Commons talk:Categories

Exceptions to the Selectivity Principle

While the Selectivity Principle prevents us from creating categories that combine multiple topics, there are some cases where we should ignore this rule: Oceans vs. Seas, and Hills vs. Mountains. Although oceans and seas are distinct topics, there are many aspects that are equally applicable to both, so I had created Category:Oceans and seas for them. For hills vs. mountains, the distinction is mostly arbitrary and subjective (e.g. the elevations of Hills of Darjeeling district are similar to other Himalayan mountains), so I will create Category:Hills and mountains once there's a consensus for making exceptions to this principle. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 16:23, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Although the above reasoning may seem to go against COM:Intersectional categories, the topics mentioned are not really distinct. While oceans are extremely large compared to seas, they have many features common to both, like coasts (including sea beaches), marine biology, etc. On the other hand, although both hills and mountains are Slope landforms, we have also categorized Plains under this category, so Category:Slope landforms is not suitable to group hills and mountains. Category:Highlands is also not suitable, since it can cover multiple mountain ranges and plateaus, as opposed to individual mountains/hills. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 16:31, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

So what would the exception exactly be? How would you describe it in general? JopkeB (talk) 03:43, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the exception is where there is a quite clear concept, but English doesn't happen to have a single term. Sometimes we fudge this a different way: e.g. "rivers" categories often also include things too small to be properly considered a "river", and might more properly be called "rivers, creeks, and streams", but we just say "rivers" in the cat name. - Jmabel ! talk 15:35, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: This is what I want to say. However, for the case of rivers, we already have Category:Watercourses, which can cover rivers, streams, creeks, and canals together. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 15:39, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

And is an obscure word probably not known to even the average native-speaking college graduate, certainly not to the average native speaker without a "higher" education. (In fact, I just ran that by my girlfriend to see if she agreed, and it turned out that she didn't know the word herself!) - Jmabel ! talk 15:49, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with this. Oceans and seas have differences. For size, location, and depth. Although I agree its hardish to make that distinction on our end it still exists and is worth having two seperate categories for. I feel like this would lead to a lot of bickering and edit waring over what's a legitimate exception or not to. Its hard enough to have standards and consistancy on here as it is. That's not even getting into instances where there's more then two terms. Category:Streams, creeks, rivers, watercourses, and waterways would be totally ridiculous but also allowable by this. And sure, its a bit of strawman but there's clear line between a stream and a creek, or a creek and a river, or a watercourse or a waterway and all of them be both, none, some, Etc. Etc. So it really makes the whole thing not worth doing. If anything the Selectivity Principle should be made stronger, not weaker. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:16, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

@Adamant1 So what about the subcats of Category:Marine? They belong to both oceans and seas, if I'm not wrong. There are Category:Mountain roads along lower hills too, for example Ajodhya Pahar Pathway at Purulia.jpg. Streams, creeks, rivers, and waterways are all Category:Watercourses, so there's no need for a general category covering all of these. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 10:27, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "they." Regardless, the whole thing seems kind of half backed and pointless. Per the description "This category is for things related to the sea." So how is that any different then Category:Seas? Then you have things like Category:Marine energy, which is a child of Category:Water power. Anyway the category contains sub-categories like Category:Tidal power and Category:Wave power. Why shouldn't those categories just be in Category:Water power though? What's specifically does either of those have to do with "marines" or whatever? Category:Marine structures, none of the categories in there have anything what-so-ever to do with "marines." So I guess my answer would be to up-merge and delete the subcats in Category:Marine as necessary and call it good.

There are Category:Mountain roads along lower hills too. Sure, "mountain roads" is kind of a colloquial term though. If it we're me I'd just stick to actual designations for roads and skip things like that completely. There's also backcountry roads. But so what? I don't think either one is a useful or clear way to organize things. Maybe this is a trick question, but where does a backcountry road end and a mountain road begin or visa versa (or for that matter even a country road)? --Adamant1 (talk) 10:59, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I really want to remind people generally: unlike "instance" and "subclass" in Wikidata, categorization is not primarily about ontology. It is about helping people find things. As a general rule is good to avoid obscure words and very subtle distinctions. - Jmabel ! talk 04:15, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel That's a good point to keep in mind. The ontology of a topic is valuable to consider, but the ultimate goal is for users to be able to easily browse our contents and find images for use in other projects. Josh (talk) 13:02, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

"seek bar"

T.vanschaik recently added some text that refers to a "seek bar." As far as I know, that term has never before arisen in any Commons documentation, and I don't know what it means in this context. Admittedly, I don't use the Upload Wizard (which is the context in which it is named) but I'm guessing that if that were the correct name for some element of the wizard it would appear somewhere in some prior Commons documentation. - Jmabel ! talk 02:45, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for noting my wrong translation. I am not a native speaker of English and I used the term to describe that part of the screen in which to write the expression one is looking for. Obviously it is not the correct term. I am looking forward to the right word. T.vanschaik (talk) 08:28, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

