Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2024/07

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Limit "chronological" categories based on notability and/or the subject's rate of change

There's been several discussions recently about limiting the creation of "chronological" categories. While there doesn't seem to be a consensus to ban them outright, they can still clearly cause problems depending on the particular situation and what "chronological level" it is. Especially when you get down to "by year" or "by day" categories. So I propose limiting "chronological" categories to two instances:

1. If the particular subject is known for taking place on a specific date, then it's OK to create or categorize it in a particular "by date" category. For instance the September 11th Attacks are widely known for and discussed as taking place on September 11th 2001. So it's fine to organize it in (or create) a category for that specific date. Whereas if it's a subject where the date has no notability or usefulness in categorizing images to it what-so-ever then there's no point in creating a "by date" category to put it in.

2. Sorting images related to a particular subject "by date" is appropriate in cases where the rate of change for that subject warrants it. But not where it doesn't. For instance, if there are two images of the same tree taking days apart then it is pointless to put said images in separate "by day categories." Likewise, if a product doesn't change from year to year, then there's point in putting images of it "by year" categories. Whereas, if there are clear changes to the subject over time that are reflected in the images of it that we have Commons then it makes sense to organize said images by date categories that accurately reflect those changes. Otherwise doing so doesn't serve a useful purpose. Adamant1 (talk) 04:22, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

I also support this but we should have a clear guideline in this. I would suggest that events should be organised in by month categories. Photos of people can be sorted into by year category. For geographical features there should not be a separation by years, but they can be sorted into cross year seasonal categories. GPSLeo (talk) 05:49, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
I don't have a problem with any of that or making it a guideline once the specific details are figured out and agreed on. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:07, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Are you talking about the "category:Subject in YYYY" categories, or are you talking about categorizing images of, let's say a temple in Delhi in the "category:MM-DD-YYYY in India" categories? Kritzolina (talk) 06:43, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure if your asking me or GPSLeo, but on my end I guess I'm talking about both depending on the situation. I guess I don't really care if a category for a temple in Delhi is put in one for "MM-DD-YYYY in India" because there's obviously going to be more that can or will go in there along with it. I don't think a category like "MM-DD-YYYY in India" should be created simply so there's somewhere to dump the "temple in Delhi" category into. Like I think creating a specific "MM-DD-YYYY" category for the location of the temple when that's essentially the only there that we have pictures of for that day, month, and year is counter productive. I have zero problem with "MM-DD-YYYY" categories for countries though, becuase there's obviously going to be media to put in them. Conversely, I don't think "MM-DD-YYYY" categories should be made specifically for the temple itself. Unless there's actually something that's notable about the date or there's changes over time to it that are worth documenting through chronological categories. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:11, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
My "You" actually was a plural you, I wanted to hear from both of you, so thanks for answering this question so clearly. I see your points and agree with all of them. Kritzolina (talk) 07:15, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure that you actually mean Category:07-31-2023 in India, because that is definitely not how Category:Photographs of India by date subcats are formatted. Now, Category:2024-04-08 and the like are formatted differently, and in fact, as I barely scratch the surface, I find an extremely haphazard and "free-for-all" mix of date formatting styles. Dates formatted MM-DD-YYYY do not sort properly, for starters. There are date formats which are all numbers, and there are date formats which include month names such as "April", which are undesirable on several counts. There are date formats which are partially specified, and there are formats which are fully specified.
So perhaps as we codify a guideline or at least approach a way to describe current valid usages, we should regularize the formatting of these dates. And, we should consider formats which could optionally include timestamps as well: photographs of September 11th events may indeed benefit from ordering by the hour and minute they occurred and were photographed. Elizium23 (talk) 07:31, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Unless I missed something important, I think you mean September 11th 2001, not 2021! But yes - I believe I mentioned the "rate of change" standard in Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/06/Category:Bicycles by year, and that seems like it could be a broadly useful guideline for the granularity of chronological categories.
Categories like Category:Photographs of India by date are a separate issue, and one that may also be worth discussing. A category like Category:Photographs of India is clearly too broad to be applied to individual files, and I'm not at all convinced that intersecting such a category with the exact date that the photo was taken (e.g. Category:India photographs taken on 2000-01-01) gives it any additional value. Omphalographer (talk) 07:53, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Are we talking here about classification of categories or of individual files? I'd certainly want to see, for example, Category:May 2021 in Seattle on any photo to which it applies (or on a category it belongs to, if it was part of some larger event). You never know when it might be useful to know (for example) that a particular picture of a person was taken at a particular place and time. - Jmabel ! talk 19:31, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Surely that need is satisfied by metadata and/or structured data? Omphalographer (talk) 19:33, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
@Omphalographer: Only if our search capabilities really improved. It's easy for a user to skim a category; very hard to skim "between two dates" in structured data. - Jmabel ! talk 21:23, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

