Category talk:Beechwood Cemetery

Proposed move

I disagree with the proposed move. The Ottawa cemetery is the national cemetery of Canada, a National Historic Site, and also serves as Canada's National Military Cemetery. It also inspired a well-known poem. A Google search indicates that it is by far the most common subject of the term "Beechwood Cemetery". The cemetery in Durham, although lovely, appears to be a fairly unremarkable local cemetery. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 17:14, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

It looks there are 10 to 20 Beechwood Cemeteries around the world. Commons has no rules for priorities, why we use a disambiguation system to avoid errors (on en:wikipedia, it is dismbiguated too). --Foroa (talk) 18:06, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

That's not really the case at all - there are thousands and thousands of undisambiguated primary topic categories on the Commons, notwithstanding potential conflicts (just as an example while on the topic of Ottawa, we have Category:Ottawa, which works fine notwithstanding Category:Ottawa, Illinois). If there is no concept of primary topic on Commons, we should be adding the {{Move}} tag to Category:London, Category:Paris, etc. As for the Wikipedia article, it was at the plain title until a few months ago, when it was moved without discussion -- there is an ongoing RM request to move it back. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 19:25, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Commons is not wikipedia where we have to get the best statistical chance to get it correct: a reader clicks easily to another item, a bot and most humans drop items in the category they think is right. We need a fair and clear "system", not a lottery. See User_talk:Multichill/Archives/2010/February#Non-move_reasoning and please stop comparing with Paris, London, Rome and Amsterdam.. --Foroa (talk) 06:42, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

First, please calm down. It is neither helpful nor appropriate for you to be telling what I can or cannot say. I believe that I made a valid point - you are, of course, entitled to disagree, but you should not be dictating to others that they not raise points with which you disagree. In any event, the point I was trying to make was not that this cemetery is similar to London, but rather that we should not be implementing non-existent policy on a haphazard basis.

As for the substance of your comments, I disagree that it is a lottery. In fact, the system appears to work fine for the most part - the link that you provided simply emphasizes to me that the principle of primary topic is alive and well on Commons, although some people (such as yourself) may not be too happy with it. Perhaps the better approach would be for someone to try and draft a clear, unambiguous policy, rather than us engaging in these one-off battles. I actually am a big fan of consistency in category naming, and would favour such an approach. Until such time, I don't see the point in being forced to adhere to subjective views of what the policy or guideline ought to be. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 16:41, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

It's a National Historic Site of Canada, but it isn't called (officially or otherwise) "Beechwood Cemetery, National Historic Site of Canada", except as its catalogued as a NHSC, so I'm not sure that this move proposal makes much sense. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 19:38, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

The name ends at the comma, the disambiguation starts after the comma; I found it more explicatif than Ottawa. --Havang(nl) (talk) 19:53, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

What policy requires disambiguation? --Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:24, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

It mostly is practical reasons. Viewed from the maintainance side it is to avoid infection of categories; viewed from the uploader side it serves as guide to put the correct category. Viewed from the visitors side it helps to find/understand what he/she is looking at. We aim at related items to start with the same word(s) in a way they pop-up simultaneously at the search windows on typing a search term. (Sometimes we use a disambiguation overall-category, notably for persons having the same family name, as they do not pop-up simultaneously). --Havang(nl) (talk) 05:13, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that you revert the problem. A category name must state in an unambiguous way what it contains (COM:CAT: The category name would be enough to guess the subject). Disambiguation terms can be omitted when there is no ambiguity possible (which have been done too often unfortunately). Which is not the case here. We cannot expect from an average user, especially the ones outside North America and the UK, that he knows that there is "the Beechwood Cemetery" and a number of other Beechwood cemeteries. I am pretty much convinced that there are several cemeteries in Russian, Vietnamese, Arab, ... that will translate to Beechwood cemetery too. --Foroa (talk) 06:26, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

First, I think you are both overstating any potential confusion -- I doubt any exists (any more than there is confusion from Category:Ottawa as mentioned above). But if you are concerned, isn't the proper approach to develop a guideline or policy that avoids this sort of unnecessary debate, rather than these attempts to haphazardly impose "standards" based on subjective concerns. Right now, fairly or unfairly, it just comes across as random application of personal preferences. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 12:05, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

If there should be standards in disambiguation situations, then exclusion of confusion should be one, including exclusion of potential confusion. Whatever comes out, I agree with any solution that resolves the disambiguation. --Havang(nl) (talk) 12:51, 30 August 2010 (UTC) (PS added: of course we are all of good faith and argue fairly.) --Havang(nl) (talk) 12:51, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Of course. I didn't mean to imply that either of you were acting in anything but good faith. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 12:53, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

"Beechwood Cemetery, National Cemetery of Canada" could be a compromise solution, if that would be okay for everyone else. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:03, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate your concern. I think that the problem originates from the beginning of Commons where the tendency was to use the least possible number of words for categories. As a result of that, we keep renaming categories (first the ones that where originally the biggest and most poplular) or adding disambiguation terms as conflicts arise. Although indeed, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Rome, ... should be disambiguated if we want to use a real categorisation system, we don't insist for countries (Georgia) and capitals with a major historical impact (and many subcategories). In practise, we don't issue move requests haphazardly, just when we are stumbling on a conflict (causing miscategorisation) or when a new disambiguated category is created that might conflict with an existing one. I think that current generation of categorisation people is more aware of that recurring unnecessary work and don't try to occupy "their" name slot in the hope that no other category with similar name will appear, as many occasional categorisers do. Moreover, I experienced several times an emotional resistance when "someones" category needs to be disambiguated. So, that is not imposing standards on subjective concerns: Whenever there is a naming conflict and a disambiguation on one of our client wikipedia's, we propose a solution. The sooner it happens, the smaller the move is and apparently less painful. But I agree that the Commons standard should be clarified on that, especially concerning cities, books, films, artworks, songs, popgroups (should have a "(band)" disambiguation whenever it can lead to confusion with a movie, book, song, ...), ... Anyway, it is indeed a painful job that requires a lot of goodwill and energy. --Foroa (talk) 13:31, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Skeezix, for understanding that my move proposal was intended to restart the discussion to go forward to a compromise. I like your proposal "Beechwood Cemetery, National Cemetery of Canada" it's quite informatif and unambiguous and National Cemetery is more relevant as search term than National Historic Site for people who don't know Beechwood Cemetery --Havang(nl) (talk) 15:49, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, thanks to you both for taking the time to clarify your concerns so well. At the end of the day, I am still not entirely convinced (by the implementation here -- I agree with your general principles), but your points are all well taken and I don't want to stand in the way of the consensus. So if we are all agreed on "Beechwood Cemetery, National Cemetery of Canada", then I would say that we have a good compromise. Thanks for your efforts. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 17:06, 30 August 2010 (UTC)