Category:Monuments and memorials referencing years

There's no Category:Referencing. Nor does this whole "referencing by year" thing seem to exist outside of monuments and memorials. Plus a lot of these sub-categories are extremely under populated to begin with. Not to mention it isn't even clear what the difference between this and Category:Monuments and memorials by year is either. So I'm wondering if these whole category scheme should just be deleted. As I really don't see the point in it and there's no higher level category scheme to justify the thing anyways. Adamant1 (talk) 19:34, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

There is a whole (quite extensive) tree in the subcat Category:Plaques referencing years. That category has existed here since 2007, so I suppose that this kind of categorisation is rather consensual. I developed the "Monuments" supercategory to cover items that aren't plaques – and these are common, though it only covers a small subset of related files. A better attitude would be to expand the category tree, not delete it :) — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 19:42, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Plaques referencing years is a child category of this one and from what I can tell most of them only contain a few categories or images. So I'd hardly call them "extensive." I don't really see how that's an argument for or against keeping this anyway. And it's nothing to do with my "attitude." I've pointed out several reasons why this category structure is an issue and makes absolutely no sense. Just because someone created something in 2007 isn't a reason to keep doing categorizing things that way years later either. Again, especially considering the issues which you seem to be ignoring. I'm kind of interested in what you think the difference is between "Category:Monuments and memorials referencing years and Category:Monuments and memorials by year is though since your the one advocating for keeping the categories. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:14, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

If we have the year a monument was a created and the year of the event being commemorated, which one goes where?
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 20:28, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I think the only one of those two that matters is the year of creation. Otherwise there's already categories for monuments and memorials having to do with specific events like WW1. Do we really need Category:Monuments and memorials of World War I referencing 1916? Probably not. Category:Monuments and memorials of World War I is perfectly fine. In the meantime from what I can tell most, or all, of the images and child categories here are for gravestones or memorials having to do with people. So what's being referenced is their year of birth and/death. Which is already covered by other categories. Either that or it's the date for something like a bridge, where the year being refenced is the date of complication and again, that's already covered by Category:Bridges by year of completion. So at least IMO having a specific category system for year of the event being commemorated is totally pointless. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:38, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

• If I remember correctly, I started Category:Plaques referencing years back in 2007 due to the fact that people were putting year categories on individual images of plaques - but often the plaques dated decades or even centuries from the event they commemorated. So I thought some category for organizing plaques appropriate. Something like "plaques by year" could mean the date the plaque was installed, or the date it was photographed - "referencing" was the first term that occurred to me that seemed clear. If someone has better clearer alternative phrasing, I have no objection to changing it. Otherwise, as it existed on Commons for more than 18 years without objection, I see no harm in leaving it as is. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 19:48, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Wooden statues by Donatello in Italy

cascade of c: without items. Wooden sculptures by D. would suffice (If in the future a not-statue would be discovered in Not-Italy we would survive.)) MenkinAlRire (talk) 11:31, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

 Keep no we need this cat, and I do not see a "cascade without items“--Oursana (talk) 11:36, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

this c: is a subc: to Wooden statues by Donatello (empty) which is a subc to Wooden sculptures by Donatello (empty). That all sculptures are in Italy is expressed in the c:15th-ct wooden sculptures in Italy. A c: that only has another c: in it that has a c: in... is nonsense, like the Matryoshka dolls, and here it would be a bureaucratic principle ruling over common sense, and that may lead to kafkaesk structures. I don't think anyone wants this sort of tricky over-categorisations, where noone actually finds anything anymore, without keeping up with empty shells.

There are no wooden sculptures by Donatello outside Italy and it is not likely that there will be. All wooden sculptures are statues, so what? You could certainly remove both c:s above, instead of both subc:s.

You have to consider all the ways users will approach this, not only the logic in the creation of c:s. I often go with the c:artist and search from there. Donatello's c-tree is not that complicated, but already complicated enough (e.g. attributed works are a problem). If you only see a list of categories it is already abstract enough and you have to really know what you are searching for, because objects have often many names, some appear in a different language and so on. To come to this sort of stapled empty categories, as a user I feel like someone's pulling my leg, I feel fucked, really (it might just be the top of the frustration, I already have getting through this jungle).

At last, the differentiation of sculptures equally only makes sense, when there are also wooden reliefs or some distinguished busts, but there are none, and if a single wooden bust would be attr. to Donatello, the bust could have its specific subc:, without having the statues compromised. We don't need to make things more complicated as they show themselves. Sorry, this was a categorical speech (pun intended). MenkinAlRire (talk) 12:41, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

As far as I see here,

1. This is the only sub of Category:Wooden statues by Donatello, especially by location. Categorization by location is fine if there are multiple locations to diffuse, but here there is not, so it serves not purpose under this parent, and all subjects of this category can be moved up to this parent.
2. This is the only sub of Category:15th-century wooden statues in Italy by creator. Categorization by artist is fine if there are multiples artists to diffuse. We can simply place Category:Wooden statues by Donatello under 15th-century wooden statues in Italy, as all of the contents of the former that we have are also of the latter. This would serve the same diffusing effect on this category while eliminating an extra click level.
3. This is one of two subs of Category:Statues by Donatello in Italy by material. In this case it makes sense to diffuse his wooden statues from the marble ones, but as with #2 above, this can be accomplished simply by placing Category:Wooden statues by Donatello directly here, since all of the wooden statues of his that we have here are in Italy.

Thus, Merge Category:Wooden statues by Donatello in Italy into Category:Wooden statues by Donatello and place the target category under Category:15th-century wooden statues in Italy and Category:Statues by Donatello in Italy.

@Oursana: , is there a particular reason why this would not work? Josh (talk) 20:31, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

• Are their any wooden statues by Donatello anywhere outside of Italy? Current categorization suggests not. If there are none, merge per Josh. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 19:55, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Wiki Loves Monuments in Ukraine 2021 - Quantity

Anyone know what the word "quantity" is referring to here and/or what the purpose of it is? If not everything in this category should probably just be up-merged. Adamant1 (talk) 15:33, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: it's a technical category for Wiki Loves Monuments organizers that denotes one of the nominations of the contest ("quantity" is the name of the nomination – it refers to awarding for the number of monuments pictured in the contest). The category serves a useful purpose and should be kept as is. AntonProtsiuk (WMUA) (talk) 16:41, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

@AntonProtsiuk (WMUA): Is there not a better way to keep track of it or at least a less ambiguous name for the category? At least from what I've seen from past CfDs and personal experience there's no consensus to have these types of personal, arbitrary maintenance categories. Especially in cases where the name of the category is so ambiguous that only the user who created it knows what it's for. Maybe something like "Wiki Loves Monuments maintenance category X" would work better. This seems like a normal category for images of monuments in Ukraine when that's not what it is though. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:46, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

It seems to be one of two domains in the WLMUK contests uploaders have to choose when participating. This category (or the other) then gets added by the upload wizard.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 12:45, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

@Enhancing999: Yeah, I don't know. These personal maintenance categories are less then ideal. If there can't be similar maintenance categories for Wikiproject Postcards then I don't see why anyone else should be able to have them. Either personal maintenance categories are acceptable or they aren't. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:11, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

@Enhancing999: I'd appreciate it if you left it open for now so other people can comment if they want to. Closing a CfD after a single day and two comments isn't great. Thinks. I still think the categories should be renamed to something clearer even if their kept anyway. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:29, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't want to hinder your retirement. All the best! And no, there wont be a subcategory "not a postcard".
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 18:39, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Not that it has anything to do with this, but I'm probably just going to cut back on this and work on other things. There's some stuff I'm in the middle of that I want to get done before stopping completely though. And I don't remember saying anywhere that there should be a "not a postcard" subcategory. So I have no clue what your talking about there or how it's relevant. Maybe stick to the topic if your going to comment though. Thanks. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:43, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

You brought up postcards and announced your retirement. Thus the closure. The only postcard category of your I recall was called "not a postcard" (or similar), thus the mention. But apparently you say things that aren't necessarily relevant and we are supposed to guess if and how it is. In any case, happy retirement. All the best.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 22:05, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't bring up retiring in this discussion, you did. I didn't know that just because someone was retiring that every discussion they had anything to do with before then was suddenly null and void either. That said I'm more then happy to retract this if your that triggered by it. Some people go into rages about some odd things on here, but whatever. I don't want you to be upset over the mere existence of a CfD. So I'm totally willing to just call this good if we want. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:15, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1 This is admittedly a poor naming structure (not just this category, but several in that tree), but the standards are much more lax for maintenance and special project categories not listed in the main topical category tree. Are you suggesting that we should impose stricter standards on such categories in general, or now that at least a purpose has been identified for this one, are you okay with leaving it to the WLM participants to manage this? Josh (talk) 20:42, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Negative

contains cats like "Criticism‎" and "Ends‎"; not useful but problematic, needs to get scope specified/changed Prototyperspective (talk) 17:50, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: I think this category is for negative aspects of something, like Category:Criticism, Category:Ends, Category:Restrictions‎, Category:Negative numbers‎, etc. Category:Criticism often covers negative aspects of a given topic; Category:Ends is considered negative, as opposed to Category:Beginnings; Category:Restrictions is also considered negative, as opposed to Category:Liberty; and Category:Negative numbers are obviously negative. See also: Category:Positive. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 14:04, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, please see the nomination rationale. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:29, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

I'd lean on the side of purging this category and replacing it with a disambiguation page. The current contents fall into two groups:

• Things which are described using the English word "negative": photographic negatives, negative numbers, negative space. There's no actual relation between these things, just a coincidence of language.
• Things which have negative connotations: criticism, asymmetry, restrictions. This is subjective and should not be used as the basis for a category.

Omphalographer (talk) 00:36, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective and Omphalographer: I have also tagged Category:Positive for the same reason. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 04:58, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Wow, that one's even more of a grab bag than "negative". Category:Positive organs is a particularly strange example; it means "a small, portable pipe organ that you sit down to play" and is completely unrelated to the concept of positivity. Support purging/disambiguating that one as well. Omphalographer (talk) 05:24, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Agree with what you said in your two comments. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:44, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Both Category:Negative and Category:Positive should be dabbed with contents to include both categories with 'negative' or 'positive' in their name as well as concepts that may be considered 'negative' or 'positive'. This way people can still navigate through these to whatever it is they are looking for, but they should not be categories for dumping all manner of subjective contents. Josh (talk) 20:48, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Mass grave Frontovoe

пустая без возможного наполнения. Надо удалить kosun (talk) 19:16, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

@Kosun: Category is not empty. I'm not sure what needs to be done. -- Auntof6 (talk) 11:35, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Category:Indoor cycling

They arent all indoors. Perhaps it should be called Spinning (bicycle) Rathfelder (talk) 21:16, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

 Keep I suggest it's kept and that instead your suggested category is added as a parent cat to it and all files which aren't indoors removed from this cat. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:51, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

 Keep In this case, it is rather confusing, but "indoor cycling" is the name of the activity, not merely a descriptive phrase meaning 'doing cycling while indoors'. I don't think riding a bike around inside a building would constitute the activity of "indoor cycling", while one could do "indoor cycling" while not actually inside of a building. Kind of like playing field hockey somewhere other than a field? I don't think there is enough here to warrant sub-categorization of this by whether it being done actually indoors or out (though if we had a lot of images of both conditions, it might be valid at that point).

@Rathfelder is right to suggest maybe using another name for this activity that doesn't breed such predictable confusion, but I have no idea if "spinning" is a more widely used term than "indoor cycling". If it is not broadly recognized as specifically meaning the same activity, the confusion issue alone isn't enough to adopt a niche alternative term. Josh (talk) 23:09, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Antony Blinken visit to Israel, November 2023

Secretary Blinken visited Israel twice in November 2023, this name is ambiguous A1Cafel (talk) 06:44, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

@A1Cafel, so you are suggesting "Antony Blinken visits to Israel, November 2023"? -- Geagea (talk) 17:25, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Probably adding the exact date of Secretary Blinken visited Israel for the second time, i.e. Antony Blinken visit to Israel, November 29-30th 2023. This cat can be retain as a disambiguation category. --A1Cafel (talk) 17:30, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

 Question @A1Cafel, do you know if all images here are from that same Nov 29th visit? I think we should be okay just using the arrival date for each visit, so Category:Antony Blinken visit to Israel, 29 November 2023. In fact, I think this might be a better scheme to use as standard, even if there is only one visit in a given month. Josh (talk) 21:55, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:20th-century black and white portrait photographs at full length

There's got to be a better way to name these categories. This one isn't so bad, but sub-categories like "Category:20th-century black and white portrait photographs of standing women at full length in theatrical costumes" are totally ridiculous. Even more so if anyone tries to create sub-category of it based on the location or something. Category names aren't supposed to be full sentence descriptions of every single thing in the images anyway. So does anyone have a suggestion about how to better name these categories? Adamant1 (talk) 22:38, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

• Support - over-categorisation. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:54, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

 Keep full-length portraits are a specific format of portrait image, so it is perfectly useful to diffuse portraits of this type from other portraits. Whether it makes sense for any given topic/subject depends on the standard factors for whether to diffuse or not by any given criteria:

1. There should be sufficient files in the main (parent) category to warrant diffusion--anything over 200 is a strong case for consideration.
2. The diffusion criteria should be clearly defined--all the better if it is an already-established criteria used in other topics.
3. The diffusion criteria should have multiple sub-categories which are applicable to file in the parent category.
4. The diffusion criteria should be something actually depicted in the diffused files.
5. The diffusion criteria should not be too similar to existing diffusion methods under the topic.
6. The children categories for a given category should result in meaningful groupings, i.e. not just diffuse 100 files into 100 sub-categories.

There are two cases raised originally, in both cases diffused by being 'at full length', and we can apply the factors:

1. Category:20th-century black and white portrait photographs at full length, a diffusion of Category:20th-century black and white portrait photographs
2. Category:20th-century black and white portrait photographs of standing women at full length in theatrical costumes, a diffusion of Category:20th-century black and white portrait photographs of standing women in theatrical costumes (this parent does not exist, but would be the one for this topic, though its parent categories and structure are poorly named and set up)

So we can apply the factors to each of these (some apply to both equally):

1. There are thousands of files of 20th-century black and white portrait photographs, so this easily weighs in favor of diffusion of #1. For #2, there are several hundred 20th-century black and white portrait photographs of standing women in theatrical costumes, so if that category existed, diffusion should be considered. However, it does not, and if it isn't deemed worthy of creation, it certainly isn't appropriate to diffuse a category that isn't even valid to exist in its own right. So for now, I'd say either the parent needs to be created, or #2 should be deleted.
2. Diffusion of Portraits by format is an existing diffusion criteria for many types of portraits, and Portraits at full length is a clearly defined sub-category based on format, so this factor supports both #1 and #2.
3. In addition to full-length portraits, there are several other formats of 20th-century black and white portrait photographs, and at least one other format of 20th-century black and white portrait photographs of standing women in theatrical costumes (difficult to locate all as parent does not already exist), so this factor supports both #1 and #2 being kept.
4. Portrait formats are fundamentally depicted in the files directly, so both #1 and #2 comply with this.
5. Existing diffusion of 20th-century black and white portrait photographs by decade, gender, age, clothing, shape, and creator are fundamentally different from format. 20th-century black and white portrait photographs of standing women in theatrical costumes doesn't have any other diffusion so far as I could find. Thus, both #1 and #2 are okay on this score.
6. Each of the different formats, and full length in particular, under Category:20th-century black and white portrait photographs, are well populated with dozens of files in some cases. As for Category:20th-century black and white portrait photographs of standing women at full length in theatrical costumes and its sibling Category:20th-century black and white portrait photographs of standing women at three-quarter length in theatrical costumes both have a lot of files (550+ and 150+ respectively). Thus, this factor supports keeping both cases.

