Category talk:Rio de Janeiro

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

Category:São Paulo

With the case of São Paulo vs. São Paulo (state) being discussed at last at the Portuguese wikipedia, and being apparently consensual among Brazilians that it is the state that should be disambiguated, I'm opening the case here as well. If nobody oposes, we can implement the decision there, if there is one, and hopefully finally eliminate the only case here in Commons where it's the city being disambiguated, and not the state. Same for Rio de Janeiro cats. Darwin ^Ahoy! 17:12, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

•  Agree -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 18:41, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

• I'm not clear what you mean when you say "here in Commons where it's the city being disambiguated". Do you mean qualified, that is, the city category has the extra "(city)" characters in the cat name? --Auntof6 (talk) 19:03, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

@Auntof6: I believe the suggestion is moving the city to Category:São Paulo, and the state (currently at Category:São Paulo) to Category:São Paulo (state). That's also the way it's done at English wikipedia, I guess, assuming the city has more notability than the state, which is hard to disagree with. I would normally lean toward disambiguating them both, but I won't demand it if I'm the only one. - Themightyquill (talk) 19:10, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Themightyquill. You're not the only one. I think both the city categories and the state categories should be qualified, with a disambiguation page at the unqualified cat. For Wikipedia, it makes sense to have the cities at the unqualified title. Wikipedia wants to get people to the article they want as quickly as possible. Most of the time when people think of "São Paulo" or "Rio de Janeiro", they think of the cities. When a Wikipedia reader goes to en:São Paulo or en:Rio de Janeiro, they probably want to read about the city. If they wanted the state, or anything else with the same name, it only takes reading the first sentence or two -- or even just the hat note -- to realize that the article isn't about the thing they're looking for.

Commons categories are different. First for people looking for media: when people look at Category:São Paulo or Category:Rio de Janeiro, it's often difficult if not impossible to tell from the content whether it's for the city or the state unless there's a qualifier. You can tell if you look at how the page is categorized, but not everyone will look at that or understand it.

The second way Commons categories are different is that media and subcats get added and removed by many different people, and also by bots. A person may not understand English (the language all cat names are supposed to be in) or Portuguese (the language of these city names). Maybe such a person shouldn't be assigning categories, but it happens, and it's easy for them to get it wrong. With bots, bots don't think about what they're doing. Many of them look at words in file descriptions and if there's a matching category name, the category gets added, whether or not it's correct, and whether or not it violates COM:OVERCAT. (I've even seen some add categories that don't exist just because the word was in the description.) You can say that bots shouldn't do that, but saying so doesn't stop them. In either of these cases, it's best to have the base name be a disambiguation page so that the files that land there can be evaluated by a human. The second best option is to have the base name be the more inclusive topic (in these cases, the states), so that everything that lands there is at least correct, if not as specific as it could be.

Another issue is that there might be people who are used to the way the cat names are now and have processes set up to categorize things accordingly. If we change the base name to mean a different thing, those processes will put things in the wrong places.

So to sum up, I support having both the city and state categories qualified, and having the base name be for disambiguating. --Auntof6 (talk) 20:07, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

 strongly disagree with disambiguating both terms and creating disambiguation pages. There are hundreds - probably thousand of categories (current and future) using those terms, I don't believe it's even feasible to implement such a thing, and that would create an huge burden on everyone dealing with those cities and states. If it is to move to two disambiguations instead of one, then it's better to leave it as it is.-- Darwin ^Ahoy! 01:54, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

The non-disambiguated name -- whether it's the state, the city, or a disambiguation page -- will get things added to it by default. It's better to have that be the disambiguation page so that those things will be flagged and can be dealt with. Otherwise, they can sit in the incorrect category a long time before anyone notices, if anyone sees it at all. There's no reason Commons category names have to match the Wikipedia ones. Having to change a large number of category names might be the best thing if it means that things get categorized correctly. --Auntof6 (talk) 10:39, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

I could even agree that it may be better, but as it's impossible to maintain that system, which would imply creating many thousands of disambiguation pages, and add immensely to the task of anyone dealing with categories related to the 2 biggest states and cities in Brazil, I don't believe that is even an option. Anyway, the current system is not that bad as well, as it works exactly as you say - in doubt, people place the files inside the non-disambiguated category, which currently is the state; and then they are moved down the tree. So, if there is no agreement to change, I'm perfectly happy with the status quo as well.-- Darwin ^Ahoy! 10:57, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

