Category talk:Head of the Charles

Name of category

There's a WP article on the head of the charles regatta. It uses some pictures from here. The regatta has a really strange name - none of the pictures, and as far as I can tell, none of the events, were anywhere near the real head of the charles, which is far to the southwest past many non-navigable structures. This is very confusing to those interested in the river as river. While on the one hand we can understand the advertising gimmick of calling the regatta "head of the charles" - such lies are common in real estate - if we are interested in pictures of the real head of the charles we are out of luck and confused. I therefore suggest we change the name of this category to be the same as the WP article and the event, "head of the Charles Regatta." Apparently one commons administrator, a sailor himself, is involving himself heavily in these categories. I think we need to broaden this to the community at large. Community, what are your thought and opinions?24.61.158.203 07:28, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

PS The article does link to an article expaining what a head race is. That is not enough, really. The title of the regatta is not "head-race of the Charles," It has been distorted from a produced English meaning to fit advertising purposes. The head of a river is still its source. WP is strong on disambiguation in many forms. Some disambig is needed here. The best way to do that as I see it is to identify the pictures as a regatta. Most people will not associate "head of the Charles" with a misnamed regatta, and it is not even a regatta, but is a race. Regatta is close enough. It seems to me it is in the spirit of WP to respond to this ambiguity, something with which I would think editors and administrators ought to be concerned. Confusion often arises from the little errors. Thanks.Botteville (talk) 00:29, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi all, to understand the naming, you need to know a little about rowing races. In rowing, a "Regatta" is a race where boats start all at the same time and race side by side. A "Head race" is a time trial, where boats start one after another and are timed over a fixed distance. "Head of the river" can also refer to the boat that wins the head race. Hence "Head of the Charles" is just a head race on the Charles river.

This is a convention across the world, I've raced in: "Head of the Cam" (Cambridge), "Head of the Nene" (Peterborough), "Head of the River Race" (Thames, London) etc. The Head of the Charles is the largest such head race in the world.

Also, the start of a river is not commonly called the "head", it's called the "source".

If there is legitimately some other category which has the same name, then perhaps we could rename this to Category:Head of the Charles (Rowing)

Renaming it to include the word regatta would be contradictory in terms of rowing.

--Ozhiker (talk) 08:50, 10 July 2010 (UTC)