In conclusion, both nominated categories meet all of the criteria for diffusion as 'portraits at full length' vs. other formats. The only question is whether the second case is invalidated by the lack of a valid, existing parent category.

Thus, strong keep for Category:20th-century black and white portrait photographs at full length, and weak delete for Category:20th-century black and white portrait photographs of standing women at full length in theatrical costumes for as long as Category:20th-century black and white portrait photographs of standing women in theatrical costumes does not exist. Josh (talk) 22:57, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

On the side question of naming, the current name comports with the parent category at Category:Portraits at full length, so a change in name would only be warranted if the parent category name was changed. That said, I would support a rename to Category:Full-length portraits to better identify it as a specific portrait format versus an incidental intersection of topics. This would also force the term in full to be retained intact throughout subs to minimize confusion. Josh (talk) 22:57, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Photographs by Agência Senado

I suggest this category be moved to "Category:Files from Agência Senado Flickr stream" for standardization purposes. Generally, the format "Category:Photographs by xxx" is used to categorize photographs by a specific photographer, not from a Flickr stream. Examples I can recall include: Category:Files from Palácio do Planalto Flickr stream, Category:Files from Lula Oficial Flickr stream, Category:Photographs by Ricardo Stuckert, Category:Photographs by Cadu Gomes. RodRabelo7 (talk) 08:55, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

@Elisfkc, Tm, Entbert, MB-one, Enhancing999, and Minerva97: pinging those who have edited the category. RodRabelo7 (talk) 08:56, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

@MasterRus21thCentury, Guttitto, A1Cafel, and Snoowes: pinging those who have edited Files from Palácio do Planalto. RodRabelo7 (talk) 08:57, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

@Cosmo V, Botaurus, Sturm, and Erick Soares3: pinging those who have edited Photographs by Ricardo Stuckert. RodRabelo7 (talk) 08:58, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

 Agree Since it is a Flickr source, I agree with the proposal. Erick Soares3 (talk) 10:59, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

 Oppose I don't see much value added by the proposal. It took forever to rename them to the current name. Besides it doesn't really matter if they transited through flickr or not. That Agencia is not an individual is clear from the name, even in English.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 11:08, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

 Neutral MB-one (talk) 13:51, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

You forgot to mention you moved it unilaterally without inviting anyone into the discussion. RodRabelo7 (talk) 14:47, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

This was moved after proper CfD. Please refrain from making such baseless accusations. If you persist, I will report you on COM:AN/U.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 09:51, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but why exactly? What's the "baseless accusation"? RodRabelo7 (talk) 13:30, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

You not being invited doesn't mean not anyone nor unilaterally.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 21:12, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

@Enhancing999, it was pretty quick that you closed your own CfD...usually a few weeks at minimum given the normal traffic on CfDs should be allowed before self-closing a discussion. Given that there was no participation in the discussion and it was open for only a very brief window, it is reasonable that it not really be seen as representing any kind of consensus. @RodRabelo7 is essentially correct that you made this change yourself without any other input through that CfD. There is nothing automatically wrong with that, and I do it myself sometimes, but you should not bristle when another user realizes what you did and calls it into question. Josh (talk) 23:47, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

 Support Same as this Cfd--A1Cafel (talk) 16:01, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

 Support in compliance with the Universality Principle. Josh (talk) 23:23, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Official text of the Republic of China

What is the difference with Category:Official documents of the Republic of China?--125.230.83.110 14:04, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Merge Josh (talk) 01:29, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Latin letter combinations

A substantial portion of this category tree is made up of subcategories relating to types of railway wagons. For instance, Category:Seven Latin letter combinations‎ consists almost exclusively of subcategories like Category:UIC class Sdgmnss railway wagons, where "Sdgmnss" is a technical code describing a type of railway wagon. This is effectively just clutter; the UIC class codes are not prominent in most of the photos in these categories, and other categories already exist which specifically handle those codes (e.g. Category:UIC classes (flat list), so placing them in secondary categories based on the number of letters in those codes is not terribly useful.

I'd like to depopulate the UIC class code categories from the "N letter combinations" subcategories, and delete categories like Category:Nine Latin letter combinations which would become empty as a result. Does this seem like a reasonable cleanup?

Please note that I am not suggesting that this entire category tree be deleted. There's some marginal utility to it. But the subjects categorized should be limited to images which prominently feature a short combination of non-word letters, not every image with any kind of text in it. Omphalographer (talk) 00:17, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. I created this category 13 years ago, apparently. I don't remember why, but my interests in Latin palaeography and ligatures probably were the reason, so I'm surprised to see so many other things included. Kenmayer (talk) 00:11, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Partially  Done - I've made changes to the {{UICclass}} template to stop automatically populating these categories, and I'll review a bit later once the changes have fully propagated. Omphalographer (talk) 23:52, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes. Well, please stop. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 21:47, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Can you explain what the purpose of this categorization is? What is the relevance of the fact that a particular UIC class (whose category, in many cases, isn't even populated by anything other than other UIC classes) is some number of letters long? We don't categorize other categories by arbitrary properties of their names - for instance, there's no Category:Surnames which are seventeen letters long or Category:Cities with names containing the letters BY; why should these classes be exceptions? Omphalographer (talk) 22:06, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

It’s obvious to me and I’m having some difficulty in comprehending your goal with your uncategorization. You don’t find this stuff useful, okay, but obviously others do. So, just let it be? Or should we all go around deleting stuff each of us find useless although others had created it becoause they found it useful themselves?

I’m not against discussing how exactly UIC classes should be categorized, sure, it’s interesting for the matter at hand, but it seems that what is being discussed here is, for the umptieth time, a fundamental disagreement about the very nature of categorization — which often surfaces in these discussion pages at random places (f.i., how to subcategorize Category:Black and white photographs, if at all, or should date categories be subcategorized into days, etc.). And for that kind of general discussion I have nothing more to add. It’s surely easier to remove than to add, and it is trivial that if we delete each and every category and each and every media file, all categorization and scope problems will be solved in one fell swoop. It’s not charitable to presume that’s what you mean, but your mock(ing?) examples above seem to push the discussion in that unhelpful direction.

-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:21, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps part of the problem here is that the purpose of Category:Latin letter combinations isn't clearly defined. The interpretation that I'm operating under is that it should contain (categories of) images which substantially depict combinations of letters - e.g. Category:ABC letter combinations should include images where the letters "ABC" are a nontrivial part of the image. It's a niche use of categories, but one which is at least based on the visible contents of the image.

Throwing UIC classes into this hierarchy simply because they are composed of letters doesn't seem like a good use of this category system. Most of the images are of rail cars whose classification isn't visible in the image, or where the "letter combination" is of a superclass of the car's actual class - e.g. the "three-letter combination SMS" for Category:UIC class Sms railway wagons, where the eventual contents of the category are actually files like File:RTS Slmmnps 31 85 4734 101-2 CH-RTS Cadenazzo 280315 1.jpg, whose actual UIC class is "Slmmnps" and is only visible under magnification. Omphalographer (talk) 22:47, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

@Kenmayer: I suppose that what you meant to go here 13 years ago is now at Category:Ligatures. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 21:56, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Category:Health by district

Superfluous intermediate category Rathfelder (talk) 09:57, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Retrofuturism

needs to be split between modern retrofuturism and actual futurism of the past (>~70 years ago) Prototyperspective (talk) 10:16, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. The history of imagining the future is different from later, deliberate evocation of that history. Also distinct from imagining a future that deliberately incorporates certain elements of the past; I mention that because Category:Steampunk is a subcat here, and it is really that last thing. It has little to do with actual past imaginings of the future, unless by "past" we now mean 30-50 years or so ago when the steampunk aesthetic began.

These distinctions are subtle, though, and I wonder how well we can get people to follow them. We may well want more "hat text" than usual for some categories in this area. - Jmabel ! talk 10:13, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Palaces of justice

Upmerge to Category:Courthouses as "palace of justice" is just the literal translation of non-English terms for "courthouse". Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 10:44, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:52, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:COVID-19 pandemic in the Commonwealth of Nations

Just a container of Commonwealth countries with no specific significance of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Commonwealth of Nations as an organization. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 12:43, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

In general, current or historical colonial affiliation implies a shared history of law and social services and regulatory traditions, including the health system. A similar containerization could make sense, for example, in some transport topics (traffic signs, side of traffic), etc.--ŠJů (talk) 13:32, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Births by location

This category seems to for lists of random people and where they were born. Which is fine in theory, but Category:Births is for images "of an organism releasing its offspring" and that's clearly not the purpose of this category or it's subcats. Per Commons:Categories "we should not classify items which are related to different subjects in the same category......The category name should be unambiguous and not homonymous."

Another issue with this is that places of birth are usually meaningless trivia except in rare instances, but there's already Category:Birthplaces for locations where notable people were born. This category seems to just be a duplicate of that one at best though.

So my proposed solution would be to either completely axe this and it's subcategories outright or at least confine it to media related to actual births and remove the subcategories from ones for people. No one knows or cares that most or all of the people in Category:Births at sea were born at sea, I doubt it's a defining characteristic of any of the people either, and unless I missed it there doesn't seem to be any images on here of actual births taking place at sea. So there's really no point in keeping the category. Category:Births in taxi looks like the one exception to that but I don't think a single image of a child being born in a taxi justifies the whole category system. @Omphalographer: and @RoyZuo: Adamant1 (talk) 19:49, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

As the editor who started this discussion: My general feeling is that non-defining biographical facts, like dates or places of birth, don't belong in Commons. Displaying data sourced from Wikidata through templates like {{Wikidata Infobox}} is fine, but Commons should not be responsible for maintaining this data, or creating categories which index it. That's what Wikidata and Wikipedia are for. There's undoubtedly a lot of other category systems which fit the same pattern and which should probably be removed as well, but this is a starting point. Omphalographer (talk) 23:57, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

It quickly became obvious that the editors who built these categories are using the Commons category structure to further the aims of Wikidata more than the aims of Commons. However, eliminating these categories will not cure a long-standing POV issue. In fact, it will only make it worse. See, before these categories existed, editors were using "People of" categories for the exact same purpose. When I discovered Category:Eminem some while back, he was only categorized according to his birthplace of St. Joseph, Missouri. This is an obvious problem, because in the public eye, he's almost universally associated with Detroit and nowhere else. One I didn't fix was Category:Jack Brooks. The only reason we have a category for Jack Brooks is because he spent 42 years in the U.S. House representing Beaumont, Texas. There's no categorization present which acknowledges this. Instead, he's only categorized according to the place in Louisiana where he happened to have been born. Even if Commons lacks an equivalent version of WP:CATDEFINING, the same principle applies: adding only birthplaces to these categories amounts to "trivial details" if those places have zero to do with the person's public life. We also need to get rid of "People of" categories if editors refuse to populate them properly.

It's not just a simple matter of inclusion and exclusion. Apparently, there are editors who believe that the "People of" tree should correspond only to data points found in Wikidata. I added Category:People of Chicago to File:Paul Harvey.jpg, which was later removed by Rhadamante after copying over categories from the file to Category:Paul Harvey. Tell me, what would you go by, the lack of any mention of Chicago in Wikidata, or credible sources such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ("Harvey composed his twice-daily news commentaries from a downtown Chicago office near Lake Michigan"), WGN ("Harvey moved to Chicago in the 1940s and originated his broadcasts from the city for more than five decades"), the Chicago Tribune ("She (his wife) is the one who persuaded him to come to Chicago in 1944 and try his hand at network radio") or the Encyclopaedia Britannica ("Following a medical discharge from the Army Air Corps in 1944, he shortened his name to Paul Harvey and began broadcasting for Chicago radio station WENR")? The quality of information on Wikidata is piss-poor and the quality of sourcing is even worse. Why should we capitulate to that simply to satisfy a small handful of Commons editors who are averse to the hard work needed to properly curate data?

Despite presenting these examples, you shouldn't get hung up on them, because the list of examples goes on and on and on and fucking on. The prevalence of such only causes the real world to view Commons as one more site populated by people with a detachment from reality. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 00:37, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

I think inevitably a lot of people are going to be associated with places, and distinguishing a birthplace (and, where relevant, a place of death) seems to me to be appropriate. In particular, I think it is very likely that a fair number of people go looking for images of people associated with the place where they themselves live. Again, we come back to the fact that categories ultimately exist to serve end users. - Jmabel ! talk 15:22, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

 Keep I don’t see how or why this category is invalid; this is a container category for a bunch of subjective, valid subcategories. The main objection I’m seeing is “meaningless trivia”— as defined by who? Every single category is “meaningless trivia” to somebody! Also, User:RadioKAOS, what on Earth are you talking about? Dronebogus (talk) 13:37, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Meaningless trivia as far as it being a way for users to look for or organize media related to people. There is a point where these types of categories are to granular and not useful even if you want to claim otherwise. I'd say that's particular true in this case since there's already Category:Birthplaces for notable birthplaces to begin with. But let me throw out an example. There's a semi-well known tech entrepreneur who was born in a hospital in the same town where I'm currently living because their mother happened to go into labour while staying at hotel here one weekend. He's never actually lived or had anything else to do with here though outside of that though, and frankly I think it would be weird for a category related to him to be a child category of one for the town. No one knows or cares that he was born here. It's in no way notable what-so-ever. Ergo it's “meaningless trivia." but you'd apparently think that would be perfectly fine "just because" though.

