Commons talk:By location category scheme

Village Pump Initial discussion: "By country conversions"

[This thread shall be copied from Village Pump to Commons talk:By location category scheme after the discussion winds down].

I did a scan on by country categories and found at least 30 not placed in Category:Categories by country. Many of those have been converted from the form [country adjective] [Object] eg: German castles -> Castles in Germany.

However, many categories remain unconverted. EG: Category:Coins If I placed a marker in these cats warning of a switchover, and then did the switchover after a few weeks, would that be acceptable?

Or is it really more proper to publish a category scheme for them? I'm ok with that- but I'm not sure whether observing that process is really not much more than busy work. I did the conversion of Naval ships by country- but really there was not any disagreement about the Ships of country noun switchover- it was other subjects that proved controversial.

Still I don't know- I suppose some folks might get hot and bothered about whether it says American coins versus Coins of the United States. Same thing for aircraft or art.

-Mak 19:43, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you and think that "[thing] of [country]" makes a lot more sense in the majority of cases. Undoubtedly, however, the only field in which I can see objections is anything pertaining to culture (e.g. art, architecture styles, but not individual buildings), which is often not coterminous with political units. Just to be on the safe side, it would be nice to publish a category scheme to enlighten people why, say, it should be "Buildings of [country]", but that, say, "Anglo-Saxon art" would make more sense than "Art of Mercia" or "Art of England" for that matter. However, even though once in a while, you might get people who will fervently complain, the majority will not oppose your recategorization efforts. I think if you'd like to do it, go ahead, in the manner you described: placing a warning for a while, perhaps linking to the category scheme (or this discussion, for that matter), and making the changeover after a while. —UED77 19:56, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

My only comment is to avoid using "of" whenever possible as it can be ambiguous. For physical entities "in" is better. Category RDRs = smart move. pfctdayelise (translate?) 03:08, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Okeydokey. When I change Languages of Country category "French language" to "Languages in France", do you mind if I leave a message requesting all comment be sent to your talk page? ;-)

There are a few others that probably should not be converted. German Law does not really translate to "Law of Germany"- it the sense intended- the vast body of laws- is not assumed if the adjective Law form is not used, and so I will leave that one alone as well.

All "By nationality" will be changed to "by country", so it will follow the same pattern for inanimate objects.

This is getting to be enough I guess to stick in a Scheme. Name suggestions for the scheme? Commons:Category scheme by country or Commons:By country category scheme? -Mak 00:01, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I got a draft out as Commons:By location category scheme. Feel free to hack away at it, or leave comments on the talk page. -Mak 05:15, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Mak's change to Category:Turkish food came up on my watchlist. I had once moved this to Category:Food of Turkey and was quickly rebuked for having made a non-sensicle move. I saw my error immediately. "Food" is another one of those things that seems to belong in Category:Food by culture rather than Category:Food by country and would probably best remain Category:XXXXXish/ese/ian Food. Only an exception...I'm all in favor of this move otherwise. Cary "Bastique" Bass ^parler _voir 11:25, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Ouch! Please don't change Category:Coins of Poland to Category:Coins from Poland, nor should you use "from" in very many cases. The first one not only sounds better makes infinitely more sense in English in such cases. "From" connotes (at least to my ears) that the coins have been removed the country in order to take the photograph. "Of" doesn't carry that connotation. Cary "Bastique" Bass ^parler _voir 11:35, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree about Coins. But really, the warning notice gave the example French coins becomes Coins of France. The wording I put in the scheme was that From should be substituted in place of "of" only when "of" is ambiguous. Perhaps I did not word it well enough since obviously I created some unintended confusion. -Mak 16:29, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

There are distinct purposes for using a Place Name. They are:

• Current Location (Sculptures in London)
• Origin (Dancers from Russia)
• Products of a culture associated with a Geographic entity (Art of the Byzantine Empire).
• Style which originated in a geographic location (Architecture from China)

I think the guiding goal here is to choose what will benefit those using Commons as an information resource, rather to focus on what is convenient for those who classify images. If we think folks will most likely use a noun form in a search and be interested in seeing the items associated with that noun, then we should definately use that noun even if the category name is a little less common than the adjectival form. I think that should be the guiding principle for choosing one pattern or the other.

With that in mind, I'm not willing to punt on the Culture or Style meanings just yet. Certainly not in the case of Byzantine art. I didn't hear that this sort of "Culture" item was being objected to.

But what about the more Narrow Style-originating-in-Location meaning? Again, I don't see the strong case for reaching for the ejection seat button just yet. Consider other styles-originating-from-country categories. Architecture is less ambiguous because it is understood as a style, and it is not difficult to accept the notion that one could label an image of a home in Singapore as clearly displaying Architecture from China. Now, with food, it is less clear for two reasons. Firstly, use of the same term for imported foodstuffs as well as a cuisine style. The second is that there are common noun forms for 3 or 4 of the foods of the world, and those terms seem most natural. "Mexican food", "Italian food" "Chinese food".

For extremely common adjectival forms- ok fine, make an exception for them. But most foods of the world don't have dominant noun phrases associated with them. For everything else, folks are much less likely to use the adjective in a search. If someone uses commons' or googles search and uses the term Kygyzstan, we want the food hits to show up. People won't use, and sometimes won't even know the dominant adjective form for some of these (Kyrgyz or Kyrgish and not Kyrgistani as wrongly guessed in Category:Kyrgyzstani politicians). For the common food styles? Yeah- I can see someone typing in mexican food as a search. If it is excepted, then folks won't find Mexican food if they are searching for pictures of stuff from Mexico. If we want those users to be short changed then fine- I agree it's a judgement call there on which will be more dominant in the requests for information.

Now, excepting those common adjective forms, let's look closer at the objections to calling something "Food from Luxembourg" rather than "Luxembourgish food". Do the objections apply to all foods? What's wrong with Luxembourgish cheese becoming Cheese from Luxembourg, -Or- Wines from Luxembourg? So if it doesn't apply to specific foods, why do folks feel uncomfortable with all foods? It is because in the back of our minds we are aware of the ambiguity of the term food, and this is born out by examining the contents of the food by country categories. Most often, Foods by country is used not in the object sense, and really mean the style meaning but are mistakenly not using the more proper Cuisine by Country categories. For Cuisine from Szechwan, it is very clear that Style is being spoken of, that the style originated in a particular place, just as with Architectural styles. So I don't see the trouble for converting the Cuisine by country categories excepting those common adjectival noun phrases. If they understand and prefer than no search hit show up when people use a country name, then fine- informed consent.

So when you look at food as object, there is no problem (Cheese from Belgium). If you look at food as style, there is no problem (Cuisine from Luxembourg). The two senses have two distinct category trees, so it is not the fault of the trees either, but of misapplication of the food category for Cuisine items. It is not the business of the "By Location" scheme to define what the Cuisine versus Food category scheme should say.

I am ok if the food & cuisine guys make a scheme that addresses their use of by Location in some excepted way. If they don't, I think the sense of Location identifying a Style should be in effect, excepting the cases common noun phrases "Chinese food" or "Mexican food"- that is if people want it that way understanding the consequences.

-Mak 19:59, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

---

'end of discussion copied from Village pump

Individual exclusions

Note that Category:British Royal Family and Category:British monarchs can and must not be renamed under this schema, due to in the former case, the use of the term "British" in a rather different context to the geographic or political, and in the latter, as a generic combined term for all the individual political terms.

Just to help.

James F. (talk) 19:28, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. Actually, looking more broadly, anything with "British" in the name will almost certainly need either keeping as is, or, at least, an especial per-case decision - for example, Category:British coins has coins from:

• the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,
• the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,
• the Kingdom of Great Britain,
• the Kingdom of England and France, and
• the Kingdom of England.

Note, indeed, that Image:Silver threepennies.jpg has coins from both of the first two of those, and Image:Giii comp.jpg from the second and third. It's... complicated. :-)

There are about a dozen or more other "location" terms we can come up with just for "British" coinage - Lordship and Kingdom of Ireland, the Kingdoms of Gwynedd and Powys, the Principality of Wales, the Kingdom of Scotland, and the Channel Isles and Isle of Man, just to think of the recent and obvious examples. "British" encompasses all of these; no other word encompasses more than a handful

James F. (talk) 19:41, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I understand your assertion about British being used in a non geographic context when refering to Royalty of the United Kingdom. I shall remove British Royal family from the list. If you could, could you please leave a categorizaiton guide note? I am not entirely clear on the meaning you intend that would be understood broadly for the more general category "British monarchs". All I have found are associated with the "Britain" geographic unit (regardless how varied the boundaries of that unit has been over time).

Again, the measure as stated in the scheme is: Which term would a novice use in a google or commons search if they wanted images from that particular category? If it is English, then we leave it. If it is England, then a change to that, Similarly for tranformations to British or Britain. I think arguments about what is historically proper will be made clear to the naive user once we get them on our pages so we can educate them. It is quite improper I believe to insist on correctness at the cost of inaccessibility.

As for the other multiple historic political names point, I have some grave reservations. Any placename of any duration will have the same problem. To accept such a principle would make it non implementable due to the number of exceptions. The way the scheme dealt with it was to refer to specificity in the original category. In the case of Greece, if the category says Greek, it is converted to Greece- even though Greek philosophers likely means ancient Greek philosophers. England and British is slightly more tricky but evidence from the members of the category should be considered. In cases where it is clearly intended that Kingdom of England or United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, then the category can be named that. If it is ambiguous, then we need to choose a broader name that reflects that.

How does that sound? -Mak 20:17, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I note that Category:British poets currently contains some Jersey and Guernsey poets (don't think any Manx poets are in there at the moment). If the category is redefined to Category:Poets of the United Kingdom, then the Jersey and Guernsey poets will have to be moved out to, presumably, Category:Poets of Jersey and Category:Poets of Guernsey. And then presumably we will need a new Category:British poets to be able to categorise British poets back together again. Or have I missed something? Man vyi 21:52, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I wonder what your response was to the topic immediately following this one. Is your critique the same if the category were "Poets from Britain"?

