Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2024/03

Proposal for a common "culture and society" category

Although Culture and Society are different topics, the two are pretty much interrelated and easily confused (this is why {{Topic of country}} template deploys hatnotes at culture and society categories). I think there should be a common Culture and society category, which would cover the two related topics together. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 13:21, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Don't think think that's a good idea – sure they are interrelated but many things are. There are good reasons for why on ENWP these are separate as well. If we were to merge interrelated cats then we should also merge in Economics because society is largely or to a large degree about economics mechanisms/systems/activities. It's more distant to culture so that is one of the rough brief descriptions for why these need to be separate at that layer (there can be and are overlaps and linking subcats). Prototyperspective (talk) 13:28, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't want Culture and Society to be merged into a single category. Instead, I want them to be separate, with Culture and society be a common category covering concepts common to both culture and society. Although economy and society are interrelated, the two are not easily confused topics. Culture and society are both interrelated and easily confused, and many languages combine the two concepts together (for instance, we Bengali people commonly talk about সমাজ-সংস্কৃতি (romanized samāj-saṃskṛti) in Bengali, literally "society and culture"). Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 13:53, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Ah okay, that wasn't clear. The idea in general seems good but not this terminology/implementation in specific (for example because it does not include socioeconomic system). I'll ping you from the discussion at a larger-order cat which I think would better encompass these in some way. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:34, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

•  Oppose There was a pretty rigorous discussion awhile back where it was determined that there shouldn't be categories that combine multiple topics. To quote Commons:Categories "We should not classify items which are related to different subjects in the same category. There should be one category per topic; multi-subject categories should be avoided. The category name should be unambiguous and not homonymous." Any categories along the line of "X topic and Y topic" will inherently go against that, including a common Culture and society category. Although I acknowledge that the original proposer is saying they don't want to merge Culture and Society, but that's essentially what will happen if you create a parent category that combines both. People will just media loosely related to both of them in Culture and society and then it will impossible to sort said media into one or the other. Otherwise, there's probably zero reason to have the parent category in the first place.

A better approach is probably to better define the purpose of each category. If it were me I'd stick to a definition for both similar to Googles. I. E. for society "the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community" and with culture "the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively." Or to put it another way, society is a group of people living together in a society and culture is the event, action, or object that clearly shows or embodies said society. Hopefully that's not to convoluted, but essentially Culture should be for images that relate to the output of a society and Society should be for the more amorphous (or non-material) things having to do with the people in it. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:53, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

 Oppose Performances, arts groups, etc. are culture, but not particularly society. Government functions and NGOs are society, but not particularly culture. Yes, some things are in the intersection, but I don't think that we should lose the distintion. It's fine if some cats have both as ancestors. - Jmabel ! talk 17:57, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposed template for simple media labels

Given the size of categories such as Vinyl singles, should there be specific templates for simple labels of physical media? The following is my proposed text for the templates:

PD record labels

This label of a phonograph record consists only of a simple background, logo and/or non-literary text. It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain.

PD tape labels

This label of a cassette tape or videotape consists only of a simple background, logo and/or non-literary text. It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain.

PD disc labels

This label of an optical disc (such as a CD or DVD) consists only of a simple background, logo and/or non-literary text. It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain.

Thoughts? JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 17:48, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

 Question Why are the existing PD templates, such as {{PD-simple}} and {{PD-textlogo}}, insufficient? Why do we need three substantially similar new templates? The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 19:29, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not saying that they're insufficient. I'm just saying that there could be a template that condenses them together (and may also automatically put files in a specific category). JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 00:27, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Leaning towards  Support, we need public domain templates that are specific to works depicted. @The Squirrel Conspiracy: , PD-textlogo is supposedly for images of texts like logos, but not photos that are derivative works of the works said above. I made {{PD-structure}} specifically for infrastructure and simple structures, as {{PD-ineligible}} does not fit into the said types of works. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 02:13, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

•  Support I was actually thinking about proposing something similar myself since as JWilz12345 points out we need public domain templates for specific types of works and PD-textlogo doesn't seem to cover record labels. Really, it would be great to have similar templates for other types of physical media to though. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:39, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  What other types of physical media are you referring to? JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 03:03, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Unified proposal

PD-medialabel

This audio or audiovisual media label consists only of a simple background, simple logo, and/or non-literary text. It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain. Although it is free of copyright restrictions, this image may still be subject to other restrictions.