This relates to Special:Diff/951509399. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:18, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Again, I don't use the Upload Wizard; possibly "search bar," which is a pretty common term? But if this is specific to categories, it might have a more specific name, like "category search bar," or I suppose it could be something else entirely. Anyway, whatever it is called elsewhere in the documentation is what we should call it here. - Jmabel ! talk 06:26, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Well I didn't know one can enter category:search term into the search bar at the top right to jump to the category search directly. Probably that would be good to add somewhere here and elsewhere as it's handy to use this to jump directly to the category search. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:58, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

COM:OVERCAT examples

The highlighted example: "a black and white photo of the Eiffel Tower should be placed in Black and white photographs of the Eiffel Tower. It should not be placed in both that category and the Paris category at the same time." is confusing. It requires knowing that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, and that the identified correct category is a subcat of the incorrect cat. And if one were to browse the cats themselves, it would still be confusing because the incorrect cat is not a direct subcat of the incorrect one--it's more complex than the image representing it.

The File:Over-categorization.svg is good for cat vs parent-cat, but the example should be clean and direct. Can someone make an analogous image for the idea of intersection-cats? The Eiffel Tower example is closer to that than just a simple subcat case, but again I'd prefer a simpler example of that. DMacks (talk) 16:26, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

All categorisation requires knowledge of the subject matter. It does not place an unreasonable burden on the uploader to know that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, France instead of Paris, Texas. Laurel Lodged (talk) 12:47, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

The example of the Eiffel Tower is one of the most famous structures - indeed, one of the best known specific objects - in the world. If you can think of clearer examples, make a suggestion. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 22:03, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Category:House–museum of Dmytro Yavornytsky

Hi, just moved the page to this title and the old title is now shown as a sub cat Category:House-Museum of Dmytro Yavornytskyi. This hasn't worked the way it should? Cinderella157 (talk) 05:44, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

That's normal. When you move a category, the old category name becomes a soft redirect. If you believe the old title should be deleted outright, you can nominate it for deletion. - Jmabel ! talk 17:02, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Soft redirects are normally not subcategories of their targets; however, they are subcategories until they’re emptied (or if a file or page is added to them after having been emptied). This is probably so that the files that are yet to be moved to the new name can be found.

By the way, are you sure the new name is correct? The old name with the capital M wasn’t correct, but the new one with the en dash doesn’t seem correct to me either. I’d write it as House-museum, with a hyphen-dash. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 18:32, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Concur that an n-dash here accomplishes little and makes it harder to type on most keyboards. - Jmabel ! talk 04:17, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

templates for setting defaultsort?

I was wondering whether anyone knows of templates for automatically creating defaultsort keys from the page title. I'm thinking about a simple template that supplies a defaultsort by last name, first name and was wondering whether we already have anything like that. VanIsaac (en.wiki) 21:43, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Proposed prohibition on using categories to call attention to certain elements

Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/02/Category:Nude teenagers is about a concerning category tree, especially subcategories that call attention to adolescent genitals. Multiple users have suggested a policy in the spirit of the following (but the wording has been significantly changed by me):

Where a file incidentally contains certain elements, and it would be inappropriate to use the file to illustrate those elements, categories must not be used to call attention to those elements those elements must not be categorized. This includes de minimis elements and intimate body parts or clothing of minors.

Brianjd (talk) 12:05, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

•  Comment While I see what you're getting at, I am unsure of your wording would make a practical rule and am unaware of an obvious way to usefully improvement. From my observations, I have long seen two conflicting motivations at work in creation of many nudity related categories. There seem to be some users who wish to "call attention to" things, while other users wish to segregate nudity to keep it make it less evident. Unless one sees a pattern of edits from a particular user, it is not always easy to determine whether a category was created to "call attention" to nudity or to hide nudity from general categories. For one example (random, I haven't looked into history), "Category:Nude dancing women" might have been created to "call attention" to nude women in the creator's mind, or might have been created to hide nudity from people looking for general images of dancing women - or third option might have just been created by a user who noticed hey, we have a bunch of images of nude dancing women, so there should be a category for that. My point is that "used to call attention to" goes to the intention of an editor, which can be hard to judge, rather than an inherent role of the category. IMO policy would be better based on inherent roles of categories. Suggestions for rewording with that in mind? Related observation: I have noticed many categories that seem of minimal use being created, mostly by anons, of nudity related topics like "side hugs by nude people with hands on shoulders" or whatever. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 17:46, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
  • See also my comment at Category talk:Female nipples through clothing -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 17:48, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

• Support a small step in reducing nasty voyeurism. I don't know why Commons facilitates this filth.

Laurel Lodged (talk) 17:47, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

@Infrogmation: I simplified the wording by striking out the part about ‘calling attention’, which I think is supported by the CfD that led to this.

That leaves the situations where users want to segregate certain elements in order to hide them. And by ‘certain elements’, I guess I mean ‘nudity’. I feel like there are unwritten rules about handling nudity but not much discussion to justify them (and this frustration has been reflected in some of my other recent discussions).

In the absence of such discussion, I will just make an initial attempt to deal with this issue. This policy applies only when it is inappropriate to use the file to illustrate certain elements. In that case, there is no need for details: a category like Incidental nudity should suffice. Brianjd (talk) 03:53, 5 February 2025 (UTC)