-Mak 00:17, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

en:Category:British poets etc seem to cover the situation in en: to most people's satisfaction. Using the formulation "from Britain" would seem on the face of it to pose a problem for poets and others from Northern Ireland. They are not "from Great Britain" but whether "from Britain" would do is something I'm far from convinced about. Man vyi 05:40, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem with correctness of your the argument. Correctness must of course allow for massive number of photographs of poets from Jersey, which will languish in obscurity due to their incorrect filing . If it is more important to be categorically correct at the expense of being more inaccessible (since most queries employ noun forms not adjective forms), then of course it is acceptable to assist the world in being more ignorant of British poets than they otherwise would be. The advocates of this category naming are entitled to their obscurity and their correctness. Jocularity aside, I can go along to the extent I can persuade myself that "British" is as common a search term as "Britain".

Anyway, assuming this is applied just to accomodate the set of British poets who are not from Britain, then what is the basis for your assertion? If you insist on correctness, then we would follow the EN Wiki category tree, which is United Kingdom subcat "Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies" subcat Jersey. Accordingly "Poets from" would be prepended to this placename category tree. Is that fair enough? -Mak 07:53, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I pick up on British poets simply because I'm watching it. And I simply ask the question to try and understand how the proposed new system is intended to work. The principle would seem to apply to all other categories relating to British nationality - it can be easily established that a group of people are British, but it can be much harder to identify a single political or geographical entity they are all from or of. To take your point about en wiki cat "Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies" - this category is somewhat hybrid because the Overseas Territories are of the UK (although not in) whereas the Crown Dependencies are neither of nor in. Of course, Jersey will also be categorised via Normandy and Europe, and the Crown Dependencies are European Dependencies so there are multiple paths. The question remains whether the intention is to replace British categories with categories of the United Kingdom and whether we then require supercats to bring the British together again? Or do the various British cats then require categorisation under Europe? I can't say I'm clear on the matter. Man vyi 11:47, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Autonomous and other ambiguous regions: The goal is to implement a categorization dimension of space that everyday people will have no difficulty navigating or benefiting from via search.

Some place names are ambiguous- especially categories associated with autonomous or other similar regious where inclusion as a subcat might (to some folks) imply something political rather simply what the cat tree is- providing multiple navigation avenues for getting at information- in this case leveraging people's knowlege (however politically mistaken that might be) of geographic groupings of regions. No political endorsement is implied, and in such cases of controversy, I propose that the english wiki category tree be the authority for determining sets. For example:

• Cook Islands As I recall, residents hold NZ passports, use NZ money, and the NZ navy patrols their waters. But they are a distinct country and are listed not as part of NZ, but under the placename categories "Polynesia" as well as cat "Oceanian countries" as well as "Oceanic dependencies". But they would not be listed as part of the NZ tree because they aren't in the EN Wiki. If they succeed in arguing their case in the EN wiki, and it is made a subcat of NZ (not listed under a non geographic cat like "relations"), then they would be entitled to include "Poets from the Cook Islands" as "Poets from New Zealand".
• Catalonia- "Poets of Catalonia" are subcat of "Poets of Spain", and are also entitled to be listed subcat of "Poets of European Countries", since the EN cat has them listed under both placename categories. Folks claiming redundant cats on Commons would be ruled incorrect.
• Kurdistan is a valid category- it is an ethnographic region, which is listed as a subcat of "Middle East" So "Poets from Kurdistan" would be "Poets from the Middle East". Individuals might also be listed as "Poets from Turkey" or "Poets from Iraq", but the entire category cannot be listed under "Poets of Turkey".
• Jersey is a subcat of the following geographic supercats: European countries | British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies | European dependencies | Channel Islands. Therefore, anyone is entitled to make a distinct subcat for "Poets from Jersey", making it a subcat of "Poets from the Channel Islands", "Poets from Eurpean Countries", as well as "Poets of the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies of Britain" (which is a subcat of Poets of the United Kingdom). If the tree is too deep, or the cat name too cumbersome then fine- cut out the dependencies subcat. I am on the fence about whether to call it Britain or the United Kingdom, but since the EN wiki's placename cat tree shall be the final authority, then someone would be entitled to make a stink and get it switched over to the United Kingdom. As with Catalunya, anyone claiming redundancy or overlapping cats would be ruled incorrect.

Man vyi, how does that sound? -Mak 20:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, actually I have no problem understanding how to categorise our putative Poets from Jersey - the question was about how the categorisation of, to continue the example, British poets was intended to work. If, as you say, "EN wiki's placename cat tree shall be the final authority", does that mean British poets is now to remain, analogous to en:Category:British poets? Man vyi 22:05, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Confused about your question. My proposal for the authority was tree- or to be most explicit, the geographical hierarchical structure of set inclusions drawn from the placename categories of the english Wikipedia. If Jersey is a direct or indirect subcat of the UK in En-Wiki, then it is acceptable to make Poets of Jersey a subcat of Poets of UK either directly or indirectly. Clearly what was not intended was that Commons mirror EN; Wiki's object placename category structure, because that would effectively mean this scheme is nonsensical. En Wiki has not standardized on noun form placenames for such Object of Placename categories. In my example above, I demonstrated this transformation with Poets of Jersey. I stated it would be a subcat of "Poets of the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies of Britain". The En: Wiki category is "British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies". Only the structure- the adjectival names are shifted according to the rules of the scheme'.

So perhaps you were asking something different? -Mak 23:37, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Is it then now the case that, for example, British poets is proposed to become Poets from Britain? Man vyi 05:49, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

No one has responded to the following section proposing that change but I think the scheme should specify that if no one objects. -Mak 17:20, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

British -> Britain better than ->UK?

Thinking about James' remarks and the issues of this most vexing group of islands, I am coming to the conclusion that converting "British [object]" to "[object] of United Kingdom" is probably not the best choice.

1. Using the schemes guiding question: "Which term would a user would most likely put in a query?", I think for the categories with "British" in there names, that surely most would use Britain over spelling out United Kingdom.
2. Lexically correct- Britain is the noun form of Britain
3. Solid ground via scheme rules- Britain is an accepted placename from the En Wiki.
4. Britain is sufficiently ambiguous to cover the historical cases

Comments? -Mak 21:44, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Whether it's better or not is a matter of opinion. The point is how to manage the overlap of categories. Man vyi 06:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Overlapping categories or ambiguous target objects are nothing new- Overlapping: ethnographic region of Kurdistan overlaps Turkey and Iraq. So you can have people be members of both Poets from Turkey and Poets from Kurdistan. Ambiguous target objects: Image:USS Phoenix (CL46) NH68326.jpg is a photo of a US Navy ship in 1939, or it is a picture of an Argentine navy ship (General Belgrano) in 1939, that was sunk by a submarine from Britain during the Falklands war. As Chevy Chase cheerfully remarked in his best announcer's voice- "You're both right. It's a desert topping and a floor wax."

My trouble is in seeing why this case of overlap is unique in any significant respect, or what the basis of an exclusion would be. Perhaps you could be more concrete about what the issue is. You gave Poets from Jersey as a problem case and I stated what the parent cats would be. Where is the difficulty exactly, and why? -Mak 08:58, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

No. I never intended Poets from Jersey to be an example of a problem. To my mind it is perfectly clear. The problem would be the asymmetric overlapping of British poets, Poets of the United Kingdom, Poets of Britain and, let's throw this into the mix for the sake of argument, Poets of the British Isles. Would Poets of Britain be a subset of Poets of the United Kingdom, or vice versa? Would it be considered that Poets of Britain would imply Poets of Great Britain? Man vyi 06:29, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

The tree you enumerate is not representative of the tree of placenames in En:Wiki. We are not inventing a new Placename category tree here. If you prefer Britain as a replacement noun in place of "the United Kingdom", then fine- I will go along with you but you said you don't care on that subject. You are right that there are inconsistencies in the EN wiki tree but such issues are not within the scope of this scheme. Placename trees in the En:Wiki- are the authority. As for the real not theoretical assymetries- Here is the EN tree illustrating some of them.

1. Category:Western Europe
   1. Category:British Isles
      1. Category:Ireland
      2. Category:Scotland
      3. Category:Wales
      4. Category:United Kingdom
         1. Category:England
         2. Category:Northern Ireland
         3. Category:Scotland
         4. Category:Wales
         5. Category:British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies
            1. Category:Guernsey
            2. Category:Cayman Islands
   2. Category:Guernsey
   3. Category:Channel Islands
      1. Category:Guernsey
2. Category:Caribbean islands
   1. Category:Cayman Islands

There is tons of duplication and illogic in there. So- Cayman islands is part of Western Europe?!? Scotland for example is a peer of the United Kingdom under the British Isles Cat, but it is also a child of the UK's tree. Wales is the same. Guernsey is its own uncle under Western Europe, as well as its own distant cousin as part of Crown dependencies under UK. There are many such examples of illogic in the placename category tree on En:wiki, but these assymetries are nothing new, and this is the wrong forum to argue for whatever the best placename structure should be. Those issues are out of the scope of this scheme. The scheme only specifies converting from adjective form to noun form, and accepts the geographic hierarchy that is established on EN:wiki. That means that Poets of Cayman Islands would be entitled to declare Poets of the British Isles, and Poets of Western Europe as its parent, and also be entitled to claim Poets of the Carribean Islands as its parent. If you feel those placename structures are wrong- this is too small a forum to resolve it- take it up on En:wiki and when it is changed there, commons will reflect the change.

You dispute the proposed change to British poets. I see your point, and if you are willing to accept the cost of opting out, I personally don't care that much about that particular category.

As far as the scheme is concerned though- if there is some general rule missing that should be provided, I am very interested. Currently there is nothing in the rules that I see that allows for such an exception for this case. The scheme may be deficient- if so, please suggest a rule that would provide for this issue. Otherwise, I personally don't see a case for special dispensation for this troublesome Atlantic archipelago. These ambiguous territories are really not all that unique. There is an accepted noun form for "British", and it can be taken to mean the same thing as the adjective form. Maybe it raises some people's hackles that they consider themselves British but not "of", "from", or even distantly associated with "Britain" the country. Fine. Think about it as Britain the cultural identity that is in the heart of anyone that considers themselves British, or for anyone for whom the goddess Brittania is their muse.