We could probably also have a 1= field for vinyl/tape/disc to make subcategories, but I think all three can share one template. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 07:40, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I also listed labels of audiovisual physical media as well, such as videotapes and DVDs.

Also, the name PD-label is ambiguous. JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 14:22, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

@JohnCWiesenthal: PD-medialabel?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:54, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

That seems more suitable. JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 16:57, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Adjusted. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 19:25, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Feedback needed on proposed changes to Describe step

Hi all! As part of our work on improving UploadWizard, we are now collecting feedback on some proposed changes to its "Describe" step. Please, feel free to join our discussion in our project talk page, and share your feedback. We are looking for your opinion to improve further our suggested changes. Thanks in advance to those who will participate! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:16, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Comment It'd be neat if the created/published box were two distinct boxes instead, so people reusing from WikiCommons don't have to guess whether the date refers to creation or publication. Moreover, both dates can now be listed. Bremps... 07:30, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposal for history maps template

Hi, if you are interested in "Maps of the history of Europe/Asia/etc" and the template(s) that could provide more order among its subcategories:
Please feel invited to participate in Template talk:Subject by century#Proposal.
Proposed features:

• New navigation template for "history maps" - well, those that are sorted by region/country, and then by century. Such a template is currently not existing.
• Switching naming standard from "Maps of 17th-century France/India" --> "Maps of France/India in the 17th century" (for all history-showing "maps of X in Yth century")
• How to group current and historical countries regionally, within the template (adaptable later)

Hope to see you there. Bring some time and long breath: I don't expect we will wrap up this open topic soon. Also, ancient history is unlikely to be covered, I think we can start with 5th century at the very earliest, but I am rather optimistic about the structure in 12-14th century onwards. --Enyavar (talk) 19:58, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Image categories by year

The more we have images categories divided up by year, the less applicable the categories become when looking for a good image for an article. In my opinion this syndrome/phenomenon has gotten completely out of hand and done very serious damage to the project. A person of royalty, for example, may have 40 different categories of "So-and-so by year" making it practically impossible to find the best image to use notwithstanding what year it was created. Would it be possible by some kind or bot or AI to duplicate all images sorted by year to the subject's main category? SergeWoodzing (talk) 19:47, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Year categories are often very useful, especially for maps, charts and so on...the problem you described is not specific to years-cats but lots of other subcats as well. For example, cats for all the countries in Category:Milky Way Galaxy and a place on Earth‎ or Gender subcategories in (1 example) Category:People exercising or and countless other cases.

A problem not quite clear from your description is that also when one intends to subcategorize them by something else such as 'which exercise' it is or what's actually shown in the image rather than common distinguishers, then this becomes very difficult when one has to browse lots of subcategories from where these have then been removed (often even before the cat has been created or despite it missing there; see COM:OVERCAT). There could be further and complementary potential solutions to this issue but for now what I proposed is a Wall of Images view for category pages so you can easily see all images in the subcats on one page like in the search results. And in addition one could sort (and filter) them by things like year or number of uses where these as well as the ability to just scroll through glanceable images make it possible to quickly find a good / fitting image. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:08, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you so much! I just voted there. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 20:31, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

An option to simply disable subcategories for a specific category would be a lot simpler Trade (talk) 20:41, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

+2 to that. Although there's nothing wrong with Prototyperspective's proposal, but at the of the day there should be multiple options and the issues with people over using "by year" categories should be dealt with regardless of if their idea takes off or not. Really, there should just be a guideline about when it's cool or not to make "by year" categories in the first place. We shouldn't have to create work arounds to compensate for the lack of guidelines or policies about these types of things. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:50, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

A good rule of thumb is that a by-year division should not be the only or primary subdivision of a given category. While by-year and similar categories are valuable for certain purposes, they are not useful when someone is looking for a general image of the subject or a certain aspect. For that, depending on the size of the main category and other factors, it's better to either have the single main category or have subcategories by aspect.

For example, Category:Construction of the Green Line Extension (MBTA) has about 750 files, which necessitated subcategories. By-year subcategories are useful in this case to see what construction activities were happening at what time - but they would be useless to find a picture of a certain station under construction, so all files are also in categories for what portion of the project was being constructed. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 00:08, 30 March 2024 (UTC)