Enyavar
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My own special interest is maps and cartography. As such, I do a lot of categorizations to move maps away from Category:Unidentified maps, a category that had nearly 8000 entries at the point when I first came into contact with it. My principle there is to identify a map as closely as possible, and not locate it in just the next best category, like "Maps of Asia" when it is in fact a Map of Provinces of Pakistan, or a Metro map of Hanoi. An exception is a move towards Category:Old maps, which is in fact just a synonym for "Old Unidentified Maps". That means I'm shelving stuff for later, not that it is done categorizing.
Expected FAQ: Re-categorization efforts - what am I doing there?
| Going after your uploads - why do you get all the notifications? |
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| So, why did I suddenly pick dozens of your maps and/or other files that you uploaded and why did I maniacally categorized them all in one day, or over the course of a week or a month? (Or worse, deletion-requested all/half/a lot of them, see below.) Why did I focus on YOUR work? Am I mad and obsessed with you, do you need to be concerned about me stalking you? Answer: No, I just think it is easier that way: I recognized that you uploaded lots of stuff and that it wasn't yet properly categorized (to my standards). I found out that it's just plain inefficient to just categorize one of your maps, and find another one later and then categorize that one, and then much later find another one or two: Each time, I have to find out what the map was about, where 'your' region is, and what 'your' topic is. (Most people do have regions/topics, believe me). Doing the categorization successively from your entire upload list at once saves a lot of people (or possibly just me) the work to go through all of them later individually, and I have the context of your other stuff right then and there as guidance. For example, sometimes people upload just a copyvio GoogleMap of their village and three fotos of the same village: After the map gets deleted, nobody can locate the images anymore, and they will never get properly categorized! That is why I go routinely after the upload lists, and that's what these are there for. |
| "Old maps" vs "Maps showing history" |
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Okay, this is an established principle in the category tree, but not fully understood by many:
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| "Old maps by decade" vs "Old maps by year" |
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| Okay, this is a tricky one. I am regularly moving files into parent categories (by decade or even by century), after they were painstakingly scattered into child-categories (by year). So, why would I do that? The answer is that we are using categories in Commons to group similar maps together, in this many cases maps from a similar period in time of the same region. Separating them into single-file categories runs counter to that idea of grouping. Let me expound on a fictional example: The category "Old maps of Nottingham" contains seventeen files, showing various maps of Nottingham from 1506, 1612, 1718, 1824, 1892, 1898, 1899, 1904, 1907, 3x 1915, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1942, 1948. In my opinion, that is a great category. And then there are users who think it is even better to break it up and create a subcategory for each year: "1506 maps of Nottingham" (with one file), "1612 maps of Nottingham" (with one file), and so on. Probably, they also use decade- and century-categories as well, and after "ordering" the category in such a way, they leave the place of destruction with a sense of having done their duty; and whoever wants to browse "Old maps of Nottingham" has to open category branches and click a hundred times to look through seventeen maps, if they use the category tree. I do hope that this sound like madness to everyone who reads this. But, this is done. Not in the case of Nottingham, but for example in the case of "Old maps of Serbia". Sure, I expect that for an entire country, there are a lot more maps around, than just for Nottingham. And there sure are. But if you look for "1505 maps of Serbia" and "1506 maps of Serbia": How many maps do you expect to find on Commons? If there is one, it may be sitting lonely in the "1506 maps of Serbia" category, which is again sitting lonely in the "1500s maps of Serbia" category, which is then sitting with ten other similarly "full" categories within the "16th-century maps of Serbia" parent category. Again, I say this is madness. When there are many dozens or even hundreds of files in the parent category, or when there is a group of several files standing out: then I concede the case there is a reason to create new subcategories. But. not. for. single. files. Period. |
| Why am I removing categories of things that are indicated in a map?? |
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| For example, why did I remove the "Maps of Tibet" category from your world map which clearly depicted the Himalayas? Or remove the "Maps of Lithuania" from after you already added that category to an old map of medieval Europe? To everyone who has never seen such categorizations: don't laugh that off! There are a lot of old maps of Europe where patriots from smaller countries apparently felt the need to point out that in "these many ancient maps, there is actually an inscription that notices the presence of my little country"! This is a regular case with Bosnia, Lithuania, Armenia, Tibet, Kosovo, but even certain cities: Lhasa is actually labelled in a 1896 world map? Quick, this is a "19th-century maps of Lhasa" entry! Here's my point: Ugh, don't do that. There is such a thing as over-categorization, and if every label was worth a category, each map would have thousands of meaningless categories. There are of course less sinister cases, but in the end we're in the same place: Take any map that shows the whole Caucasus. Of course, it necessarily shows the areas of the three currently independent states of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. But that doesn't mean we need to point out that belongs into "Maps of Georgia", "Maps of Azerbaijan" and "Maps of Armenia". Or even include Dagestan, Circassia, Chechnya, Ossetia, Abkhazia, Russia, Turkey and Iran, each with their own category! It is simply a "Map of the Caucasus". In the same way, we don't need to categorize generic "Maps of the Balkans" with each single country that happens to be on the Balkans. Not even when it's a 1506 map of the Balkan, and you as a patriot are very excited to point out the faint label "Servja" with a "1506 maps of Serbia" category. The same applies to "Old maps of Scandinavia" (no need to point out Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland...) or "Old maps of the Holy Roman Empire" (no need to point out the arch bishopry of Heydelbergh, and no need to point out that there is a label of "Poland" at the eastern borders). Please think of the people who will eventually browse the category that you filled with all the clutter: While I am still writing this essay, "Maps of Lhasa" is filled to the brim with maps of India, maps of China, maps of entire Asia and old world maps. And very, VERY few actual maps of Lhasa. |
| What about those species maps? |
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| Maps that highlight an entire country because a species is endemic there, are a pet peeve of mine. They are in my opinion profoundly useless: Yes, the Siberian tiger occurs in China and Russia and was previously endemic in the whole Korean peninsula. That does not mean that a map should highlight all of Russia and China in tiger-orange. Animals and plants don't believe in national borders, they distribute along habitats. If there is no specific area you can show in a map, it is better to just list the countries where a species occurs, without making maps that just produce false statements. |
Another FAQ: Deletion requests - why did I nominate your files for a deletion?