As I stated in a separate thread below, the Bot I run will pass over this category and not make a change, but if someone else happens along that is a stickler for rules, then they would be entitled to change the name and claim it is the correct form under the rules of this scheme. -Mak 22:15, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Roman roads

Category:Roman roads should be left as-is - not only are they are not per-country, they can be found on three continents! "Roads of Ancient Rome" doesn't really do it for me either, seems to suggest roads that formerly existed, not the ones still in existence. Stan Shebs 12:03, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Of course, the Geographic borders are no longer there. If the principle of your argument is accepted, isn't the implication of what you are saying that placename can only be used for current entities not historical entities? To be concrete, would your principle also apply this way? Would it not be possible to classify an image as being a temple of Ancient Greece because the temple is located in current day Turkey? -Mak 00:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

The roads Roman roads should be left and include only ones of a roman design and roman constructed, earier and later roads should be classified as such. And for the temples it should be classified as a Ancient Greek Temples as this is the culture and Greece is a geographical area in the modern sence. Enlil Ninlil 02:48, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, but what is the guiding rationale? Why should the creations of the ancient civilization of Greece be handled differently than those of the ancient civilization of Rome? -Mak 07:11, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

They shouldnt be handled differenty, the civilzations flourished at different time, and influenced each other. The Axum civilization cant really be compared to Rome, China or the Inca as they were all different in technology, evolution etc, but areas within the territory of the civilization at a certain period of time must include all things made and developed there. Something made in India and sent to china will still be classed as Indian, so a road made buy the Etruscans and improved by the Romans would still be under Etruria? So I would say time and technology la Enlil Ninlil 00:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Surely, "Roads of the Roman Empire" would suffice in this instance?

James F. (talk) 16:22, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Stan Shebs and Enlil Ninlil. (I've seen it happen too often on Wikimedia projects that the 'grand idea' is dreamt up and then forced on the rest of us without carefully considering all of its ramifications...)

In this case, the Romans (a people and a civilization) extended far, far beyond Rome. The term 'Roads of the Roman Empire' is inelegantly long, and could even be considered incorrect if one were talking about roads built in the Republican period. Why must we privilege the territorial over the cultural in every case anyway? I think we're anachronistically projecting our ideas of the nation-state back in time. The genius of Roman culture generated both Roman roads and the Roman Empire. The same goes for Roman deities, which also should stay.

If you want a schematized rationale, I'd say that when we're talking about ancient civilizations stretching beyond modern-day state boundaries (such as the Celts, Romans, Greeks, Carthaginians, Persians...), we should not restrict ourselves to territorial category names but leave open the possibility of using cultural or ethnic terms like Celtic art or Greek philosophers.

Speaking of whom, what would the new schema do to 'philosophers of ancient Greece' who in fact were Greeks from Egypt (like Plotinos), Syria (like Iamblichos), or Cappadocia (like Apollonios of Tyana)? The important thing is not whether or not such individuals lived within the boundaries of modern Greece or even of ancient Greek states, but whether they participated in ancient Greek cultural life. QuartierLatin1968 23:45, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Enlil and Stan were only talking about Roman Roads, not even about all things from the Civilization of Rome. Your statement is not only to all thinks Roman, but all things ancient. They made no such statements.

You misunderstand the purpose of the scheme. The scheme enumerates 4 different unique meanings that can be taken by associating a place name with an object. Just one of them is the cultural sense. But you seem to feel that this sense is not possible if we use the noun form. Implicit in your statement is the suggestion that adjectives are the domain of cultural senses and Noun forms are the domain of boundaries drawn in the dirt. What is the basis of this assertion? We can make statements like "This architecture came from Greece" just as easily as we can say that it is Greek Architecture. We can say that the play is from Ancient Greece even if it were penned in Alexandria by a Greek. Ambiguous borders is nothing unique to the ancient world. In the modern day world, we can point to Kurdistan, the culture of an the ethnographic region that overlaps Turkey and Iraq. In the En: wiki article, a region is sketched on a map. But what is being described is a culture. Is it helpful to give students a sense of place when an abstraction like culture is being discussed? You bet.

The purpose of the scheme is much more concrete than these theoretical points. It is the very practical- that users normally use noun forms in queries, not adjective forms. So- to achieve whatever slightly more perfect view of the ideally named category would be, you are willing for users to be able less able to find them?

That's a pretty heavy price to pay for correctness- even if your correctness is in fact correct. With physical reference points, novices can more easily navigate the cultural terrain. This is not a scheme to assert the superiority of one of 4 different interpretations over the 3 others.

It is a scheme that simply asserts that noun forms be used. If there is an exceptional case, then I am only requesting as I did of Enlil that you spell out what the basis for the exclusion is. Really, it's that simple.

If I may suggest the rationale- it would be to assert than in user queries, that "Roman" will likely be just as common as the noun form "Rome", and so there is diminished benefit from the change. How does that sound?-Mak 05:12, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

If I may jump in after a few days: Maybe the problem arose, because "roman" and "greek" in this context aren't places, but cultures. So applying a scheme designed for places may not be appropriate for them. --h-stt !? 18:15, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Easy now, tiger! You were the one who asked for a generalizable rationale, so I suggested one. It's obvious that such a rationale would extend further than what was originally being talked about, which is just a single instantiation.

"We can say that the play is from Ancient Greece even if it were penned in Alexandria by a Greek." No. It would be untrue, because the term 'Greece' (and its various equivalents in Latin, ancient Greek etc) meant something in ancient times — namely a place, which did not extend as far as Egypt.

And don't take this in a disrespectful way, but you're fooling yourself if you think users are more likely to search for "Art of the Byzantine Empire" than "Byzantine art". My point is that always privileging place-names (which are necessarily nouns) over ethnic or cultural terms is too inflexible... particularly for cases like Roman roads or Greek mythology, which can be found in abundance far from Rome or Greece. And yes, ethnic and cultural terms as a rule are adjectives (or else nouns that refer to people, like 'Roman', which most often are identical to the adjectival form anyway, apart from certain cases like 'Dane' or 'Spaniard').

Now, please let me say that in about five times out of six, your schema is probably going to be much better than not. For example, it's much better to say "dancers from Russia" than "Russian dancers", for a variety of reasons (they may not be ethnically Russian, they may perform styles of dance other than Russian dance, etc: in other words, "dancers from Russia" is much more precise). But what I'm saying is that it's a bad idea to assume that something that works better five times out of six has to be followed every single time. And one of the cases where it should not be followed is that of historical artifacts that antedate the nation-state. Or perhaps for 'cultural styles' more generally, to follow your schema (not sure though; I'd have to think about this some more). So I'm not saying we should throw your schema out the window, because it's a good schema on the whole; I'm just pleading for flexibility in applying it. QuartierLatin1968 18:40, 11 July 2006 (UTC) (PS: I wrote this answer before h-stt gave her two cents, but needless to say, I agree with them!)

I pressed the point for the sake of not having a wishy washy scheme. The fossilized expressions exception seems to cover all of the objections states here to date, so that is a workable safety valve. All of the objections made above concerning greeks and romans were excepted. And although I insist on clear rules, I am quite immoderate about insisting on moderation when applying such rules to real world situations.

Anyway, I am interested in mapping what folks use in search expressions which is the dominant method of finding information on the web. Users nearly always employ nouns, not adjectives. As for puny commons search, it has a rather sloppy stemmer so it conflates most of the adjective and noun forms together anyway, but more importantly, the principle doesn't matter because you have redirects, and so it will hit on both phrasings. For google, if the substitution is Roman civilization or Byzantine empire, then their is only a slight advantage in greater footprint for queries to hit on (if query terms have civilizaiton or empire). But you are right, there is little benefit to switching Byzantine. And there is only the normalized format benefit left, but that as I said can be addressed with redirects if anyone actually tries to do a commons search for roads of Ancient Rome rather than Roman roads.

I am not backing off on the notion that this scheme can cover cultures and styles, as stated in the scheme. We have talked about the popular categories that have fossilized expressions associated with them. Consider Kurdistan though. It is a culture that overlaps a place where those from other cultures also live. It is defined as a place though. Is it better to refer to those categories as Kurd or Kurdish? I say no, and start not from a classification correctness POV, but from a search utilitarian point of view. Because our job is to provide access routes from where people are coming from. If they are mumbling in only nouns, well by golly, make sure you map to their nouns well or all you will do is be assisting in keeping them ignorant concerning the subjects you are an expert in.-Mak 14:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Writings by language

Today I found the renaming notice on Category:Japanese writing. Please keep in mind that by language categories are excluded from renaming (see front page)! --Hämbörger 08:08, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

This was an oversight. I have tried to catche the language ones, but some slip through. This is the Language sense which is also a noun and these are excluded as specified in the scheme. I will specifically do a scan for any writing, language or pronunciations cats in the final list. -Mak 16:37, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Greek mythology

Hello,

The name of this category should be left unchanged, because "Greek mythology" it is the usual name of the topic, rather than "Mythology of Greece". Regards. Bibi Saint-Pol 13:24, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Same situation as "French revolution". It is virtually a noun phrase, which are expressly excluded. -Mak 16:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

MakBot shall pass over disputed categories.

My goal is the elimination of the bulk of the mess in the placename categories. There are about 1400 of them which are due to be normalized, so if a few dozen don't get converted, that is ok by me. I can see people's points on some of these disputed cat names, and it's not a big deal to me, so as far as I'm concerned, the Bot I run will not convert any of the specific category names that people have so far disputed.

So why should you continue to discuss the subject? Well not so much for the heck of it, but because it would benefit the scheme by strengthening it. If folks have time, I would appreciate if you could help out by suggesting a rationale for some of the exceptions. I know you are busy with other matters on your wikis and on commons, but input is very much appreciated.

