User talk:Foroa/archive 2008

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Traduction[edit]

Bonjour et bonne année - mais encore moi, sur un détail! Autour d'une ébauche d'article sur WP français intitulé "Paysage d'hiver" (peinture flamande et néerlandaise) [1], j'ai rencontré le terme "Wintertje". Pourriez-vous, si vous aviez un instant, me le traduire ? Je vous en serais comme de coutume infiniment reconnaissant! User:Michel-georges bernard, 19 janvier 2008, 12h26

Infiniment est chez nous un mot bien lourd, nous utilisons d'ailleurs beaucoup moins les superlatifs (pour mon père, "pas mauvais" était le complément ultime, super était un mot d'un autre planète). Wintertje = winter-tje = hiver petit = petit hiver. "-tje" est donc le diminutif. De toute façon, je suis toujours content de rendre des petits services comme celle ci. Pour moi, c'est un des joies des wiki's. --Foroa 13:29, 19 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Merci donc, tout simplement. J'avais bien compris le Winter mais n'allais pas jusqu'au tje. Somme toute, on pourrait écrire ceci :"Appartenant à la même génération qu'Hendrick Avercamp et Arent Arentsz (dit Cabel), Adam van Breen contribue au succès des scènes d'hiver (« Wintertje ») d'origine flamande, évoquant des patineurs sur des canaux et des rivières gelés, dans un décor d'arbres et de maisons." où « Wintertje », tel que je l'avais rencontré dans mes lectures et tel que je le reproduisais aveuglément (non sans inquiétude), semble avoir le sens de "petites peintures d'hiver". Ne vous dérangez pour me répondre que si c'est linguistiquement absurde. Bonsoir! User:Michel-georges bernard, 19 janvier 2008, 18h55

  • Une explication possible (j'en ai trouvé des traces) est que wintertje est la courte période d'hiver pendant il gèle et neige, donc pendant laquelle on peu ""jouer".

PS. Quand je pense que j'ai oublié de vous féliciter pour votre photo du vitrail de Jean Le Moal à Saint-Malo (que j'ai jadis introduite dans l'article sur lui dans WP-français - où elle est de loin la meilleure), j'ai honte.

Valuable Images Proposal[edit]