@DarwIn and Auntof6: I don't think we need a disambiguation page at every level. A disambiguation page at Category:São Paulo is sufficient. I don't imagine anyone would place an image in, for example, Category:Public transport in São Paulo‎‎ if no such category exists. If we have Category:Public transport in São Paulo‎ (state) and Category:Public transport in São Paulo‎ (city), it will show up properly in hotcat etc, and people would choose the right one. It's actually less work to do qualify both trees, because we'd only need to move everything at "São Paulo‎" to "São Paulo‎ (state)" and we can leave everything at "São Paulo‎ (city)" alone. - Themightyquill (talk) 06:51, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

@Themightyquill: I've been dealing with those categories for years, and my experience is that if the main term is not created, newbies will create it at some point and disturb the whole category tree. They have been doing that for ages. The only way to stop that is either to use the main term as the city or the state, or to place a disambiguation there, as suggested by Auntof6. The last option seems to be completely unpractical/unfeasible, so I believe it's best to stick with deciding if the main term should be the state, as it is now, or the city.-- Darwin ^Ahoy! 07:15, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

I've definitely never seen that. If it happens all the time, you can surely give me just one example of it happening when categories already exist at state and city level. I could imagine that, if no there's no Category:Float planes in São Paulo‎ (city) or Category:Float planes in São Paulo‎ (state) someone might create Category:Float planes in São Paulo but the category tree here is pretty flushed out so this would be rare and easy to remedy on a case-by-case basis. - Themightyquill (talk) 07:21, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

I've been working heavily with those 4 categories since the past few years, so I do know what I'm speaking about. It used to be a mess, sometimes with images dispersed by 3 or 4 versions of the same cat, sometimes with disambiguation, sometimes without. If it is to return to that system, just leave it as it is.-- Darwin ^Ahoy! 18:42, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't understand - which four categories? - Themightyquill (talk) 13:50, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

@Themightyquill: São Paulo, São Paulo city, São Paulo (city), São Paulo (state) - and São Paulo state, so they actually were at least five kinds, not counting the upper case varieties, which existed. Both for São Paulo and for Rio. It used to be a huge mess, and only started to take some shape when one form was chosen for the city, and another for the state. Actually things are working just fine as they are now, so I retract my proposal and  strongly disagree with any change at all.-- Darwin ^Ahoy! 16:55, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

 Agree with Category:São Paulo being used for the city and Category:São Paulo (state) for the state. Similarly with Rio de Janeiro categories. (Just in case someone decides to reopen the discussion ;) —capmo (talk) 16:00, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Can we come to a conclusion here? When creating navigation boxes, it's very hard to do that well if some categories are called "São Paulo (state)" and some are just called "São Paulo". Thanks --Reinhard Müller (talk) 21:14, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

@Reinhard Müller: No clear agreement yet. DarwIn won't agree to disambiguate both. I think disambiguating only one (whichever it is) will inevitably lead to confusion. Note that Template:Brazilian states will not currently work unless (state) is appended to the end of Rio or São Paulo. - Themightyquill (talk) 08:35, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

@Themightyquill: No way I will ever agree with a disambiguation for *every category* about São Paulo. Anyway, pt.wiki has changed the main category "São Paulo" do designate the city, and passed the disambiguation to the state. Apparently it will stabilize there, and probably we should follow that as well, since it's also the system used in other similar situations, such as New York.-- Darwin ^Ahoy! 03:33, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

the problem about disambiguation on commons is, unlike wikipedia, category is much more often used because thousands of files are sorted by cats. and this sorting is often done thru uploadwizard or cat-a-lot/hotcat. all of these prompt users as they type, so it's very important to make the distinction between all notable entries. only cases like London the british city which is something almost everyone would think of first, would not need disambiguation and be the primary topic.

so the question is, are the cities SP and Rio so famous like London that most ppl think of the cities first without thinking of the states? especially when ppl upload photos etc. and when they categorise, are most files related to the cities only?--RZuo (talk) 08:45, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

---

 Done: Closing stale discussion, and moving São Paulo to São Paulo (state) per the common use everywhere as discussed above. -- Darwin ^Ahoy! 20:59, 7 May 2023 (UTC)