-Mak

Category:Trojan War

Hi,

This cat should NOT be renamed, for the same reason as for French Revolution. 213.39.18.130 11:49, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps Category:Greek deities should not be renamed too. 213.39.18.130 11:58, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Trojan war-Done

Regarding Greek deities- I don't recognize that as a noun phrase. Is there some big deal about why this isn't Greek gods? That is a pretty recognized noun phrase. -Mak 14:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, gender. "Deity" explicitly covers both gods and goddesses, whereas "gods" is ambiguous: it might be gendered or not. QuartierLatin1968 18:46, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Thought so. OMG. (and I mean that in the genderless sense of the phrase.) OK. the MakBot won't touch it, but fair game if anyone wants to make a big deal about it not being a noun phrase. I really don't care. -Mak 20:15, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

(Not to split hairs, but I think you mean "fixed expression". "Greek deities" is, technically speaking, a perfectly good noun phrase. I believe you can also say "set expression" or "fossilized expression". QuartierLatin1968 23:04, 11 July 2006 (UTC))

Clarity is such a breath of fresh air on Commons. Thank you. Thank you. Had I been using it, my longer form "established noun phrases" was not clear anyway since a lot of folks don't really think about what noun phrases are (including me). Anyway, I am Guilty Guilty of sloppy terminology. I prefer fossilized expression because of the ambiguity of the other and have used this for the scheme. Regarding Greek deities, the bot shall not change it- nor shall it change any of the Roman [objects]. -Mak 00:20, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Culture

In general, I think that it would be better to use adjectives with cultures, such as Finnish culture (not Culture of Finland) or Italian culture (not Culture of Italy) etc. -Samulili 09:43, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

My generic response- Yes. If this were conversation, I couldn't agree with you more. But it isn't. We are setting up search targets, not trying to decide which phrase is

• most used,
• most familiar,
• more conceptually accurate.

I am not making this up: statistics are pretty lopsided in favor of noun forms used in internet search expressions. Sure, we love Finnish culture- do we want to insist on calling it exactly that if it means that 9 in 10 folks looking for an image of expressing Finnish culture cannot be found because Finland appears nowhere on the Image page?

I would call that loving correctness for its own sake, rather than loving culture so much that you would do what it takes to make it easier for people to illuminate themselves concerning cultural subjects.

-Mak 20:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Jump off today.

The assault on Adjectival Category names commenced this morning in the early hours.

The progress of conversion may be viewed on User:MakBot/AdvanceNotice2. Categories in the right hand column showing up in blue have been converted (excepting the few already existing cats).

Unsorted cat entries in collections of 'by country' categories This issue concerns aggregation categories like Poets by nationality. When the switchover is complete, followup cleaning runs will walk these trees to add the country name to the cat entry (EG: [[Category:Poets by nationality| Portugal]] for poets from portugal. I could have performed this as part of the conversion, but this way, I will also catch errors in already existing categories. -Mak 22:42, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:USA cinema

That category is planned here to be renamed in Category:Cinema of the United States.

This is not consistent with the categories Category:Films and Category:Films by country ; logically, we would have :

1. Films by country AND Films of the United States

   OR

2. Cinema by country AND Cinema of the United States

and so on for the other countries. --Juiced lemon 10:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Makbot is not enforcing any additional schemes with this conversion. I have run into many other inconsistencies such as this, and quite frankly, it looks like there will be well over my worst case estimate of 60K images affected by this one scheme alone. So this Bot is swamped with work as it is. If there are specific uncontroversial changes and you can enumerate what they should be and agree to compose the warning notice, I will look at them and undertake them as a follow project. But no promises- if they are disputed (excepting disputes from Mars), my bot won't run the change. How does that sound? -Mak 20:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't go in details and I have no idea about the right names for these categories. For the moment, I am looking at uncategorized items. --Juiced lemon 22:23, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

You'll notice that « cinema » is (also) a building in some countries (Category:Cinemas in Ottawa). --Juiced lemon 22:37, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Good point. That is not an unusual sense of cinema in the US and NZ either. So really to avoid ambiguity, the conversion shall be "Cinema of" to "Cinema from". I suppose since someone could shoot some "films of Japan", then it should also be "films from". -Mak 01:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Oddities

I note certain oddities about the process.

• Category:Army of Britain - it's called the British Army
• Category:Indian Army - that's its title
• Category:Indian Navy - that's its title
• Category:Opera of China - Chinese opera doesn't mean opera in China (similarly Category:Opera from Canton)
• Does Category:English literature mean literature in the English language?
• Does Category:French literature mean literature in the French language?
• Category:Finnish Bible means the Bible in the Finnish language
• And does not Category:Finnish books refer to books in the Finnish language?

Comments? Man vyi 14:32, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

And Category:Army of Australia - it's called the Australian Army. Man vyi 14:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how many times I can say this. This is not about changing names that are not accepted names. If we think that folks will more often search on Google and use the terms "Indian" "Chinese" or "French" than they will India, China, or France with some object, then we should use the adjectival form (eg. "Indian") in the category name. If you are concerned about searches on Commons, it doesn't matter because when they type in Indian Army, they will be redirected to the correct category. What part of this is difficult to understand?

It is irrelevant that people most often refer to Indian Army as Indian Army, or that it is more proper. In conversation I would certainly call it the Indian Army. Totally correct, but totally irrelevant. We are not composing literature here, we are composing search targets. One could also say, "this is a picture of some object from the army of India" Both are acceptable ways of refering to the entity. So what's the trouble?

-Mak 20:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not saying it's wrong - I'm just pointing out oddities. In the particular case of Category:Military of Australia there are subcats for Category:Royal Australian Navy and Category:Royal Australian Air Force (rather than Category:Navy of Australia and Category:Air Force of Australia) but now not for the Australian Army. I don't think pointing out the inconsistency is a failure to understand. Man vyi 08:28, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Finnish bible- Correct. This is language and was an error.

Finnish books. Note that Spanish books includes no books from latin america. Just Spain. I think this means Books from Finland. If it doesn't, then perhaps it should be renamed anyway, to Books in Finnish -Mak 03:22, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

• Category:Area stamps of Germany - are these stamps of German areas or stamps of areas under German control?
• Category:Military Road of Georgia refers to the road called en:Georgian Military Road (Военно-Грузинская дорога [Voyenno-Gruzinskaya doroga] in Russian, and საქართველოს სამხედრო გზა [sakartvelos samkhedro gza] in Georgian)
• Category:French Empire > Category:Empire of France - !?
• Category:Coins of the European Union isn't the same thing as Category:Euro coins
• If Category:First War of Indochina, why not Category:War of Vietnam?

Man vyi 17:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

• German area-> this is certainly wrong. I have no idea what the original creators meant by German area, so I choose to revert it back to original form and let someone who understands it perform a suitable noun form.
• Euro- This was an error too. Euro in this sense is like drachma's or ruble's and isn't an adjectival form of a geographic entity.
• Indochina <-> Vietnam. Original author referred to the broader region, and any such changes are outside the scope of this scheme.

-Mak 02:47, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Another stupid error I made was French Republican Calendar. It is back to normal now. -Mak 02:53, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Fashion of Greece

Category "Greek Fashion" should not have been changed to Category:Fashion of Greece , because a lot of times ancient Greek people did not live in Greece -- according to either a modern or an ancient definition of "Greece". If you insist on including "of" in the name, then "Category:Fashion of Greeks" would be better. Churchh 02:08, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

You confuse “fashion” with “clothing”, which is the subject of this category. Fashion does not especially concern clothing. --Juiced lemon 11:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Commemoratives of the United States

MakBot changed Category:United States commemoratives to Category:Commemoratives of the United States in a bunch of coin images. Since that category did not yet exist, I went ahead and created one as a subcategory of Category:Coins of the United States. However I think that the name should be more specific: Category:Commemorative coins of the United States would probably describe the category a little better. -- Nonenmac 22:45, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Byzantine art and Category:Byzantine architecture

Must be left because they are terms used i arthistory and in most of the litterature about the subject.---Nina- 20:58, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

This is the most common confusion about this scheme. Perhaps It should be one of the first or second statements. The purpose of the naming of the categories is to make the information more accessible to users. One might think that naming a category as most people refer to a particular would achieve that goal. But paradoxically, that is not correct. I have given a specific case in the British army cateogory renaming. I shall copy those threads here from my talk page. Consider the points and if you still feel strongly, please contact me on my talk page as I have not been patrolling this page regularly after completion of the conversion. -Mak 19:55, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I think this should be one of the exceptions to the rule. The terms Byzantine art/architecture are not used exclusively about the art of the Byzantine Empire; they are also applied to art from areas with close ties to the Empire and to art from the Ottoman Empire. The terms are not so much references to the national origin of the art (such as Art of Denmark or Art of Germany) but rather to the style (such as Baroque or Mannerism). They are not actually categorized under Art by area or Art by country, but under Art by period and Art by culture. Changing the name has in this case also changed the category into something that is quite useless, since it should now not include for instance the masterpieces of Byzantine art found in Italy. Cnyborg 13:59, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

This amounts to the position that "Placenames are not good for association with styles". I feel it is incorrect that it has any affect on Byzantine art in italy. Consider for example Cuisine from France. Can you eat a French dinner in New York? Can a person do Byzantine art (meaning art in the Byzantine style) in the 20th century? Of course. Is it still a style from the Byzantine empire? Sure. Is it useful to indicate the orgin of that style? You bet. But I agree that neither "art of" nor "art from" works as a conversion in the same way as "cuisine from" does. So it has to be something different than what it is, and I would rather not be byzantine about it.

A person could make the point that there is no benefit from a search perspective because "Byzantine" is in the old and new form. I am unconvinced that associating styles with place names is a bad idea, but since this has been disputed by more than one person, if someone wants to press the argument, MakBot will not take sides. I shall instruct MakBot restore the category the way it was, but do not agree that Byzantine art or architecture is entitled to an exception in the scheme, by reason of the statement that the scheme covers styles originating in a geographic location. -Mak 17:30, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

This reversion is now complete. Byzantine art is back the way it was. -Mak 19:36, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, and I enjoyed the pun. Cnyborg 01:33, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks ---Nina- 20:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Category scheme Threads copied from Makthorpe talk page

Cat' move

Hi there! I noticed Category:British Army was moved to Category:Army of Britain during the renaming process. The new title is wholly inaccurate and disregards the fact that "British Army" is the correct title (see [1]). I do hope this will quickly be resolved and the move, perhaps, reverted. Happy editing! SoLando (Talk) 09:25, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The intention of the Scheme is best spelled out by itself and on the talk page Commons talk:By location category scheme. I agree it is the best way to refer to it in an article or in conversation. Everyone knows it is the British Army and would use it in conversation that way. Categories are not conversation and one of the purposes of using nouns instead of adjectives is that this is what they use in search expressions. So when they are attempting to find a challenger tank for example, they will use the term Britain much more often than British. Certainly, we could use the more comfortable term British Army, but if it will result in far fewer people finding the pictures we upload, is that what we want? This is not an issue on the wikis because they normally have huge amounts of text associated with them, and the noun form will occur.

