Template talk:Subject by century

Great job. It would be interesting to have:

the standard way of referring to categories: including the (red) categories that exist (have content) but that are not created, as in Special:Categories/20th-century: I guess that there is somewhere an alternative to ifexists. I am under the impression that Special:Categories/20th-century does not show empty nor redirected categories but not sure.
An option to display all categories without ifexist test: to facilitate rapid creation of the right series of categories.

It would be great to have a Commons red tools tool without going to the server. --Foroa (talk) 08:17, 20 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

Great, the red links work now (but might skip empty or redirected cats I guess). --Foroa (talk) 17:31, 20 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

You answered before I published my answer below. ;-) I believe red links showing now all have at least 1 file or page in them. If you wan to see them all, what do you think of my suggestion below? Place Clichy 17:56, 20 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

Answers to your questions:

I managed to show "red" categories, i.e. that are not empty but where the category page has not been created, by using the PAGESINCATEGORY magic word.
We can create an additional swith for this, but then:

How would you call it? (showall=1 is an option)
What would be the margin? There is a 55th century BC but no 22nd century, but of course very early categories are not very frequent and would generate a lot of red links with little use. This can be seen at Centuries and its subcategories. An intermediate position can be to keep the current system for all centuries from 6000 BC to, say, the 20th century BC even if the showall switch is selected.

I wonder a bit how this redlinks tool work, especially in terms of namespaces. For instance I notice that there is a link to Category:10th century BC bronzes on template page {{1st millennium BC bronzes}} and, through inclusion, on 8th-century BC bronzes for instance. However this red category is not linked on http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/redlinks.py?page=10th_century&namespace=14&dbname=commonswiki although the results are apparently not limited to links from the main or category namespace. How can it be? I asked the question on the developper's page, we'll see what they say.

Another point: what should be done with {{Show-years-centuries}}? This template is very old, unmaintained (its only editor is inactive since 2008), is used on very few pages and has obvious flaws (it does not deal correctly with 21st century). Should we replace it with something else on the few pages using it rather than correct it? Place Clichy 17:54, 20 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

You should warn in the doc that empty cats (I guess) are not displayed.

Showall= 1 seems fine

Limits: 35th century BC with a link to Centuries for the rest

{{Show-years-centuries}} seem difficult to maintain, we (you) have a better/cleaner solution so we better replace it to make it more uniform.

Toolserver tools often have some residual bugs; as can be seen, very few people are interested in their maintenance. --Foroa (talk) 11:01, 23 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

Subject by decade?

Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This is tremendously useful, but we lack an equivalent for decades. Is there any way to create an equivalent category that can handle the many many BC decades, ideally without someone having to type them all out? - Themightyquill (talk) 19:52, 16 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Allowing a prefix-suffix-combination?

Latest comment: 2 months ago11 comments3 people in discussion

As far as I looked into it, currently it's not possible to include a prefix here. I'm looking into the creation of a navbar that makes it possible to have "Category:Maps of 6th-century Italy" or "Category:Maps of 17th-century France", which are categories to collect history maps of the places. (It is necessary to make a distinction from Category:17th-century maps of France, which is a category to collect old maps of the places). Right now, my best guess on how to achieve this, would be a copy of this template where I slap "Maps of" in front of the <nth> definitions, but I think that's not very elegant. I can think of other use-cases for prefixes, too. Let's say we have a category for "Books on <subject> by century described"; in this case the template would be invoked to create the link to the category "Books about 15th-century England". I hope you get what I mean here. --Enyavar (talk) 16:03, 18 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Enyavar: Hi, Enyavar. Potentially we have a prefix feature, but we lacks a suffix feature working with it simultaneously.

As a result of the source check and quick tests, prefix have been supported by an undocumented option called incenturyno, however ~~postfix~~ suffix seems not yet supported. The following tests use the showall=1 option to check for incomplete results.

Test 1: a test of prefix option incentury=Maps of:

Code 1: {{Subject by century|incentury=Maps of|mothercat=Maps of the history of Italy|showall=1}} generates:

The result link for "(CE) 6th (Century)" is Category:Maps of 6th Century, and the prefix test itself is successful!

Test 2: a test of both prefix option incentury=Maps of, and normal option subject=Italy
(I had expected the normal option to remain in the suffix position ...)

Code 2: {{Subject by century|incentury=Maps of|subject=Italy|mothercat=Maps of the history of Italy|showall=1}} generates:

The result link for "(CE) 6th (century)" is Category:Italy Maps of 6th century, and normal option unexpectedly moved to the prefix position. Failed.

As a result, we need a suffix option that works in pairs with the prefix option incentury. It would be nice if we could change the behavior of the usual option subject to lock it in the suffix position. --Clusternote (talk) 07:36, 24 April 2023 (UTC) [edited] --Clusternote (talk) 11:34, 24 April 2023 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Clusternote, I am still hopeful to eventually get closer to my goal of having a category system for Commons' history maps. What I envision is a template that allows the user to browse history maps by century and state - allowing to go from "Category:Maps of 15th-century Bulgaria" to "Category:Maps of 15th-century England", and there allowing to choose "Category:Maps of 7th-century England" next.

