Category talk:Old maps

Old world maps

It was a little confusing that "old maps" meant "old world maps" so I moved the world maps into a separate Category:Old world maps, which also has the advantage of being a subcategory of Category:world maps. This category should exist like Category:maps, where the maps are meant to be moved into the various subcategories. --Astrokey44 09:01, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Definition of "old maps"

The definition of "old" is a bit weird, I'm quoting from which details the "old" further as: "Old maps" means maps made over seventy (70) years ago.

That statement was written in 2007, so it means that all maps that are made before 1937 qualify as old... then. Today, the same statement means that all maps that are made before 1949 qualify as old. Ten years from now, all maps that were made before the 1960ies qualify. And so on.

In my opinion, a hard threshold should be set between 1940 or 1950.

Better yet would be categories that differentiate between ancient maps (from before geodesy), old maps (between geodesy and aerial surveillance), modern maps (from a time when aerial or satellite surveillance was possible), since the methods of data gathering, and drawing styles are so hugely different between these types.

Comments or other ideas? --Enyavar (talk) 00:57, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

The "70 years" is constant, 70 years ago from current year. Agree that "70 years" is to a degree arbitrary but so would any other number, or any set date. Where more precise subcategories are possible and useful, they are encouraged. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 14:36, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

In the box at Category:Old maps it says: "map produced at some time in the past, which no longer serves the purpose for which it was made, often because the information it contains is outdated, but which may be of artistic or historic interest". I think this is a good definition to apply to the category as well (the text must be shortened a bit of course). A qualitative criterion makes more sense than an exact date. If the majority still prefers a quantitative criterion I would suggest to set it to 30 years at least. 30-70 years old maps are interesting because of its historical data at first. --P170 (talk) 11:11, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Categories for discussion

See Commons:Categories_for_discussion/2016/10/Category:Old_maps for 2016-2019 discussion. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 14:36, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

British library spamming this category?

It seems BL has uploaded hundreds of poorly categorized images into this category. It will take days to analyze and re-categorize these into e.g. 'old maps from books' where many would seem to belong. As a public institution with huge resources I would expect BL to do a better job. Should we ask them to clean up this category? --Periegetes (talk) 19:57, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

@Periegetes: As far as I can see, that spamming was done mainly by User:Artix Kreiger 2, who mass-transferred Flicker content from BL. Was the BL really actively involved? Like, did they employ Artix? The problem seems to be, Artix never categorized the uploaded maps correctly, and they all (eventually!) landed in this category. Thousands more of the old BL maps are in fact still just dumb "illustrations" and haven't even show up here, yet. Artix is already blocked for being a sockpuppet; I don't know if there were other issues with their work. Unless another user makes more brainless transfers, the amount of unsorted old maps at least won't grow anymore. I can't see how we could get BL to take responsability here for content they posted on Flicker, since they already provided all the correct attributes (on Flicker, though). I'd love for ArtixKreiger2 to be put to work in a cage, to solve this horrible mess. Alas.

My own approach for these maps has been so far: Check the detailed description from BL, then perform a search for this exact text string. Then, create a new category and bring all media with the searched string into that category. Sometimes, you get a few dozen maps in one haul, and also a lot of other uncategorized media, too. Finished example: this one. (Agreed on the fact that this is pretty tedious work!) --Enyavar (talk) 16:04, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for you explanation of the situation. Very unfortunate end result. Apart from the BL materials, I have done quite a lot of cleaning of the 'old maps' categories. I hope someone will have the energy to carry on with the BL data. Periegetes (talk) 06:47, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

"Old maps of the history of..."

Hi, I have observed that the "Category:Old maps of the history of <somewhere>" usually doesn't exist, and I don't think that it would have much sense either. The reason is that "Old maps of..." often gets subcategorized by subregions and/or by centuries. My own suggestion would be to sort (e.g.) an 1898 french-language map about territories of Wales in they year 985, into:

• "French-language maps showing history of Europe" (or the most detailed sub-category, nothing changes here)
• "Maps of 10th-century Europe|980s" (this is the sub of "Maps showing 10th century history", or the most-detailed sub-category like "Maps of 10th-century Wales", which doesn't yet exist)
• "Maps of the history of Wales|980s" (or the most-detailed sub-category, like "Maps of 10th-century Wales" again, this would roll item#2 and item#3 into a single category here, but usually the tree isn't that detailed yet. I think we don't have anything systematic like "Maps of the 980s in Wales", in any sub-tree, just special cases like Category:Maps of the Roman Empire in 117 AD.)
• "1890s maps showing history": This is my actual suggestion, to split Category:Old maps showing history up by decade of production, and stop splitting by the described region. The extent of the described "history by region" would be already handled by the "Maps of the history of Wales" category, see above. In the tree, this new category would be under "Category:1890s maps" and "Category:Old maps showing history, with all decades up to the 1950s getting an entry. (Note: What we're supposed to do right now: categorize that hypothetical map of Wales into Category:Old maps of the history of the United Kingdom, which doesn't even exist on the one hand, and which is also not really applicable, given how Wales was not part of the UK in the 980s.

I have also noticed that well-intentioned people tried to establish Category:Maps by year shown and Category:Maps by year created as a solution for essentially the same problem (maps displaying a different time than the date of creation). The latter category is redundant with "[[:Category: YYYY maps]], e.g. Category:1652 maps of France: The "YYYY map"-categories are always meant to denote the year anyway, so "by year created" is superfluous and should be built back. On the other hand, "Maps by year shown" have not been enforced much so far. It could make some sense in special cases (like the 117 AD maps for Rome, see above), but I fear most categories will not be filled with more than one or two files. Especially once we rightfully sub-categorize these maps not just by year but also by region again: there is little sense in having maps of 650 Arabia, 650 England and 650 China in the same Category:Maps showing 650. Here, I'm in favor of going with the "Maps of 7th-century Arabia/England/China|650" cat-tree, with possible subcategories for the shown decades or sub-regions once doing so makes sense.

But, am I overlooking something? --Enyavar (talk) 16:04, 14 June 2022 (UTC)