Category talk:Streets in Austria

Category names for streets (especially in Austria)

There have been some questions recently about how to name categories for streets (especially in Austria). But this discussion could get beyond Austria. Feel free to add your contributions in German. The goal here is to find a common understanding for category names for streets in Austria.

Es geht um die Frage, wie die Commonskategorien für Straßen zu benennen sind. Also um Namenskonventionen. Wir freuen uns auch über Diskussionsbeiträge auf Deutsch. Ziel ist ein gemeinsames Verständnis für den Aufbau von Kategorienamen für Straßen hier auf Commons.

Invitations to people who already worked with category names for streets (feel free to invite others interested)

@Gryffindor, FDMS4, Gugerell, Anna reg, and Darkweasel94:

old discussions (thanks to darkweasel94)

• User_talk:Gugerell#,_Vienna
• User_talk:Gryffindor#Entfernung_von_",_Vienna"
• User_talk:Darkweasel94#Disambiguation_names_in_categories

international implicit naming conventions

The following different conventions can be found on commons currently (examples) / folgende Namensschemata existieren aktuell auf Commons (Beispiele):

Streetname in City: Warsaw, Yaroslavl (Russia)

Streetname (City): Switzerland, Bregenz, Monza, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Turku, Prague, Tucson (Arizona), Beijing (mostly), Manhattan

Streetname (City - district): Berlin-Bohnsdorf

Streetname, City: Graz, Vienna, Oslo, Malmö, Leeds, Dublin, Ankara, Bratislava, Kiev, Sydney, Cape Town, City of Westminster (London)

Streetname City: Zürich

Streetname (if no disambig is needed) and Streetname (City) (for disambig): Innsbruck, Barcelona, Zagreb, Sofia, Athens, Helsinki, Santiago de Chile

a mixture: Zürich, Saint Petersburg, Boston (in general there is often a mixture, but I added most of the categories to the one that had the biggest weight)

to sum up:

• adding the city to the name of a street seems to be a widespread practice on commons, not only for disambiguation.
• Schemes most often used are: Streetname (City) and Streetname, City (not far from 50:50)
• But: there is nothing like a single common international schema!
• Inside the streets of a city the names are using the scheme consistently.
• I would argue that both schemes used widely are influenced by the disambig scheme on the corresponding home wiki
• There are no known naming conventions for categories for streets in Commons.

is it a disambiguation?

It could, but in general we do not know whether there are relevant streets in the world sharing the same name. Would we skip the city and country on a plain old letter, if the name of the street was globally unique? And leave it to the postal services to find out where the street is?

is it useful to avoid suffixes like ' (Vienna)' or ', Vienna'?

The reason on de:WP to have the most simple name for each lemma and avoid disambiguations as much as possible is, IMHO, the convenience with linking and the avoidance of creating articles for the same object with different suffixes. Avoid red links if the article exists. But here, on commons we do not create links (most of the time), we do not write text, but describe images by short descriptions (sometimes containing links) and categories. Thus the situation is different. On the other hand we much more often navigate through hierarchical structures (Categories) on commons than we do on de:WP, where we navigate through wiki links and search.

what is the risk of renaming?

It is low, as categories are used by wikipedias, but mostly in only a small number of places. WD could help to rename a category and all its usages.

advantages of adding the city by default (feel free to add)

• You can judge by the name of the category (as opposed to opening the category and find a description (haha)) in which city the street is. This is relevant for tools like HotCat, Cat-a-lot and Search (at least). It also helps when when getting a suggestion while still typing. Of course, there are cases where we need additional criteria, mainly when the name of a city is not unique.
• No need to check for ambiguities all the time
• No need to create disambigs later, if ambiguities arise
• avoid wrong categorizations

disadvantages of adding the city by default (feel free to add)

• makes names longer
• causes this kind of discussions (but we are already in)
• with commonscat on de:WP you have to check (but a common scheme for a city will help and you will know it the other day)
• people having naming conventions of their local WP in mind have to relax a bit

I think we have to clarify and decide on the following questions:

• Do we just do disambig in the case we have to or do we use a scheme?
• What scheme do we use? Streetname (City) and Streetname, City?
• What to do with legacy data, keep or rename, rename slowly of with eagerness?
• Will we do it the same way for all of Austria, or keep it for different cities differently as it is now?

I would like to add some principles:

• If you change a name, only change it in the agreed direction
• follow the scheme found in the corresponding city
• Be lazy when changing names by adding the city that are internationally well known without mentioning the city (like Broadway, Avenue des Champs-Élysées (Paris), Sunset Boulevard, do it in case of disambig is necessary. But not as BKL II.
• In case the city is not sufficient, e.g. Postgasse, Vienna, we can do some disambig later when the second street is constructed by adding the district. We will not change the whole scheme for special exceptional cases.

My personal opinion:

• From the discussions I already read, most of you prefer to add the name of the city by default. I'm fine with that.
• And follow the scheme already chosen for a particular city to reduce necessary work. Which would mean , Vienna, but (Innsbruck). Not strongly convinced about this.
• For the first street category in a city, I prefer the Streetname, City variant. Because for me it isn't and never was a disambig, but some add-on (like in an address on a plain old letter).

happy discussions. lets find a consensus that is practical and can be used to streamline various contributors. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 23:04, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

place of discussion

I started it here as a matter concerning mostly Austrian people and Austrian streets, but if you know a better place, please propose.

Agreed naming conventions for Austrian street name categories on Commons

and as a result: