of the disambiguation category, but whichever name it ends up with, it should not contain the disambiguating entries. A disambiguation category should normally be empty. It would have text listing the possible things it refers to, but it should have no files and no subcategories. -- Auntof6 (talk) 11:15, 22 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I got that, but without "(disambiguation)", it seems to me it would be rather confusing.
What downside do you see, except that "it should [not]"? Enhancing999 (talk) 11:19, 22 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
That's just it: Disambiguation categories are for things that are confusing (that is, words/phrases that have multiple possible meanings).
As for the downsides I see, I explained them above. Some users (and probably all automated processes) that assign categories don't do so correctly. Things will get categorized in the categories with unqualified names, whether they are disambiguation categories or not. It's better for those categories to be disambiguation cats so that things that get categorized there don't get lost in incorrect categories. -- Auntof6 (talk) 12:43, 22 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
These seem to arguments about the use of "(disambiguation)" in general, not specific to my suggestion above. Enhancing999 (talk) 12:47, 22 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Edits to "guidance by topic"[edit]

i integrated rather outdated guides from special:permalink/703743320, and rewrote it to cover any kinds of structures instead of only bridges: special:diff/707887756. RZuo (talk) 13:11, 19 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Category scheme for people[edit]

In 2010, a reference was added from this page to Commons:Suggested category scheme for people which is stated to be "under construction" and not formally a policy. I don't know if here or VP is best but I think we should have a discussion if any of the suggested scheme should be policy because I don't think it's policy to refer to not-even guidelines. Ricky81682 (talk) 08:56, 22 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There is some good material here, and some problematic material. I think some of these ideas may be ready to discuss porting them over to actual COM:CAT policy, but probably not that document as a whole. Josh (talk) 03:58, 8 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Moving tens of thousands of files en masse[edit]

Tudor Collins was a photographer. We have about 21,460 of his photos at Category:Tudor Washington Collins. We also have a cat for his photos, at Category:Photographs by Tudor Washington Collins, but it contains only a dozen. I think we should move all the files in Category:Tudor Washington Collins to Category:Photographs by Tudor Washington Collins. Then we can manually move or copy the tiny percentage of them that have Collins as a subject back to Category:Tudor Washington Collins. I know I can move 200 files at a time with Cat-a-lot. Is there a way to move the thousands at once? Thanks. Nurg (talk) 07:57, 26 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Nurg Commons:Bots/Work requests. RZuo (talk) 08:38, 26 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • That's easy enough (done now, although any to move back still need doing)
As a side issue, a lot of these seem to be duplicates? The negative (glass plate?) seems to have been scanned twice and we have one positive image, correct way round, but also a negative that's horizontally flipped. Should we delete those? Put them somewhere else? Andy Dingley (talk) 11:55, 26 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Andy thanks very much. Your question about the negatives was the next question looming large in my mind. I wondered whether there is any standard Commons practice with regards to negatives for which we also have the positive. I am not very familiar with Commons deletion policy & practice. Personally I can't think of any use for these negatives, and at present I'm leaning towards deleting them. Separating them out is the other option, as you suggest, if there is a reason to not delete them. I certainly think we should do something with them, to declutter the main cats. Nurg (talk) 20:58, 26 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I'd support deletion. I've not seen them anywhere else before and can think of no useful purpose for them here. The idea of moving them to another category is really just for some QC checking before deletion. I've found one already where the naming doesn't hold up – the positive was uploaded singly some time earlier File:1939 Plymouth rolling chassis.jpg Andy Dingley (talk) 23:51, 26 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I've listed these for deletion Commons:Deletion requests/Photographs by Tudor Washington Collins (negatives for deletion) Andy Dingley (talk) 11:25, 13 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    That failed. Someone should create the category since it's alive now. Ricky81682 (talk) 19:47, 18 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    The negatives often have wider crops, so while odd they may still be useful in some situations. Maybe they could be moved into a category like Category:TIFF images with categorized JPGs, which are for TIFF/JPG pairs (where the lossless one can be used for future editing efforts, but the JPG being a better crop or more convenient file format or size). For those, the JPG gets categorized so there are fewer visual duplicates in the categories. Most of those have a visual link in the JPG file to the corresponding TIFF though, so it's obvious when looking at the JPG that the other one exists. But something along those lines may make sense if we don't want to see (and categorize) each pair of images. Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:01, 18 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Also we should think about any useful ways to sub-categorise these by subject. 20k files is too unwieldy to be much use for anything. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:23, 26 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Category chooser wizard should appear even on categories that don't exists yet[edit]

