Commons talk:Category inclusion criteria

Opening heading

Thankyou King of Hearts improving this. This is just the start and some of the things are just my opinion but the hope is that this eventually will be a guideline here. Its surprising that this didn't exist and that while w:WP:OVERCAT goes to the inclusion guideline, COM:OVERCAT goes to WP's equivalent of w:WP:SUBCAT. Apart from Commons:Categories and Commons:Rename a category#Subject identification there is little to say about what can have its own category here and how many sub categories can be created for a topic (X in Y categories) though Commons:Don't be bold#Categories might touch on that. Indeed I think the point is that the inclusion criteria is intentionally lower here then WP, this means that if a topic is notable on WP then per COM:INUSE an image is generally automatically acceptable here and thus a category would usually be acceptable, though maybe we shouldn't have topic categories with just 1 image but since they can usually end up with more it seems OK. Someone desiring deletion of the category should probably nominate the WP article, then the file for deletion first. Also as you have noted there are many cases where topics that fail WP notability guidelines but nevertheless have many images for (such as farms and non notable people that still have some coverage) that we can have categories for. The main bar for some topics (other than those that can't generally have things assigned to like ideas) as you noted is indeed copyright since many notable films, albums etc can't have files here and thus can't have categories. Similarly there are topics like w:Kintyre and the Islands (ward) and constituencies that due to the fact they aren't used as container categories might not often have categories here if they only have 1 file associated with them but more files could presumably exist and as noted 1 file categories might be OK. Crouch, Swale (talk) 11:59, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

More suggestions

@King of Hearts:

For notability of topics category (such as people, places, companies etc) there are several options:

1

• A, no criteria thus only 1 page required (since categories with o pages can't generally be kept) as long as whatever is chosen in part 2 applies for example if we choose 1A and 2B then a person who only has a file that they aren't the main subject(s) if would fail.
• B, notability required such as topics with no sitelinks or Wikidata item needing 3 pages, those with only a Wikidata item (or having some notability) needing 2 pages and those with valid Wikidata sitelinks (or would likely meet WP's notability criteria) only needing 1 page. Wikidata items without sitelinks may pass d:Wikidata:Notability 2 and 3 but as long as a Wikidata item currently exists it would only need 2 files.

How do we categorize topics?

2

• A, categories for details of the specific person or place etc (such as when born, occupation etc) can only be added if the file (or other page) is the main subject(s) if the file in question. Categories that wouldn't have been added to the subject's category like "People wearing hats" etc aren't counted.
• B, categories for such details can be added where the person etc is not the main subject but the subject has at least 1 file which they are the main subject(s) of or otherwise likely meet WP notability guidelines meaning information about the person is probably verifiable. An example of not being the main subject of a file would be a picture of a notable person where there is also a NN one such as Commons:Categories for discussion/2020/09/Category:Geoff Evans (soldier) or a picture of a city centre which shows people.
• C, categories can only be added if the person etc is the main subject(s).

Answers

I think for 1 I'd normally go with A since COM:PS can probably normally deal with NN categories. There are plenty of things like street (see w:WP:50k) etc that don't generally meet WP's notability guidelines but are useful to have here and can have many files here. I'd normally go with what you said about Bunny Bleu in that either the person is in scope in which case a category can exist or they are not in which case all their images should be deleted.

I think the main thing is to restrict set categories such as not having things like Cities in Devon (as there is only 2) and not having Villages in Babergh (as not useful to most people even though there are dozens of villages in Babergh as most readers only know the county). As well as not having subject/not definable etc categories. In some cases like the North Britain example they should only contain media specifically discussing the idea rather than the area they may cover and some topic categories like Category:Greater London may be deemed to overlap too much even if a WP article exists. We should however avoid subdividing by year etc unless we have a larger number of files (say more than 100) as otherwise such categories generally make it harder to find different images of the topic.

Categories of clearly "invented" topic category names for topics like "Thistle 100 metres north of Mill Lane" probably should not exist unless a reasonable number like over 10 files exist.

Even if we do accept 1B (at least for some topics) I think the original suggestion of 10 pages is far too high as it would otherwise mean we would need to add the categories the topic category would have had like People from X to all of the files and its often easier even if you just have a few pages to have a separate category for finding that topic.