Hi Foroa, we have previously been in contact regarding the great PH-x debate (remember)?I think your input as an opponent to the proposal then was fruitfull as you brought in themes in the debate, which had not been considered by us pro-quantitative-assesments-of-photographic-capabilities followers. The proposal ended in...nothing, which when looking back now, is perhaps good... Anyway, I am now working on an entirely different proposal for a new concept called Valuable Images, which is being discussed here. I am curious to hear your opinion about this new proposal? Overall, the users who has noticed the proposal so far, has given positive feedback. However, I feel, just like in the great Ph-x debate, that some fresh eyes and opinions could be healthy and stimulating for the consensus-oriented approach, which I am seeking this time (another thing I learned form the great ph-x debate - don't vote, do consensus). Your views are therefore appreciated, no-matter what you think about it. Cheers, -- Slaunger 11:32, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I will have a look and some thoughts the coming days. I feel indeed that there is such a need but the word "valuable" gives me already some en:goose bumps as it is a difficult thing to translate in simple rules and a workable process. Bravo for your courage to tackle such a subtle and difficult subject in this world of speedy workaholics. I agree with you that a voting is often the indicator of a failure of reaching a consensus leaving a substantial number of unhappy people in the cold (We have that sad experience for the Belgian government). Moreover, often each additional voting round increases the polarisation and decreases even more the consensus leaving mainly extremist or black & white positions at the debate. Some of us are strange animals; at least I am ;-) --Foroa 12:06, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Great that you will have a look at it! Concerning the goose bumps and the "valuable" term, that is indeed one of the most difficult aspects of the proposal and also one of my concerns. For a long time I tried to think of other terms, like "encyclopedic" or "unique", but none of these terms ssemed to match the scope I had in mind. For the same reason I and others have tried to add some examples in the proposal of what could be considered VI and what couldn't. There has been some good discussions about this already, but I think more "difficult" examples are needed as well as more discussions about this. One thing I do not think is optimal about the "Valuable" term is that it sort of indicates that images, which do not qualify for VI are "not valuable". This is of course not correct. I also considered to add some an extra word like "Most Valuable image", "Highly Valuable Image", but it just does not seem right to me. -- Slaunger 12:55, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Should we not stick to just one image relating to racism to stress test VI? Just to get a reasonable balance between things. I mean there aren't that many images of this type and I am concerned that the controversial nature of the images may distract from the test itself. Yes, I nkow there are two frog photos of the same species, but that was to emphasize as an example that it is possible to have VIs of the same subject as long as it is different kinds of aspects of that subject.-- Slaunger 16:33, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that any of them are really going to trigger racism discussion.
The first image is about a damaged and caricatural poster drawing from 150 years ago, so I fear no real discussion on the contents.
The second one is concerning a widely condemned apartheid symbol (say 25 years ago), but 15 years ago, I have seen those things with my own eyes. Question is: is the heavy symbolic having priority over a bad quality image ?
You see, two completely different tests, but maybe we should not put them next to each other to avoid the "overflowing" of the discussion from one image to the other. --Foroa 17:47, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK, just keep them as-is. Anyway it would also seem strange to put one in the middle. It is logical to have them in the order they are "test" nominated. ~I'll have a look at them later tonight. It is not my speciality, so I'll read a little bg info first.-- Slaunger 18:56, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Too late. You can revert the order if you prefer (I don't care). The apartheid image is a nice exercise case for the system, although not really "stress" testing (yet ?). I'll try tonight or tomorrow to formulate something on the other poster image. It's not always easy to translate an image that "talks" or induces guts feeling, into a short and sensible text. My lesson is that an image that "talks" is not enough; it needs to be translated in text. Best. --Foroa 07:28, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I reverted the order. They aren't really that controversial after all - due to their historic nature and how things have changed since then. Now, this image of the earliest known portrait of Muhammad would be a truly controversial image to stress test VI, but that would really be a bag of worms to open up. So I do not think we should try that either... -- Slaunger 14:15, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think that your examples would work without too much stress, but I would not propose it as VI anyway, so why taking risks. If you want real stress, then try the Danish cartoons on the Islam, but this will help nobody. Maybe we should try something of all the subjects you did propose. Abstract art (and 3D), naive art, a bit of sex, something about religion or saints, image:BrigitteBardot.jpg (quite good for me, this fainted glamour), ... I'll try some things later on as it should go naturally (and slowly). --Foroa 14:46, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe we should ask Carol for a number of test case with her beloved images. Chances for stress testing might increase. --Foroa 07:31, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
...I think I'll just post a message on COM:VP to get views from a more diverse set of users. -- Slaunger 09:01, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Boerderijen[edit]