In any case, when anyone types in "British Army" on Commons, they will be redirected to the army of Britain. Same for the French, Russian, German, Indian Armies. Arguably, the United States Army already has the noun form but it also is being converted to the regular pattern that the scheme advocates should be used for all [objects] of [placename]. One mechanism of categories is to move from particulars to generalities, and after all, it is the army of the United States

Regarding the conversions, my general viewpoint is not hard line. If a category switch is disputed understanding what the scheme alleges is price of the use of such an adjective, personally, I'm probably not going to agree, but also I am not going to make the bot do the conversion. I will leave the interested parties argue out the matter. There was a two week warning prior to this conversion and it has already been done, but if you still have concerns after considering the subject let me know. -Mak 15:47, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm unsure that Britain is the predominant term used by those searching for articles/pictures/general information on the British Army. Googling alone accrues (obviously) more results for "British Army" than "Army of Britain" (many of which pertain to the Roman-era), but that's presumably irrelevant. To me, the use seems fundamentally odd/wrong, similar to changing a category like "United States Marine Corps" to <obvious new title>. Perhaps it is just me, but it's conceivable that the renamed category might be considered by some to pertain exclusively to the island (or Kingdom) of Great Britain (as was mentioned in the discussion at "By location category scheme"). The ambiguity would be preferably eliminated by adopting the more formal alternative "Army of the United Kingdom", comparable to Army of the United States (rather than Army of America ;-)). Still, I object to the original renaming, but it's not particularly important.

Unfortunately, I wasn't active during the 2-week notice period. I've been on an extended wikibreak over at en. and have rarely visited the commons since February. Anyway, happy editing! SoLando (Talk) 22:26, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh, without question people would use "British Army" rather than "Army of Britain". Do you think this is about such specific queries? I was refering to typical searches which are rather unfocussed. For example, someone wants to know about Montgomery or Mountbatten. So what do they do? They just put in the name and get tons of hits on Montgomery and even mountbatten (brailler and an institute. Ok so they want to narrow it down. They know these chaps were from Britain so they search {Mountbatten Britain) or {Montgomery Britain). For demonstration purposes, I narrowed it to commons so you can see the hit.[2] and [3]. Three days ago, you wouldn't get hits on either of the image pages listed for these queries, because the only "Britain" on these pages is from "army of Britain" category name. Now, we can make speculative statements about just how many people use Britain as opposed to British, but try the search with British and Mountbatten.[4] You still get the same hit. Or do a search on british montgomery [5] - 7 image pages. Why? Experts on the content use adjectives for the simple reason that they don't state the obvious. Of course they don't say Mountbatten or Montgomery is from Britain in the caption. Yet in describing their surroundings, there will be a lot of "British" objects laying about. So with the Mountbatten image they were at a "British Headquarters", you still have a hit on Britain even though the category name is no longer "British Army".

Do a cost benefit- Say you are right that 60% of the people would search for British mountbatten, or british montgomery. Ok, with the "incorrect" cat name of "Army of Britain" they get 7 hits on Montgomery. and 1 Image hit on Mountbatten. Now compare to the cost of the "Correct" "British Army" cat name. What do the 40% of people get if they say the chaps were from britain? Prior to this change, Zero in both cases.

Category	Benefits	Costs
British Army	Adjective searches no change	Zero Noun search hits
Army of Britain	Adjective searches none or negligible change Noun searches on Britain work	None

So really, there are positive benefit at zero cost to this change even if you don't think that people use nouns much more frequently than adjectives in queries.

Which they do, as many SIGIR research projects have found. -Mak 01:40, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't object to the move in principle and I'm not too inclined to persist with this. But "Army of Britain" seems far too casual (after all, it's subordinate to "Military of the United Kingdom" and "Army of the United States" understandbly won't be located at "Army of America"). Clearly it is considered to be incorrect in referring to the political entity of the UK. Yes, Britain is the common informal term, but so is "America/American". It's pedantic and disregards the convenience of using "Britain" in searches on the Commons, yes, but it seems so glaringly wrong. ;-) By the way, I never rejected the likelihood/possibility of people using such search terms, I merely said I was "unsure" ;-) SoLando (Talk) 12:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I am willing to run the bot to put it back as British Army if folks would rather that it be harder to get search hits subjects related to the British Army. I can imagine the US armed forces enthusiasts may be a little ticked off when the bot gets to their cats- eg. Air force of the United States may not have the whatever grandeur is associated with calling it the USAF. The general way of refering to it may seem too diminutive and common to some people's ears.

It is an unusual situation in internet search. Usually there is a lot of text and the differences between the language of the search target and the search query are not pronounced. I have been struggling with these differences by undertaking a few experiments (Info pages being another).

People who don't know about a subject and are doing searches to educate themselves understandibly use more feeble terminology than the people who know a lot about a subject. It is not an issue if there is a lot of text (not typical on commons, but typical in all the other wikis). It's not just because the tide of words has gone out and there is not the kind of word variety you would find in a typical wiki article. The other problem is that the purpose of text in image captions is to describe specifics- not to describe what those specifics are in more general terminology. Info pages are designed to transclude some general terminology on the specifics for an image, thereby enlarging the search target so that queries will hit on them. This mini project is normalizing the category names to use terms more frequently used in queries. It is certainly not a general solution to the problem for a number of reasons, but it may be affecting up to 100K images, so it may have some impact on getting commons images into search results. -Mak 16:19, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

As I said, I don't object to the move in principle. My primary objection is merely the use of "Britain". The British Amy is relevant only to the political entity and not the geographic, therefore using the informal term is incorrect. Would including text in the categories and articles themselves not circumvent the problematic issue of searches? For example, the "British Army is the land force of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", thus contains a number of search queries at a centralised location. Or would that not have a tangible effect? Either way, I suspect those who are interested in U.S subjects will probably be the most vocal and influential. :-) SoLando (Talk) 17:32, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Russian Empire

Please move back all content from Category:Empire of Russia to Category:Russian Empire. See en:Russian Empire, Google results for Empire of Russia and Russian Empire. --EugeneZelenko 14:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Please consider the thread immediately above that Solando started. Your confusion is the same as his. I completely and totally agree that "Russian Empire" is the more common expression and even that I as a native speaker I would use it far more in a conversation. Likewise with British Army. But as I pointed out to Solando, the purpose of the placename scheme is not to find the most common phrasing for a place. Indeed, it often creates more clumsy and unnatural phrases.

Please consider the points I made about the British Army. If you prefer that people not be able to find out things about the Russian Empire in the same way that they would not have search hits on Mountbatten and Montgomery above, then my question to you would be, why is it better to have a particular category name if it makes it harder for people to find things? We have had this conversation before. But now with google working it is no longer academic. It is better that people be able to search for commons objects from internet searchers and get more hits than it is to have the most comfortable descriptions of things. We should not be so inflexible that it condemns our beloved images to obscurity.-Mak 15:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I think will be much more easy to find images in category with more commons name. Please try to think about this again. Please don't invent a bicycle. --EugeneZelenko 15:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Easier? Why? The facts show you are wrong. If your position is taken, the Mountbatten and Montgomery images would not be found. They are today due to this change. Since you appear not to have read the earlier discussion as requested, please note that anyone typing in Russian empire will be redirected, so people can still use the more common expression just find. Consider the cost benefit table. If you prefer that images not be found via internet search, then I have to say your position baffles me. -Mak 16:20, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

We had discussion about relevancy. With current category name you will create huge number of images with relevant word Russia. But you'll create disadvantage for people who want to find images related to 2 centuries period of time in history of Russia, named Russian Empire. I feel that good idea to help people who want to find relevant information, not for those who want to dig further into big heap of irrelevant images. --EugeneZelenko 20:35, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Eugene. Please don't attempt to rewrite history. The discussion was about internet search and how it interacts with commons. You didn't think that text you regarded as "irrelevant" should appear on an image page. Ok. You reverted my version of the page[6] and Eugene, please don't be surprized about the outcome because I warned you. Because of your insistence on your phony characterization of it as a discussion of "relevance", it is still impossible to find ANY image of Zhukov on Commons including your brother's if they spell zhukov as they were taught in school: Eg: tr: Jukov[7]; nl: Zjoekov[8]; fa: گئورگی ژوکوف [9]; pl: Żukow [10]; sv: Zjukov [11]; de: Schukow[12]; zh: 朱可夫; fr: Joukov;. You can use any of those terms and you will get a hit on my category page- the only page with those transliterated transclusions. Why is it better that all of these people be ignorant about Zhukov? What exactly are you trying to accomplish with this stubborn refusal to accept change? None of these people of these languages can search on images of Zhukov because I bowed to your request in order to prove how mistaken you are on this subject.

Congratulations on relegating your brother's picture to obscurity. This is what I mean about loving an image to death and a misguided adherance to some esoteric principle regardless the disasterous outcome.

You had your way, and search hits do not occur on that particular image.

I am not optimistic that you have learned anything by your errors and in this case will insist on your way with this, and again I will bow to your request, and again it will mean that people will be more ignorant about Russia. It really is sad, Eugene, and I hope one day you will stop and think before you lash out. Your request will result in less information getting to people about the Russian Empire.

To the meat of this particular meal- You are asserting that there will be some loss of search hits, but have not provided any evidence of this. Eugene, unfounded conjecture is really not something to base an argument on. Did you read the previous case of the case of British army. Here are facts to ponder Eugene. Not speculation. Were we to believe your point, we would expect that there would be fewer hits on British army. But here weren't, and I explained why. Either you didn't read the prior case or you feel that somehow it will be different for the case of Russian Empire. So which is it, and why?

