Wikimedia Commons

Category talk:Scientific journals

Latest comment: 8 years ago by Spiessens in topic Explanation of move request

To merge the categories Category:Scientific journals and Category:Images from journals is not really a good Idea, because there are whole books in some subcategories and some categories containig a whole book with text, contain a subcategory "Images of book xyz". --Kersti (talk) 10:00, 10 August 2011 (UTC)Reply

It makes the names longer, which is against good practice. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:02, 5 September 2011 (UTC)Reply
 Oppose: I do not think we should assume that the content of "Category:Scientific journals" is going to comprise entirely of images. I can envisage that editors may want to upload PDFs or DjVus of scientific journals that are in the public domain. Images should be in a subcategory called "Category:Images from scientific journals". — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 06:52, 6 September 2011 (UTC)Reply
Comment "I do not think... is going to" is not generally regarded as sufficient justification for establishing new categories. First, there should be so much content it becomes inconvenient. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:12, 21 September 2011 (UTC)Reply

 Oppose Having read the discussion below i have arrived at the same conclusion that i had in my gut when i've stumbled upon this proposal. Firstly, not all journals are scientific, there are literally journals for example. Isn't there a Science Fiction journal? Secondly, there truly is a large difference between 'Images from' somewhere and 'Media representing' some topic. A diagram showing a common peer review process for example can fit nicely in the Category:Science journals even if it was created by some user's pet cat with no publications. And lastly, if an image has been extracted from a science journal, and has lost all the relevance to that journal by having been cleaned up from the formatting of that journal, there's no reason to keep it in the Category:Images from journals (or Category:Scientific journals for that matter). Beta M (talk) 20:03, 28 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Explanation of move request edit

Latest comment: 8 years ago12 comments6 people in discussion
@Kersti: First of all, the category you mentioned is not called "Images of book xyz" but it is called Category:Images from books. When there exist images of whole pages of books, they are categorized in the Category:Images from books.

Why the following images should be in the same category?

  •  
    Image of Bubo from some book
  •  
    Image of the whole page from some book
They are not. One is in the main category for the work, the other is in the derivatives category for that work. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:12, 21 September 2011 (UTC)Reply
@JackLee:The same situation is with journals and their images. (PDFs and DjVs should be in the same categories as images, because separate images (instead of extensive PDFs) are usually and generally preferred for use in Wikimedia Projects. But for simplification PDFs can be in same categories as images.)
Do we have that many alrady? Then it's simple: "Category:PDFs from journals", and then make any subcategory that is large enough. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:12, 21 September 2011 (UTC)Reply

Overview of things:

  • Publications
    • Books
    • Journals - look at en:Journal for terminology, "professional magazines" = scientific journals
    • Magazines - look at en:Magazine
    • Newspapers

Consider, that "journals", "magazines" and "newspapers" are also "periodicals" = "periodical publications". And also "serials" are a type of periodicals. So the category name Category:Serials, periodicals and journals can be simplified according to the names above. All images that are categorized in Wikimedia Commons in category/subcategories Journals are are from scientific journals. Other images are categorized in Magazines. Therefore it is proposed to merge this Category:Scientific journals into the completely duplicte Category:Images from journals.

  •  
    this is image of journals
  •  
    this is image from journal depicting its front page
  •  
    image from journal depicting some inner side
  •  
    Image from journal

So it is possible to conclude that categories can be simplified for example like this:

Somebody would argue, that shorter name "must" be better. Shorter does not mean more simple. I do believe, that according to the Commons:Categories and Commons:Naming categories and the sense of these guidelines, categories "are categorized according to their subject" (I have explaned above that these images are from journals, not of journals), categories should have "unambiguous names", should have enough Modularity (for example there is possible to precisely categorize also audios and videos Category:Videos from journals such as File:S7-PMNs Dragging Conidia in Media.ogg in the Category:Videos from PLoS Pathogens instead of Category:Images from PLoS Pathogens), and so on. (Similar inconsistency is also for example in Category:Images from encyclopedias 25 subcategories contain Images from ... and 17 subcategories contain the name of the encyclopedia, but at least that these subcategories are in single unified category.) --Snek01 (talk) 09:41, 6 September 2011 (UTC)Reply