Visit e.g., Category:Some category that doesn't exist yet. Well, there we can put another category's name in the box below. But wouldn't it be great if the same "+" "-" category chooser appeared near the top of this not-yet existing category too, to help us along? Jidanni (talk) 23:44, 26 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Jidanni There's a work-around for that: The link to Category:Some category that doesn't exist yet will actually lead you to https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Some_category_that_doesn%27t_exist_yet&action=edit&redlink=1 - which is the page in edit mode. Go to your browser's address bar, delete the &action=edit&redlink=1 at the end of the URL and hit Enter. HotCat will be there. El Grafo (talk) 12:47, 13 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Adding a caption makes page unfit to add categories until refresh[edit]

Fill in the Caption box of a file. Now at the top, add some categories with the "+". Result: warning that you are editing an old version. Must remember to manually refresh the page in the browser first. Or, first add the category, then the caption. Jidanni (talk) 01:11, 27 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Add idea sender link[edit]

The "Categories (++):" tool should have in its corner, a link to where to send ideas. Jidanni (talk) 06:40, 27 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Don't offer redirects in match list[edit]

The Categories (++) tool should not offer redirects in its lists of matches. Jidanni (talk) 06:41, 27 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Jidanni You mean HotCat? What exactly is the problem with redirects there? I think it's doing a pretty good job at resolving them automatically ... --El Grafo (talk) 12:37, 13 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Delete "Universality Principle"[edit]

I propose to delete this section.

It was added, undiscussed, by one single editor in a massive change of policies here. That seems to have been to try and justify some specific category discussions here: Category talk:Navigation consoles of watercraft (and others) that were being resisted by a number of editors. It has been cited again here: Commons:Categories for_discussion/2021/11/Category:Tracht. A massive change involving it came up more recently here: Commons:Categories for discussion/2020/01/Category:Gray and as that was (unsurprisingly) such a surprise, it then generated pushback here: User talk:JopkeB#Grey or gray?

There are two problems with this section. They are fundamental and cannot be addressed simply by editing the wording.

  • It is contrary to all other WP policy and practice.
  • It seems only to be used to introduce neologisms. Which are themselves against WP policy and practice, and they also reduce usability for readers by phrasing things with invented terms that are equally unfamiliar to all.

Commons is not Wikipedia and does not inherit Wikipedia's policies. Few have been explicitly copied across, most were thought to not be necessary. However it's still worth looking at them, and especially at the backstory for how they came to be. In particular en:WP:ENGVAR: because language differences are inevitable, and editor loyalties will lie with their own tradition, then there is no hope of ever finding a "best" solution. In the interim though, we need to avoid concrete problems, such as edit-warring and needless churn between versions. If a narrow use of a term does have an evident national link (such as Category:Grey road vehicles in London), and where the alternative with "gray" would be a wiki-invented aberrance, then of course it can be tied to that.

There is no reason at all why MediaWiki categories need to have consistent naming across their children. I am tired of people claiming this as some justification for this "Universality". MediaWiki works by tagging both "Grey vehicles in London" and "Gray aliens in Area 51" and "Things that are an iridescent rainbow and aren't monochromatic at all" with membership in the Gray category, then they're done. The parent category just doesn't care what the children are called. Nor do our readers: the names themselves, in relation to their content, is much more important than a false and contrived consistency imposed between them.