Really Eugene, I am perfectly happy to revert this for you to demonstrate again how sorely wrong you are.

P.S. Sometime do an image search on Страус [13] There is exactly one image on Commons waiting for you Eugene.

Think about it why that is so.

-Mak 06:50, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

You could do whatever you like. My POV is: Russia is very huge topic, so it's bad idea to search images for such generic terms as Russia. --EugeneZelenko 15:07, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

?? Britain is a huge subject. But (Montgomery Britain) returns a search hit out of mountains of search hits. Really this conversation would have been much easier if you had read and reflected on that previous thread.-Mak 17:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:United States Air Force

Please move the category back to Category:United States Air Force from Category:Air force of the United States. There is one air force of the U.S., and United States Air Force is its name. Shouldn't MakBot include a link to where this change should have been discussed? --Pmsyyz 07:04, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

1. Link to the scheme is on the User:MakBot page.
2. A warning was placed on the Category:United States Air Force page two weeks ago with a warning of the change, and a link to the scheme page, inviting comments.
3. The User:MakBot page also has a link to all other adjectival placename changes.
4. Multiple announcements of this renaming and the links to the scheme pages have appeared on Village pump over the past three weeks.

You are the first person to complain about the renaming of any military branches of the US to more generic forms similar to the generic naming for all other countries.

Incorrect, see Commons_talk:By_location_category_scheme#Oddities --Pmsyyz 09:27, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

You will find a similar observation to yours above. The name of the army of Britain is the British Army. The air forces of Spain, France, Germany, Finland, etc etc, plus the armies and navies are refered to in the generic.

Why should the naming for United States military branches be different than other countries?

-Mak 07:51, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

It shouldn't, it should be Category:United States Air Force for the same reason as Category:Royal Australian Air Force. --Pmsyyz 09:27, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the reason for Royal Australian and Royal Navy is that they are mistakes according to the scheme and should have been converted. The benefits of the conversion is the same principle as the Mountbatten and Montgomery examples of users not being able to find things due to the noun not being present.

You will notice that in the ships scheme, "Naval ships of the United States" has replaced the top of the naval forces hierarchy in place of "US Navy". The reason why is that there are and were naval forces that were not US Navy, such as CSS ships, coast guard, etc.

Those waves of strategic B-29 bombers flying from Saipan in WWII were not USAF. But they were certainly part of the air forces of the United States. Categories are meant to move from specifics to generalities- that is why specific names are much more constrained. I suspect a future scheme for air forces would say precisely the same for two reasons:

1. firstly as in the case of USAF prior to 1947, many countries had substantial air forces prior to their formal recognition as a separate military service- France's substantial air force in WWI was under the army, and though separated in the 1930s, is still called "Armée de l'Air". Germany and Japan has had multiple air forces, making a distinction between those of the Nazi's (Luftwaffe) and those of the emperor. (imperial forces as opposed to the self defence forces).
2. secondly, modern combined forces principles have made it necessary to combine air and sea forces with ground forces, so that all branches of substantial militaries have air units associated at the division level with ground units. With the dilapidation of the Russian strategic air force, the US Navy has air forces arguably more powerful than any other air force in the world other than the US.

But it is correct that this is a semantic shift and deeper organizational change and is best dealt with specifically with a scheme such as that for Ships. I am not the person to go to the mat over such fine points, so if you insist, because the USAF has the noun form in it, I would rather put it back the way it was and let folks hash it out a scheme for air forces at some later date. -Mak 17:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Burden of proof

What bothers me about the latest portions of this argument is that the entire rest of Commons apparently has to prove why the old system should prevail, and it seems to be wholly up to Mak to agree or not. We've got the prosecutor acting as the judge, and the burden of proof's on the defence. No offence here, Mak; I'm sure you're well-motivated in advancing this scheme. But where is the authority for imposing it, when there's clearly no great consensus in its favour? QuartierLatin1968 23:04, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

As for the general movement from Adjective to noun forms, there actually is a great deal of concensus in the community on that point. There was no objection at all on village pump when I announced it. Go ahead and search the archives. Over and over you will hear folks moaning about adjectival forms. But if you want to have a vote on it, feel free to propose one.

And there is nothing precious about this Scheme either. People have made improvements to it without consulting me or anyone else. Generally they are discussed here prior to the change, but whatever. That is the process of determining a scheme. There really has not been a huge lively debate like those on other schemes, but we don't have the population of some wikis.

Anyway, I make a big distinction between what goes in the scheme and what MakBot actually converts. I have stated over and over that if people have understood the arguements on the other side and still dispute a particular category rename, so long as they are not being frivolous, I will revert the change and let others hash it out. And I have done that in multiple instances. So what is the problem here? -Mak 23:54, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Politicians of/from country

(copied thread from User talk:Makthorpe) I noticed you bot-moved a number of categories of politicians to names like "Politicians from COUNTRY". There are however also a couple of categories named "Politians of COUNTRY" (see for example Category:Politicians by nationality). May I suggest that this be fixed (i.e. categories named uniformly, as far as possible) and that the "of" version be used. This because what you look for is generally where politicians hold office, rather than where they were born. Thanks for clearing this up.

Also, could you please use edit comments for bot runs, which makes edits a lot easier to understand. --139.18.1.5 17:10, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

As stated in the By location category scheme, the use of prepositions should be predictable as you state. The general rule with professions though, is that "from" is used. For example, Dancers from Russia. Where do they work now? New York, Paris, Rome- anywhere that can afford a world class dancer. But are they Dancers of Italy, Dancers of the United States, etc? No. See what I mean? Politicians is probably an exception and has some additional odd choices that are best decided case by case. Is Kofi Annan a Politician of the United Nations, or is he a Politician of Ghana? Ronald Reagan's fame was both as a leader of California state as well as the United States. So is he Politician of California or Politician of the United States? Anyhow, let me know if you still want them all Politician of, I will convert them that way. -Mak 03:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, you look at it from the point of professions by nationality. Speaking of Californian Governors, were do you put Schwarzenegger in your scheme (born in Austria, politician in the US, no politician in Austria (so far), dual citizenship)? You look at it from the point of professions by nationality (or origin), therefore, strictly speaking, he is a "politican from Austria". I look at it from the point of the general subject at hand, i.e. for me he is, broadly speaking, an "American politician", more specifically a "Governor of California" and, besides that, a native of Austria. I am sorry for bringing this up so late, but I only stumbled over this issue recently. Thanks for sharing your opinion. --139.18.1.5 10:31, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Yep. Naturally, we should take note of the type of location relationship that most folks would be interested in. In most cases for professions (especially involved in the arts hosted on commons), the locality from which they came is more important than where they found themselves in later life. But that blanket rule does not grasp the essense of the more general principle. Both Reagan and Hillary Clinton are Politicians from Illinois. Not especially interesting. The scheme only noted the more general type of case that like of Baryshnikov, Dancer from Russia. Saying he was a Dancer of New York doesn't tell you anywhere near as much. So the scheme needs to point out it is in no way a blanket rule to follow.

• So the principle we seem to agree on here is that the decision on "of" versus "from" should be based on deciding the location whose relationship is most important to the set being described.

If you agree, I'll add that to the scheme and change the Politicians cats accordingly. How does that sound? -Mak 16:23, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Deal! --139.18.1.5 15:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The long and short of it was that I should have thought a little more when I assigned all adjectival politicians to "Polticians from". Anyway, the bot is making these changes, and the scheme has been modified slightly to emphasize this principle that on the face of it is pretty self evident. -Mak 21:34, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Not a policy but a proposal.

I've changed the content of this article because it could be confused. This is not a policy, because it hasn't been voted by the Commons' community. I've made changes according to discussions from:

• Commons:Language for categories: General discussion about the language used in Categories.
• User:NielsF/Arbitration: Mainly about using endonyms for place names. Dispute related to Catalan name endonyms.
• Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Disputes/Catalonia: About conception related to Catalonia.

Feel free to change the article to add other generic proposals, specially those related with proper nouns in other languages. If you change something, please, add references from the related discussion in the list of above. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 09:48, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I've blocked the page because of reiterative reversions by Juiced lemon, who strongly supports one of the criteria (wp:en authority). --Joanot Martorell ✉ 10:01, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this is not policy yet, but guidelines on how things should work. More discussion is needed. Also a doctrinal use of English as the only language is not recommendable to me IMO and not suitable for the diverse Commons. Gryffindor 11:20, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

This is not a proposal, since Martorell replaced the previous text about place names. Proposals must be made without changing the current version. Therefore, I request the restoration of Revision as of 12:29, 26 January 2007 of this scheme, before Martorell's manipulations (this scheme is referenced in Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Disputes/Catalonia. He can write his non-consensual proposals in the talk page. --Juiced lemon 13:38, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Not a proposal, but a custom

I have restored the initial text (see this first version, Revision as of 00:32, 12 July 2006 by Makthorpe) regarding place names.

I don't know if this version was based on consensus, but there was most probably a large consensus to apply the instructions of the Place names as determined by En: Wikipedia section. In this text, the instructions are practical details of Commons:Language policy, a logical result of the Commons policy.

I agree on this interpretation, since English language is the language you can heard or read in books, articles, ads,and so on. That's to say an inseparable whole: you may not remove, from the English language, some place names which doesn't suit you; exonyms are part of this language, and the Commons:language policy obviously regards exonyms as well as other words of the English language.

Here, you'll find my arguments against a similar proposal. Some proposals seams to be pleasant when they are not explained in details, but in reality, they are unworkable. So, my opinion is: let approve the custom rules, because we know that they work. --Juiced lemon 14:00, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Statues of?

Should statues by place categories really use the preposition 'of'? I think 'in' would be better for those categories. As an example of why 'in' is better, consider en:Image:Statue of Paris.jpg. /82.212.68.183 10:33, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

You are right. This scheme clearly states that the proposition in have to be used for statues, with the Sculptures in London example (statues are sculptures). I support the renaming of the concerned categories. --Juiced lemon 10:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

People - of or from?

