Category talk:Objects by material

Consistent subcategory names

Hello, today I made some changes to some subcategories of Objects by material which I want to document here for further discussions:

When I saw this category it was a bit chaotic: half of the subcategories were named "objects made from <matrial>" and other half were named like "<matrial> objects". And I saw category names like Amber objects which can mean "amber colered objects" or "objects made of amber". So since all this condition lasted for nearly one year and no one seems to take care I decided to make the category a bit more consistent. The first naming concept appeared to my more precise than the second so I started to uniform the categories:

1. Bone objects --> Objects made from bones
2. Concrete objects --> Objects made from concrete
3. Stone objects --> Objects made from stone
4. Straw objects --> Objects made from straw

When I realised that there was also Objects made out of meteorites I was wandering if maybe the name sheme "made from" is not the best and sheme "made out of" or even "made of" are better. Because English is not my mother tongue, I made a short research on google about the commonness of the three versions, my results:

made			of	out of	from
---------------------------------------------
amber			6000+	9	1200
stone			50000+	11000	9000
limestone		9000+	4	1400
sandstone		5000+	0	5
rock			27000+	7000	2900
rocks			15000+	8	2300 
wood			100000	195000+	16000
leather			20000+	4000	8000
bone			33000+	5500	7000
-s			11800	10	3600
Ivory			13000+	3100	3500 
basalt 			4000+	0	600 
animal horn		10+	0	6
horn			3700+	5	700
straw			5900+	1900	1100
Glass 			61000	69000+	6900
sugar			38000+	2900	1600
wax			32000+	7	1500
slate			2500+	0	2300
chocolate		4200	13000+	1200
paper			54000	99000+	6400
concrete		82000+	3600	1900
cannel coal		5+	0	3
schist			3+	0	2
rubber			11000+	2000	1200
plastic			35000+	7000	6000
-s			11000	1500	1200

I realised that "made from" is quite poor English and the most hits has "made of" in the most cases, so I changed the previous four categories a second time:

1. Objects made from bones --> Objects made of bone
2. Objects made from concrete --> Objects made of concrete
3. Objects made from stone --> Objects made of stone
4. Objects made from straw --> Objects made of straw

But for the sake of consistency now I also had to change the existing "made from"- categories, where I wasn't too keen:

1. Objects made from amber --> Objects made of amber
2. Objects from basalt --> Objects made of basalt
3. Objects made from chocolate --> Objects made out of chocolate
4. Objects made from cannel coal --> Objects made of cannel coal
5. Objects made from diorite --> Objects made of diorite
6. Objects made from eclogite --> Objects made of eclogite
7. Objects made from greywacke --> Objects made of greywacke
8. Objects made from limestone --> Objects made of limestone
9. Objects made from metadiabase --> Objects made of metadiabase
10. Objects made from obsidian --> Objects made of obsidian
11. Objects made from Crackington Formation rocks --> Objects made of rock from Crackington Formation
12. Objects made from sandstone --> Objects made of sandstone
13. Objects made from schist --> Objects made of schist
14. Objects made from slate --> Objects made of slate
15. Objects made from sugar --> Objects made of sugar

To finish the work now I could continue with the "<material> objects" categories:

1. Leather objects --> Objects made of leather
2. Paper objects --> Objects made of paper
3. Plastic objects --> Objects made of plastic
4. Rubber objects --> Objects made of rubber
5. Glass objects --> Objects made of glass

The last change was too much. Andy Dingley who takes care about Glass objects was not happy about my changes and together with Jmabel asked me to stop and start a discussion about it, what I'm doing here.

Regards, --W like wiki ^{good to know} 23:29, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

• Actually – and I'm saying this as a native speaker – "made from" and "made of" are pretty much interchangeable. I think the latter is a little more common, but the former isn't wrong. - Jmabel ! talk 23:56, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
• I don't think we need complete uniformity here, especially if we are thinking of pushing this down the hierarchy. E.g. "sculptures made of wood" for "wooden sculptures" sounds like a bad translation from another language, and even at this high level, "glass objects" is a lot more colloquial than "objects made of glass". I would agree that it when we need a preposition, it generally makes sense to be consistent about "made of" vs. "made from", and that generally "made of" is the better choice. In some cases, though, there seem to me to be subtle differences of meaning here: "Objects made from [or of] bone" tends to suggest bones that have been more "worked" than "Objects made from [or of] bones", especially so in the case of of. If the latter is what we meant all along, then that one is definitely an improvement.