Semi-related to that, but a lot of these categories are sub-categories of one's for "People of" categories. I wouldn't call most of these people "people of" the locations where they were born either. As it implies that we have media related to the person and said location. Which inherently isn't the case with most or all of these categories. I think it kind of follows that every sub-category of Category:Dili (city) should have images of Dili though. but if you look at Category:Fernando Sylvan which is a sub-category of Category:Births in Dili there's isn't any actual media of Dili in there. So I really don't see what the point is. Again, that's why it's meaningless trivia. Because you have a bunch of sub-categories for locations that contain no actual media of, or related to, said locations just because the person was born there. this image has absolutely nothing to do with Dili what-so-ever but it's still in a subcategory for Dili just because Fernando Sylvan happen to be born there. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:44, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

 Delete category tree per discussion. Such categorisation makes sense on Wikipedia, but not on Commons. I don't see how the effort maintaining it vs the actual, realistic navigation benefit makes this worth having. ~TheImaCow (talk) 16:56, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:CH-NB-Photographs of the Grisons (canton of Switzerland)

seems to be mostly the same as Category:CH-NB-Graubünden (Kanton) in a different language
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 20:00, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Die Kategorie CH-NB-Graubünden enthält nicht nur Fotografien, sondern auch Druckgrafiken und Zeichnungen. Es sind keine identischen Kategorien. Swiss National Library (talk) 11:03, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Die eine ist eine Subkategorie der anderen. Die Fotografien sollten dann nicht auch in Category:CH-NB-Graubünden (Kanton) sein.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 14:23, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

I removed the files that were in both categories from Category:CH-NB-Graubünden (Kanton). This solves some of it.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 16:35, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Structures by height

The point in categories is to help people organize media related to a specific subject. Not act as stores of trivial information that serves no practical purpose to categorizing images. To that end (most if not all) of these subcategories seem way to granular and trivial to be a meaningful way to categorize images of structures.

Just to give one example we have Category:5-meter-tall structures, which contains images of Category:George Henry Thomas Memorial. Is anyone seriously going to argue that people know about or care that the George Henry Thomas Memorial is 5-meters tall or that it's a defining characteristic of the statue (let alone one that even relates to images of it)?

Is there really that much a meaningful difference between a 5-meter and 6-meter tall statue that justifies them being in special categories for how tall they are? Not to say the height of a statue isn't an interesting fact, but it's just not one that IMO most people care about when looking for images of them. At least at the per meter level. There's also already infoboxes for storing that kind of information anyway.

There's also the side issue of how the subcats seem to have arbitrary start and end heights. Like Category:23-49-meter-tall structures. So I think in light of that the other issues that at the end of the day these categories should just be axed since they are totally arbitrary, to granular, and meaningless trivia in most (if not all) instances. @Omphalographer: and @RoyZuo: Adamant1 (talk) 20:18, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: There are some categories defined by height that should not be axed, like Category:High-rises, Category:Skyscrapers, Category:Supertalls, and Category:Megatalls, as they are useful for navigation. The only categories that does not seem useful to me are "x-meter-tall buildings/structures" categories, unless there is more than one building/structure with similar heights. Instead, I would prefer categories like Category:100-149-meter-tall buildings, despite seeming to have "arbitrary start and end heights", since people tend to categorize buildings and other structures by height ranges instead of exact heights. However, I don't like Category:0-22-meter-tall buildings and Category:23-49-meter-tall buildings categories as more arbitrary than Category:100-149-meter-tall buildings. Anyway, I prefer categorizing buildings/structures by height like this:

• 0-99-meter-tall-buildings/structures
  • 0-9-meter-tall buildings/structures
  • 10-19-meter-tall buildings/structures
  • 20-29-meter-tall buildings/structures
  • 30-39-meter-tall buildings/structures
  • 40-49-meter-tall buildings/structures
  • 50-59-meter-tall buildings/structures
  • 60-69-meter-tall buildings/structures
  • 70-79-meter-tall buildings/structures
  • 80-89-meter-tall buildings/structures
  • 90-99-meter-tall buildings/structures
• 100-199-meter-tall-buildings/structures
• 200-299-meter-tall-buildings/structures
• 300-399-meter-tall-buildings/structures
• 400-499-meter-tall-buildings/structures
• 500-599-meter-tall-buildings/structures
• 600-699-meter-tall-buildings/structures
• 700-799-meter-tall-buildings/structures
• 800-899-meter-tall-buildings/structures
• 900-999-meter-tall-buildings/structures
• 1000-1099-meter-tall-buildings/structures

Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 07:51, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:High-rises should be axed, as it does not seem to have a commonly agreed definition. But Category:Skyscrapers should be kept, as it is nowadays usually defined as buildings taller than 100 or 150 metres. I would stick with the 100-metre definition, as it is consistent with my above proposal. --Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 08:04, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sbb1413 I'm not even concerned about whether skyscrapers has an exact height limit. The reason it makes sense to me to keep is that it is a commonly understood concept that users will expect to find contents of to illustrate the topic, even if they don't have a clue what height they are looking for. Josh (talk) 05:24, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

• The present categories partly came from a previous discussion at Commons:Categories_for_discussion/2012/09/Category:High-rises, where I ended up replacing the Category:High-rises by height and Category:Skyscrapers by height categories. They originals were kind of useless and misused, because there's no single definition for high rises or skyscrapers. I ended up regretting it, because there are thousands of these kinds of categories, and even using scripts, it ends up as a mega-project. --ghouston (talk) 22:08, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

  @Ghouston: Thanks for reply.

  They originals were kind of useless and misused, because there's no single definition for high rises or skyscrapers.

  While there are several definitions of high-rises, there are only two modern definitions of skyscrapers that are widely used, one is 100 metres (330 ft) and the other is 150 metres (490 ft). I stick with the 100-metre (330 ft) definition, as it is not only a round figure but can also cover skyscrapers taller than 150 metres (490 ft). Categories are meant for navigation by end-users and not for ontology, and if someone wants to look for buildings in India taller than average, they can find them at Category:Skyscrapers in India, as average buildings in a given country or city (not just India) are usually shorter than 100 metres (330 ft), although there are exceptions (like Hong Kong). Category:High-rises is really superficial to me, as it is ill-defined. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 17:45, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

  Totally agree about high-rises versus skyscrapers. At least IMO the definition of the later is clear enough to have categories for. The former though, not so much. If you look at the Wikipedia article for high-rises it's pretty ambiguous. I think the definition for skyscapers on Wikipedia is pretty clear though. "Modern sources define skyscrapers as being at least 100 meters." --Adamant1 (talk) 04:44, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

  @Ghouston I appreciate the effort, and the frankness about what a mega-project it can become. I sympathize and have been there before! Josh (talk) 05:28, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1 I agree fully with your sentiment here. Deciding that because we know 'Fact XYZ' about a topic, we have to add a 'Category:Fact XYZ', is a big problem in some topics (there is an entire page of parent categories for some people now). Also, diffusing for the sake of diffusion is an ongoing problem that I disagree with doing.

I am very liberal about categorization structure for what is actually depicted in an image or other file, but when categorizing categories, or categorizing things in images by other facts about the subject that are not depicted in the image, I think we need to be far more judicious. For example, if we know a building is 330 m tall, does that mean we should categorize a detail image of an interior room or external feature of that building under Category:300-349-meter-tall buildings, even though the image does nothing to depict the height of the building or even anything related to its height? I don't see the point in that.

I general, I am not a big fan of this kind of categorization. I've given a few attempts at working with such category structures to make them more useful and maintainable, but I have rarely seen results that make it worth the effort. If someone else is committed to do it, I won't get in the way of keeping this, but if not, I say we simplify it back down to common concepts people will actually seek. Josh (talk) 05:42, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

 Comment I have also tagged Category:Architectural structures by length as some of the same ideas being discussed here apply to both height and length diffusion. Josh (talk) 19:49, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Nazi symbols status

" This category should be empty. Any content should be recategorised." But it isnt. Rathfelder (talk) 21:40, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

It looks as though many, if not most, of these are being populated by {{Nazi symbol}} (via {{Nazi symbol/layout}}); the category name has been there since the template's inception in 2009, but the category was renamed a few days ago. Make a protected edit request on the layout template to get this fixed. Omphalographer (talk) 04:18, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

• Hi Omphalographer and Rathfelder. My question is: what was the point of Category:Nazi symbols status in the first place and what's changed after the category was moved (pinging also Adinar0012). Something is similar with categories: Category:Communist symbols, Category:Symbols of communism and Category:Communist symbols status which needs to be fixed. --Ratekreel (talk) 19:05, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

  I'm afraid I dont know how to fix templates. Rathfelder (talk) 20:42, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

•  Comment The original edit should just be reverted and the category deleted. "Status" makes absolutely no sense and there's no reason to have it in the name of the top level category for Nazi symbols anyway. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:58, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

  Adamant1, I agree. It is pointless to have "status" in the title (unless it means something that I'm missing). However, I'm unable to understand your argument. Which original edit are you referring to? --Ratekreel (talk) 20:42, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I could have been clearer about it but I'm refering to the original edit or really edits that created the category and moved the files there. Essentially the files should be upmerged and the category deleted. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:55, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Move: As far as I am aware, it is a non-controversial edit to move files from a redirect to the redirect target unless there is some apparent reason such a move does not make sense.

As for whether or not to keep the redirect, it doesn't really add any search value to make it easier to find the target so I'm fine with deleting it, though if anyone has a reason to keep it, I don't see that as particularly harmful. Josh (talk) 05:18, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Joshbaumgartner, as was noted by Omphalographer above, the issue here could be solved by making an edit request to {{Nazi symbol/layout}} to replace "Nazi symbols status" with "Nazi symbols" and so was done (see Special:Diff/948881982) but the files still seem to be in Nazi symbols status which should not be happening after the edit request was implemented. Ratekreel (talk) 07:50, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

 Comment This is not a controversial issue, but a BUG in the cat system, see Commons:Village_pump/Technical#Category:Pages_using_the_JsonConfig_extension. File:Deutsches Reichsgesetzblatt 33T1 126 0902.jpg has only Template:Deutsches_Reichsgesetzblatt_33T1 chaining to Template:Nazi_symbol/layout causing cat insertion into [[Category:Nazi symbols|{{PAGENAME}}]], not into "Category:Nazi symbols status". BTW, I  Support deletion of "Category:Nazi symbols status", but this will not fix the BUG as elaborated at Commons:Village_pump/Technical#Category:Pages_using_the_JsonConfig_extension. The cat was moved 2024-09-30 well before this discussion started, and it was presumably empty at that time. @Ratekreel, Joshbaumgartner, Adamant1, Rathfelder, and Omphalographer: Please delete this cat and close this discussion. Nothing needs to get reverted, and no edit requests for whatever template are needed. Please do NOT start further discussions of this type if you find further broken cats. Discussion of the BUG belongs to Commons:Village_pump/Technical or Phabricator. Taylor 49 (talk) 20:18, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

There are still 14,831 files in the category, so it cant be deleted. Rathfelder (talk) 21:19, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Rathfelder, yesterday, there were approximately 27,000 files. Does that mean it is emptying itself? Ratekreel (talk) 03:53, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Taylor 49, thanks. That's what I thought and that's why I posted an update on VPT. The category was not empty after the move was performed, it was populated by many files via {{Nazi symbol/layout}}. My concern was that the edit request should have solved everything but it didn't not. I agree that this needs no further discussion and the category can be deleted. Ratekreel (talk) 03:51, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

How? Rathfelder (talk) 14:15, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Wikireality

What is this? Found with this report: Commons:Report UncategorizedCategories with redcats. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:40, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Funds of the State Archives of Ternopil Oblast - Fund 37

what is this? please add categories. found via Commons:Report UncategorizedCategories with redcats Prototyperspective (talk) 12:55, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

What is this discussion? This bad name category. Correct category Category:Funds of State Archive of Ternopil Oblast - Fund 37. I remove files to correct category. --Микола Василечко (talk) 19:09, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for solving this. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:18, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:La lucha (advertisements)

please clarify what this is. has only one file so probably doesn't need a category. found via Commons:Report UncategorizedCategories with redcats Prototyperspective (talk) 12:58, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Statistics about consumption in Australia

is this only about financial consumption / expenditures? it currently has no existing category set. found via Commons:Report UncategorizedCategories with redcats Prototyperspective (talk) 13:00, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Đại số 10

what is this? found via Commons:Report UncategorizedCategories with redcats Prototyperspective (talk) 15:42, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Videos by Terra X by language of subtitle files

@JimKillock: These categories seem to be redundant to a proper search query. For example, incategory:"Videos by Terra X" incategory:"Files with closed captioning in French" yields Category: Videos by Terra X with French subtitle file, but does not need additional maintenance. Maybe I’m missing some detail here? Ping Prototyperspective as creator of Videos by Terra X by language of subtitle files supercategory and a user currently maintaining this and its subcategories. ‑‑ Kays (T | C) 08:00, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

 Keep If you use WMC a bit more you'll notice that countless categories are theoretically redundant because some advanced deepcatogory searches would also show their contents to a few expert users who thought of the respective concept. The use of these categories is that you can go to a place with more videos by Terra X with that subtitle language from the video by clicking the category link. It's also useful for people creating transcripts / subtitles. The search query is used to make sure these categories are complete and don't miss any files and this maintenance should also be done for lots of other categories. Prototyperspective (talk) 08:42, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: My point is not whether it is useful, but whether the effort of manual maintenance is warranted. Especially since there are discrepancies resulting from this manual maintenance, e. g.

• Special: Search/file: deepcategory:"Videos by Terra X with German subtitle file", vs.
• Special: Search/file: incategory:"Videos by Terra X" incategory:"Files with closed captioning in German"

But maybe my assumption that these two search queries should yield the same results is incorrect? Unfortunately, as far as I know MediaWiki does not feature “virtual categories”, categories evaluated by software. ‑‑ Kays (T | C) 06:44, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

The solution is not to delete the category but to do something about the manual maintenance which is something on my list once other even more important WMC tech problems are fixed. Queries like the one you linked can be used to populate the categories. No valid reason for deletion. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:41, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: You are the one who brought up a hypothetical deletion. I inquired whether I was missing some detail. I never suggested to delete the category, but now I would. The only reason I could think of is that Special: Search is capped to 10k search results, yet by then the category is too difficult to navigate nevertheless. ‑‑ Kays (T | C) 02:40, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

You wrote seem to be redundant to a proper search query so obviously you were suggesting deletion to people who can't read your mind especially since most CfDs are about deletions which is known well to most active contributors. As I said, people don't know of and don't use advanced search features and many other categories can be dynamically built with some sophisticated search as well which is how many of them got populated and also how I populated several of the subcategories which were by created by people other than me like @Stefangrotz, Theklan, and JimKillock: . Once again please first get a bit familiar with the site instead of suggesting deletions and ignoring points. Do not delete this useful category. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:37, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

For me, the [over]categorization makes sense, because the category Category:Videos by Terra X with Basque subtitle file is both in Videos by Terra X by language of subtitle files and Videos with Basque subtitles. So you can reach from two different places. Theklan (talk) 14:41, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

I mainly created the category for Esperanto to keep the videos OUT of the other list because I assumed most people are not interested. Stefangrotz (talk) 15:43, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's also useful albeit I don't know what you refer to with other list. I suggest to comment on the proposal. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:54, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

The user apparently wants to delete Videos by Terra X by language of subtitle files and seemingly also Videos by Terra X with Basque subtitle file. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:56, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

The reason I created these categories was simply management of redubbing; I had a process whereby I would add captioning to files, eg in DE, then translate to say EN, then to a minority language, eg CY and LA, then organise redubbing.