Please see the matching heading, dated about 20 minutes ago, at Commons talk:Category scheme countries and subdivisions. (Brief summary: 92% of the 460-odd "people/place" categories use "of"; is there a real move to change to the "from" style that is persuasively recommended here?) Robin Patterson 12:13, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

•  Comment Especially in cities where many people were previously from somewhere else, but to some extent most places, "of" seems in this case the more accurate option. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 00:56, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Adding location names to building names?

Hi folks, is there a naming convention for categories that states how to add a location name to a building name (when there are multiple buildings with the same or similar names in different locations)? In the categorization of churches – for instance – we find four different naming methods:

1. Building name (Location name) → Category:St. Michael (Litzldorf)
2. Building name in Location name → Category:Pfarrkirche St.Michael in San Candido-Innichen
3. Building name, Location name → Category:Michaelerkirche, Vienna
4. Building name Location name → Category:St. Michaelskirche Fulda

I thought that the commons standard is version no. 1, which seems to be the most often used form, see for example Category:Saint Martin churches or Category:Saint Mary's churches, but maybe that’s just coincidence. Any ideas? --Gepardenforellenfischer 08:11, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Location of/ in

If anyone is watching, could you please tell me what this sentence from the project page is meant to say.

• Location When [object] "of" [place name] means location in which the object may currently be found, then "in" shall be used.

I am/was trying to clean up the Reservoirs in/of England problem. The custom and practice here seems to be with of, using the precedent of Lakes of place. However we do have Dams in XXXX, does this mean that the Hoover dam could be moved to Zimbabwe? I look to the sentence above for help, I admit that I had assumed that when the feature was natural, it was of, and when it was manufactured it was in. -ClemRutter (talk) 18:05, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I have a similar question too...

Especially for geographical entities, people have been using "of" for years now on Commons. In the past, I've encountered a few discussions or even some guidelines/consensus topics on the subject. Anyway, people seem to be following this approach long before I ever discovered commons ;-) So it's mountains "of", lakes "of", rivers "of"... but houses "in", roads "in", etc...

Personally, I don't have a real opinion whether "of", "in", or even something else, is the most appropriate choice. BUT: it appears other people have had a good think about it in the past years, and apparently, they've chosen "of" for now.

So I don't think that should be taken lightly. However, it seems a few individuals have been using User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands or other ways to massively rename entire categories the last few days/week. It might be fine or a better choice, but I think that's something that should at least be discussed within the wikipedia community. I have seen discussions on the topic in the past years, so it seems people have chosen this category naming carefully... though I'm not sure !!

However, I haven't found any recent discussion agreeing that everything should suddenly be renamed. Or I might be missing the thing of course ???

So my question:

• Has there been a recent discussion and consensus on the subject (+ could someone link to it, and add the link in future move requests if appropriate).
• And if not, could people that have been working on the geographical category structures and names have a look, before things might get messed up? Regards. --LimoWreck (talk) 19:05, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Or is this whole usage of the preposition "of" for rivers, mountains, lakes, just something that's been left over from the old days, and just hasn't been cleaned up for now ??? --LimoWreck (talk) 19:36, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I usually prefer "of" instead of "in", but since both seem to be grammatically correct and unlikely to be confusing I would usually leave them alone. Category renaming often breaks a lot of interwiki links and in my opinion should be avoided in not necessary. --Jarekt (talk) 02:47, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

This problem in/of is long story.

• At the time, I thought, that "of" is better possibility and I changed them from "in" to "of", but will come this request User talk:Mircea#Category:Lagoons in Australia is correct.
• I accept, that "in" is better possibility and started with changes from "of" to "in" and problems are here again :Oo

Where is solution? This is not question for me, because english isn't my native language, but I want find bright and single valued rule. I don't prefer "in" or "of", I prefer uniformity! Mircea (talk) 12:37, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

True, but when things are set clear (be it a overall discussion, a clear guideline page, or whatever -- I don't know), you (or someone else) risk having to fix things again and again within a couple of months. That's why I'm asking around if there's actually some discussion or consensus to be found anywhere on commons so that we won't have to change this again and again and again in the future (indeed risking to make things hard for everyone, breaking interproject links to commons, etc...). If it can be explained clearly and unambiguous in a good guideline, everyone will at least have something to hold on to. --LimoWreck (talk) 22:20, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Can I ask again my original question, please? ClemRutter (talk) 22:01, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes you can ;-) But the answer seems to be that it's rather unclear for the moment how to name things, or what's preferred, if there's any preference at all ;-) --LimoWreck (talk) 22:20, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

• Exactly the answer I was seeking! I will be bold and make two proposals.

1. Delete the present advice Location When [object] "of" [place name] means location in which the object may currently be found, then "in" shall be used. and replace with Location When [object] "of" [place name] means a actually location then "in" is the preferred choice. Check for consistency with other locations in the container category. This should be done as a temporary measure. The wording reflects current practice.
2. The policy should be : When the feature is natural,'of' shall be used, and when the feature is manufactured, 'in' shall be used . This is more prescriptive and needs to achieve consensus- but seems to reflect the current category tree, and will force the least changes.The nuances of meaning between of/in are subtle and probably fluid varying with ethic origin, social class, time- so I believe that this pragmatic selection of a criteria is justified.

Naturally, I reserve the right to disagree with my own proposal, in the true tradition of this debate. ;-) Please discuss. --ClemRutter (talk) 09:51, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

 Agree Uniformity with least of changes - I like it. The wording is much more clear as well. --Jarekt (talk) 13:36, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Decisions ?

I don't mind making changes if we can converge to a simple and uniform rule. After all, withing one or two years, there will be 5 to 20 times more in/of categories, so the longer we wait, the more it will be difficult to impose rules. I am pretty much pleased with the simple and clear in/of rule of [[User:ClemRutter|ClemRutter], although the confusion of "Rivers in xxx" and "Canals of xxx" remains. But now we have to decide if:

• we follow that rule from now on
• we simplify everything and make "in" the standard
  • Mircea (talk) 14:55, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
• we simplify everything and make "of" the standard

Opinions ? --Foroa (talk) 11:52, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Other opinions? How will be result?Mircea (talk) 13:45, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I strongly support to unify all location prepositions of physical objects for both, natural and artificial, temporary and longterm objects, to one preposition. I prefer to keep the current proposal to unify all to "in". I strongly reject ClemRutter's idea to use one preposition for ponds and weirs and other preposition for lakes and rivers, it's confusing and absurd. --ŠJů (talk) 13:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Now that we are 18 months later, I support ClemRutter's proposal because it is more correct English (though more complex for non-natives), the current de facto standard, corresponds with the majority of the existing category names and their interwiki's, existing categories almost all correspond with the in/of ones on the en:wikipedia. Nowadays, we get 40000 new categories per month and there are relatively few mistakes against the in/of naming. --Foroa (talk) 14:54, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Is "De facto standard" the status which is built-up wilfully by yourself in despite of proposed rules as well as this discussion? --ŠJů (talk) 15:18, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Ponds

After discussion will finish, please uniform category: Category:Ponds by country. This is manufactured feature, then "in" would be there... Mircea (talk) 12:34, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

OK: Ponds and Lagoons: We have two cases where this object can be natural or manufactured- ponds occur naturally where the water table breaks the surface, and are manufactured to provide pleasure to ducks, and to power mills etc. With three exceptions, ponds have been classified as "of"s.

• The policy should be : When the feature is natural,'of' shall be used, and when the feature is manufactured, 'in' shall be used . ( When the category encompasses features that could be of either origin 'of' must be used. )

That should nail it down.:-} --ClemRutter (talk) 14:37, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

some categories is mixed (natural+manufactured) - this is problem. Mircea (talk) 14:16, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

To quote myself:- ´´( When the category encompasses features that could be of either origin 'of' must be used. )´´ ClemRutter (talk) 15:41, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Bodies of water

I think "in" is solution for all Category:Bodies of water by country and its subcategories. For example see non-uniform Category:Springs by country Mircea (talk) 14:59, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh what fun! Springs is an interesting mixed category. Springs is used as a translation of the German word ¨Brunnen", and to me they are completely different. A spring is a naturally occurance- but if I think of Brunnen then I think of a monument- a sculture that celebrated the spring. (That is when it is not "Well "). If I had to translate springs into German I would use Quellen.

Bodies of water is also an interesting category. All seem to have two subcategories- Lakes which use (of) and Reservoirs that use (in) see Category:Bodies of water in Ukraine. Some have other subcategories, look at Category:Bodies of water in Finland. There are two categories that I could not describe as a body of water- Streams because they flow and a Body needs to be static, and Water Transport. Streams adopts the (in) convention (you propose, I oppose). Slovakia has the Streams (in) but Rivers (of)- (here a river may be a water body, or not - it depends how fast it is flowing !!!) If is were so simple- I would agree with you!!! ClemRutter (talk) 16:34, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

See: en:Body of waterMircea (talk) 11:13, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

See: en:Talk:Body of water. I have to agree with the reservations. The definition doesn´t reflect reality. A pond is too small, a beck is flowing, rivers only can be included in their third stage. Now looking at the list, it really isn´t complete: For instance Penn, as in Sarre Penn, Dyke, as in en:Rucklinge Dyke, Broad as in en:Wroxham Broad, a Level as in en:Bedford Level a Fen as in en:The Fens, a marsh, a Moss- then a water as in en:Wastwater. An important Body of water was /is en:The Roads. We also have the language problem here no mention of a Habour ;-). Possible we should RfD this list, and construct some similar lists with a better title. -ClemRutter (talk) 18:25, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Solution is : to create Category:hydrosphere, Bodies of water, water streams and other (springs, waterfalls) will be subcategories. Mircea (talk) 14:00, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I have learnt a new word. Its not in my Pocket Oxford Dictionary, and my Chambers Twentieth Century says in means the ´´water-envelope of the earth- the seas the oceans´´ which I don´t think is what we mean here.

ClemRutter (talk) 15:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Reservors in ...