You are mistaken: en:KISS principle. This is a general good-practice rule. You are excused for having apparently no experience with programming, things like setting directory and file names - but believe me, anyone who does is alternately laughing and facepalming at the crappy, verbose and obfuscated naming schemes which have been creeping up on Commons as of lately.
The problem gets worse due to the fact that English has become the default language on Commons. For all people who do not have English as first (or even second) language, it is mandatory to keep naming as simple as possible and category trees as short as possible. That much was clear when we choose to go "English first". Even a single extra word is technically a violation of the idea underlying Commons and Wikimedia as a whole - which is providing easy access to noncopyrighted online content, no matter who you are or where you are and what language you speak (see also en:WikipediaManual of Style/Accessibility).
Howewever I completely agree with your remark on "Videos from journals".
Proposal: Create Category:Videos from journals and put everything in it that is not aleready in a "Category:Videos from [journal title]" Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:12, 21 September 2011 (UTC)Reply


I was invited to comment this discussion. Thus:
  • I strongly support to keep the distinction between category of any publication and a subcategory of images from such publication. I support arguments given above by Kersti a JackLee. Category:Scientific journals and Category:Images from journals are two quite different categories which can have their common subcategory Category:Images from scientific journals but shouldn't be merged. The category of the book or magazine can contain e. g. photos of the editorial meeting, autograph session or launch ceremony, photo of the chief editor, editorial office, scan of a review article or a graph of number of copies or readers. One specific subcategory can be a category of scans of the publication by page, a more specific subcategory is a category of images from the publication.
  • The words "Images from..." were ever understood as "that what was an image in the book or magazine and is extracted from it". A scan or a shot of a whole text page aren't "images from book/magazine" but rather "images of book/magazine" and are equal to pdf files, even though they have some technical format as pictures (jpg, png, gif, tif...). The words "Images from..." mean primarily theme (content) of the file, not its technical format.
  • I don't think that "journals" is a synonyme of "scientific journals". Journals is a word of substantially broader meaning. It's usefull to have specific separate category of "scientific journals". However, I'm not sure about the relation between "Scientific magazines" and "Scientific journals". Should be scholarly journals together with science-popular magazines? Is this distinction ever clear?
  • The idea to simplify the category name "Serials, periodicals and journals" to "Periodical publications" or simply "Periodicals" is rational and should be discussed - but on the appropriate discussion page, not here. Maybe, it was discussed once - here or at en:wiki?
--ŠJů (talk) 16:23, 8 September 2011 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I think it may be a good idea to start a discussion on renaming "Serials, periodicals and journals" to "Periodical publications" or "Periodicals". I don't know if this issue was previously discussed at the English Wikipedia. The best way is probably to tag "Category:Serials, periodicals and journals" with {{Move}} and discuss the matter on the category talk page. A message should also be left at the Village Pump to alert editors to the discussion. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 17:52, 8 September 2011 (UTC)Reply
  Support we can discuss all we want and possibly arrive at nothing, but this is going to get us somewhere (hopefully). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:12, 21 September 2011 (UTC)Reply
Like most categories contain photos, so will "journal, book, newspaper categories" contain images. So images are the default items that populate the categories such as the 50 subcats in Category:Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. So in my opinion, we don't need to deeper categorise the default; we have to make specific categories for the exceptions such as "texts/articles ... from journals/proceedings". --Foroa (talk) 09:47, 9 September 2011 (UTC)Reply
  Support per example below Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:12, 21 September 2011 (UTC)Reply
Maybe that most included files are technically of some image file format (if we omit pdf format) but that doesn't mean that they all depict specifically "images from journals". Many of them depict pages of journals, i. e. they are "images of journals", not "images from journals". Images extracted from journals are a very specific content which should have their special subcategories. Complete scans of journals or photos of editors or editorial buildings shouldn't be categorized under "images from journals" (in the same way we should make distinction between "images of art galleries" and "artworks in art galleries". Btw., considering the definition of the category Journals, the category Images from journals should be renamed to Category:Images from magazines (with a possible subcategory Images from scientific journals) and shouldn't be categorized under Journals. --ŠJů (talk) 15:38, 11 September 2011 (UTC)Reply
Disagree. According to the way we categorize artwork, "Journals" as opposed to "Images from journals"would contain photos of the printed work lying around somewhere. Do we have a lot of such content? No? Until there is a significant amount of content, there is no justification in creating categories for it.
Commons practice is generally to regard the "usual" medium/content/whatever as not needing eplicit mention. Category:Photographs of landscapes and Category:Photos of landscapes does not exist but Category:Paintings of landscapes (or actually "Landscape paintings") does. It is in "Landscapes in art". By contrast, "Landscapes" is assumed to contain photographs if not otherwise specified.
Consequently, following the established and working practice, the name ought to be as simple as possible: "Journals". Containing any sort of "imagery" from journals. While obvious non-image journals content - audio, video, PDFs - must be categorized specifically. Until the majority of content is photos of a bunch of journals lying around somewhere. Which is probably never going to happen...
I would also advise agains trying to go dictionary, partifularly with the term "images". We tried that earlier and after many months of trying to find a definition of "image" it ended at nothing - except that is became clear that "image" is defined very differently by different people (and with some long-standing users getting temp bans, it wasn't just "no agreement", it was "total disaster and a few good people kicked").
You illustrate the problem with the word "journals" above ("I don't think that...") - for me, if I use the word "journal" in spoken language it's almost always meaning "scientific journal" because I'm a scientist and that's the kind of journals I talk about. But if I think "journal", like mentally visualizing the word, I usually think of ship's logs, diaries etc.).
TL;DR: the easiest way would be to keep "Journals", drop the "Images from", and move all non-image-from content to a subcategory as and only when needed ("Videos from journals", "PDFs of journals", "Photos of journals"). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:12, 21 September 2011 (UTC)Reply
Hello Dysmorodrepanis, I need help, I can't find a proper category to put in for instance the french literary perdiodicals (fr : revue), which are NOT magazines (i.e. La Revue blanche, Esprit, Mercure de France, etc.). Any idea ? Thanks a lot, --Spiessens (talk) 20:32, 8 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