By creating easy visibility of captioning, the work of choosing videos to translate captions or redub audio from translated captions is made easier.

If the captioning categories were always visible to users this wouldn't be necessary I agree, but if it requires special searches to find what is available that isn't great for users who are interested in helping but not familiar with Commons, Wikis, etc. JimKillock (talk) 04:26, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Category:Black and white images of men

Category for only one AI-generated B&W image of a private detective. Most B&W images of men are photos, and the B&W images of men that are not photos can be categorized under the appropriate subcats of Category:Black and white images and Category:Men. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 09:31, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Laurel Lodged (talk • contribs) 14:50, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: The category now has more entries. -- Auntof6 (talk) 12:28, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Category:Women and comics

It has only one subcat, Category:Female characters in comics, which is not always related to women, as "women" refers to adult females and young girls are commonly depicted in comics. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 09:45, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Wait a minute, this category can be used to categorize Category:Female comics creators, but I'm not sure if "women and/in topic" categories are always useful for every single topics related to women/females. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 10:02, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Former countries

It's not really clear to me how useful this category is since most, if not, all of the subcategories in this aren't for countries, former or otherwise. For instance looking over Category:Former countries by name the subcategories seem to be a mix of former "empires", colonies, kingdoms, grand duchies', Etc. Etc. I guess the categories could just be removed, but it seems kind of pointless to keep this if it's only going to contain a couple of categories to begin with. As I'm not sure there's that many former countries anyway or that it's even a useful way to categorizes countries even if there is. So does anyone have an opinion about it or care if it's axed? Adamant1 (talk) 08:31, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I don’t understand your argument. Besides being rather long-winded and rambling I don’t see how a category being cluttered with junk makes it invalid. “Former countries” is about as objective as they come it’s a country that doesn’t exist anymore. I see it’s mostly full of categories of the format “X thing as it relates to foreign countries”; that seems perfectly valid and appropriate to me. What are you even objecting to here? Dronebogus (talk) 13:29, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Like you've never written a multi-sentence paragraph before. Regardless, I'm objecting to the fact that the category is to subjective to be useful. I don't really see the point in the category if its just going to be used as a dump for random things that aren't countries. Category names aren't suppose to be ambigious. Although I'd agree the term "country" isn't ambigious in meaning per se it seems to be in this particular instance for some reason. Laural Lodged's response below being a good example of that. Adamant1 (talk) 19:03, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

• Keep An empire is a country, a kingdom is a country, a grand duchy can be a country. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:50, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

At that point a country is essentially any semi-organized border. I think the term has a certain modern connotation to it having to do with governed nations though that just doesn't apply when it comes to kingdoms and the like. No one calls places like the Kingdom of Algarve countries. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:03, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1, Dronebogus, and Laurel Lodged: The definition of "country" has been disputed since June last year on whether it only includes sovereign states or other non-sovereign entities, like Category:Dependent territories and Category:Constituent countries (link: Commons:Categories_for_discussion/2023/06/Category:Wales). Since the discussion has not been closed yet, I usually consider only sovereign states as countries in categories. So Category:Former countries should list at least the sovereign states that no longer exist. Adamant1 is right that Category:Kingdom of the Algarve should not be called a country as it was a part of the Category:Kingdom of Portugal, a sovereign state. Former kingdoms should be categorized under Category:Former kingdoms instead of Category:Former countries, unless the kingdom is also a sovereign state. I don't think colonies should be categorized under Category:Former countries, as they were administrative divisions of colonial empires. However, since we tend to categorize dependent territories with countries and many colonies of former empires have evolved into dependent territories, categorizing colonies and dependent territories under Category:Former countries may make sense. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 07:32, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Former colonies should be categorised as former colonies. I agree that "countries" should only include sovereign states, so that excludes the Algarve. It should probably also exclude the SSRs of the USSR like Category:Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. Some further thinking will be necessary for Category:Former countries by status and its children; I don't have an answer yet. Laurel Lodged (talk) 07:38, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

“Former sovereign states”? Dronebogus (talk) 09:13, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I could support that suggestion. Laurel Lodged (talk) 12:34, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sbb1413 Yep, seems we have to discuss what does 'country' mean again. There didn't seem to be any clear consensus on how to change Category:Countries from its current status as 'sovereign states, sort of.' There certainly were a lot of different opinions on how we should define them though. Given that, we muddle on with a relatively broad scope of what can be considered a country, including sovereign states and pretty much anything someone can make an impassioned case for being considered a country of some sort, or at least can filibuster any attempt to exclude it.

But what about 'former'? I don't think there is much debate over what it means, but should it be used at all? Categorization by at-the-moment status of something (current/former/old/etc.) is generally a bad idea because it requires active maintenance to insure accuracy. That said, it is used in several topics, and if maintenance is kept up in reasonable time, that can be overcome. In the case of countries, they aren't exactly coming and going on a daily basis like airplanes in airline fleets are, so I think keeping Category:Former countries is probably okay.

Thus concluding:

1. What should Category:Former countries contain? Any topic that belongs in Category:Countries yet does not currently exist as a country.
2. Should it be renamed Category:Former sovereign states? No. Per the Universality Principle, a 'Category:Former X' under 'Category:X' should use the same term for 'X' at both levels.
3. Can we create Category:Former sovereign states? Absolutely, under Category:Sovereign states so long as it exists. Any topic which belongs in Category:Sovereign states but is not currently a sovereign state would be a candidate for Category:Former sovereign states. This same answer applies to Category:Former colonies under Category:Colonies, etc.
4. Should contents be moved from Category:Countries to Category:Former countries? Currently, that is how it is done, but this should be changed. Requiring a user to know the status of a country before they can access that country's category is not a good system. Instead, it would be better for Category:Former countries and status categories to be indices and for countries to be listed there in addition to within their normal country location. This way a user is not required to know the status or look in multiple places when that is not desired, or they can look in 'former countries' when they actually do want to refine their view.

Josh (talk) 05:09, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Standing animals

We already have a consensus to follow "people activity" and "people posture" for activity and posture people categories respectively at Commons:Categories for discussion/2021/11/Category:People by posture. But there was no discussion regarding animal categories and subcategories. So I want to see if there's a consensus to follow this pattern in animal categories. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 15:00, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Terms like "standing" are inherently ambiguous when referring to a quadrupedal animal - it can be interpreted either as standing flat on four legs, or standing up on the hind legs. (Other postures like "sitting" or "lying down" are similarly ambiguous.) I don't know what the right solution is here, but I don't think copying the category structure from humans is it. Since it's so overwhelmingly common for quadrupeds to be photographed standing on four legs, I almost wonder if it might make sense to omit this category altogether and only categorize animals in other postures. Omphalographer (talk) 17:39, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Terms like "standing" are inherently ambiguous when referring to a quadrupedal animal - it can be interpreted either as standing flat on four legs, or standing up on the hind legs.

@Omphalographer: I think "standing" refers to both for quadrupeds. We can create Category:Animals standing on four legs and Category:Animals standing on hind legs to cover two types of standing for quadrupeds. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 08:26, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: Not forgetting animals standing on front legs, although I'm not sure the dog depicted in the files in Category:Four-legged animals standing on front legs is really standing -- it's more like it's being held up. -- Auntof6 (talk) 14:18, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Four-legged animals standing on rear legs already exists. --Pitke (talk) 10:03, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Hahn Hi-Boy

instead of creating a cat with 1 file and making it pollute e.g. cat "Agricultural machinery", cats like that should be deleted and the file moved. found via Commons:Report_UncategorizedCategories_with_only_infobox_categories Prototyperspective (talk) 23:43, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: Thanks for this request. However, I do not know, how to link such a file via Wikidata to the article(s) with the same name (in various language Wikipedias) unless we create a category on Wikimedia Commons. I would even go so far, to say that a bot should create automatically categories on Wikimedia Commons of people, whose photographs are displayed by Wikidata. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 18:33, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:People with scarves

What should be the preferred word to use instead of X in "people X scarves"? Some categories are using "with" (e.g. Category:People with scarves, Category:Male humans with scarves, Category:Female humans with scarves), while many others are using "wearing" (e.g. Category:Men wearing scarves, Category:Women wearing scarves). I prefer "wearing", as scarves are something to wear, and many clothing categories are using this word. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 07:15, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Current ATR aircraft of Air North

We usually don't create categories with "current". It's either an aircraft or a destroyed/disassembled/retired aircraft. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 09:01, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes we do. There are over 800 such categories for airlines and has been for the last 7-8 years or more. Ardfern (talk) 11:13, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm with SBB on this. The assumption is that everything that is not current is in a "former" category while everything in the category is current. Manual re-categorisation is how this is achieved. Laurel Lodged (talk) 12:42, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Before we had current and former all aircraft of a type and airline were listed as one long list (eg 147 Airbus A320 of EasyJet or 499 Boeing 737-800 of Ryanair), making it impossible to see what aircraft were current or no longer in use with the airline, which wasn't much use to anyone. Ardfern (talk) 21:34, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sbb1413, @Laurel Lodged You are completely correct, but there are a dedicated few users who want to use these particular categories as their personal list-making tool. If they are legitimately keeping them up-to-date, then in the end it is not terribly harmful, and they seem pretty committed to this activity, so I'm fine with keeping those that are being accurately maintained. On the other hand, if you find some that are not being maintained, we should be free to remove this kind of thing as in that case it becomes actually harmful to keep in place (being misleading at best). Also, we should still maintain all of the contents of the 'current/former' lists in the normal location (not diffused by currency), as requiring a user to know whether or not an aircraft is current or not in order to find it is asinine. Josh (talk) 04:39, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Talud

Can this category be renamed to Category:Embankments in the Netherlands? It looks like Category:Embankments is about the same subject, but I am not at all an expert on this subject. And I think the parents are not correct. JopkeB (talk) 09:32, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

It has been changed to Category:Embankments in the Netherlands! Antoine.01_overleg(Antoine) 13:36, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

That might be a bit too early. There was a suggestion on Wikidata to ask these kind of question on ChatGPT, and the result was:

• "Talud" in Dutch refers to a slope or incline of the land, often found along roads, rivers, or dikes. It can describe any sloping surface, such as a natural hillside or a man-made structure like a dam.
• "Embankment" in English typically refers to a raised structure made of earth or other materials, built to hold back water or support a road, railway, or canal. An embankment often includes a slope but emphasizes the purpose of creating a barrier or supporting structure.

Key Differences:

• Talud focuses on the incline or slope itself, whether natural or artificial.
• Embankment usually refers to a man-made structure designed for a specific purpose (e.g., to prevent flooding or provide support), and it often includes a slope.

So my conclusion is that both categories should stay. Perhaps you can undo you actions (including the deletion request)? Then we might perhaps first discuss the outcome of ChatGPT. JopkeB (talk) 15:22, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

It's been reversed what you asked for! Antoine.01_overleg(Antoine) 16:14, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Antoine.01! I now suggest:

• Keep both.
• Add descriptions to both of them.
• Rename Category:Talud to Category:Taluds because category names should be in plural, at least in this case. Make sure the parent categories and Wikidata item are OK.
• Create Category:Taluds in the Netherlands and move files about the Netherlands to this category.
• Search for more files about taluds and copy them to one of these two (or, if necessary, create more subcategories).
• Keep Category:Embankments in the Netherlands as well, and search for more files that fit in.

What do you think? JopkeB (talk) 05:38, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

83 / 5.000

Hi JopkeB, I will see what is possible or if there are more categories on this topic!?! Antoine.01_overleg(Antoine) 15:50, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean?

It is a good practice on Commons to wait until this discussion has been closed before we make any changes. Would you please be patient? There might be other people with other ideas. JopkeB (talk) 03:20, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I thought you were giving directions of what you expected me to do and I did that!? But if there are those who want it differently, I think that's fine! Antoine.01_overleg(Antoine) 14:56, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I am sorry, no, the only direction was to revert the edits, given on October 10. The rest are suggestions to be discussed, with you and others who want to join this discussion. So, please give your opinion about my suggestions. JopkeB (talk) 03:57, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Populated places on Lake Erie in New York (state)

categories like this should not be in categories about lakes like Category:Lake Erie in New York (state) – instead they should have share some parent cat further up about the region and maybe link to each other via cat see alsos Prototyperspective (talk) 12:00, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1940 in India

Please fix the self-categorization introduced here. Found via Commons:Database reports/Self-categorized categories. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:27, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I removed that. Pakistan didn't exist yet in 1940, so this seems purely disruptive. However, I would rename all pre-independence categories as "British India" or "Pre-independence India". Yann (talk) 15:14, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective and Yann: See also: Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/01/Category:United States in the 16th century. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 08:04, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Human geography

This needs cleanup including cat removals/moves and more specific cats: cats as broad and unacademic like Category:Fields shouldn't be subcats of Category:Academic disciplines by topic. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:11, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

I strongly agree with a complete reorganization of the categories.--Ciaurlec (talk) 13:42, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: I'm interested with complete reorganization of categories like this. But it would be better if you can suggest some cleanups for which this CFD is warranted. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 17:53, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

I named one concrete example (removal of cat "Fields") and it has already been fixed. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:59, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Instrumental music

Please clarify whether it's merely (fully defined by) "music without spoken or sung language" or whether there are more conditions like it extensively featuring musical instruments instead of only/mostly noninstrument electronic music. I think the latter is the case but the categeorization currently does not match that and Category:Instrumental music videos is in cat Category:Music videos by language. It needs categorization changes (e.g. via new subcategories). Prototyperspective (talk) 11:31, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:M. Ward taken with Canon EOS 100D

Feels overly specific. If we had to create intersection categories between people and cameras, we'd explode the number of categories. Cryptic-waveform (talk) 16:15, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

agree. Same for other subcategories of Category:Taken with Canon EOS 100D.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 11:29, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

@Wikisympathisant: Please let us know how you feel about this suggestion to remove these categories. Cryptic-waveform (talk) 12:44, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

For me this cat is ok, because if you remove it, these picts with one topic may "walk around" between other topics. KR Wikisympathisant (talk) 12:49, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your response! Could you clarify what you mean by "walk around between other topics"? Cryptic-waveform (talk) 19:27, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

If you remove all the categories, all picts are mixed independent of the content/ topics. I don't know about other users, but in my opinion the topic-categories as "food" and so on are helpful. Because than there is a system, even if you don't use search tools. KR Wikisympathisant (talk) 13:19, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

The topic isn't "Canon EOS 100D". If if a topical distinction within Category:Mark Ward (politician) should be made it shouldn't be by "Canon EOS 100D". Also the inconsistency in naming could be fixed and aligned with the main category.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 21:25, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

why not a catgory People or humans taken with 100D, Mark Ward could be a subcategory, but I guess you don't want a new subcategory, do you? Fixing inconstencies in naming would help reducing the problem, in a People-cat, too ... Wikisympathisant (talk) 13:20, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