| Why did I nominate multiple files for deletion? |
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| In short: I am not after you, but found some of your content deletion-worthy. See also the other answers in this section, but please also notice the section "Going after your uploads?" under "Re-categorization efforts" above. There is some overlap between deletions and recategorization, when done systematically from the Upload list, which is something I sometimes do. |
| "GoogleMaps CopyVio"? |
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| Oh no, I made a deletion request on YOUR map, which YOU created in many hours of WORK with nice lines and your logo on it, by using a screenshot of Google/Bing/Yandex as a backdrop! Answer: For the polite version, please check out our help page on copyright. And here is my blunt take: Sorry, the problem is not your great work, but using Google as your base map: Google owns copyright on their maps, because the company either bought the aerial photographs, or conducted street surveys with their (in?)famous cars. However they got it, they own their map data, and they definitely own their drawing style. Which is why Google Maps are not allowed on Commons. (Period!!) You should have used the free-to-use OpenStreetMap as your basemap, which as CC3 is compatible with the rules on Commons. Or you might have used basemaps that were pre-produced here on Commons for the very purpose of mapping. There are lots of options. |
| "Fantasy map"? |
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| Oh no, I made a deletion request on YOUR map, which you painstakingly drew of your fantasy world! Answer: Please read Commons:Scope first, then let me continue: a bunch of fantasy maps is uploaded every other day on commons, and the creators tag them as "Maps". Category:Maps is moved regularly into the Unidentified maps, and then a few people like me get to decide how your map gets identified. And frankly, I have seen my fair share of fantasy maps, there are many webforums dedicated to the concept, and 95% of the fantasy maps I see here are not really the great works you might find in site like the Cartographers Guild. All maps that are a) not of a well-established fictional world and are b) not aesthetically pleasing to me, get deletion requests instead of the Category:Fantasy maps (which might also need a clean-up, but I'm not feeling especially motivated most of the time). There is of course the exception for fantasy maps from published works: these are acceptable, please state the title of the publication in the description, and they are to be kept unless they violate copyright. For example, an original map of "Forgotten World" (the A.C.Doyle novel), is a fictional map but within scope. However, fictional world maps may later be deleted by other people, if they are infringing on copyrights of D&D, StarTrek, JRR Tolkien and GRR Martin. But that kind of CopyVio is not something I patrol for, usually. |
| Maps and flags of micronations and alternate elections... |
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| Oh no, I made a deletion request on YOUR alternate-reality world map AND your fictional flags related to that map! Answer: Please see first: SCOPE, which has the polite version. Please understand what is said there. But here's my slightly less polite take: At this point I don't really care all that much anymore about fictional flags of micronations and proposed rebel movements. There are fancy flag-designers in Italy or Massachusetts, and "rebel" cartographers sitting in Ottawa or Osaka that outline the border claims of sixteen "indigenous independence movements within China/Pakistan/Congo/Russia" in a row... While the actual indigenous minorities in China/Pakistan/Congo/Russia apparently couldn't care less about a new graphics made in their name, even if they feel opressed or whatever. And don't get me started about the micronation-flags and -currencies that are recognized in one flat in London. That bullsh_ has to be purged from Commons. I approach the tens of thousands of "alternate-reality-Cuban-superpower map" and "inverted-Earth-dinosaur-empire map" and "fictional-duplicate-Sicily-in-the-Black-Sea map" just the same, and I am sorry I didn't do so more radically in the past! Because this stuff is "out of scope" for even most fan-fiction forums, and has nothing to do with possibly educational content. |
| Map Forgeries |
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| I have a particular beef with "historical" maps that are either forgeries, modern territory falsifications or some other kind of irredetentist claim that <YOUR ancient motherland> owned a lot more territories a thousand years ago, than it really did according to historical sources. Like, Go-Joseon ruling over the Amun river basin and stuff. Sadly, a lot of these maps are "In-Use" and thus don't get deleted, and instead increase the level of mis-information of regular WP readers. But whenever I find egregious examples, I either mark them as what they are (inaccurate!) or file deletion requests. Note to self, there is the {{Hoax}} template, the {{Disputed map}} template... Sometimes, deletion procedures work, for example in the cases of "Ancient Singrauli" and "Real Suriname". |
Note:
currently also active in de-WP, en-WP, (formerly and in the future maybe, in fr-WP, de-WS)
- Karten-Galerie
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