The reason 1B has a suggestion for requiring 2 files for Wikidata items without valid sitelinks is that the notability requirements are lower for Wikidata items as an item with valid sitelink(s) is automatically notable per the Wikidata notability criteria but some topics are still accepted as being notable there even without valid sitelinks. d:Wikidata:Notability 1 excludes Commons categories but if it didn't it would be possible to create a catch 22 situation by uploading an image, creating a Commons category for the image and creating a Wikidata item which uses the image and links to the Commons category. This would mean the Commons category would be entitled to be kept because of the image it contains, the Wikidata item would be entitled to be kept because of the Commons category and the image would be entitled to be kept because of its use on the Wikidata item, this is why the "Getting a non-notable topic deleted" section may be useful.

For 2 I'd be against C since otherwise we could have categories for NN people that can't be verified or (such categories added to the files if 1B was applied). Commons:For Wikipedians#Policies and guidelines says the author's claims are normally accepted. So it seems sensible to not allow such categorization at least for people, other thinks like building etc seem OK.

For some example which have come up, Commons:Categories for discussion/2020/03/Category:Sunny Leone in 2002, a "by year" category with just 1 image doesn't seem useful though there are other years with more so unsure. For Commons:Categories for discussion/2020/05/Category:Bunny Bleu the category has 2 images and several WP articles so automatically notable. For Commons:Categories for discussion/2020/07/Category:Deepak Singh 3 files seem enough and if not notable nominate all 3 files for deletion and if deleted the category can be deleted as empty. Commons:Categories for discussion/2020/09/Category:Geoff Evans (soldier) is more interesting, I'd say that this more points towards the 2nd questions, that is to say should he be categorized at all such as in Category:Soldiers of the United Kingdom? If he is NN then surely his categories should be deleted completely rather than merging Category:Soldiers of the United Kingdom to the 2 files he's in. Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:27, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Heavy focus on en:Wikipedia

If I may give my subjective impression of/opinion on this page: It seems like this was written from the point of view of someone who is familiar with how things are handled at the English language Wikipedia. To me as someone who is not an en:wikipedian, some of that is completely obscure (for instance, we don't distinguish between topic and set Categories at Commons). Other things seem unnecessarily biased, for example where Wikipedia's notability criteria (en:wp not specifically mentioned as such but presumed from context) are directly applied as an inclusion criterion for Commons, but most other sister projects (including non-en:wp) are being ignored.

That's not necessarily a bad thing: I think this could be very useful for lost en:wikipedians, but they should be clearly defined as the target audience right in the beginning so that others don't waste their time. Maybe even call it Commons:Categorization for Wikipedians instead? El Grafo (talk) 09:24, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

@El Grafo: Its not intended to just be aimed at ENWP but yes indeed it is mainly written that way but yes with respect to things that are notable in general it would apply to any project even non Wikipedia projects but yes there may be a reason still not to have a category here for some pages that do exist on other projects. This for example would mean if there was a Dutch chess player who only had an article on Nl and had a category with a single image it would be considered inherently notable in the sense of having a separate category for the person. This is a compromise between having no criteria and thus allowing a category for everything such as an unnamed individual shrub and having a strict criteria such as requiring 5 or 10 files here and a Wikipedia article.

With respect to set v topic categories as far as I'm aware most projects like the English Wikipedia and Commons have no strong distinction between set and topic categories, for example consider Category:Barnsley it appears in the set categories Category:Towns in South Yorkshire and Category:Unparished areas in South Yorkshire and the topic category Category:Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley. The En category is in the same categories (though there was disagreement about if it should be in the set "Category:Geography of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley") apart from the fact its in the container category "Wikipedia categories named after populated places in England". The De category is in the topic "Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley" category, "England nach Ort" (a container category like the En one) and "Europa nach Gemeinde" another container category. De doesn't allow putting the town's topic category in "Ort in South Yorkshire" but from what I'm aware most other Wikipedias do allow this. This strong distinction seems specific to De. Crouch, Swale (talk) 12:39, 15 October 2022 (UTC)