Neologisms are a real problem on both Wikipedia and Commons, but Wikipedia has policies that they mustn't be invented, Commons (this policy) says that they must! We should resist this. No-one is well-served by inventing nonsensical names for things, even if that makes them "consistent". We do not need any more attempts to invent Category:Driving stands of watercraft.

"Universality" does not work as a naming principle here. WP recognises that and long abandoned it, in favour of accepting stability and recognising national ties. We should do the same on Commons. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:43, 10 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  • Agree strongly. "local dialects and terminology should be supressed in favour of universality if possible." No. - this would create huge amounts of local categories contrary to what locals actually call things. There have been several category discussions over the years where sentiment went the other way. We allow both "pubs" and "bars" rather than trying to pretend that every example worldwide is either one or the other despite what people who live there call it - etc. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 23:48, 10 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    If there is no counter argument over this point, I suggest deleting that segment. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 00:37, 18 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    that convention dates back to 2007. you cannot change commons conventions without at least an rfc. RZuo (talk) 08:39, 18 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Thank you, so I guess starting an rfc is in order. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 15:15, 18 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • @Andy Dingley: Has an rfc been started? If not I suggest you start one, as you seem articulate on the issue. Thanks, -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 19:00, 1 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

In, From, Of[edit]

The common English language words "In" "From" and "Of" have distinct meanings familiar to native and advanced speakers. Perhaps they are not clear to some second/third etc English language speakers. Possibly some users have chosen to deliberately disregarded the meanings in a quest for some sort of uniformity in category names. Whatever the case, we seem to have a number of examples where the terms are misused. "In" refers to location and time. The location where a photo is taken is "in" that place. "From" refers to origin, for example the place a person is native of, or where an object was manufactured. "Of" is more general, and can refer to either or both "in" and "of"; it states a general but significant connection. (For example, if a Nerf herder native to Tatooine moved to Alderaan and had their photo taken in Alderaan, the photo could accurately be categorized in "Nerf herders from Tatooine" and/or "Nerf herders in Alderaan", but it would be a falsehood to categorize it as "Nerf herders in Tatooine" or "Nerf herders from Alderaan".) Is there agreement that these three small words should be used accurately in Commons categorization - and if there is not, what is the counterargument? Wondering -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 18:58, 1 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think people often use the first word that pops up their mind. Sometimes they choose the word according to their intention with the category, without realising that the limitation imposed by the choice would require a parallell category tree with mostly the same content. Often the only thing you know is "in", as your motif is in that place when you take the photo. For celebrities "of" makes more sense, as you usually know where the person lives, but not necessarily where they are from (and that may be irrelevant, cf "Presidents from France").
There is also a true problem: you might want to include both presidents and nurses in People in/from/of X by occupation. Do you need three such categories for each country (or city, or whatever)? If you settle for just one (as we normally do), you probably don't want visiting presidents included, so you should say "of" (you really don't want "from"). So to avoid the visiting presidents you choose "of", and still include Nurses in X, and thus also those in the country for Médecins Sans Frontières, or on a workplace retreat across the border.
–LPfi (talk) 20:13, 1 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Along which lines this recent move by User:Trade seems a bit odd. We can easily know these people are in the United States, but the change to of seems to raise questions about our knowledge of the particular people in each photo. - Jmabel ! talk 01:03, 2 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
It makes no sense for one set of age groups to use "of" and another set of age groups to use "in". I choose the former as that seemed to be the norm with men, women, children, boys and girls. Trade (talk) 18:55, 2 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I assume none of them is served by using "of". It is probably inherited from "People of", which includes authors, politicians and other celebrities. The age group categories are mainly for random people who might not be locals – that's at least my impression – and should thus use "in". –LPfi (talk) 20:17, 2 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I have no strong opinion as to which construction is better in this particular case. I only note that the three words have different connotations, and movement of any media from one to the other should always be done with awareness for every single file, making sure no inaccuracies are introduced. I do feel very strongly that "consistency" should never be used as an excuse for falsehoods in categorization. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 20:56, 2 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
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