Category talk:Competitive swimming

This discussion of one or several categories is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive.

Category:Topless male swimmers

All male swimmers swim topless, normally. 176.239.85.61 09:37, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

That hasn't always been the case, but I agree that it's so common now that this category would end up too many files to be very useful. --Auntof6 (talk) 14:39, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Delete it please.--176.239.85.61 16:49, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm fine with deleting, but do we put Category:Male swimmers in Category:Topless male sportspeople? Or do we not intersect these categories? - Themightyquill (talk) 08:36, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Any category under Category:Topless male sportspeople should specify topless. See this photo of a men's swim team: they are not shown swimming, but posing with medals wearing more than just swimsuits. Note that "male swimmers" is not the same as "males in swim clothing". --Auntof6 (talk) 09:12, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

@Auntof6: So you're in favour of keeping this category? - Themightyquill (talk) 06:26, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't see the need for it, because I think it's easy enough to find images of topless male swimmers without a separate category, but I have no strong preference if others think it's needed. Whatever categories get kept should be properly categorized. This one seems properly categorized at the moment. --Auntof6 (talk) 08:26, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

I fully accept your reasons for not putting Category:Male swimmers in Category:Topless male sportspeople but I guess the challenge is that Category:Topless male sportspeople might end up with hundreds or thousands of images of topless male swimmers. I can't think of any good solutions though. - Themightyquill (talk) 10:46, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Some of the images actually require assuming or outside knowledge that the swimmer is topless, such as this one where the splashing water obscures the swimmer's torso and others like this one where the torso isn't even in the frame. Then there's this one where the focus is on a swimmer where we see only the legs, but there happen to be other (topless) swimmers in the background that aren't good illustrations of toplessness. To be in this category, I think the toplessness should be clearly visible.

I feel silly even discussing this. --Auntof6 (talk) 15:48, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Haha.. I agree completely, both with your suggestions and with your sense that this feels rather ridiculous. I guess wikidata will help eliminate some of these issues. Then we can put everything in flat categories and not worry about it. - Themightyquill (talk) 07:01, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Themightyquill: Do you really think that will take care of it? I have my doubts. You can't, for example, do an intersection on "women" and "people wearing blue" and expect to get only women wearing blue, because the individual attributes could apply to different people in an image. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:47, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

@Auntof6: Maybe "eliminate" was the wrong word... maybe "help with" would have been better. I don't know how it will turn out. - Themightyquill (talk) 10:02, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

@Auntof6: Do you think it would help to distinguish between Category:Swimmers (which would include competitive swimmers personal categories, images like this and maybe people in swimsuits sitting next to a pool) and Category:People swimming (for images of people actually in water)? Maybe that exists already and I'm just not seeing it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Themightyquill (talk • contribs) 08:40, 29 September 2017‎ (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply: I didn't get the ping because the post wasn't signed. I guess that would be helpful. Someone could want pictures of people actually swimming -- not just in the water, because they could be keeping still there, but actually swimming. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:02, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

@Auntof6: Ooops, my mistake. Sorry.

There would likely be a lot of overlap between the two categories (both sub-categories of Category:Swimming ?) I wonder if it would make sense to move Category:Swimmers to Category:Competitive swimmers, so as to distinguish it from Category:People swimming ? - Themightyquill (talk) 10:46, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

That would seem to mirror what's under Category:Swimming. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:38, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

The suggestion that male swimmers are typically topless is somewhat misled, it is a generalization that only can apply to the past several years. In fact, until 2010, swimmers regularly wore full-body swimsuits during competitions. Just take a closer look back at the 2008 Olympics, the United States mens swim team wore full-body swimsuits in competition. As I said, it was not until after 2009 that this changed. One of many catalysts was an incident in which US swimmer Ricky Berens had such a suit rip completely down his backside during a competition (revealing his derriere for all to see). But the main cause was controversies about so-called "high tech swimsuits" (which cut down substantially on drag) that led to F.I.N.A. banning such swimsuits from competition in 2009, a rule-change which only took effect in 2010. Therefore, it has been less than a decade wherein toplessness has been standardized in the pool during competitions. And this still does not account for some of the most-photographed moments of competitions, namely the pre-competitions (where competitors regularly are wearing warm-up jackets) and the medal podium (where competitors frequently are seen wearing shirts) SecretName101 (talk) 10:42, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

@SecretName101: Thanks for your input, that's actually really helpful. While that may hold true for competitive swimmers, we might still have a problem if we separate between Category:Men swimming and Category:Competitive male swimmers. There's no reason to divide the latter into topless or not, but the vast majority of Category:Men swimming would be topless men. - Themightyquill (talk) 12:31, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

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 Not done: no consensus. --ƏXPLICIT 12:48, 22 October 2020 (UTC)