As I have no idea how to create or modify the most fundamental templates... may I ask @Reinhard Müller: to have a look here at some point? (As the subject is describing the history of stuff by country/region, there is no need to subdivide by decade or year, I'd say.) --Enyavar (talk) 22:29, 17 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi Enyavar, have you already created many categories using this naming scheme? I think that Category:Maps of England in the 15th century could be better intuitively understandable, and it would probably also be easier to put into a pattern: look for example at the Netherlands in "Maps of the 15th-century Netherlands" and "Maps of the Netherlands in the 15th century".

If you decide to follow that scheme, I could easily provide a template within the {{Category description}} framework. However, there's another question to clarify first: which country names should be included in the navigation list? Countries come and go, in Europe in the 20th century we had the USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, in the 19th century we had Prussia, in the 18th century we had the Holy Roman Empire...

Thanks --Reinhard Müller (talk) 14:11, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

You're asking the right questions! I have created quite a few of these categories already (Italy, Spain, France, Germany for example), the original idea seems to have been by @AnRo0002: with England. However, this scheme is not yet completed, not even for Europe. And at least a few category trees already follow your suggestion: Category:Maps of the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century (etc) and Category:Maps of the Byzantine empire in the 6th century (etc); while you're right that "Maps of 16th-century Ottoman Empire" (or "Maps of 16th-century Netherlands") is missing the article. Sidenote: not sure if "the" article is really needed in this context. Many categories are missing out on "the", e.g. Category:Maps of Finnish War and Category:Books about Patriotic War of 1812. In my understanding, this is bad grammar, but in the context of quick categorizing it also makes sense: Someone combined the two categories "Books about subject" and "Patriotic War of 1812". Back to history maps by country by century, I had a slight preference for "Maps of 7th-century France" over "Maps of France in the 7th century"... On the other hand, "France in the 7th century" is the main history category: you have convinced me. I'm curious about AnRo's opinion here.

On the question about defunct countries/empires... well. It depends. Anything that didn't even survive a century, can be categorized just as "Maps of (the history of) <Yugoslavia>/<the Soviet Union>/" etc: there are no maps of USSR history in the 19th century. Prussia is arguably different, I did prepare files from 16th- to 19th century already, but these categories would definitely fall under modern borders (see Category:Maps of 18th-century Prussia, it's a subject of Europe, Germany and Poland). "Maps of the Holy Romand Empire in 1Xth century" are another thing again, these should show the whole HRE, and (depending on the time) placed as a subject of Europe, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Austria, Czechia. Maps showing e.g. only Saxony or only Lombardy in the 11th century, would be subject of "Maps of Germany/Italy in the 11th century", but not the HRE; in addition to "Maps of the history of Lombardy/Saxony". I hope this makes sense?

Other countries again were wholly part of larger entities: "Maps of Ireland in the 17th century" would be subject of both Europe and Great Britain. "Maps of Greece in the 17th century" would be subject of the larger Ottoman Empire... but only when there are that many that have Greece as the main subject. "Maps of the Ottoman Balkans in the 17th century" is probably the better category, because otherwise you have the same three Balkan-maps in each of the tiny categories of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, Dalmatia, Bosnia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Wallachia and Romania. Similarly, it was my firm belief that "Category:Maps of 16th-century Arabia" is fully sufficient for the whole Peninsula.

Now testing like Clusternoteabove:

Code 3: {{Subject by century|incentury=Maps of the Ottoman Empire|mothercat=Maps of the Ottoman Empire by century|showall=1}} generates:

Code 4:

{{Subject by century|incentury=Maps of the Byzantine empire|mothercat=Maps of the Byzantine empire by century|showall=1}}

generates:

Does this mean that we don't even need a new customization or modification of the template, if the history-map category just follow your (Reinhard's) suggestion? --Enyavar (talk) 15:57, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

For the navigation by century, it obviously works with the current template because there's only a prefix and no suffix. However, I understood your previous request that you also want to navigate from Bulgaria to England, so the question is do you also want to navigate from the Ottoman Empire to the Byzantine empire? (And why has the Ottoman Empire an uppercase E and the Byzantine empire a lowercase e?) So if we want a navigation by country/empire, we need to define a complete list of countries/empires which we want to include in that navigation. And I guess we don't want to limit that navigation to today's sovereign countries, because then not only England would be in the list. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 16:25, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

The workload can be lifted by two templates. The first one is {{Maps of history of <country> by century}} (--> similarly to Template:Maps of England by century), I think (?) this is the one we have just proven possible. The naming scheme is still up to debate, I think. "Maps of <country> by century" is already reserved for old maps, so history maps need a different scheme, like the one I used there, adding "history of".