 Oppose I am against new restrictions here. Bicycles by year is useful in my mind, as they change in style and technology over time --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 10:46, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

I have to disagree. I was just editing "by year" categories for bicycles and there's rarely any difference from year to year. At least not that's readily viewable for most people. Maybe a 1980 bike is different then one made in the mid 1970s, but that's what "by decade" categories are for. We need to stop making categories in mass for minor things that no one can actually see in the images without a manual or specialized degree. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:14, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
Decade is too general for me, especially in these fast changing times --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 14:14, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Agree on that but not an argument for years cats as is: it just suggests there need to be subcats such as "2020s electric bikes" or "{novel feature/technology/component/event}" – such would be much more reasonable and useful than arbitrary by years cats in cases like this. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:32, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
  •  Oppose (edit - changing to clear "Oppose" in light of other comments below -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 16:01, 8 July 2024 (UTC) ) Tend towards oppose the proposal as stated as being rather vague and not helpful. I have no objection to discussion as to when chronological categories are recommended and when they are not. A few thoughts on my experience in this issue: I was at first skeptical that categories any finer than by decade were widely useful, but came to see their utility. The usefulness of some categories may not be obvious to some casual users, but sometimes can be very informative to others researching particular topics. For example, I've worked in audio for over 40 years, and have interest and have written about historic audio technology as well. I have some interest in microphones. We have many photos (and some diagrams and other media) related to microphones - for a time almost all just in "microphones" category, which became something of a huge dump. Some users started creating subcategories like "Women with microphones", "Men with microphones", etc. That may be of interest to others, but not very useful to me, so I created year and decade categories. I had another user make fun of me for doing so, but once categories were set up, Commons had a good overview of technological development and use. I don't know enough about bicycles to state what granularity of chronology is useful, but will defer to those actively categorizing such images. We certainly have year categories for automobiles - they are commonly marketed with model years. Chronology categories are also useful in subcategorizing what would otherwise be very huge categories. Guidelines might be helpful as recommendations, but hard rules might be difficult since there can be exceptional circumstances. For example, Pie Town, New Mexico is a rather small and generally undistinguished place, not somewhere of great notability, and there is no need of a full category tree by year - but Category:Pie Town, New Mexico, 1940 is entirely appropriate, since FSA photographer Russell Lee spent time making a series of photographs there then. I find it sometimes useful when for example I spend a half day taking photos of some historic cemetery or district to have a category collecting all the photos. As to "subject's rate of change", that may not be obvious until some frame of chronology is established. I certainly found much more change then I expected to see with centuries old historic monuments when media on Commons was organized chronologically - for example one might see gradual decay, then restoration, additions then slow decay again, then some disaster, another restoration that removes additions to restore a more historic appearance; changes in signage and visitors - perhaps the point at which visitors are no longer allowed to climb all over the monument - social contexts, etc. So IMO there should be no obligation to categorize everything chonologically - but many topics can benefit from it from the perspective of some users. The categories may not be of obvious usefulness to other users, but I don't see their existence as harmful. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 15:22, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
    •  Comment IMO another consideration is the amount of media in a category. When a category is filled significantly beyond the default display of 200 media, IMO creation of subcategories should be considered. Chronology is certainly not the only option and not always the best, but is often a useful one. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 15:29, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Support any changes that reduce the plague of chronological categories. Nosferattus (talk) 03:20, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Whatever you mean with "the plague of chronological categories" – your comment is unexplained and makes no sense, you want black and white videos from 1920 crowd out recent up-to-date recordings of a subject, old outdated charts bury useful ones, and 1900 photographs of a city or subjects relating to ancient history be intermingled with recent subjects and media? …and these aren't even good examples. One could say reduce the plague of locational categories such as by country subcategories. --Prototyperspective (talk) 11:49, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I mean. As long as the dates are recorded in structured data associated with the files, there is no need for date intersection categories. They may still provide some usefulness in certain cases, but that usefulness is outweighed by their overall damage to the category system. We would be much better off with no chronological intersection categories (with maybe a few limited exceptions). That is my honest opinion. Nosferattus (talk) 01:50, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
For something like Category:Bicycles by year (currently at CFD), having some degree of chronological separation so that you don't end up with File:1924-71 Ladies Hobby Horse.jpg sitting cheek-and-jowl with File:Triathlonrad.jpg is good. On the other hand, the exact year of manufacture isn't particularly relevant either. Omphalographer (talk) 03:33, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
  • @Infrogmation: Categories such as those are "actively harmful". They make it virtually impossible to find images by browsing categories. For example, if I want to find the most beautiful images of snow in Massachusetts, I have to look through Category:Snow in Massachusetts in February 2012, Category:Snow in Massachusetts in November 1894, Category:Snow in Massachusetts in January 1941, and 91 other chronological categories for snow in Massachusetts!! And this is not an uncommon situation. I run into this problem constantly and have to waste hours going through all these pointless subcategories. Nosferattus (talk) 18:16, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
        • Agreed that categories with only one or two photos are usually a liability, especially when they are intersection categories. Still, there are a few times when such small categories are appropriate:
          1. A Wikipedia article on the topic already exists, or clearly should exist. This is especially the case for individual people, places, buildings, etc.
          2. The category is very likely to grow. E.g. in an area where we routinely have enough photos every month to merit by-month categories, if it's the 2nd of the month and you are uploading the first photo from that area this month, there is no reason not to create the category now.
          3. Where there happens to be one poorly-populated category in a clear sequence of mostly well-populated categories. For example, if there were a 19th-century magazine where we sub-categorized images by which issue they were in (hopefully not the only categories they'd get!) and we turned out to have only one image from a particular issue, where 20 or 30 was more common, we'd probably still want to make a category for that issue.
There might be other cases but I can't think of them. Jmabel ! talk 18:36, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    • "As long as the dates are recorded in structured data associated with the files, there is no need for date intersection categories." Disagree strongly. IMO this makes multiple questionable assumptions. Commons still has a large amount of media without structured data, along with a large amount of media where the categories are of much greater accuracy, granularity, and usefulness than the structured data. For media from before EXIF became common - and such media can be very important for historic subjects - too often the date information is simply false, even when true date is clearly stated in the text or can be found by a look at the off-Wiki original source. This has unfortunately been greatly exacerbated by people copying media from Flickr while completely neglecting their responsibility to make the information correct - resulting in much media having date of digitization or Flickr upload, unrelated to true date of the media. Also the hand curation of categorization allows selection of media that are actually representative of the categories. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 16:21, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
  •  Support Agree, subcategories should have the fidelity that makes most sense. Media are buried in deep chronological subcategory branches that sometimes are as specific as the month even though the rate of change is decadal and most of the media haven't been subcategorized with this fidelity, making things even more dispersed than already by introducing these cats.
It would be good if there were more categories by decade and century like Category:Sleeper trains in the 21st century by country that then that then get subcategorized by subject not by ever finer chronology and/or subject-specific-irrelevant criteria (like gender rather than exercise/sport in Category:People exercising). Chronological categories are useful for many reasons (some hinted at above) including making it possible to see the media on recent subjects such as from studies of a year, but for all subjects there is a level of fidelity that stops making sense.
The few opposers have not thought this issue through and it greatly reduces the usefulness and navigability of WMC while year-specific images can still be put in year-specific categories like "{year} in transport" for an image previously in "Bicycles by year" that is actually truly relevant and due there. It doesn't mean all by year/month cats are inappropriate, just many of them. It just makes things hard to find and organize (even if there was a way to easily view files in cat including those in its by-year subcategories in a modern wall-of-images view).
Relevant: Category talk:Videos by year#Criteria? Bot?. And I think we'd need to discuss what should be done in regards to the issue discussed here: a new board where the level of fidelity can be discussed or upcoming upmerging of by year/month/day categories into larger time-span categories can be notified in advance? And what about the templates (example) that add these cats?--Prototyperspective (talk) 11:49, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Please replace two PNG files with SVG files across all Wikipedia articles.