Hallo Foroa. Diene kwiet van weken terug is weer bezig met de categorie van boerderijen aan het leeghalen. Hele hoeves zit hij te verdelen in vreemde subcategorieën. Help je ook even dat in het oog te houden? --LimoWreck 19:05, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pff, ongelooflijk... meerdere mensen hebben het voor nieuwjaar met handen en voeten uitgelegd... maar hij blijft maar doorkliederen. Foto's met boerderijen in heel hun glorie propt hij in een té specifieke subcategorie (die boerderijhuizencategorie), foto's met binnenkanten van stallingen van een boerderij verhuist hij dan weer naar een veeel te generieke oudercategorie (landbouw in een land). Jammer dat we zo'n tijd moeten verliezen aan mensen die het niet willen snappen :-( --LimoWreck 19:22, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Heb ik pas opgemerkt. Het was veel te stil en mooi om waar te zijn zonder de gepersten. Nu en dan moet er blijkbaar nen verdroaidn wytewoai opstaan. Niet veel tijd nu, maar ik probeer mee de schade te beperken. --Foroa 19:26, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, nu ge het zegt. Diene geperste heb ik al een tijd niet meer zien passeren en geen last meer van gehad. Is die verdwenen of zo? Anyway, we zien wel. De leute ! --LimoWreck 19:29, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Al een of twee maand geblokkeerd door SBJohny wegens inciviek gedrag. De moment om Brugge weer "plat" te zetten. --Foroa 19:32, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tss, in zijn uitleg denkt hij nu dat hij moet de boerderijen verdelen naar de "weelde" of "rijkdom" die de eigenaards zouden hebben gehad. Alsof dat er zoveel mee te maken heeft. Alsof je op die paar na zoveel kasteelboerderijen met gesloten binnenplein gaat vinden op de polders, of langegevelhoeves in de ardennen. Rijk of arm zal daar niet veel aan veranderd hebben. Het concept van streekgebonden bouwstijlen (of het nu voor boerderijen of eender wat is), is hem ook onbekend blijkbaar. --LimoWreck 19:47, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Er zijn wel een paar sjiekere herenboerderijen of heerlijkheden, maar bonne chance om die paar in goede cats te isoleren. De heerlijkheden van Ingelmunster: je moet er twee uren in de geschiedenis voor duiken voor je weet dat het om een heerlijkheid gaat. En bovendien hebben die sjieke boerhoven nog een gewoon boerhof in annex. --Foroa 19:52, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Pff, wat een zeurkous. Hij vindt maar nieuwe categorieën uit ook... er zou dan nog ergens een nut in kunnen zitten, ik vertrouw zijn gedoe aan geen kanten meer. En dan loopt hij nog eens de village pump, de notice boards etc af om te gaan janken. Precies een reïncarnatie van diene geperste lemon :-( Ik heb gezien dat je regelmatig bent bijgesprongen, als je verder een oogje in het zeil kunt houden, alle hulp ware welkeom. Ciao. --LimoWreck 23:30, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ik heb zeker 15 reverts gedaan die ik niet meer terugvond in de logs: blijkbaar was je meestal net iets sneller. Anderzijds heb ik kalm en rustig geantwoord bij de administrators. Het probleem is dat er overal deletion en move request rongestrooid worden maar die worden blijkbaar met veel moeite opgekuist. We zien wel, maar het wordt wel tijd dat er een administrator er zich eens serious mee bezig houdt. --Foroa 13:42, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

hand drawn pig[edit]

When I jokingly left the {{citation needed}} at the VI demo with your hand-drawn pig image -- I had no idea that I would get a chance to see it morph into an almost cite-able 'reality' so quickly!

Life is funny on the anonymous internet, eh? -- carol 01:37, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes, life can be very funny. Especially if one looks to things from another angle than the "usual" angle. It is not a matter of being anonymous; at work, I am known for my creativity, but in fact uniquely when problems arrive that have no "standard" solution. --Foroa 18:39, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Geklieder[edit]

Voor als je nog eens wat van ons patrimonium wil opvolgen... Er denkt er hier ene het licht te hebben gezien Erik Baas (talk · contribs) door een aantal foto's van W-Vl kerken te nomineren voor verwijderen. Meneer denkt dat ze "onbruikbaar" zijn omdat de oostkant van de kerk er in de late namiddag bij een winterzon donker uitziet. Tiens, hoe zou dat toch komen ? Misschien interesseert het je wel ;-)

PS: niet meer op stap met het fototoestel in het Kortrijkse de laatste tijd ? ;-) --LimoWreck 00:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

1. Licht. Voor sommige kerken moet ik er wel drie tot zesmaal ernaar toe gaan om een accepteerbaar licht te vinden, er geen stellingen of vrachtwagens voorstaan, de kerk open is voor binnenfoto's, ... Als er inderdaad al foto's weggegooid worden omdat de lichtbalans eventueel beter zou kunnen dan dweilen wij natuurlijk met de kraan open. Mijn ervaring is ook dat er veel slechte of slecht ingestelde schermen zijn die een totaal verdraaide indruk geven van de licht en kleurbalans. Kalibratie van schermen is allesbehalve eenvoudig, en eigenlijk zou je een tijdje de meeste foto's moeten afprinten om te zien hoe die er uiteindelijk uitzien teneinde een "mentale" cailbratie/referentie te hebben met een scherm.

