Category talk:Stamps

Commons:Categories for discussion/2022/06/Category:Philately

Stamp scanning

From User talk:Dbenbenn:

Unless you know more about philately than I do, you should have asked me, or used the talk page, instead of simply deleting my wording in Category:Stamps. I could easily be setting all the records for commons file sizes just by scanning a large cover at 2400dpi, but it's simply pointless; there is no additional information to be had. Stan Shebs 13:14, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Hi Stan. Please note that being bold is considered a virtue here. The edit that I made was not at all out of the ordinary. As for "setting all the records for commons file sizes", this is impossible: there is an 8 megabyte size limit, and there are lots of 8 megabyte images already. Also, please see Commons:Criteria for inclusion which indicates that images should be uploaded at the "highest resolution available". Cheers, Dbenbenn 19:49, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Simply deleting knowledgeable people's carefully-worded advice, and replacing with bad advice, is not considered a virtue at all however. An 8.5 x 11 cover scanned at 2400dpi is 1.5GB in raw form, so somebody following your "bold" advice would quickly run afoul of the 8MB upload limit. I'm amenable to discussion of recommendations, which I added because so many people were uploading tiny scans, however there is no point in me writing a better recommendation if you're just going to mindlessly delete it every time. Stan Shebs 02:58, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

That's a good point about large scans going over the upload limit; I updated the text at Category:Stamps to reflect that.

I don't understand why you think I'm "going to mindlessly delete it every time". I modified some text that you had written; that's how Wikipedia works. Dbenbenn 03:25, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm certain you know full well that deleting is not just "modifying some text" - try deleting half of a policy page on en:, see how many minutes before it's reverted, you're desysopped, and sent up in front of the AC for vandalism. So please don't insult my intelligence by lecturing me on "how Wikipedia works"; it's going to be a long time before you've contributed as much to WP as I have. Since this "discussion" is going nowhere, I'm just going to do my thing, and revert your edits as I see fit. Stan Shebs 06:59, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

I come back to the scan advice. In my experience, a 400 dpi is perfectly acceptable, it provides an image less than 1 MB. For a large cover, a 200 dpi may be enough, with a separate scan for the stamp (postmark) if of good quality. On the opposite, a stamp of 10 - 30 kb should not be accepted (there are too many of them in Wikimedia).

Jacquesverlaeken (talk) 20:13, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

I completely disagree with the advice Scan at the highest resolution possible; 1200 or even 2400 DPI is good. I have already stated that 400 dpi is an excellent compromis, providing ca 200 kBytes images, which I have used for thousands of scans. In the Stan Shebs user gallery, the Victoria image is 108 kB. Jacquesverlaeken (talk) 20:25, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

@Jacquesverlaeken: I keep track of most philatelic uploads every day and see loads of your stamp images. We thank you for all the hard work that entails but I personally have to disagree with your "excellent compromise" on image sizes. Most of your images, at around 200kb, could be at best be described as web resolution, so anyone wanting to look at details has no chance. Besides which, even though there used to be a 20Mb file size limit that was increased to 100Mb some time ago, so hard drive space here is not a concern, but quality is and maybe you are not aware of the file limit. We should also remember that computer's screen resolution is increasing, so small images will be of less use as display technology gets better. Of course you are correct that there are many files of even lower resolution than yours but based on your concept I presume you consider it of little use to use a higher resolution image, such as, this Penny Black stamp where you can even see the wove of the paper or this cover at almost 8Mb, neither of which even come close to the old 20Mb limit much less the 100Mb size. I have no problem with the existing advise but perhaps you are compromising for the sake of quality when we do the scans ourselves, or maybe your time is limited which I can understand. Of course for stamps we have no access to we have to upload whatever resolution we can find. This is a rather old discussion and maybe should be started elsewhere for a wider set of opinions, such as the enwiki philately project or the Village Pump. Cheers Ww2censor (talk) 22:17, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Given the size of most stamps there is little problem scanning them at high resolutions, although there may be an upper limit at which we are getting detail of little practical use such as each fibre in a paper, but generally, the higher the better. All stamps will also eventually degrade so a high resolution scan is useful for posterity. Philafrenzy (talk) 12:25, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Since this discussion, I scan most stamps with details (recess for ex) with 600 dpi, providing the necessary details for a good identification. Jacquesverlaeken (talk) 11:52, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Subcategory names

Although the de facto standard here is to name subcategories "Fooian stamps", that seems to be going away from the general standard of using "X of Foo" for by-country subcategories of X. The adjectival form is often awkward or little-known, sometimes nonexistent ("United States"). Does anybody else have an opinion? In any case, I think area subcats, such as "German area stamps" still make more sense than "Stamps of the German area", which suggests to me a misleading sense of "area". Stan Shebs 15:16, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

I created Category:Stamps of Togo just to try out the idea. Stan Shebs 05:11, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Changing national entities

I don't know if there is a standard way of dealing with changes of border and national entity, but I have tentatively created:

• Category:Stamps of British Bechuanaland, placed directly in Category:Stamps and also in Category:Stamps of South Africa (the modern country covering that area);
• Category:Stamps of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, placed directly in Category:Stamps and also in Category:Stamps of Botswana (the modern country covering that area).

This covers the different ways people might search for these stamps. Please change this arrangement if you feel it inappropriate. Cheers, JackyR 02:31, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds very sensible, thanks! Stan Shebs 03:17, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Cinderellas and alike

For articles about cinderellas and "countries" like Sealand, can we download their stamps here? What licensing template should be used for this purpose? One of such stamps was already downloaded before. Should we follow the same procedure? Would it be helpful to create a category Cinderellas? Thanks. --Michael Romanov 18:11, 5 September 2007 (UTC)