User talk:Cmuelle8/Archives/2018

Bridge categories

Hello, Cmuelle8. I noticed that you are working on bridge categories. Some of the bridge categories you have worked on are categorized as buildings. This is incorrect, because bridges are structures but not buildings.

I hope that this doesn't duplicate anything in the section above. My German is not good enough to read that discussion. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 00:26, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

This is a categorization scheme not developed by me. It was and is deeply rooted in the (german) category trees. I am not going to fight it. If you want to do that - go ahead (but note that this is a lot of work, and it has long history..). Personally I think, that there are pro and contra arguments for this, so for some it may be incorrect while for others it will be perfectly correct. Note that a lot of category subtrees do not bother to differentiate between structure and building and use the terms interchangably (read: omit structure based trees in favor of a generalized building term). Oh, and there is a reason, some companies and machines are called bridge builders after all - things built by man are buildings: this is among the most general definition you can get for the term. Greetings --Cmuelle8 (talk) 00:40, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

The problem may stem from the fact that there are two terms in German (both nouns!) that translate to building. These are Bauwerk and Gebäude. Your usage of the term building more closely relates to Gebäude while the usage of building within the german category trees more closely relates to the Bauwerk translation (but note that Bauwerk may very well be translated using structure as well). This may aid to understand why the problem is larger than you initially anticipated: a lot of other things that ought to sort to structures are sorted below the building subtrees (in the german cats) because of this translation ambiguity, I suppose. You'd have to reeducate all the volunteers contributing to commons that have learned it this (ambigue) way to achieve a cleaner separation between building and structure objects, or develop some kind of bot to do this. Still, I think you may loose some contributors doing so. I do understand your point though, it's just that I won't make this my field of work. --84.133.80.98 01:09, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Interesting insight -- thanks! This is one of the side effects of having all the category names in English. I understand the point that things that are built should be called buildings -- it makes perfect sense! However, Commons categorizes things like bridges and dams as structures. The difference seems to be either that buildings have walls and a roof, or that their purpose is occupancy or storage. When I go through these, I'll try to create structure categories where they don't already exist. --Auntof6 (talk) 01:18, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

There should be no problem sorting bridges and other entities into a (for now) supplementary and parallel structures-subtree, but I'd refrain from doing systematic deletion in the (german) buildings-subtrees. If that supplement has grown solid at some point in the future, then the effect your trying to achieve will eventually happen by itself. Otherwise there is risk of undo-redo cycles, because of people being accustomed to the current state that, considering the (translation-bound issues) above, is not strictly wrong.

Again, you may not have to do this manually. E.g. if you define a bot looking for x y z subcats below Buildings in foo, you may program that bot to copy x y z to Structures in foo. (copy not move, because I suppose a grace period will help to gain broader acceptance for such a large reorganisation) Greetings --84.133.91.74 18:34, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Buildings go under structures, so you'd have something like this:

Architecture of <place>

Structures in <place>

Bridges in <place>

Buildings in <place>

Churches in <place>

Houses in <place>

etc. (other building cats)

Dams in <place>

Monuments and memorials in <place>

etc. (other structure cats)

Maybe what I'll do is start a discussion for this, so that people have a chance to see the issue and comment. --Auntof6 (talk) 20:01, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Do I take it for granted that the ideal layout in your mind is something like

Foo
Architecture of Foo		Economy of Foo	Nature of Foo	.. of Foo
Structures in Foo	.. in Foo
Buildings in Foo Castles in .. Churches Houses Manor houses Post offices Multipurpose halls Storage halls Town halls .. Bridges in Foo Tunnels in .. Fountains Squares Stadiums Venues .. (what about Covered bridges or Skyways??)

The definition of building (noun) as something with a roof and walls may also apply to some squares, some stadiums. In turn there are some bridge types that do have walls and a roof - they fit both Gebäude and Bauwerk definition in German, resp. building and structure (that is if the term building is used in the narrower sense and building as a translation to Bauwerk was omitted).

A lot of these corner cases need not be dealt with if building is used in a more general way, which I suppose adds to the historically grown situation found in the german category subtrees, let aside the translation bits.

If you have a municipality with a single (market) square only that happens to have a roof, then it is not easy to come up with a general rule, stating that all squares cats should be listed in structures cat. This hypothetical example is an argument against writing a bot that is too ambitious re-categorizing. It probably won't do a wrong thing in this specific case, but it may remove specifics that are correct (even if narrower defs of cat titles apply).