2. Ik heb nog een paar honderd foto's staan die om opkuis, kadrering, klassement, retouches ... vragen, opzoeken van juiste namen en data, onvolledige series (licht, kerkbinnenkanten) zodat ik inderdaad momenteel minder op tocht ga tot mijn backlog een beetje opgekuist is. Wel niet zo veel tijd de laatste tijd. --Foroa 09:13, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nog eens een goeien dag ;-)

Wat is je idee over deze categorie die plots weer gevuld wordt blijkbaar ? Category:Castles in the Flemish Region ? Greetz --LimoWreck 22:59, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Vermoeiend. Na een poging om per provincie te klasseren, nu een poging per regio. Ik blijf erbij dat de mensen vooral per stad/gemeente en land denken (zoals je een brief adresseert) en dat een uniform twee niveau systeem voor België voor iedereen het gemakkelijkst is. Als je sommige items per regio, sommige per taalgroep, sommige per provincie gaat klasseren dan wordt het een hopeloze soep met all bijhorende discussie en fouten. Heb wel niet meteen veel tijd nu om daarop te reageren. --Foroa 07:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Beste medewikipedianen, het is helemaal niet mijn bedoeling om hier onrust te stoken of de boel op stelten te zetten. Ik zag gewoon dat er cats op lager niveau bestonden en heb daarom de kastelen in de bestaande weliswaar lege categorie ondergebracht in de overtuiging dat ik daarmee goed werk leverde. Ik volg de discussies hier niet. Als de gemeenschap niet wil dat die categorieën gebruikt worden, waarom deze niet verwijderen of kan dat technisch niet? Graag antwoord op mijn overlegpagina hoe we de dingen oplossen Paul Hermans 08:35, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dag Foroa,

Ik ben het er mee eens dit onderscheid op te heffen. Het verplaatsen van de categorieen van Waalse kastelen die ik tegen kwam lijkt me prima. Vlaamse kastelen dan natuurlijk net zo goed, daarmee aansluitend op bovenstaande discussie.

Met vriendelijke Groet, Cycn 19:09, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Prima Cycn (zie ook User_talk:Paul_Hermans#Category:Castles_in_the_Flemish_Region), ik heb er ook een ander klassement, kastelen in de Belgische Ardennen, uitgezwierd; nog een ander type van klassement (naast taal, regio en provincies, stijl/architectuur en periode in de geschiedenis, zonder nog van de eigendom en politieke aspecten te spreken (graaf, prins, koning, hertog)). We kunnen meer klassementen uitvinden dan dat er kastelen zijn. Op zich is er met bijkomende klassementen niets mis, maar in eerste instantie lijkt het mij prioritair een hoofdklassement op poten te zetten.

En bedankt voor het goede werk dat je levert op de maps en coat of arms; het was hoog tijd dat iemand er een beetje orde in schept. --Foroa 07:42, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

...en vlaggen... het is een enorme bende. onder wapens staan (stonden) ook allemaal gemeentevlaggen. Ze moeten nog allemaal in subcategorieen... maar dit is al een goede en noodzakelijke eerste stap! Dank
Inderdaad; vlaggen, wapens, logos en insignes worden door de meesten door elkaar gegooid. Dat is grotendeels veroorzaakt door de klassementspolitiek die door velen gevolgd wordt: alleen dieper klasseren als een categorie overloopt (en catastrofaal wordt). Als je weet waar je naar toe gaat, dan start je natuurlijk beter met een stevig uniform basisklassement (zelfs met lege categorieën), waar iedereen meteen zijn weg in vindt. Op die manier vallen de stukjes beter op hun plaats en zijn er minder massieve herschikkingen nodig. Goede moed en vriendelijke groet. --Foroa 08:16, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Image deletion warning Image:Saint-Malo_cathédrale_Saint-Vincent_interieur-1.JPG has been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether it should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry.

If you created this image, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue.
In all cases, please do not take the deletion request personally. It is never intended as such. Thank you!

