User talk:Pirate-Prototype

Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, Pirate-Prototype!

First steps tutorial Our first steps tour and our frequently asked questions will help you a lot after registration. They explain how to customize the interface (for example the language), how to upload files and our basic licensing policy (Wikimedia Commons only accepts free content). You don't need technical skills in order to contribute here. Be bold when contributing and assume good faith when interacting with others. This is a wiki. Getting help More information is available at the community portal. You may ask questions at the help desk, village pump or on IRC channel #wikimedia-commons (webchat). You can also contact an administrator on their talk page. If you have a specific copyright question, ask at the copyright village pump.

Goodies, tips, and tricks Put Babel boxes on your user page so others know what languages you can speak and indicate your graphic abilities. You can find the files you have uploaded in your Uploads. Please sign your name on Talk pages by typing ~~~~. To link to an image page without embedding the image, type: [[:File:Foo.jpg]], which produces: File:Foo.jpg. You may enable gadgets (custom features) for your account. There are several tools to upload files. Have you edited Wikipedia before? This guide might be useful. Made a mistake? Do you want to have a file renamed or moved? Use the move link and wait for an authorized user to rename it. Do you want to have your recently uploaded picture removed? Tag it as {{speedy|reason here}}. For more information read the deletion guidelines.

-- Wikimedia Commons Welcome (talk) 12:19, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Please don't replace existing categories with ones that don't exist

After your recent changes, there is now absolutely no way down the category tree from Category:Restaurants in Washington (state) to Category:Restaurants in Seattle, because you moved the latter out of the former and into into some "red" (nonexistent) categories. I'm guessing this isn't the only thing you broke this way. Do you understand why this is not good? Do you intend to follow through and clean this up? - Jmabel ! talk 00:34, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Please resend your message without the passive-aggressiveness ("I'm guessing this isn't the only thing you broke this way") and I'll get back to you after that. Pirate-Prototype (talk) 04:04, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

I am not being passive aggressive in making this observation (though you are welcome to imagine any tone you like). Speaking on the basis of about 15 years as an admin here, if you broke something this way it is very unlikely that that it is the only thing you broke. This is a rather new account. You are making rather major edits to an area of the category hierarchy that may well be subject to improvement, but which was certainly not broken when you started. Reorganizing such a category hierarchy is not a "move fast and break things" task. From lengthy experience I would be very surprised you checked your edits carefully in all but the one place that I happened to notice.

When you (that's an abstract "you", like "one") do tasks like this, failure to do your own quality assurance means you eat a ton of someone else's time checking your work, and your well-intentioned work becomes a net liability. If you prefer not do that sort of follow-up, then please take on a different task than trying to slightly improve existing category hierarchies that were not particularly broken. Improvements are genuinely welcome, and if you want to do this systematically and carefully, then great, genuinely great, and thanks, when done right this is useful. However, if you prefer a "move fast and break things" approach and want to do category work, please focus on things that are nearer the zero-level when you start. - Jmabel ! talk 04:57, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I apologize for the inconvenience, I've added Category:Restaurants in Washington (state) back to the Category:Restaurants in Seattle page. I can't see anything obvious in a brief scan that was broken (as a relatively new user), if you have any suggestions on other places to check, I'd be happy to try to correct them. Thanks for your explanation & time. Pirate-Prototype (talk) 02:03, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Ooh, you really are pretty new to this. That does fix the immediate problem I raised, but I can see that you haven't yet category hierarchies work. I would have spelled out more (and probably said it differently) if I had guessed that it wasn't just a matter of not following through.

The problem with the way you left it the first time wasn't that [:Category:Restaurants in Seattle]] needs to be directly in Category:Restaurants in Washington (state). The problem is that when you moved it to Category:Restaurants in Washington (state) by city you didn't properly build out the latter. Take a look at Category:Restaurants in Washington (state) by city and you will see that it has two red links. That means you put it in nonexistent categories. There is no Category:Restaurants in Washington (state) by location or Category:Buildings in Washington by city. I'm guessing you follow an analogy from somewhere that was differently structured.

I fixed one thing for you just now: Category:Buildings in Washington by city should have been Category:Buildings in Washington (state) by city

There are two ways you can attack the rest of this:

1. On the page Category:Restaurants in Washington (state) by city you can replace Category:Restaurants in Washington (state) by location with Category:Restaurants in Washington (state) so it hooks back into the existing hierarchy.
2. you can leave that page as it is, and create Category:Restaurants in Washington (state) by location, placing it at least under Category:Restaurants in Washington (state) (and under other things as may be useful)

I'd probably do it the first way, myself.

Either way: my main point here is that if you are creating new categories, especially if you are reworking an existing hierarchy (but, really, also if you are not), you need to check for "red" links like this when you are finished (or, more accurately, when you think you are finished) and resolve them one way or another. - Jmabel ! talk 02:22, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Thank you kindly for the information and context on how categories are structured, I appreciate it. I went with your first suggested method and replaced Category:Restaurants in Washington (state) by location with Category:Restaurants in Washington (state). I'll be more careful going forward and I apologize for my initial frustrated/accusative comment. Best wishes, Pirate-Prototype (talk) 02:35, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

No, I get it, no apology needed. I assumed you knew how to do this and were being sloppy, rather than that you needed guidance, so what I wrote was not entirely appropriately worded. - Jmabel ! talk 03:47, 12 May 2021 (UTC)