Commons talk:Categories

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New line in Commons:Categories#Selectivity principle

The outcome of Commons:Village pump/Archive/2023/08#How independent is Commons in deciding which categories are appropriate? was an extra line in Commons:Categories#Selectivity principle: "There should be one category per topic; multi-subject categories should be avoided." I just did that. Could an experienced user please look whether that is OK so, or should still a translate tag be added? JopkeB (talk) 14:28, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

@JopkeB That looks fine to me. Josh (talk) 23:20, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Category naming purpose

As has been noted in recent CfDs, the section on category names does not clearly enough convey the role of category names and has led to confusion with some users. The section on this page give a reasonable amount of technical detail about naming specifics, but little on the actual purpose of choosing a specific name for a category. It would be good to offer a bit more of an introduction to naming so users can more easily see the principles of why specific names and naming formats are appropriate and what role category names play in categorization and Commons at large. To that end, a simple starter paragraph in the "category names" section would be helpful, along the line of:

Category names serve to give users a quick idea of what topic is depicted by the contents of the category and make the contents of the category easily discoverable by users seeking them. They are generally to be concise, unique labels in common-usage English which are descriptive of the concepts depicted in their contents (i.e. they encompass the topic). They should be specific enough to give users a clear picture of the intended scope of the category. However, they are not a comprehensive definition of the contents; additional details on what should or should not be contained in a category should be provided in a hat note.

While this all may seem obvious to some experienced editors, and some of it may reinforce points made elsewhere in the article, a clear introduction in the category names section may help some users who are not as familiar with this article in its entirety or categorization practices in general. Josh (talk) 01:41, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

 Agree Thanks for starting this proposal. I would like to make some sentences somewhat shorter and splitting them to make it easier to read, and changed some words which are more clear for non-native English speakers. In my proposal I have changed the bold parts. Please adjust them if it is not proper English.

Category names serve to give users a quick idea of what topic is depicted in(?) the contents, it is all about: What is this category about? Users seeking such content should also be able to find easily the category by searching for its category name. Therefor category names are generally to be concise, unique labels in common-usage English that encompass the subject of the category. They should be specific enough to give users a clear picture of the intended scope of the category. However, category names are not a comprehensive definition of the contents; additional details about what should or should not be included in a category, can be provided in a short note.

Please let me know whether this is indeed an improvement. JopkeB (talk) 16:16, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

@JopkeB Thanks for the feedback. I will update what I have above to consider yours and any other suggestions in a few days when I can give this another good look. Josh (talk) 17:06, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I think "find" and "easily" need to swapped but I'd prefer "discoverable" (which would be very good to include there), "Therefor" should be "Therefore", and I think "descriptive of the concepts depicted in their contents". "(i.e. they encompass the topic)" could be replaced with something like " – they name the subject of the category".

One could replace "short note" with "short note at the top" and one could also add " and should be short" after "…of the contents".

Moreover, one of the many code proposals I intend to submit sooner or later (now there is too little work even on far more important issues) is that when entering a category name or something close to it (like a category name but singular such as "Map" where cat "Maps" exists), it shows a link-box at the top of the search results with A category of this name exists: [link to cat] where something similar is already implemented with the "Did you mean" (light-bulb icon) boxes of which I don't have an example right now. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:34, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Definitely can rather than should be provided in a short note on the category page. The majority of categories don't need a note. - Jmabel ! talk 21:42, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Edit mode link

Hello @Jmabel: regarding your edit comment the little bit strange edit mode link Category:PD NASA in edit mode was already in the page, it wasn't me. Feel free to change that. With the rest of my edit pointing out the difference between using the __HIDDENCAT__ or {{Hiddencat}} I hope you agree!? And I see it was even there before my edits in November 2022 on this page. Regards --W like wiki ^{good to know} 02:21, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@W like wiki Sorry, I didn't look closely enough at the diff to see which part was new. - Jmabel ! talk 02:37, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@Jmabel: ok! --W like wiki ^{good to know} 02:44, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Sortkey recommendations

Regarding this:

The special sortkey τ (lowercase Greek letter Tau) is used to sort templates at the end of the related Commons-category, see for example Category:Transport templates sorted in Category:Transport. (Sorting in Commons is not case sensitive so only uppercase Τ (Tau) is shown.)

I wonder whether this is a good recommendation. I tried it for a few categories and I found it quite confusing because the uppercase Tau is, in practice, visually indistinguible from the latin letter T. I see a lot of template categories with a sortkey of ~ and would actually consider that a very good idea because it's sorted after Z, it's visually recognizable, and it's a character which you probably can find on way more keyboards than the Tau.

On a side note, I would expect using three different dashes as sortkeys to create a lot of confusion, and for many people it will be hard to understand the difference between them. So I would also suggest to remove any mention of the emdash and the endash here.

Thanks -- Reinhard Müller (talk) 15:35, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

agreed. i think common practice is using ~ for anything commons-, or more broadly, wikimedia-related stuff.

the dashes were added by https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3ACategories&diff=prev&oldid=703824439 . RZuo (talk) 15:40, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

@W like wiki: any input from your side? --Reinhard Müller (talk) 15:53, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Grüß Dich @Reinhard Müller: Yes, I agree. I can't remember on which Commons page I read this recommondation with the Greek Tau before including it here, but I had always the same problems, need to copy paste it from here or even made a copy of this on my user page. And also about the equal look to normal "T" I was not so happy, but when I wrote this chapter I can not create a new rule. But when we do this now I appreciate!

Same with the dashes. Maybe some have an idea if they are useful, but also here I would apreciate a changing, deletion in this case. Best Regards -- W like wiki  ^{Please ping me! • Postive1 • Postive2}  16:25, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to everybody who commented! I updated the page and hope that I didn't mess up anything regarding the translation. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 18:15, 22 February 2024 (UTC)