The only suitable subcategories at Category:Taken with Canon EOS 100D I can think of would be some by the lens used (w:Canon EOS 100D notes "Lens Interchangeable"). See Category:Taken with Canon EOS 850D e.g.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 08:32, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:War memorials abroad

Country cat names like "war memorials of X located outside X" are too long, when we can shorten this name to "X-ian war memorials abroad" without causing ambiguity, like Category:Indian culture abroad. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 09:19, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

We can also rename them to simply "war memorials of X", with "war memorials in X" and "war memorials of X in Y" (where Y is another country) as subcats. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 09:25, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Red Lion pubs in Manchester

There seems to only be 1 pub in the metropolitan district of Manchester and I have created a category on it Category:Red Lion, Manchester but if there are others it could be moved to Category:Red Lion, Withington. While we normally sub divide by city I'm not sure its a good idea when it comes down to buildings by name unless there are many otherwise by county namely Category:Red Lion pubs in Greater Manchester is sufficent. This should be deleted or redirected to the only one. Crouch, Swale (talk) 12:33, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

• Delete The members have nothing in common. They just share part of the same name - "Red Lion". Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:31, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:1793 works in the United Kingdom

There was no United Kingdom in 1793. It was established in 1801 Rathfelder (talk) 15:19, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

• Move to Category:1793 works in Great Britain would seem the best solution, together with all the other 1790s categories. Sionk (talk) 16:30, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

  Exactly, and all the other UK categories before 1801. Rathfelder (talk) 19:06, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Works in the United Kingdom by year

The United Kingdom did not exist until 1801. Rathfelder (talk) 13:10, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

@Rathfelder: See Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/01/Category:United States in the 16th century. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 05:49, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Train stations in Switzerland photographed in 2021

There is a question if the redirect should be removed or not.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 15:10, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Imho, this category, which exists in several countries, is interesting as it allows a search on buildings. 2021 in rail transport in Switzerland will lead you to subcategories about trains when Train stations in Switzerland photographed in 2021 is more about train stations as buildings as it's a daughter category of Buildings in Switzerland photographed in 2021 which has a lot of daughter categories about different types of buildings (churches, museums, houses, mosques etc.). Birdie (talk) 15:23, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

 Strong support --Lukas Beck (talk) 15:28, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:2 men with other organisms

I wonder why this would be useful. I don't think even just 2 humans with other organisms would be a variable that is reasonable to categorize by. Humans with other organisms would be a reasonable cat but I doubt this one is. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:12, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

 Keep just part of an overall structure and not empty, so no harm here. Josh (talk) 04:31, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

"just part of an overall structure" is not an argument. The overall structure is a problem too. This level of differentiation certainly is. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:54, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Joshbaumgartner Would these organisms include... microbes? Or which kind of organisms, specifically?

Support  Delete nonsense category. Darwin ^Ahoy! 15:19, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Commons:Report UncategorizedCategories with redcats shows also Category:2 women with other subjects, Category:4 clothed children with 2 clothed men (CfD subject too), Category:4 men with other adults, Category:4 women with other people and Category:5 women with other people. Wikiwerner (talk) 09:50, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

•  Delete All including the ones mentioned by Wikiwerner. With this category specifically, there's Category:Men with animals. I'm not sure what other organisms men when be with. So this should either be merged to a category for two men with animals or deleted. The usefulness of categories based on how many objects are with how many other types of objects in images questionable anyway though. So I think it and similar cats should just be deleted.

BTW, the whole thing is also just tautological recursive nonsense. With a category like Category:5 women with other people you could have it where the "other people" are women. Creating a situation where you'd either end up with a category for "6 women with other women", "7 women with 2 women" Etc. Etc. Or just a category for "X women." Even if the other people were men, then what? Category:5 women with 2 other women and 1 man, Category:7 women, 2 men, and other organisms, and Category:4 women with other people and other organisms? --Adamant1 (talk) 15:45, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

 Delete I would not mind a much broader set of deletions, but the example here is particularly absurd. (Two men and a daffodil. Two men who just caught a fish. Two men in a city where there is a tree in the picture. Etc. Not useful.) - Jmabel ! talk 19:12, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

 Delete as well as any similar categories. Not useful. See similar categories like Category:Adult humans in groups of 5 -> Category:Adult humans in 5 people -> Category:Clothed adult humans in 5 people -> Category:Clothed adult humans in 5 clothed people -> Category:Clothed men in 5 clothed people -> Category:2 clothed men in 5 clothed people -> Category:2 clothed men in 5 clothed adult humans -> Category:2 clothed men with 3 clothed women. Nosferattus (talk) 15:26, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

 Comment - A big part of the problem here is that these are all effectively intersection categories - "2 men" + "other organisms"; "4 clothed children" + "2 clothed men", etc. We've never allowed those, and I don't see any reason why these categories should be an exception. Omphalographer (talk) 18:22, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

 Keep – @Joshbaumgartner, DarwIn, Adamant1, Jmabel, Nosferattus, and Omphalographer: I think I am one of the two users to !vote keep. Josh has already pointed out that it is a pat of an overall structure, and I agree with it. Plus, we can put Category:Men with animals, Category:Men with plants, and Category:Men with fungi (e.g. Matsutakeredpinemushroomhunting.jpg) under Category:Men with other organisms (or simply Category:Men with organisms where "others" is implied). I think the problem is with the potentially redundant term "others", which can be discarded if the terms at both sides of "with" are different (e.g. men with animals). Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 04:06, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

The "other" is needed as men are both organisms and animals. Would you also support the creation of categories such as those suggested by Adamant1? Why or why not? Nosferattus (talk) 04:21, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@Sbb1413 It seems this discussion has broadened into a discussion over the whole framework of categories for various mixed groups of people. In that case, my support is strongly for keep, as this structure may seem esoteric and superfluous to many users, but does indeed serve a purpose in objectively categorizing the actual depiction within media. Additionally, I've seen no harm pointed out other than certain users' lack of use for them.

However, when it comes to the originally nominated category and other '... with other XYZ' categories, for these specifically, they represent an inner group in an outer group. In the originally nominated category, '2 men' is the inner group, and 'organisms' is the outer group. I am in agreement that 'other organisms' is poor wording and in fact had transitioned to using a different format already, though there are several 'other xyz' categories remain worded that way. Instead of deletion, it should be renamed as Category:2 men in groups of organisms to better reflect the inner/outer group relationship and avoid the use of 'other' which is not generally a good word to use.

As for the idea that 'intersection' categories are bad, nearly every category on Commons is an intersection of two or more topics. Yes, '2 men in groups of organisms' is an intersection of an inner group of 2 men and an outer group of organisms. But '2 men' is also an intersection of the quantity 2 and men. 'Men' is an intersection of 'male' and 'adult human'... and so on. So no, I don't think labelling a category as an 'intersection' makes it automatically bad. Josh (talk) 04:29, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

 Agree – @Joshbaumgartner and Nosferattus: Category:2 men in groups of organisms is a better alternative to Category:2 men with other organisms regarding the inner/outer group relationship, where "2 men" is an inner group, while "organisms" is an outer group. Now, let's look at whether the categories suggested by Adamant1 are plausible or not:

• Category:5 women with 2 other women and 1 man – somewhat plausible, as long as the groups of 2 women and 5 women are separate enough, and it can be better rephrased to Category:1 man, 2 women, 5 women. However, it is often better to categorize such images to Category:1 man with 7 women, as the separation between the groups of 2 women and 5 women can often be difficult.
• Category:7 women, 2 men, and other organisms – plausible, but can be rephrased to Category:2 men and 7 women in groups of organisms.
• Category:4 women with other people and other organisms – implausible and redundant to Category:4 women with other organisms, as "other people" is implied in "other organisms".

Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 04:47, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@Sbb1413 and Joshbaumgartner: I think the disconnect here is that many people would not consider it worth the work of maintaining an infinitely complex category system for the vanishingly small utility of such "long tail" categories. Also, and perhaps more importantly, these categories actually make it harder to find images in most cases. For example, if I'm looking for "Adult humans in groups of 5", I have to click through 7 subcategories before I actually see any images. And isn't it much more likely that someone will be looking for "Adult humans in groups of 5" than "2 clothed men with 3 clothed women"? Categorization is not an end unto itself. It should only be done insofar as it makes finding images actually easier and that should be optimized for what people are most likely to be searching for. This is also why most people hate "by year" categories. If you're trying to find a nice photo of a child riding a bike, would you rather browse through 1 category with 500 images or 200 subcategories each containing 2 or 3 images? The "harm" that these categories create is: more maintenance work and making it harder to find images. Nosferattus (talk) 05:30, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Category:4 clothed children with 2 clothed men

I wonder why this would be useful. I don't think even just a 4 clothed children with other people would be variables that are reasonable to categorize by. Children with men would maybe be a reasonable cat but I doubt this one is. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:13, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

 Delete This splitting of categories is reaching the point of absurdity. - Jmabel ! talk 06:00, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

 Keep no harm, this is just one of a standard structure, let it be. Josh (talk) 04:30, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

"just part of an overall structure" is not an argument. The overall structure is a problem too. This level of differentiation certainly is. Not useful. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:54, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

 Delete absurd non-useful category and subcats. Nosferattus (talk) 15:27, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Category:Water activities

Probably best merged with Category:Activities relating to water Prototyperspective (talk) 23:19, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Ligature "THE"

What is this? Uncategorized. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:20, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

THEre's an example in the single image in the category. I don't know enough about historical typography to say whether this is something that's common enough to be worth categorizing or if it's a one-off bit of weirdness. Omphalographer (talk) 23:37, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Ligatures are a well known phenomenon and are relatively common. A quick search on the web will reveal this. RSLlGriffith (talk) 09:00, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

This 'THE' ligature is unusual in that three letters are involved rather than the more usual two. RSLlGriffith (talk) 10:26, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

All this should go in the Discussion tab This place is reserved for other valid reasons. --Allforrous (talk) 13:42, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

See Category talk:Ligature "THE" --Allforrous (talk) 13:48, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from (wanted categories)

See Special:Categories/Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from.

The other day, we noticed that countless Sanborn categories lacked existing parent categories. It appears that some 7000 have a total 3500 red categories. This may appear as a lot, but given the number of map files, this is reasonable. Sanborn produced detailed maps for many US towns for almost a century and Commons has quite a good coverage of them.

I suggest to create the missing categories similar to this one
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 08:20, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Would probably be a good thing to do. However, I don't know whether the redcats all have accurate titles and a script should probably be used to create these cats. Prototyperspective (talk) 08:34, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

• I think it's better to make this into a page as a project for Commons. There are actually a lot that already exist but contain different naming conventions. I'm trying to systematically hunt them down but it may be better to have a bot tackle moving things into categories while we figure out what is missing. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:32, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Category:1799 works in the United Kingdom

Should be 1799 works in Great Britain. Rathfelder (talk) 09:24, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Rathfelder: Please see Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/01/Category:United States in the 16th century. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 13:10, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

That doesnt seem to exist. Rathfelder (talk) 13:12, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

My fault, you've already commented on it. Thanks for comment. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 13:20, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Badminton photos with watermarks

I don't see any strong reason to keep badminton images with watermarks A1Cafel (talk) 16:31, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Bust of Woodrow Wilson in Poznań

There are three different categories for this single sculpture. I propose that they be merged. Presidentman (talk · contribs) 22:14, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

• Comment The other two categories are Category:Thomas Woodrow Wilson by Gutzon Borglum and Category:Woodrow Wilson statue in Poznań. - Presidentman (talk · contribs) 22:17, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I support the merging of the categories. If there are more than one statue of Woodrow Wilson in Poznań, the name of the sculptor should be in the name of the category.Bärbel Miemietz (talk) 22:43, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I support having the sculptor's name in the category name. Presidentman (talk · contribs) 13:58, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Facilities

What is the difference between Category:Facilities and Category:Infrastructure? Both seems synonyms to me. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 14:14, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Water pipes for ex. are not facilities. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:34, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: But how? I see water pipes as facilities as they are built to serve water to different buildings, thus consistent with the definition of "facility". Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 05:09, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

You have a strange understanding of 'facility' then. As ENWP says, A facility is a place for doing something, or a place that facilitates an activity. Types of facility include:[…] highlighted the part that makes it more clear. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:40, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: Thanks, but the dictionary I've cited talks about "something designed, built, installed, etc.", which may or may not be a place. The Wikipedia article looks more like an unsourced w:WP:DICDEF to me, which is not useful when defining this term. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 17:11, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

One of the linked articles, telecommunications facility defines the term "facility" as follows:

1. A fixed, mobile, or transportable structure, including (a) all installed electrical and electronic wiring, cabling, and equipment and (b) all supporting structures, such as utility, ground network, and electrical supporting structures.
2. A network-provided service to users or the network operating administration.
3. A transmission pathway and associated equipment.
4. In a protocol applicable to a data unit, such as a block or frame, an additional item of information or a constraint encoded within the protocol to provide the required control.
5. A real property entity consisting of one or more of the following: a building, a structure, a utility system, pavement, and underlying land.