I'm not really sure we need total consistency here, and would be particularly disinclined to see us force this rule on the last set ("leather" etc.). Maybe some soft redirects are in order here to allow some flexibility, though I know Commons' consensus tends to be opposed to introducing category redirects. - Jmabel ! talk 00:08, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

• @Jmabel: yes, I also think we don't need complete uniformity, but I think as much as possible.
• You talking about the aspect of "colloquial" use. That is important but can only be an orientation. (Look for example Lamps, it is more colloquial than Lighting fixtures, but mostly we mean that when we saying lamp.) So Commons is a kind of database where a precise name is more important than a colloquial one, if not we geting problems. So maybe the intention of my edits was less about consistency/uniformity and more about accuracy/precision e.g.:
  • "Amber objects" two meanings: "amber colered objects" or "objects made of amber".
  • "Stone objects" two meanings: "Objects made of stone" and "objects made out of stones" ("objects composed of stones" e.g. Stone walls, Piles of rocks, Rock balancing) -> better precise names with only one meaning
  • "Bone objects" two meanings: "Objects made of bone" and "objects made with bones". And than the aspects you bring in as a native speaker like the different meanings of "Objects made from [or of] bone" which only a native speaker can solve.
• Your example with "Wooden sculptures" is not so good. It is the only category with an adjectiv - and sure that is working quite well. But "wood sculptures"!?
• Regards --W like wiki ^{good to know} 16:45, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
  • "Wood sculptures" isn't exactly wrong, but "wooden sculptures" is definitely more normal. It's a surviving vestige of older usage: there also is a more specific "oaken" that is now largely archaic, and "golden" has come to include just gold-colored. There were more of these, but I think the others have become truly archaic. I might be failing to think of come other that is still current.
  • I don't think that with wooden objects we (Commons, English-speakers, really anybody) particularly distinguish whether or not things are made out of a single piece of wood (except for monoxylons, canoes made from tree-trunks), but for bones it's different because (for example) a sculpture made out of a single piece of carved bone is likely to be a very different thing from a sculptural assemblage of bones, and both are common. "Monolith" literally means made out of a single stone, but its meaning has stretched in so many directions that it is hard to use literally. - Jmabel ! talk 17:08, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
  • The real problem comes if we want to push this down further in the hierarchy. "Objects made out of wood" is not a bad category name in its own right but "spoons made out of wood" instead of "wooden spoons" sounds like very awkward English. - Jmabel ! talk 17:10, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

• Category:Objects made out of chocolate is almost empty. The related sub-categories seem to be under Category:Chocolate by form instead.
• I started a vaguely related discussion about redundant categories with "Navy ...", "Naval ..." and "... of the Navy" over at Commons:Categories for discussion/2023/01/Category:Uniforms of the Spanish Navy.

TilmannR (talk) 16:59, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Common vs. awkward English

@Jmabel:  Info Beside of "wooden", "golden", "oaken" there are "Metallic objects" (what redirect to "metal" objects).

In case of "wooden" there is no need for awkward English. But in general I think category names first has to be precise! Everybody says "lamp", no one "lighting fixtures", but when we name the category "lamp" then we get a problem.

Note: A lamp is this part of a light fixture (lighting device or luminaire) that produces the light, e.g. a light bulb. Colloquially, however, the word lamp is often used for the entire lighting fixture (pars pro toto), including in terms like table lamp, porch lamp, hanging lamp, wall lamp, floor lamp and numerous others; and in their components’ names such as lamp shade or lamp cord.

So Commons is special, and sometimes categories with awkward names like Solid with direction colors: chamfered 4a with equal edges or Volcanism of the United States by silicon dioxide content of igneous rocks are needed. --W like wiki ^{good to know} 04:06, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

"Made of" or more

First I was thinking, as it is written:

English: This category is for objects indexed by material they are composed of.

But I realised it has more menanings and my renaming from "stone object" to "objecte made of stone" was wrong. But less because of awkward English and more because I set something equal what is not! For "stone object" for example there are at least 4 meanings:

• "made of" stone ("made from", "made out of"), e.g. Art made of stone or Art made from wood. Inside there is:

• "made with" / "made of" stones, e.g. Arrangements of stones, bones,...

And then there is:

• "made on" stone, e.g. Paintings on stone or Inscribed stones

• "looking like" stone, e.g. Concrete paint or in case of metal Metallic color cameras

 Question What do we want?

• Meaning "made of"? Than "Category:"objecte made of ..." is right!
• Broader meaning? Than "Category:<material> objects" is right. But then we have to make sure, that everybody understands the broader meaning!!

And where is @Andy Dingley: anyway? Regards --W like wiki ^{good to know} 04:06, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

• I don't have a full answer here except to say that looking like a given thing but actually being made of something else would probably not belong under Category :Objects by material for the things they merely look like. - Jmabel ! talk 05:18, 29 January 2023 (UTC)