A point of note edit

Latest comment: 12 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Most "journals" content we have (and will be having for the foreseeable future) is PD-old. This means that it can only be images of/from journals, with the occasional photo (very few) and no video. The only exceptions are a few publications (PLoS, ZooKeys etc) from where we have mostly photos.

The debate here affects some 100 categories. Most of these are "images-only" categories. What category structure is preferrable, then?

vs.

If we adopt the second, as is proposed here, it would result the creation of almost 100 "Category:[Journal name]" which have no content except "Category:Images from [journal name]".

Is creation of dozens of empty categories and verbosity in category names, "just because", now considered acceptable on Commons? It may be argued that obfuscated category naming/structuring is in violation not only of established code-writing "gold standards", but also runs contrary to "effectively and globally", and thus must be exterminated with extreme prejudice whereever it occurs on any Wikimedia project.

We are bound to provide the easiest and shortest way for anyone to access anything we have.

This is the one rule everything we do must comply with. No debates allowed. Go to Citizendium if you don't like it.

Seriously. Commons has teh cancer. I am only a trained taxonomist, and not a full-time one; my main line of work is evolutionary biology though. So I think I have learned about how to put stuff into boxes stacked into boxes.

Try taking a piece of paper and a pen and drawing up what you think is a "Great Idea" at categorization.

Possibly you will find that it is a small bubble of perfection which borders the 98% of Commons that are not included in it with a large swath of category "gangrene". People apparently try and implement their own petty scheme without caring how it interfaces with the rest of Commons.

Regarding the matter at hand, I would simply start at Category:Image sources with "Images from periodical publications". Therein, you would have "Diaries", "Ship's logs", "Scientific journals" and "Magazines" and what else, as plain categories as it was.

>95% of all content therein would have something to do with the use of these periodical publications as image sources. People will see this when they see the content files; it is unnecessary to write it especially, and considering they cannot necessarily understand English well it is actually insulting I'd say. If I only knew French, Spanish and a bit of English, I'd be pissed off if I had to walk through one empty "Stuff of from by color in other stuff" after another to get something from a fricking journal (i.e. what a native English speaker would probably call "magazine"). The sooner I see the files the better. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:12, 21 September 2011 (UTC)Reply

Related discussion: Category talk:Serials, periodicals and journals.

By the way, the sentence "If we adopt the second, as is proposed here". is not correct. There is also not proposed to "Category:[Journal name]". Such categories are no needed at all. Consider, that there is no need Category:Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London at all. To clarify that, I have created the proposed scheme from categories used above:

--Snek01 (talk) 22:27, 21 September 2011 (UTC)Reply

The first category structure obviously makes more sense. We have categories that consist of nothing but PDFs from scientific journals and have no images at all, for example Category:Peckhamia (journal). Kaldari (talk) 05:03, 3 February 2012 (UTC)Reply
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