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84.57.78.85 06:07, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hum[edit]

Time you were an admin? :) Regards --Herby talk thyme 09:38, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As there are less fights, maybe I should consider it. OK if this causes not too much additional trouble. --Foroa 07:54, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Valued images evaluation[edit]

Dear Foroa,

This is a standard message to the 18 different users who so far have been involved in testing Valued images candidates as either a nominator, reviewer or project editor. We are interested in hearing what you think about the project and what your positive and negative experiences have been. We would be grateful if you would voice your opinion here. Thank you,

-- Slaunger 19:11, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

hallo[edit]

Dankje voor je bericht. Ik heb de foto's inderdaad ingescand. Maar dit zijn allemaal foto's die mijn oma genomen heeft vroeger. Dus ik denk dat ik deze rechten wel heb. De foto's heb ik niet gecomprimeerd, dus ik denk niet dat de resolutie groter kan. En in de tekst verwijs ik naar de foto's. Dus de uitleg van de foto's vind je in de tekst.

Vriendelijke groeten 193.190.147.129 06:22, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bellegem[edit]

Hallo, een vraagje: [2] vanwaar de categorie Bellegem hier? Groeten --LimoWreck 21:10, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Omdat volgens nl:Willy Bocklandt, hij van Bellegem afkomstig is. Ik probeer ook mensen aan hun thuishaven te linken (minimum geboortedorp), alhoewel het het niet altijd evident is om de werkelijke thuishaven te vinden zoals je ook al ondervonden hebt met de massa's mensen die in een kraamkliniek van een centrumstad geboren zijn. Beste groet. --Foroa 06:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, ik vermoedde al zoiets. Een andere denkpiste was dat je het café op de achtergrond herkende, en dit toevallig in bellegem stond ;-) Ciao --LimoWreck 21:09, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Veranderen categorien bij image Image:Ottenburg_church_L.jpg[edit]

Ik heb je veranderingen teruggedraaid want het lijkt mij nuttig de link naar categorie Ottenburg te behouden. Verder om de categorie Churches in Belgium toe te voegen lijkt me weinig zinvol. Die categorie bevat meer dan 2000 afbeeldingen. Het zoeken daarin is niet makkelijk. Daarom ben ik begonnen om specifieke categorien te maken - zoals er al veel zijn - "Churches in ....." en dan bij het plaatje de categorie churches in belgium te vervangen door de meer specifieke. Daarbij zie ik dat er bij de categorie van de plaats veel afbeeldingen zijn die geen link naar de Churches hebben en afbeeldingen die bij Churches staan die geen link naar de plaats waar het genomen is hebben. Wouter 08:04, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dag Wouter, eerst en vooral ben ik onder de indruk van je vele goede bijdragen aan de commons.

Zoals je bij de Category talk:Churches in Belgium kan zien is die categorie misschien overvol, maar heeft toch zijn nut omdat ze een visuele search toelaat, bijvoorbeel om een kerkje op te snorren van rond 1950 met ronde vensters en koperen dak (om maar iets te zeggen). Er zullen altijd wel mensen zijn die zoeken op een visueel detail, en in dat geval is een globale categorie meer dan nuttig. Te diepe cats maakt het visueel zoeken heel wat moeilijker.
De kerk in category:Ottenburg en category:Churches in Ottenburg zetten heeft weinig zin maar stoort niet echt omdat er weinig ander foto's zijn. Het wordt wel wat veel in category:Overijse waar dezelfde kerken op drie of vier niveaus gecategoriseerd staan. Op zich nog niet zo erg omdat er relatief weinig andere foto's zijn. Bij steden met veel foto's wordt dat wel problematisch omdat het moeilijk wordt om na te gaan of alle kerken wel in de juiste cat staan en dus zowat overal gezocht moet worden om zeker te zijn dat men alles nagekeken heeft. Dit probleem wordt nog erger als de naam van de gemeente en kerk niet meteen zichtbaar zijn in de filename.