Hello, my name is OperationSalura6144. I was trying to replace File:Palestine RCS.png and File:Galatasaray Sports Club Logo.png with File:Palestine Red Crescent Society logo.svg and File:Galatasaray Sports Club Logo.svg respectively across all Wikipedia articles, but I can't do it wholly because my IP is blocked on the English, Spanish and Persian Wikipedias and that problem made the whole process incomplete. I would like you to help me in this situation. I tried the best as I could in replacing files, but I hope you help me in these challenging situations. I'd be happy if you do that.

Also, I'm very grateful to User:The Squirrel Conspiracy for helping me and I thanked him with a plate of biryani. So, try to help me and I'll be grateful to you all. Good night. OperationSakura6144 (talk) 16:30, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

There has been a lot of discussion on this general topic already, and a general replace of images in other formats with SVGs is not wanted. So you should reach out to the individual wiki's noticeboards for them to perform the change, if they agree. (other global replaces [that do not have restrictions as in the warning section] can be requested on this talk page of User:CommonsDelinker/commands). --Schlurcher (talk) 06:43, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
Adding requests to User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands is the usual way for cross-wiki replacements, but that specifically notes that the tool will reject requests to change non-SVG files to SVG files, so it can't be done. It must be done individually. It looks like {{Vector version available}} annotations have already been added, so nothing really more to do on Commons -- they need to be replaced by editors on the respective projects. Carl Lindberg (talk) 12:17, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
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