Many of the items listed are not really "places". Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 17:16, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

I never understood this term in any other way and if it didn't have its current meaning then there would be a major gap in words, no other word can substitute it. I'm quite confused by that anybody could think "facility" to refer to any kind of infrastructure and it's exhausting to argue about things like this. Authors of medical facility and wiktionary item @Op47, Slowking Man, Atitarev, Widsith, and Ncik: has term "facility" the same meaning as "infrastructure"? Prototyperspective (talk) 21:13, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

The supporting structures there refer only to the local structures at the place location, i.e. in and underneath or around the building. Cambridge Dictionary defines facility as a place, especially including buildings, where a particular activity happens – the things not considered here underlined. Prototyperspective (talk) 08:10, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

To the extent that I understand the argument… "facility" does not refer exclusively to places. The fundamental meaning is of (to use the OED definition) "a service or feature of a specific kind, or a building or establishment that provides such a service". That said, while there is some overlap with the word "infrastructure", I definitely wouldn't consider them synonymous. 2A02:1210:26FF:8200:5873:155F:69F:456A 08:14, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

That definition does not spell it out but a building or establishment are at concrete places (places one can go to which can have geocoordinates, not areas, regions or large networks) and I think that is a defining characteristic for the physical meaning of the word even if the key semantics is about the service-provision. In the case of telecommunications facility, the facility when it comes to networks is about network-provided service, not the physical infrastructure. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:31, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Purge and disambiguate. Much like Category:Wallah (below), the word "facilities" has very little meaning on its own; it's generally used as a filler word to mean "place" or "capability" (or occasionally, through the power of euphemism, "toilet"). This isn't a good basis for categorization; the topics of subcategories like Category:Beach facilities or Category:Immigration facilities or Category:Transloading facilities have almost nothing in common with each other beyond a coincidence of how they're worded. Omphalographer (talk) 19:12, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

This makes sense and there's a nonsmall number of categories that have the same problem. However, I think the current subcategories all relate to the meaning of facility as a place. A good thing to do may be moving it to e.g. Category:Facility (place) or Category:Facility (building). Is there any subcat that wouldn't fit into that cat? It should be removed even before merging but I couldn't find one. The ones you named are all about the same thing, I'm really very surprised that you also seem to have some strange understanding of that word – all of those three match the described meaning. Basically means facility means building except that it's a bit broader and also includes other physical local structures such as, probably, a telephone booth (telecommunication facility) or waterpark (recreation facility). Prototyperspective (talk) 21:45, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Moving it instead to another word that also is for buildings and other local physical structures may be better, what about:

• Physical structure sites (a network of cables is a physical structure but the scope here is a place where one can go to)
• Constructed sites
• in German the word I think would be Einrichtung but the best translation for it still is facility

Prototyperspective (talk) 10:19, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

@Omphalographer: It would be great if you explicitly comment on the CFD on Category:Wallah, since closing editors will look at category discussions separately without much connections. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 06:14, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Ping response: "facility" in English is a very generic "fuzzy category" word. In the broadest sense it just means "place, method, means, for/of doing a thing". (Something for facilitating a task goal etc, you might say) The etymology may help illustrate: via French, from Latin facio, "to do, to make, to produce, to compose" etc., ultimately from Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to do, put, place". Not sure it makes a good category, being so generic. Compare a Category:Objects, Category:Places, Category:Entities. Slowking Man (talk) 23:37, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree that "facilities" is quite vague so I understand the concern that it's a fuzzy category. But there is obvious value to some of the sub-categories. I think it's worth, for instance, separating Category:Facilities for children from Category:Child-related places (which contains Category:Graves of children and Category:Monuments and memorials to children) even if these could be better organized. If someone can come up with a better word to replace facilities, I'm open to moving it. We also have Category:Venues and Category:Activity places which are similarly fuzzy, so they might all be merged. I do think it's different then Category:Infrastructure which would include plumping and power lines. So, tentative keep unless there's a better suggestion.-- Themightyquill (talk) 09:21, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Category:Wallah

"Wallah" is an Indo-Aryan suffix used to create agent nouns. However, this category categorizes random images showing people whose occupation titles end with "wallah". However, we already have widely-understood English terms for many Indian-English occupation titles ending with "wallah". For example, Category:Rickshaw drivers for "rickshawallah", Category:Tea sellers for "chaiwallah", and so on. So this category is strictly useless. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 17:27, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Ivory Coast

First of all, I apologize for changing the name of a few categories, I didn't realize there were hundreds of them.

Since April 1986, the government declared that Côte d'Ivoire would be its formal name and has since officially refused to recognize any translations from French to other languages in its international dealings. So we have to change the name for all categories that include the name "Ivory Coast".

Like we don't call Birmania anymore, or unlike Costa Rica which has never been translated into "Rich Coast", using the name Costa Rica in its original language promotes consistency in country names, avoiding translations that may lead to confusion. Côte d'Ivoire has an incredible number of different names. Ivory Coast (English), Costa de Marfil (Spanish), Elfenbeinküste (German), Boli Kosta (Basque), Obala Slonovače (Croatian), Ranná Bóga (Irish), Kotu di Bivora (Galician), Bregu i Elefantit (Albanian) and so on.

Many countries (like Canada in English) and international organizations now use "Côte d'Ivoire" in their official communications, helping to establish a standard. -- Zorion ^eko 10:00, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

 Support per your argument. I'm not too concerned with how much work it would be to rename these categories and move files, we have tools that help speed up that process. But it also means changing the country templates used in these categories that still use "Ivory Coast" (and don't recognize Côte d'Ivoire) where these parameters are buried deep in various subtemplates most people can't easily get to or may not even have edit rights to.

Maybe COM:VP or COM:VPP would be a better place to have this discussion after all? As this doesn't just involve changing category names. ReneeWrites (talk) 11:41, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

@ReneeWrites we had a similar discussion, which, ironically, began with a notable cemetery and memorial site in our country that rarely uses "Heroes' Cemetery"! See Commons:Village pump/Archive/2024/08#Is renaming categories with an English name to local language names a good idea?. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 02:46, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@JWilz12345 This really has nothing to do with it, none at all. We are talking about a country that is asking for its name to no longer be translated, be standardized and that there is already a consensus at the diplomatic level. We are not asking to change Category:Guinea to Category:Guinée. for example Australia, Canada or UK no longer use Ivory Coast in their communications.  Zorion ^eko 03:53, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Zorion the logic is the same. As per the latest enwiki discussion, the move was reverted as "no consensus", which implies English-language sources are split over Côte d'Ivoire vs. Ivory Coast, indicating Ivory Coast is still a common name in majority of English-language sources. While Commons does not necessarily need to follow enwiki guidelines in names of places, there are conflicting claims on how Commons needs to handle such cases. In the discussion I cited here, Broichmore argues the default language of Commons is English, so English should be the preferred language. This standpoint appears to conflict with Bastique's argument below, in which Commons is an international project. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 04:07, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: I think the naming conventions for certain topics depends on one or two things:

• Whether the English name is widely recognised for that topic, even if different from other languages. For example, Category:Eiffel Tower for Tour Eiffel.
• Whether most languages follow a common name for that topic, even if different from English. For example, Category:Ananas (fruit) for pineapple.

Based on these two factors, I have supported renaming Category:Cristo Redentor (Rio de Janeiro) to the English name, while renaming Category:Ivory Coast to the French name. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 14:09, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

 Weak support — I used to know the country as "Côte d'Ivoire" in English and "কোতদিভোয়ার" in Bengali till 2020, when I was amazed to find that Wikipedia and Commons use "Ivory Coast" in English rather than "Côte d'Ivoire". The Bengali name is the transliteration of the French name, by the way. I don't know much about the country, other than being a West African nation once colonized by the French. So I can't tell whether "Ivory Coast" is more common than "Côte d'Ivoire" in English media. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 12:22, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

 Weak oppose Half the files on here having to do with the country use "Ivory Coast." So neither seems to be more common, at least not to any meaningful degree. At least sticking to Ivory Coast would be simplier and go along with how other have it. That said, it probably doesn't matter in the long run either way. 99% of the stuff like is just change, or the lack of it, for its own sake. Not because it makes any actual difference to anything. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:40, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

 Support per Zorian and ReneeWrites, this is the internationally recognized name, even though "Ivory Coast" may still be more common in English, we are not a strictly English project and even other English speaking countries recognize it as "Côte d'Ivoire". Bastique ^{☎ let's talk!} 17:54, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Sea and river deities

Category combining the topics "sea deities" and "river deities", something discouraged according to the Commons category policies. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 14:19, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Upmerge to Category:Water deities. - Jmabel ! talk 14:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Upmerge per Jmabel. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:39, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Category:Channelised rivers and streams

What are the differences between Category:Channelised rivers and streams and Category:Channelized rivers, other than the spelling difference of "channeli(s/z)ed" and the inclusion of "and streams"? Streams are usually included with rivers in river categories. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 14:24, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

I have no objection to merging the two categories. Thanks. Moreau1 (talk) 02:25, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

 Support should be merged. I have no preference for spelling, so I'd suggest to merge Channelized rivers into Channelised rivers and streams, because, that's broader and more widely used at this moment. But I'm open to arguments for the american spelling as well. MB-one (talk) 13:58, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Belgium by century

Belgium didnt exist until 1830. Rathfelder (talk) 16:10, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

 Keep Nevertheless this is a valid and systematically useful, proper metacat. --Kleeblatt187 (talk) 18:29, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Its misleading. In the 16th & 17th century it was the Habsburg Netherlands in the 18th century the Southern Netherlands. Rathfelder (talk) 15:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Not at all:

• The only category which is nominated here for discussion is the metacat Category:Belgium by century, obviously nothing else. And there should not be any doubt about keeping it.
• If you believe that there should be additional categories for certain centuries in Habsburg Netherlands, than feel free to create it as an additional category tree for those users who need it and who do know the historical borders and the historical entities' names.

But despite that please do not create a mess by trying to destroy well-established category trees and changing the category system into a history book. That's what we have wikipedia articles for, e.g. History of Belgium. Regular commons users do need a clear and systematic structure both for categorizing as well as for finding media. And also, I'm quite sure about this, regular users do know that today's countries did not always exist in the past. Present-day and widely known administrative borders, though, are a clear, distinct and certainly not misleading means of reliable categorisation and even for navigation between categories, even for past periods. Don't break this up! Regards, --Kleeblatt187 (talk) 20:06, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Design drawings in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

what is a design drawing and what is meant here. The category contains a broad sujet variety. I do not see, what they have in common Oursana (talk) 01:40, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree that there is an issue here. I see portrait, landscape, allegorical, mythological, and religious drawings, plus more. Some of them seem like they could be categorized as design drawings (for example, this one, this one, and this one). -- Auntof6 (talk) 06:33, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

They are all DRAWINGs in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and almost all explicitely declared to be : "Objecttype: tekening ontwerp". (Objecttype Drawing, design (for ....). That is because they are made as designs /concepts /technical steps for printed matter, for other paintings or book illustrations. Some of them even have a grid that makes it obvious that they where made to be used in a reproduction process. In this sense they are preliminary works (not standalone studies and not autonomous drawings). It is by nature thematically a mixed class, because it is not a category by depicted subject. It can and may hold a lot of subcategories. Like designs for book covers, for book titles, for book illustrations, for posters, for architecture, furniture, jewelry ... etc. This cat holds large subcategories of book designs and sketches for book illustrations. What would be the suggested alternative name for a category to hold those types of drawings? There might be a few cases of doubt or mistake but I don't see a valid reason to discuss or to delete this group as a whole. I don't understand the action of nominating this cat. I repeat it is not a cat by subject themes but by objectype. This answers both questions ... both looking for homogenous depicted subject matter in the wrong place. These drawings are ususally, or should ideally be, sorted by subject matter into other existing cats as well. Peli (talk) 09:26, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you Peli. What about "Drawings for printing(s)", in German we have "Druckvorlage".

Subcat Architectural designs in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam doesn't fit to this meaning. Here I understand design drawings but they are not meant for printingOursana (talk) 11:59, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

This is meant as a cat by object type by museum. It is intentionally broad because first level down from drawings in RMA to contain more specific subcats like technical drawings / drafts / illustrations for book designs, furniture designs, poster designs, garden designs, etc. It is a work in progress. It does not yet have a cat voor "Voorstudie", which are understood as peliminary drawings for paintings, murals and stained glass etc. The funny thing is that there are a lot of possible translations voor Ontwerp Ontwerptekening Ontwerpschets. But the Städel has not one "Druckvorlage", yet it has over hundred times Zeichnungen als "Entwurf". So does the MET, it has almost 400 hits in "design+drawing". Not many of them qualify as Drückentwurf. I propose to keep the category name unchanged but write a few lines of explanation as a caption, also for the sebcats. I was able to add 1500 new files and removed 200 that where there by mistake. Peli (talk) 16:54, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes thank you, I am fine, when you make some explantiona. Perhaps Architectural designs in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam shouldn't stay here, because the criterion preparation for print does not apply here.Oursana (talk) 21:14, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Jupiter in art

Rename Category:Jupiter in art to Category:Jupiter (planet) in art , as the name "Jupiter" may refer either to the planet or to the Roman god. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 04:00, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

• I agree that the category for the planet should have the name suggested. This category could then be a dab cat, including Category:Jupiter (planet) in art and Category:Iupiter in art. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:03, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I also agree: Jupiter (planet) in art. --A. Wagner (talk) 07:16, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Auntof6 and A. Wagner: I have also tagged Category:Mercury in art, Category:Saturn in art and Category:Uranus in art, as they are similarly ambiguous. In particular, Category:Mercury in art can also refer to the element Hg, other than the planet or the Roman god. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 13:55, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: Does Commons have any media for the element in art? -- Auntof6 (talk) 17:34, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

We do! File:Ripley alchemical scroll - Philosophical mercury in the tree of life draws out a child - Leonard Smethley, Princeton University Library, 1624.jpg, for instance. It's "philosophical mercury", though, which has little relation to the actual element... perhaps that's even a fourth category. Omphalographer (talk) 05:40, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

•  Support per parent category especially given as noted the god can have art. Crouch, Swale (talk) 14:36, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Template WikiProject Svenska Grillplatser

This category consists of templates that are all intended for one category page each, save the first one. Why create templates? Why not just paste the content directly on the category pages? As for the content in question, I don't see how it is relevant on Commons. I have tried to talk to Salgo60 about it on his talk page, but it appears I failed to make myself understood, unless I was simply ignored. Sinigh (talk) 04:31, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

It can be used on more places depends on how the usage will be the basic design idea is to follow the DRY pattern don't repeat yourself (Q1242407) and make it easier to maintain....

• status today is that I add 99% av all Swedish BBQ pictures so maybe there is better ways to get this going ;-)

Salgo60 (talk) 06:27, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

It's generally a good idea to add category descriptions. Maybe Template:WikiProject Svenska Grillplatser could be made to work for all of them? Would also simplify improving them. OTH Template:WikiProject Svenska Grillplatser Järfälla is used on multiple categories.

As far as Category:Template WikiProject Svenska Grillplatser is directly concerned, I think the standard format would be Category:WikiProject Svenska Grillplatser templates or at least the plural form.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 10:16, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

1) Yes the naming is a mess and I feel we have this technical debt not supporting more languages is the major problem...

2) My first thought was that we as a community could make it easier to find more objects and then have category links on the page ....

2-1) my latest test is using Mapillary and tried getting that community to add picture segmentation for BBQ places ;-) link negative answer right now

2-2) Lesson learned is that Wikidata queries with a "short url" is a mess as you have to rewrite the query all the time it would be better to also have a template for SPARQL queries where you just add the "changing object" as a parameter or even better if you could "read" the parameter from the commons category... would be magic and easy to maintain...

3) I have also used #20 OSM Notes in Wikidata (task in swedish) to get locations confirmed by OSM editors - example SPARQL finding WD objects with a ref to OSM annotations OSM Note File (Q25824045)

Salgo60 (talk) 10:25, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

A category description is a brief introduction to or clarification of the topic, or even less than that, as Commons:Categories puts it: "A short description text that explains what should be in the category, if the title is not clear or unambiguous enough on its own." It usually isn't 15 bullet points with resources for the Wikiproject maintaining the topic of the category. Commons is a media repository. Sinigh (talk) 13:01, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

ok what is the problem adding things to the page I use the template Template:Wikidata/FamilyTree a lot see Categories below Category:SBL släktartiklar and I think its good for navigating inside commons and also find persons in the family tree that lacks pictures... All Trees are from a quality Swedish source Dictionary of Swedish National Biography (Q379406) - Salgo60 (talk) 18:30, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

As you are well aware that we both already know, there is nothing wrong with "adding things to the page" per se. The family trees are great: relevant category and/or Wikidata links in a collapsible template. The grillplats type templates only do a little bit of that, but mostly they just list a bunch of things that are largely irrelevant to people who access a media repository. Sinigh (talk) 18:52, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

For me Wikicomkmons is used by people uploading pictures and my templates is to make it more easy to find new fireplaces that needs a picture - Salgo60 (talk) 19:25, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:18th-century political cartoons of the United Kingdom

UK didnt exist until 1801. Should be cartoons of Great Britain. Rathfelder (talk) 08:59, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

If we must do this kind of hyperaccuracy, please also CfD the parent categories ("Politics of the UK in the 18th century", "International relations of the UK in the 1710s" etc), but do not forget to correctly link all categories with each other so that people are able to navigate seamlessly. --Enyavar (talk) 09:16, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

We certainly should do that, but its quite a big job. Rathfelder (talk) 20:04, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

• Support there's no such thing as hyperaccuracy. Laurel Lodged (talk) 09:26, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:International relations of the United Kingdom in the 1770s

UK did not exist in the 1770s. Rename this and all below to Category:International relations of the Kingdom of Great Britain in the xxxxs.