Some people in IT are over-generalizing on the peculiarities of this world. I consider it a mistake if commons tries to remove these peculiarities the brute-force way (which is a pledge to have structures cat btw). But then, without a generalization process one may not be able to categorize at all. Organizing media by using categories is always a trade-off (a non-definite one as long as it is editable).

So while you (and others) think it is too general, to throw structures and buildings together into the same pot (and then use the terms interchangeably for that pot), you will also find people on the other end. They may argue that it is still too general to differentiate objects into structures and buildings only (on that level of generality).

If you consider that pot for a moment, then if german contributors would have gone with the term structures early enough to name it, you would not have noticed any mistake at all. But by the absence of a dedicated structures subtree, it is easy to see that the building one is in effect a drop-in-replacement (same pot), it just appears to be strangely named to native speakers..

Wikidata has solved this problem by the ability to assign and re-assign names and aliases to db-objects, a tool to heal some translation issues. But cat titles on commons are fixed and less flexible, there is a DISPLAYTITLE magic word, but it's not target language dependent and really meant to overcome technical limitations for some titles not representable by the URL, as I understood. --84.133.92.25 20:19, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

.. i.e. you would not have had a problem with the following tree. Notice the pot just being named differently and that both pot names translate to the same german term, 'Bauwerk'. --84.133.80.187 20:42, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Structures in Foo

• Bridges in Foo
• Castles in ..
• Churches
• Fountains
• Houses
• Manor houses
• Multipurpose halls
• Post offices
• Squares
• Stadiums
• Storage halls
• Town halls
• Tunnels
• Venues
• ..

English wikipedia reflects on these categories sometimes by explicitely naming the pot Buildings and structures as in en:Category:Buildings_and_structures_in_Leipzig_(district). I do not think that it's a good idea to reimport this, because it breaks nav templates or worsens setting them up. If renaming cats is a path chosen to deal with the problem, then moving from Buildings in Foo to Structures in Foo where the latter does not exist, may drop-in more easily to these templates.

Another, less disruptive method is to adjust the category description to include .. and structures, but this may not satisfy the goal to streamline the semantic meaning of building across all categories regardless of their associated geographic location, which you seem to aim at. --Cmuelle8 (talk) 01:49, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

After a discussion not long ago, Commons eliminated all "buildings and structures" categories, converting them to separate categories. This was done because the term "buildings and structures" is redundant (similar to, as another editor pointed out, "carrots and vegetables"). So using "buildings and structures" here on Commons is no longer done. In some cases, there is only a structures category or only a buildings category, but that does not mean that things are meant to be combined there: it just means that only one happened to be created. It is valid to combine everything in a structures category because buildings are structures, but it would not be valid to combine everything in a buildings category. --Auntof6 (talk) 01:57, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

That leaves you with moving the pot from Buildings in .. to Structures in .. where applicable. But again, for German speakers this is a non-issue, unless they share your passion to create totality in semantics that is. Greetings --84.133.92.118 02:07, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Also I have not read that discussion (link?) that concludes "buildings and structures" would be redundant to just saying "structures", but for completeness sake: It is strictly not. The former, less compact variant conveys in its title the explicit and proclaimed intent to not subclass buildings into their own, separate subcategory. Instead it flattens all building types to the same category all other structure types are in. Just saying "structures" in the cat name is not the same: because the cat title is then not definite about whether buildings may/should be subclassed or not.

This is the same thing with "carrots and vegetables". Since carrot is a major root vegetable one is saying that one won't create a separate sub-category for all carrot types, but instead list them directly below the vegetables one. This is an expressed definite choice. Actually its not the same thing - though there are carrot variants, it more often than not refers to a sub-species in the taxonomy (while buildings is more of a sub-class). But if you play the equivalent with root vegetables instead of carrots the analogy may work.

If either category is sparsely filled only when separated, it does make sense to opt for the combination of both in one pot (and name that adequately), to spare users a pro-forma or dummy level in the tree that has no or almost no content. Of course this may hold true for a certain period in time only and may become obsolete as more media is uploaded.

Hypothetically you could also flatten the bridge types by using "bridges and structures". Yes, it is debatable whether to do that for the purposes here. No, it is not redundant to saying merely "structures".