The second template would "just" require another navigation template to know all the possible countries/nations/regions of interest, right? We could use the combination of {{Historic countries of Europe}} (--> similarly to Template:Historic counties of Wales, like it is used in Category:Old county maps of Radnorshire). This county-template has prefix and suffix - or is there a foreseeable problem in utilizing both? --Enyavar (talk) 17:40, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Edit: The Why-question on the case of the E gets the old Banana-answer: Cause nobody changed it. ("Weil noch keiner in den Urwald zog und die Banane gerade bog.") Those categories were independently created by yet another, different editors: Elkost, Kimdime, and Io Herodotus. Before we make decisions on the naming scheme, we should involve these and a few others as well. Do you think it's already time for that, or should we (me or you?) first create a template and examples? Do you want to attempt wrapping this task in just one template? --Enyavar (talk) 17:40, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think it's reasonable to first agree on a naming scheme as well as on the list of historic countries to include, and when that's done, I can look into creating a template that does the whole job of navigation by historic country and century and even adds a short explanation about the category, in the style of {{Category description/Flora by administrative division and month}} - if you want. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 19:22, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Proposal

I am in no hurry and wanted to wait for others to chime in. But right: let's agree on a naming scheme for now. I think your suggestion works best: Maps of <country name> in the <Xth> century, each of them a child-cat~ of Maps of the history of <country name> Many existing categories would need to be moved, but I think the result should be worth it.

Which territories to include? My suggestion (for Europe) is to allow for all current countries, plus a selection of important historical entities, especially all those that were ruled by kings and emperors for at least two centuries (duchies/principalities only as an exception). The real problem is how they would be grouped. Right now, I would favor the Ptolemaic approach. All the following group-entries would be always included (but not necessarily linked!), with the grouped sub-entries in brackets only included if the category exists.

Europe

the British Isles (Roman Britain, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Great Britain, United Kingdom)
the Iberian Peninsula (Roman Hispania, Portugal, Spain, Aragon, the Basque Country, Galicia, Navarre, [tbd.])
France (Gaul?, Maps of Roman Gaul, Burgundy, Occitania, Switzerland?, Low Countries*?, [tbd.])
Germany (Roman Germania, Holy Roman Empire, Austria*?, Bavaria, Bohemia?, Low Countries*?, Prussia, Saxony, Switzerland?, [tbd.])
the (West) Balkans (Albania, Austria*?, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Dalmatia, Illyria, Istria, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia)
Italy (Roman Italy, Lombardy, the Kingdom of Naples, the Papal State, Piedmont, Sicily, the Republic of Venice, [tbd.])
Scandinavia (the Baltics*?, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden)
Eastern Europe (the Baltics*?, Belarus, Bohemia?, Galicia?, Hungary, Moravia, Poland {Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth}, Russia {the Grand Duchy of Moscow < the Tsardom of Russia < the Russian Empire}, Silesia, Slovakia, Ruthenia, Ukraine)
the (East) Balkans (Bulgaria, Galicia?, Transylvania, Moldova, Romania, Thrace, Wallachia) --> probably better include in #5
Eastern Mediterranean (Greece, Macedonia, the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire)

(*) the Baltics = (Estonia, Latvia, Livonia, Lithuania, Teutonic State...?) / Austria = (Austria, the Habsburg Empire, Austria-Hungary) / the Low Countries (the Roman Low Countries, Flanders, Spanish Netherlands, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg)

Asia (abandoning the Ptolemy approach from here)

West Asia (Roman Asia Minor, Turkey, Cyprus, Levante, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia?, the Near East)
1. the Caucasus (Abkhazia, Alania, Armenia, Aserbaijan, Circassia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Georgia, Ossetia, Yaddayadda...)
2. Arabia = the Arabian Peninsula - Note how this already has a possible "description template", although highly customized.)
Central Asia (Mesopotamia?, the Middle East bn, Iran, "Tartary"?, Afghanistan?, Pakistan?)
South Asia (Afghanistan?, Pakistan?, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar?)
1. Southeast Asia (Myanmar?, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia?)
2. the Malay Archipelago (Malaysia?, Indonesia, Philippines)
East Asia (China, Korea, Japan)
North Asia ("Tartary"?, Mongolia, Siberia)

Africa --> North (Maghreb/Libya/Egypt), West, Central ("the Congo"?), South and East Africa (Ethiopia)

Americas (North, Central, Caribbean, South --> each by current countries)

I admit that this is based on some rather outdated geographical divisions, and it requires tweaks (I already replaced Ptolemy's #7 Europe with Scandinavia). The template would need to be made in a way that makes it possible to insert new areas of coverage within the established framework, or to move entries within the framework. The numbers I use above are not practical, better just string the stuff together. I think that a geographical grouping is better than just alphabetical listings, but alphabetical might be easier to achieve. Most of the entries don't yet deserve a by-century entry however, some don't even have a "maps of the history of..." category. Also, no idea how these "Roman Europe" categories could be made to fit in this framework; they could just be left out if it's too much of a hassle. This is just a first proposal. What do you think? Best, --Enyavar (talk) 15:07, 24 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you Enyavar for moving forward here. I must admit that I am more of a technician than a historian, so I won't be able to contribute much to this discussion and would welcome if others joined in again.

Let me just remark that it's possible to have geographical groups and within these groups sort by alphabet. See Category:Flora of Drenthe for an example how this could look like. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 17:15, 24 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Add topic