Laurel Lodged (talk) 09:51, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:International relations of the United Kingdom in the 1780s

UK did not exist in the 1770s Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:05, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:International relations of the United Kingdom in the 1760s

UK did not exist in the 1770s Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:06, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:International relations of the United Kingdom in the 1790s

UK did not exist in the 1770s Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:06, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Relations of the United Kingdom and the United States in the 18th century

UK did not exist in the 1770s Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:07, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Politics of the United Kingdom in the 1770s

UK did not exist in the 1770s Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:11, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Politics of the United Kingdom in the 1710s

UK did not exist in the 1770s Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:12, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Politics of the United Kingdom in the 1780s

UK did not exist in the 1770s Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:12, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Politics of the United Kingdom in the 1760s

CAtegory:Politics_of_the_United_Kingdom_in_the_1790s

UK did not exist in the 1770s Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:12, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Demonstrations and protests in the United Kingdom in the 18th century

UK did not exist in the 1770s Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:13, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

This topic has already been discussed ad nauseum in multiple other locations. It's the same as the United States/Germany/etc. in the 1660s, etc. Yes, the political entity didn't exist, but the geographical entity did, and we want to be able to navigate through historical categories. Hyperaccuracy (yes, that's a thing; consider shoreline measurement) can get prohibitively complicated in some cases. That said, if you want to go through and accurate subcategorize the files by constituent country (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or Ireland) to be more accurate, I think that would be fabulous; I just found that too time-consuming myself. Alternatively, while United Kung and Great Britain are not completely interchangeable, in many cases it's 'close enough,' so I wouldn't oppose renaming the categories. BUT -- please retain/create redirects for United Kingdom -> Great Britain! Partly for relatively seamless navigation and partly because some templates don't account for change in 1801. -- Kreuz und quer (talk) 02:16, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't see why the UK should be an exception to the rule yo eliminate anachronistic categories. Laurel Lodged (talk) 07:36, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

"... the geographical entity did [exist]" - I must respectfully disagree. The UK is a political construct, not a geographic construct; the same is true for the Kingdom of Great Britain: neither polity is co-terminous with the island of Great Britain. Laurel Lodged (talk) 07:42, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1798 in the United Kingdom

UK did not exist in the 1790s. Note: Category:1795 in the United Kingdom redirects to Category:1795 in Great Britain, so some work on this has already been done. Personally, I would prefer "Kingdom of Great Britain" to distinguish the polity from the island. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:09, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1799 in the United Kingdom

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:09, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1797 in the United Kingdom

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:10, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1797 in the United Kingdom

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:10, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1797 in the United Kingdom

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:10, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1797 in the United Kingdom

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:10, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1796 in the United Kingdom

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:10, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1794 in the United Kingdom

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:11, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1793 in the United Kingdom

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:11, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1792 in the United Kingdom

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:12, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1792 in the United Kingdom

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:12, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1792 in the United Kingdom

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:12, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:1792 in the United Kingdom

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:12, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:United Kingdom in the 1620s

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:19, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:United Kingdom in the 1620s

UK did not exist in the 17th century Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:19, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:United Kingdom in the 1620s

UK did not exist in the 1790s Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:19, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:United Kingdom in the 1620s

UK did not exist in the 17th century Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:19, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:United Kingdom in the 1630s

UK did not exist in the 17th century Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:20, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:United Kingdom in the 1640s

UK did not exist in the 17th century Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:20, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:United Kingdom in the 1650s

UK did not exist in the 17th century Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:21, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:United Kingdom in the 1660s

UK did not exist in the 17th century Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:21, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:United Kingdom in the 1660s

UK did not exist in the 17th century Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:21, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:United Kingdom in the 1660s

UK did not exist in the 17th century Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:21, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:United Kingdom in the 1660s

UK did not exist in the 17th century Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:21, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:United Kingdom in the 1670s

UK did not exist in the 17th century Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:22, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:United Kingdom in the 1680s

UK did not exist in the 17th century Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:22, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Canada in the 16th century

Canada did not exist before the 19th century, so nuke it. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 13:27, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

• Upmerge & Redirect to Category:North America in the 16th century. Laurel Lodged (talk) 08:43, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
•  Keep All these allegedly "anachronistic" categories were discussed many times, many years ago, so proposals like this are reinventing the wheel. There's even the Wiki article 16th century in Canada interconnected with this category so its purpose is quite obvious. It also links to ten other sister projects. --Orijentolog (talk) 10:49, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

  I went diwn the rabbit hole and ended up in Category:Hochelaga National Historic Site. Neither Jacques Cartier nor the native Iroquis would have recognised the place as "Canada". It's just presentism. Laurel Lodged (talk) 17:42, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

It ain't a discussion here. I'm well aware that Germany in the 13th century BC is strictly politically & historically incorrect, but it actually stands for today's borders and helps us navigate space & time. --Orijentolog (talk) 15:14, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

The "but" part is not a valid objection. The essence of the matter is that this, and other such categories, are "..strictly politically & historically incorrect.". Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:27, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

 Keep please add a notice about "Canada" in the category name refers to Canada in 2025.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 11:30, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Canada in the 15th century

Canada did not exist before the 19th century, so nuke it. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 13:28, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: Canada was not a political entity until 1967, but the name had currency for at least a century before that. And I cannot imagine what else we would better call a category for this region in that period, and cannot see any advantage in failing to keep such material in a category. Jmabel ! talk 14:57, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @Laurel Lodged and Rathfelder: , who have nominated similar categories for deletion. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 17:37, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I think each place needs its own consideration. My impression is that people talked and wrote about Canada long before 1867. Obvious question to which I dont know the answer is how distinct was what is now Canada from the rest of North America in the 15th or 16th century? Rathfelder (talk) 17:45, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

• Upmerge & Redirect to Category:North America in the 15th century. Laurel Lodged (talk) 08:45, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

 Keep, the category has some content. Just add a noticed that "Canada" in the category name refers to Canada in 2025.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 07:18, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Canada in the 10th century

Canada did not exist before the 19th century, so nuke it. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 13:33, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

• Upmerge & Redirect to Category:North America in the 10th century. Laurel Lodged (talk) 08:50, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
• Why so much hate? This type of categories exists for every country. E.g. Slovenia in the 5th century BC when it became independant in 1991 or Czechia in the 2nd century BC when it was created in 1993. Also, Lower and Upper Canada existed before the 19th century, not even talking about the use of the name Canada for a territory since 1534. --Birdie (talk) 18:53, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

  I don't hate Canada. Some of my best friends are Canadian. I do, however, have a problem with ahistorical, anachronistic categorisations that are just examples of presentism. Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:25, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

 Delete content seems to be from Central Panama.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 07:19, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Canada in the 1st millennium

Canada did not exist before the 19th century, so nuke it. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 13:33, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

• Upmerge & Redirect to Category:North America in the 1st millennium. Laurel Lodged (talk) 08:51, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

• Upmerge & Redirect Per the nominator and Laurel Lodged. The "country X in the 1st millennium" thing is just an exercise in revisionist pedantry. The same goes for most of the sub-categories. Like with Category:Canada in the 1st century There's absolutely no reason to have 5 essentially empty categories just for one image of a bust of Emperor Tiberius. Especially since it wasn't created in Canada to begin with. It's totally ridiculous to have a category structure that insinuates something made in ancient Rome has anything to do with, or was created in, Canada. Let alone Canada in the 1st century. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:29, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

•  Keep BUT for relevant archeological cultures. Any (sub)category based on imported art is redundant, as I explained here. --Orijentolog (talk) 15:01, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:India in the 1st millennium

Although India as a geographic region has existed long before human history, the main topic of this category is Category:India (a sovereign state) instead of Category:Indian subcontinent (the geographic region). There was no political entity named "India" or "Bharat(a)" until the 18th century, when Category:British India was established. It was partitioned in 1947 into two countries: Category:India and Category:Pakistan. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 13:39, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Commons ain't strictly historic, these categories follow current borders. We also have Germany in the 38th century BC and tons of similar categories. --Orijentolog (talk) 13:58, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

 Delete Per Sbb1413. There's already a category for the Chalukya Empire, which is good enough IMO. There's no reason to take things to that level when you only have a single category full of single subcats full of more single subcats Etc. Etc. though. It's just way to granular and doesn't help people find what their looking for. Compare that to Category:India in the 7th century which is totally justified IMO because there's actually media and sub-categories on here having to do with it. At this point your just creating categories to fill in red links though. Which isn't what they exist for. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:31, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

It's true that I didn't fill it up, but now it's done. It contains 12 subcategories. It's also interconnected with six Wiki projects so voting for deletion is nonsensical. --Orijentolog (talk) 17:14, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

• Rename to Category:Indian subcontinent in the 1st millennium. Laurel Lodged (talk) 08:56, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Not a practical solution because India would be an exception among many. --Orijentolog (talk) 09:59, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

I'd support that. There doesn't seem to be other "subcontinent by time period" categories though. But then leaving the category as is isn't a great solution either. So at the end of the day this might be something that needs a wider discussion. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:21, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

"India would be an exception among many": India the present sovereign state? What does "among many" mean - the other sovereign states on the subcontinent that also did not exist in the 1st millennium? Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:01, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

@Laurel Lodged: Yes, Category:India refers to the present sovereign state, which was established in 1947 after the partition of Category:British India into two countries. Any references to "India" before 1947 is either to Category:British India or to the Category:Indian subcontinent. For the sake of consistency, the categories of "India" before 1947 should use "Indian subcontinent" or "British India", depending on the chronology. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 04:58, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

@Laurel Lodged: I'm speaking of many years, many decades, many centuries, and many countries. There are thousands of such chronological categories arranged by the contemporary borders. This discussion is "reinventing wheel". --Orijentolog (talk) 10:31, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Just to give Orijentolog the benefit of the doubt even though they totally don't deserve it, I can kind of see the usefulness of having the distinction in some instances. Like no one really considers the Satavahana dynasty to be from Nepal even if they had some minor dealings there. So it seems a little weird to include Category:Satavahana in a main category for the subcontinent. I don't think doing it this way is necessarily the solution either though. It's already in a lot of other categories that better describe the situation without need to be in Category:Andhra Pradesh in the 1st century, which is a child category of this one and has the same problem as there was no Andhra Pradesh at that point. At the end of the day the only solution is probably just to get rid of both categories and come up with a more general one or just don't and not sub-categorize things like Category:Satavahana that way to begin with. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:25, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: that particular case with Satavahana and Andhra Pradesh in the 1st century is completely unnecessary and I'm for deletion, generally I strongly favor keeping former countries and centuries strictly separate. Sometimes a century can be fit under a former country, and sometimes former country under a century. So regardless of the path chosen, there will be issues with imprecision, inconsistency, or even circular categorization. --Orijentolog (talk) 11:08, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

This is not a case of "reinventing the wheel"; the goal is to destroy the wheel. All sub-categories purporting to belong to a non-existent state are ahistorical, anachronistic and instances of presentism; they need to be unraveled back to their core tribes / dynasties / states for their respective time periods. Yes, it's a big job but better than letting these errors persist and multiply. Laurel Lodged (talk) 12:59, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I strongly oppose such an idea. The categories of former states are a different categorization tree. --Orijentolog (talk) 17:33, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

+1 Kleeblatt187 (talk) 20:55, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

What former states do you mean? I'm talking about States that did not exist at that time period. Laurel Lodged (talk) 21:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Quite clear: There should be an undisrupted category tree according to today's countries/states (for „regular“ commons users concerning about sorting and easily finding media in whatsoever topic by location and period) – and, if wanted, another additional category tree referring to historical resp. geographical entities (for users specifically and primarily interested in history and historical/geographical entities, subordinately in other topics). --Kleeblatt187 (talk) 22:54, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

You have to admit there's a point where it can and does become historical whitewashing and/or revisionism. In this particular case Category:Countries by millennium only has 13 categories, out of what like 200 countries that currently exist? And most of those seems to have been created by Orijentolog. So it's clearly not a widely accepted or practiced thing on here. At least not outside of Orijentolog's personal editing performances.

