File talk:Bernard Rohrbasser (1981) by Erling Mandelmann.jpg

Over-categorization

As I explained in the edit comments, Commons:Categories states that the subject of the image, and not all content of the image should be included in the categories. This photograph is of Bernard Rohrbasser, who it seems was a Swiss prefect in the district of Veveyse. It's clearly of a man with two horses. The necktie, however, is a minor element of this photograph, just like the man's moustache, eyes and nose, the roofs in the background or the bridles on the horses. Just as none of those items are worthy of categorizing the image, neither is the not-totally-visible necktie. - Themightyquill (talk) 19:04, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it's the other way round: one category should have one topic, not several.

If you look into Category:Men wearing neckties you will notice that there are several images of people otherwise categorized in subcategories of Category:People by name:

• 
  Erwin Huber
• 
  John Lasseter
• 
  Allen Ginsberg und Peter Orlowski
• 
  Gulio Andreotti

All are correctly identified as men wearing neckties.

It could be overcategorization, if Category:Men wearing neckties was a subcategory of Category:People with horses, but obviously not everyone depicted with a horse wears a necktie. --  Docu  at 11:39, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

And in each of those images, the tie in question takes up a great deal more of the image than the one in this photograph. My point isn't that the categories were in conflict, but that the tie is not a relevant part of the image. - Themightyquill (talk) 17:27, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Ok, so we agree that there is no "overcategorization" as such. The question is just if the image is suitable for "neckties" or at least "Men wearing neckties" and meets the definition of the category "Men wearing neckties".

The actual percentage of the image covered by a feature isn't a factor. The question is if it can be seen when viewing the image. The tie in the image of "Andreotti" takes of less pixels BTW.

Personally, I think it's a more interesting addition to Category:Men wearing neckties as at least 3 of the other images listed above a more standard views of "Men wearing neckties". Given the context (Category:People with horses), the necktie is a noteworthy feature. --  Docu  at 04:21, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I guess "overcategorization" as it's used by the commons guidelines might be more suitably called "category overlap", which isn't a problem here. My concern is that we end up with categories like Category:People with hats which inevitably become overfilled. I'm not convinced that Category:Men wearing neckties would be a useful category if it contains all the images in Category:Lounge suits, or a vast number of the 2000+ images in Category:Portrait photographs of men in which neckties appear, but are not featured. I'm not going to add this category to all of those images, but logically I could, and I think that's a problem. - Themightyquill (talk) 15:45, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I think Category:People with hats is a helpful category. It's easy to add (everyone can quickly decide if it applies or not). As wikis are not paper, categories us such can't ever be "overfilled". Obviously as Commons grows that number of images on every conceivable topic grows. One just shouldn't feel overwhelmed by them.

For those seeking to categorize hats further (e.g. in Category:Hats by type), Category:People with hats allows them to work on a pre-selected set of images (they don't need to scan other images for hats). --  Docu  at 05:35, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not a matter of wiki not being paper, it's a matter of quality control and usefulness of categories. Someone in search of a good image where the subject is a man wearing a tie shouldn't have to look through 2000+ images that happen to contain men wearing ties somewhere in the photo. I assume creating Category:Images in which a men wearing ties are the subject of the image wouldn't be appropriate. Diffusing the category with Category:Men wearing ties in France wouldn't help the situation either. - Themightyquill (talk) 20:31, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

It's still not clear to me why you think this image isn't one of man wearing a tie. What you might consider quality might just be stereotyped ways of taking pictures.

I don't think there is anything wrong with having more images to choose from (2000+ is better than 200+).

I agree that Category:Men wearing ties in France is somewhat pointless, but one could sort ties easily by topical criteria: type, knot, color, fabric etc. --  Docu  at 03:48, 27 May 2011 (UTC)