I can unify Category:Reservoirs as "Reservoirs in" (Ontario, Quebec etc). Please your opinion. Mircea (talk) 10:57, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

according to discussion above I will unify category Category:Reservoirs with "IN". This category contains only artificial lakes. Mircea (talk) 14:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Ponds in the Czech Republic

according to discussion above I will unify category Category:Ponds of the Czech Republic with "IN". This category contains only artificial lakes (called "Rybníky"). Mircea (talk) 14:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Ponds in Germany is same example - this are only artificial lakes (called "Teich").

On/Of, the discussion is continuing

Discussion copied from Commons:Undeletion requests/Current requests#Subcategories of Category:Rivers of the Czech Republic by region. --ŠJů (talk) 13:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

User:Foroa had proposed on 07:07, 15 May 2010 all 14 subcategories of Category:Rivers of the Czech Republic by region to rename and between 7:11 and 7:30 (UTC) he moved their content and deleted them. However,

• he didn't keep those categories as category redirects, although they are linked from Wikipedia articles and Wikipedia categorie and Commons rules recommend generally to keep moved categories as category redirects
• he didn't notice links to the new (replacing) category into the edit summary
• he didn't link a Commons rule or discussion which warrants such moving ("Incorrectly named" isn't a sufficient reason for this case)
• he didn't categorize the new categories, so that they are orphan categories and the Category:Rivers of the Czech Republic by region is empty
• he didn't move interwikis, descriptions and categories from the deleted categories to the new categories
• he didn't take out "seecat" templates from the kept (new) categories

What effect can have such negligent effort, without any discussion, without any consensus, in despite of all rules about deleting or moving of categories? I request to restore the deleted 14 categories at least as category redirects and either to finish the moving properly or to restore the status quo ante. And Foroa should be strongly admonished that without discussion can be made only unquestionable movings and that old categories mustn't be deleted, especially if the moving isn't properly finished and all links from outside aren't corrected. --ŠJů (talk) 01:13, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I just executed the move as requested by Mircea; [14]. Those wrongly named categories have been named by people from the Czech Republic (bot renamings instructed by Mircea too) with naming that are against the Commons naming rules. I avoided wasting my time in adding redirects in yet another rename of those categories. As I told Sju already, we are responsible for the move, that's all.

I did a mistake in that I did not remove the old redirects from one of the previous renaming rounds and I apologize for that. It was probably caused by the major backlog we had on the delinker. This should be arranged by now. --Foroa (talk) 01:54, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Note that we requested already several times to have the delinker bot insert automatically redirects, with no answer till now. --Foroa (talk) 01:57, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

You repeatedly mentioned some "Commons naming rules" but you have never linked them when you are asked. Do you mean Commons:Naming categories? Do you mean the text Commons:By location category scheme which is labelled "This page is a proposed Commons guideline, policy, or process. References or links to this page should not describe it as "policy"."? Discussion wasn't closed with clear consensus, that's why massed changes are counterproductive now. Btw. even this proposal says that location should be expressed by the patern [object] in [location name] You did a negation.

You ignore the recommendation Commons:Rename a category#Should the old category be deleted? in the long term. You ignore that Commons have relations to many other projects and that every moving without retained redirect breaks links from sister-projects and from outside. Please stop all changes which evoke more damages than benefits. We should correct clear naming errors, not force some unconsensual personal preference. --ŠJů (talk) 03:48, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I restored the categories so that you can see for your self that they all haved moved against the naming conventions. --Foroa (talk) 05:26, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't waste my time for making redirects that cover for names that blatantly violate commons naming rules and that only confuse HotCat users. (Commons:Category redirects suck) --Foroa (talk) 05:48, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

It seems, you are who violates commons naming rules and other Commons rules. The proposed rule is location should be expressed by the patern [object] in [location name]. The current rule is: moved categories shouldn't be deleted if they aren't mistaken. --ŠJů (talk) 13:00, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

And what nonsense you made now? It's necessary either to finish the moving properly or to restore the status quo ante. What halfway treatment you created now? I see 28 categories instead of 14 categories and 14 category redirects. --ŠJů (talk) 13:05, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Dear ŠJů, the rule states "When [object] "of" [place name] means location in which the object may currently be found, then "in" shall be used." A river is not currently found in a region. It is in that region permanently; you cannot pick up a river and move it somewhere else. So "of" is the appropriate preposition to use for categories of geographical objects. The correct resolution to this conflict would be to use a bot to categorize the "of" categories and change interwikis from "in" to "of", and then delete the "in" categories. All river categories here use "of"; there is no reason for the Czech Republic to get a special exception. — Tetromino (talk) 18:46, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Dear Tetromino, "currently" don't mean "temporarily". River surely can be "currently found" at its place and in its region just like a pond or a building. The table with 4 types shows clearly that location should be expressed by "in". Therefore, the rule says that "in" should be used in case of rivers. I think, region of the river is neither local origin nor a cultural style. The proposed rule don't differentiate between temporarily and pemanently findable object but between location and origin. Btw, the rule says: Existing prepositions that are uniformly used in current sets of category names shall be retained unless they are ambiguous or unless the impact of the change would be minor. Isn't desirable that one user has moved categories according the proposed rule (of → in) and other user will move them backwards (in → of) according his own preference. The original moving was performed in times where the location prepositin was beeing unified as "in". Why now the unification to break and to make an useless two-appearance when the discussion given more support to uniformity?

In the discussion as well in the rule proposal was distinguished four types: 1) current location, 2) origin, 3) products of a culture associated with a Geographic entity and 4) style which originated in a geographic location. Rivers fall clearly into the type number 1). As summarized pfctdayelise on 03:08, 29 June 2006 without any controversy: For physical entities "in" is better. Consequently were many categories moved from "of" to "in". This problem was reopened in November 2008 (Commons talk:By location category scheme#Location of/ in) by users which was confused by disunity of use and by the word "currently" in the rule proposal. LimoWreck (19:05, 10 December 2008) was noticed that there is "of" more preffered for mountains, lakes and rivers and "in" for houses and roads, and that massive bot-done changes (of → in ?) was made by "few individuals" without community discussion. Jarekt (02:47, 11 December 2008) noted that "Category renaming often breaks a lot of interwiki links and in my opinion should be avoided in not necessary". User:Mircea (!) (12:37, 11 December 2008) wrote that he was changed categories from "in" to "of" but when he was adviced that "in" is correct, he accepted that "in" is better possibility and started with changes from "of" to "in" and problems are here again. He closed: "I don't prefer "in" or "of", I prefer uniformity!" ClemRutter (09:51, 12 December 2008) was who brought the proposal into discussion that "When the feature is natural,'of' shall be used, and when the feature is manufactured, 'in' shall be used ." But this proposal wasn't approved by clear consensus, wasn't included into the rule proposal page and is discordant to uniformity request. Jarekt (13:36, 12 December 2008) agreed with a reason: "Uniformity with least of changes" "Least of changes" was the reason why make an abatement from unified "in". Foroa (11:52, 15 December 2008) wanted to "converge to a simple and uniform rule" and to simplify and unify all locations to "in" or all to "of", Mircea (14:55, 16 December 2008) given his support to "simplify everything and make "in" the standard" (and repeatedly 14:59, 16 December 2008 for all bodies of water) and noted (14:16, 7 January 2009) that some categories are mixed (natural+manufactured).

As I can see, the idea to make distinction between "natural and artificial" was only a solitary and controversial thought asserted only by ClemRutter, while most of others preffered to unify all locations to one preposition: most of them (pfctdayelise and Mircea) preffered "in". Jarekt preffered "Uniformity with least of changes (interwiki links mustn't be broken)". Then, outcome of the discussion is:

1) no useless changes which broke iterwikis

2) if mass changes then approved by discussion and clear consensus

3) if mass changes then from "of" to "in" and with correction of interwikis from wikipedias

And I'm also supporting those three principles. Foroa in case mentioned above (rivers by region) disrupted all three of them. If this consensus isn't sufficient because one user (ClemRutter) rejected unification, we should avoid mass changes, not to infringe prevailing opinions in order to satisfy an isolated proposal. --ŠJů (talk) 13:32, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

End of part moved from Commons:Undeletion requests/Current requests#Subcategories of Category:Rivers of the Czech Republic by region. --ŠJů (talk) 13:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

In and Of, music

If an Italian bel canto opera singer performed a concert in Detroit, is no doubt "music in Detroit", but is it accurately "music of Detroit"? If W. C. Handy went from Memphis TN to New York to record "the Memphis Blues", it would seem to me to be "music OF Memphis" but "music IN New York". Rejecting use of "in" for the sake of uniformity seems to lose some nuance and accuracy. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 00:52, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree. Perhaps there should be an exception for performing arts (not only music, also dance and many others). Make a difference between the location of the performance ("in") and where the performance artists come from. --JopkeB (talk) 09:11, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

@Infrogmation: Even if I understand what you're saying, I've got to disagree with you. If you're not satisfied with the "Music of..."/"Dance of..."/"Theater of" pattern, there are already numerous subcategories which can be used for a better accuracy and to keep a consistent category scheme (eg. Music performances in New York City, Music venues in New York City, Recording studios in the United States,...) The same thing applies to other performance artists as well (Dance events in the United States, Theatre festivals in the United States,...) Synthwave.94 (talk) 13:01, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Good suggestions, thank you. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 17:24, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

What about subcategories of Category:Music? Music education, Music events, Music stores, Music venues, Musical genres: many of their subcategories are "in" a country. It is odd to have a parent category with "of" while they theirselves are "in". Or should they all be changed to "of"? For me they are "in" a location, not "of". The same for other performing arts. --JopkeB (talk) 07:55, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

@JopkeB: As per "Preposition choice", "when [object] "of" [place name] means location in which the object may currently be found, then "in" shall be used". "In" is therefore appropriate for music education, events, stores and venues, considering they are subcategories of education, events, shops and buildings, respectively, which also use "in" (eg. Education/events/shops/buildings in New York City).

I'm not quite sure about music genres, however. Some music genres come from different places (suck as punk rock, coming from both the UK and the US) while the 8 subcategories found under Music by country by genre almost seem to use a different preposition for each genre. I guess the best choice would be to use "of", like the parent category itself. Synthwave.94 (talk) 05:18, 12 November 2021 (UTC)