You can say this is useful to "users specifically and primarily interested in history" or whatever. But it clearly isn't. Otherwise the categories would have been created years ago for most countries and by multiple users. Not mainly by one person in the last few months for a couple of countries that they happen to have a personal interest in. No one else seems to care about it or thinks it's a good way to categorize things outside of Orijentolog though. Although it's purely revisionist pedantry regardless. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:12, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm indeed not sure if we need the millenium category level. My comment refers to the previously presented idea to „destroy“ the well-established category tree based on today's countries/states for certain historical periods. I strongly oppose that. --Kleeblatt187 (talk) 04:59, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh OK. Not to speak for Laurel Lodged but I assume they mainly meant it in relation to the category being discussed. If you look through something like Category:Canada in the 1st millennium it and the sub-categories seem to have similar issues though. For instance File:Emperor Tiberius - Royal Ontario Museum - DSC09793.JPG is in a sub-category for Canada in the 1st century when Canada didn't exist at that point and the bust wasn't created in Canada to begin with anyway. The same goes for the sub-categories and images in Category:Singapore by millennium, Etc. Etc. So the whole thing really needs to go or at least be massively cut back. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:25, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Adamant1 & Kleeblatt187: Just for the record, the category Works in India by millennium was opened 11 years ago, and en:Category:Millennia in India almost 14 years ago. Considering we also have categories of India by century, it was a logical and practical idea for me to open India by millennium also, as parent categories. It helps both local and interwiki navigation. Adamant1's claim that it is "not a widely accepted or practiced thing on here" actually refers to flawed or impartial categorization. There are some chronological categories unique only for Germany, thanks to AnRo0002 & Triplec85, and the fact that all other countries don't have it ain't an argument for deletion. In fact, it should be a role model for all other countries. The same is with countries with categories by millennium. --Orijentolog (talk) 14:08, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1: you're 100% correct about the case of File:Emperor Tiberius - Royal Ontario Museum - DSC09793.JPG. The idea of ​​creating chronological categories based on imported art is nonsensical, not to use a harsher word. I remember well such flaws in recent years, like Birdie's edit which removed the country of origin (Iran) and replaced it with the city of current location (Paris). Truly bizarre. IMHO artworks should have the country of origin for chronological categories and nothing more. One example: the Guennol Lioness statue was kept in New York City, which implies having New York City in the 3rd millennium BC, but then in 2007 it was sold to private collector Alastair Martin. It implies deleting the New York City category, and opening a new for... I don't know. We can only make a phone call: "Hello Mr. Martin, would you tell us where the vault with your artworks is? California, or Kentucky? I need to open a new Commons category!" In other words, a ridiculously impractical idea. On the other hand, it is useful to have chronological categories of current states for archaeological sites that originated there. If all those categories of Canada and Singapore are based on imported artworks, I'm in favor of deletion, but India is a different case. --Orijentolog (talk) 14:39, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Works from Europe

Should merge into Category:Works in Europe. The intended distinction does not work. Its confusing even for native English speakers. All the subcategories should merge too. Rathfelder (talk) 20:01, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Rathfelder:  Keep this distinction, no matter how confusing it might be. Category:Works in Europe includes European or foreign works displayed in Europe, while Category:Works from Europe includes European works displayed in Europe or elsewhere. Both categories can come under Category:Works of Europe. This is the convention Joshbaumgartner and others have followed. --Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 06:46, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

For native English speakers, Category:European works may sound better than Category:Works from Europe. However, we rarely follow the "[region]-ian [topic]" format in Commons, instead following "[topic] [preposition] [region]" most of the time, while the former is followed more commonly in Wikipedia categories. People are starting to unlearn prepositions nowadays. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 06:48, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

It is quite clear that most editors do not understand the difference and it is not used as intended. Rathfelder (talk) 08:53, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

@Rathfelder: I think having {{Mbox}}es on such categories is better than consolidating them. The hatnote will show if there are different prepositions for the same topic and country, and it will be integrated with the {{Topic by country}} series of templates. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 04:53, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I doubt if many editors read hatnotes. Changing from prepositions to adjectives would work better. Rathfelder (talk) 08:13, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Actually, it would not work as well as you might think. I've gone down that road in the past and the more one gets into working with that format, the more problems start to crop up. It's a mess. Just a couple of the issues that come to mind from that exercise:

1. Country adjectives are often more ambiguous and less standardized than country proper names. Most do not have any kind of official adjectival form, especially non-English speaking countries, but even in English, would it be 'American works' or 'United States works'? That's just the tip of the iceberg. For many countries, there is no adjectival form that works so we just end up with the proper name as the adjective and it is clumsy ('Democratic Republic of the Congo works', anyone?). This causes frustration in users who cannot readily find the country they seek in a list.
2. Adjectival forms offer no information to the user on what the nature of the relationship is between the topic and the country. What does 'German works' mean? Was the work made in Germany, by a German, is it a German style, is it in Germany, does Germany own it, all or any of the above? We can start applying hyphenated extensions, but it gets clumsy as well: 'German-made works', 'German-owned works', 'German-based works', 'German-origin works', etc.

That's just a couple of things that come readily to mind based on earlier experiences with this approach.

Much better to leave countries in their proper name form and use prepositions to describe the relationship whenever possible. 13:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC) Josh (talk) 13:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Joshbaumgartner: I mostly agree with you. I mentioned hatnotes (i.e. {{Mbox}}es) in my last comment, and if there are different preposition for a given "topic" and "country" (city/constituent/continent/country/region), then hatnotes for prepositions will be shown. I've created such a hatnote at {{Topic by country/hatnote}} for demonstration. I feel sad that even native speakers have issues with prepositions, and my native language Bengali uses postpositions instead. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 14:10, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sbb1413 That hatnote makes perfect sense to me. I do sympathize with @Rathfelder that hatnotes are probably read and considered less than some of us would like to think, so they are not a cure-all, but they are still a good tool to help people understand how things are set up and how best to find what they are looking for.

I am not familiar with Bengali, but appreciate that there is a great amount of variety in how language can be structured, as I have found in the few languages I am familiar with. Josh (talk) 14:40, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Democratic satire

Maybe clearer if renamed Russian satire. Rathfelder (talk) 09:06, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:East Slavic literature

has a category cycle East Slavic literature → Ukrainian-language literature; please fix this and also see ENWP Prototyperspective (talk) 20:50, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: Boldly do it — No discussion should be needed for such a trivial thing. --Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 05:02, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Okay what is the solution and please also implement it on Wikipedia which has Church Slavonic literature, Russian literature, Ukrainian literature set on it. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:47, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/10/Category:Tudor crown in the royal standards of the United Kingdom

Category:Sieverts kabelverk

should the company have the bussinessman category Max Sievert or the other way around? Prototyperspective (talk) 22:51, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Men of

What's the purpose of this category? Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 08:14, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Can it be merged into cats including Category:Men by location? Prototyperspective (talk) 10:39, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but this should be deleted anyway as the resulting category redirect (if any) won't be useful for end users, and the category Category:Women of has been speedied. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 02:32, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Hard to imagine any purpose it serves. If it's just for the category prefix, we have a perfectly good prefix search Special:PrefixIndex/Category:Men_of. - Jmabel ! talk 14:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective and Jmabel: After nominating this discussion, I found that this category is the byproduct of {{Men by country}}, which is (in many cases) superseded by {{Topic of country}} with |1= set as "men". I have just noticed that Prototyperspective has reverted some of my replacements of this template, so it is better deleting this category first before replacing the template. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 02:31, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't remember reverting this so it probably had some other reason and it would be useful if you linked the diff. Maybe it was one of the templates that caused self-categorization. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:01, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel and Prototyperspective: I have replaced the code at {{Men by country}} with {{Topic of country}}, with |1= set as "men". So this category will be (mostly) empty once the caches get purged. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 10:59, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, there is still one subcategory which needs to be moved into some subcategory of "Men by location" then maybe the category should redirect and I think probably it should be deleted. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:39, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Category:Senior studies

Although the category description says this is about education by old people (aka "senior citizens"), the otherwise ambiguous category title may also refer to Category:Gerontology, the study of old age. Maybe Category:Senior education is a better name for this category. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 08:56, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Double Ten Day

This appears to be a duplicate of Category:National Day of the Republic of China. The Wikipedia article says: "The National Day of the Republic of China, also referred to as Double Ten Day or...". So, they both are the same. Should they be merged?--125.230.84.199 09:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Mortality rates

Most files about death rates are only in Category:Death statistics and its subcats like the OWID subcat; what to do about this cat, can somebody populate it or should it be upmerged somehow or is there anything else that should be done...e.g. the parent cat seems like a major concept but it not linked to any Wikidata item. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Upmerging to Category:Death statistics sounds good to me. And Category:Mortality rate maps can be upmerged to Category:Death maps. And so on. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:38, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Linking the parent category to "mortality rates" would be confusing. I don't think it's necessarily a problem when all files aren't subcategorized yet. (as in any other category).
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 21:21, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I am not clear as to what you are saying. Are you saying we should keep Category:Mortality rates? I may not have been clear in my previous reply. "Upmerging" is not a common word, not does it necessarily have a clear meaning. I think Category:Mortality rates should be eliminated and its contents would be under Category:Death statistics. Category:Mortality rate maps could also be eliminated, and its contents would be put under Category:Death maps. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:16, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

In any case, the infobox with d:Q58702 shouldn't be on Category:Death statistics.

I don't think it's problematic to keep Category:Mortality rates
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 12:57, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Boys wearing T-shirts or shorts in winter

An intersectional category, combining Category:Boys wearing T-shirts in winter and Category:Boys wearing shorts in winter. If a boy is wearing both in winter, he can belong to the two aforementioned categories instead of this one. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 07:30, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Fog or mist

Another intersectional category of little utility, and its subcats are just Category:Fog and Category:Mist (visible atmospheric water). The latter was called simply Category:Mist before adding the unnecessary disambiguation "(visible atmospheric water)". Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 08:17, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Can you easily spot the difference between the two? Those are two different subclasses of the same thing, probably often combined. I'm just not sure it's intersectional and should be removed. As for mist, the cat should be moved to the cat that is currently a redirect. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:14, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Although it is an essay, Commons:Intersectional categories states a valid point: The idea is that if a user is looking for one of the subject topics, they are best served by delivering them directly to that category. The idea that Category:Trucks and buses would permit a user to find both topics in a single convenient place is moot, as that user would still in the end need to navigate to both Category:Trucks and Category:Buses to see content of both topics. That is, if someone is looking for either Category:Fog or Category:Mist, separate categories are more useful for them than Category:Fog or mist, no matter how similar the weather phenomena are. I myself can combine fog, haze, and mist as Category:Fog, haze, or mist, because many people cannot distinguish between these weather phenomena. However, these categories are not useful for people who are looking for either fog, haze, or mist. You can use Category:Unidentified weather phenomena for such cases. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 07:14, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

• The idea that Category:Trucks and buses would permit a user to find both topics in a single convenient place is moot, as that user would still in the end need to navigate to both Category:Trucks and Category:Buses Good point and thanks for bringing that up – I think that part needs to be revisited since the user would not still "need to navigate to both [subcategories]" in many cases: one can also use the deepcategory search operator, clicking on More in top right->Deepcat🖼️ to view a wall of images/videos of files in both (or more) categories. However, it doesn't work here in this case because these category branches are too large (a problem until at least phab:T376440 is solved and it should low deeper branches once one reached the bottom).
• Category:Visible aerosol formations near surface or similar is a singular-subject valid category above both. The name could probably be improved (e.g. "Category:Near-surface visible atmospheric aerosols"). I wasn't sure about what to do here earlier if anything but now I think the best solution would be to  Move (leaving a redirect) this cat to such a title/scope.
• These categories are also useful for these people since they can use it to find the relevant subcat or at least they don't cause any issues to them. The unidentified weather phenomena cat doesn't exist, maybe you meant to link something else?

Prototyperspective (talk) 10:47, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for this idea. I'm now quite busy in real life, so I'll revisit it soon. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 07:29, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: I support moving this category to Category:Visible atmospheric phenomena near surface, consistent with the great-grandparent Category:Atmospheric phenomena. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 12:35, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good except that this would be much broader (or not?); I think it would be better if it was about aerosol formations or if the cat I suggested was a subcat of your cat instead of moving this there. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:49, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

 Keep The category should be left alone as it represent the same phenomenon with a technical difference. Mist and fog are "A suspension in the air consisting of microscopic water droplets, reducing the visibility at Earth's surface", basically a surface cloud. Mist and clouds are differentiated only by the horizontal visibility they permit :

• Mist is with visibility more than 1 km or 5/8 mi (https://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Mist)
• Fog is with visibility less than 1 km or 5/8 mi (https://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Fog).

Category:Snowy roads

What are the main differences between Category:Icy roads, Category:Roads with snow, and Category:Snowy roads? I understand that Category:Ice roads are "frozen, human-made structures on the surface of bays, rivers, lakes, or seas in the far north", while Category:Icy roads are "normal roads on land with icy surface". So what about Category:Roads with snow and Category:Snowy roads? Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 09:10, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe roads that are black, but surrounded by snow as opposed to white roads? Not that it's clear from the category descriptions nor content of either.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 21:17, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Categorization might hint to that: one is in Category:Roads by condition, the other Category:Roads by surface.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 12:59, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Tamped down snow (unless glazed with ice) is a very different surface from ice, especially black ice. Snowy roads present challenging conditions, icy ones present hazard. Ice can be present on a road without snow, with snow, under snow, or on top of snow. --Pitke (talk) 17:34, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia images of commercial logos

What is this category for? "Commercial logos" means that the logos in this category are non-free, so Commons cannot host them, but this category has only contained one file (of a logo that falls under {{PD-logo}}) since its creation Nutshinou ^Talk! 20:50, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@Nutshinou:

"Commercial logos" means that the logos in this category are non-free, so Commons cannot host them

Actually, we allow commercial logos in Commons as long as the logos are free of copyright restrictions, see COM:L. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 09:00, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

•  Delete confusing, if they are on Wikipedia they won't be in this category on Commons and if they are on Commons they won't be Wikipedia images. I don't know if there is a category for images moved from Wikipedia (I can't find it) but I'm not sure we need one for commercial logos however they may be something commonly moved here if the copyright owner cosents but even still I can't see how its that useful. Crouch, Swale (talk) 10:16, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:21st-century gallery pages by year

these each just contain a very very small number of random unrepresentative useless largely-irrelevant images and these pages are as of now misleading and not useful Prototyperspective (talk) 10:00, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Wrong venue — You should use COM:DR for this instead of CFD. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 11:39, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Ok makes sense but how can I select all gallery pages in this cat? Moreover, I think when DRing all pages in a cat it makes sense to also put the cat into CfD. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:47, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

not necessarily, as the arguments for the category is different from the pages or files in the category.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 14:02, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Logos zgh

Should the category be moved to something like Category:Berber-language logos to be in harmony with Category:Logos by language? Nutshinou ^Talk! 13:22, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

 Support in principle, but I'm not sure that's the preferred ethnonym. Omphalographer (talk) 23:13, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Public transport buses in the United Kingdom

Genuinely, what is the point of this category? All but a handful of every UK bus categorised under the 'Buses in xxx' regional categories are arguably 'public transport buses'. Creating categories such as, say, 'Public transport buses in Kingston upon Hull' would in my opinion feel very redundant.

As MTaylor848 says on the category talk page, this category is severely overcrowded. I'm not sure if many people have used this category since Ultra7 left, so maybe its time to consider a deletion, redirect or some other way of breaking down this category? Hullian111 (talk) 13:51, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

 Comment Category:Buses are, by definition, motorized public transport road vehicles. Maybe this category refers to publicly-owned buses as opposed to private ones. If so, this category should be moved to Category:Public buses in the United Kingdom. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 04:48, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, the only publicly-owned buses (after 1986, mind) belong to the handful of municipally-owned operators, franchised bus schemes, i.e. the Bee Network and the Liverpool City Region's Metro network, or the state-owned Translink of Northern Ireland. The other buses, i.e. those operated Stagecoach, Arriva, First and Go-Ahead, as well as regional independents, are privately-owned. Not to mention, Category:Private buses in the United Kingdom already exists for 'private hire vehicles or private services' in a similar way to this category. Its a difficult one, isn't it? Hullian111 (talk) 11:09, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Vairankode Festival

Improperly created article as category. — Huntster (t @ c) 18:29, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

 Keep There do seem to be files it can be populated with: . Category description needs fixing.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 21:38, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm somewhat concerned about the legitimacy of at least some of those images. There's some visible (Instagram?) watermarks. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:17, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't see how this is relevant to scoping, naming or description of this category.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 07:14, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:John T. Williams

Given the existence of many other well-known people by this name (see en:John T. Williams) I would suggest adding a disambiguator to the category name, probably just "(architect)". Jmabel ! talk 23:48, 30 October 2024 (UTC)