That said, I'm not in favor of using "buildings and structures" cat titles, because it hardens creation and update of navigation templates as long as its not widely used. But this has nothing to do with the expression being redundant to saying "structures". The emphasis in both is a different one. --Cmuelle8 (talk) 16:50, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Der WLM-Countdown hat begonnen

Hallo Cmuelle8,

nun ist es wieder soweit. Vom 1. bis zum 30. September findet zum fünften Mal der internationale Wettbewerb Wiki Loves Monuments statt. Im Mittelpunkt steht bekanntlich das Fotografieren von Kulturdenkmalen. Du hast an einem der letzten Fotowettbewerbe teilgenommen und wir freuen uns auf weitere Bildbeiträge von Dir.

Viele interessante Motive, nicht nur Burgen und Schlösser, sondern auch Fachwerkhäuser, Brücken und Brunnen, technische und Industriedenkmale und vieles mehr gibt es noch zu fotografieren, damit sie in der Wikipedia dokumentiert werden können. Nützliche Tipps findest du auf unserer WLM-Projektseite. Du kannst gerne individuell Fototouren durchführen oder aber Dich auch Gruppentouren anschließen. Besonders freuen wir uns auf Fotos, die Lücken in den Denkmallisten der Wikipedia ausfüllen.

Darüber hinaus kannst Du auch an der Arbeit der Jury teilnehmen, die Mitte Oktober die Fotos bewerten und die Gewinner ermitteln wird. Bis zum 15. August kannst du hier Deine Bewerbung einreichen.

Viel Erfolg und Spaß beim größten Fotowettbewerb der Wiki(m/p)edia in den bevorstehenden Wettbewerbswochen wünscht Dir das Orga-Team. Wir freuen uns auf Deine Fotos.

( Bernd Gross, 6. August 2015)

Kann archiviert werden. --Cmuelle8 (talk) 06:37, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Earth 2017

Hallo Cmuelle8,

bald startet wieder Wiki Loves Earth Deutschland, unser Fotowettbewerb rund um das Themengebiet Naturschutz. Wir würden uns freuen, wenn Du wieder mitmachst.

Bilder können vom 1. bis 31. Mai 2017 eingereicht werden.

WLE Deutschland kooperiert dieses Jahr mit der Deutschen UNESCO-Kommission (DUK). Die bestplatzierten Bilder von Biosphärenreservaten, Weltnaturerbe und UNESCO-Geoparks sollen auf http://www.unesco.de präsentiert werden.

Die allgemeinen Wünsche der Organisatoren haben sich nicht geändert: Schutzgebiet oder -objekt angeben, Originalauflösung, keine Signaturen oder ähnliches im Bild.

Die Suche nach geeigneten Motiven erleichtern unter anderem neue Listen aller deutschen Naturwaldreservate oder Listen der Naturdenkmale in Baden-Württemberg, im Saarland, Hessen und Brandenburg. Stöbere einfach mal bei Wikipedia, z. B. auf der Karte.

Eine Vorjury wird die Vorauswahl der Bilder übernehmen. Hier kannst Du Dich ebenfalls gerne beteiligen. Bei Interesse bitte unter WLE-Vorjury eintragen, das Passwort kommt per E-Mail.

Viel Spaß und Erfolg wünscht im Namen des Organisationsteams,

--Blech (talk) April 2017

Kann archiviert werden. --Cmuelle8 (talk) 06:37, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Category:Network tied arch bridges

Network tied arch bridges has been listed at Commons:Categories for discussion so that the community can discuss ways in which it should be changed. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this category, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for discussion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it. If the category is up for deletion because it has been superseded, consider the notion that although the category may be deleted, your hard work (which we all greatly appreciate) lives on in the new category. In all cases, please do not take the category discussion personally. It is never intended as such. Thank you!

--PRZ (talk) 18:39, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Category:Bridges_in_Landkreis_Leipzig_by_material×type×function_(flat_list)

Category:Bridges_in_Landkreis_Leipzig_by_material×type×function_(flat_list) has been listed at Commons:Categories for discussion so that the community can discuss ways in which it should be changed. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this category, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for discussion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it. If the category is up for deletion because it has been superseded, consider the notion that although the category may be deleted, your hard work (which we all greatly appreciate) lives on in the new category. In all cases, please do not take the category discussion personally. It is never intended as such. Thank you!

Themightyquill (talk) 07:07, 15 June 2018 (UTC)