Beste groet. --Foroa 08:36, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bedankt voor de link naar Category talk:Churches in Belgium; ik had het nog niet gezien. Ik ben van plan om zo af en toe eens in de churches of Belgium een serie foto's met weinig zeggende filenamen te controleren op goede verwijzingen en zonodig aan te vullen of corrigeren. Zelf vind ik in het algemeen het meest ideaal om alleen de meest karakteristieke foto ook in een algemene categorie te plaatsen. Andere foto's van hetzelfde object (ik doe het vooral bij planten) komen dan in de specifieke categorie of pagina, maar via een gallery bij die karakteristieke foto wordt de kijker opmerkzaam gemaakt dat er meer is. Groeten --Wouter 10:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Helemaal mee eens. Betreffende "churches in Belgium": de catsort pipe parameter maakt een override van de filename sort maar wordt intern niet geprefixt zoals de default "image:filename" (denk ik). Wij moeten niet alleen een soort categoriesysteem op punt zetten maar ook een systeem om de wandelaar (visueel) en de browser (tekst) snel naar interessante plekjes te brengen. Velen hier houden echter mordicus vast aan een puur categoriesysteem zonder dubbele cats. Ik had ooit nog gedacht om een "postcard" type of label in te voeren voor de meest significante foto van een reeks, maar met de gewone commons is het hier al ingewikkeld genoeg. Als er iemand dan de dubbele cats terugdraait dan laat ik het maar: ik maak mij er niet meer druk (meer) over omdat deze subtiliteiten moeilijk uit te leggen vallen aan iemand die puur aan categories denkt. Beste groet. --Foroa 10:41, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Beeld van het Leeuw van Waterloo[edit]

dag meneer! mijn nederlands is niet zo goed maar ik doe mijn best... ;) mag ik jouw beeld image:Waterloo - De Leeuw -3.JPG van het Leeuw van Waterloo benutten om het voor een wapen van waterloo te bewerken? sorry nog een keer voor mijn slechte engels.. mvg 012maximus345

Je Nederlands is prima. Natuurlijk kan je die beelden gebruiken: daarvoor doen wij het. Ik ben wel benieuwd wat het resultaat zal zijn, vooral omdat die rondvliegende vogels ambetant kunnen zijn voor een dergelijke toepassing. Op je user page zou "Als jullie suggesties of aanmerkingen over mijn bijdragen hebben → Een vriendelijke en constructieve discussie helpt altijd!" correcter zijn dan het huidige "Als jullie enkele suggesties of aanmerkingen over mijn bijdragen hept → Één friendelijke en constructieve discussie helpt altijd!". I have no problems with English or French neither (German is rusty and merely read-only) if this suits you better. Beste groet. --Foroa 07:05, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

dank u! heel vriedelijk! Ik zal eens kijken hoe de wapen zal worden... 012maximus345

Help needed with the Valued images project[edit]

As you may have seen, this project is going live for nominations on 1 June, 2008 at 0:00 UTC. Before then, there are a few things to be finished off, and any help you can give will be welcome. The latest discussion is at Commons talk:Valued images candidates#Open action items for Valued images.

When the project launches publicly on 1 June, it will need reviewers who are able to jump in quickly and provide prompt feedback. During those critical first few weeks it will be important to have a decent number of reviewers who are prepared to put in the effort to make sure the first nominations are well-reviewed, as that will set the standard for the future.

Would you help, please, with the final tasks now, and also pledge your help with some reviewing on 1 June and thereafter? --MichaelMaggs 17:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

deprecated function in your monobook.js[edit]

Dear user, I noticed that you use the includePage function in your monobook.js page.

This function is now obsolete, as the importScript function was introduced with rev:35064 to the MediaWiki Javascript core library wikibits.js. It also keeps track of already imported files.

To allow us to remove includePage from Mediawiki:Common.js I'd kindly ask you to replace its use with importScript (same syntax!). Thanks! --Dschwen 17:03, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Giggy's RfB[edit]

G'day

I just wanted to say a huge thanks for your support in my RfB. It just closed, and I'm now a bureaucrat. If you ever want to discuss any of my actions, as a 'crat, admin, or plain old user, please don't hesitate to leave a note on my talk page.

Cheers, giggy (:O) 10:39, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Valued images test review phase has ended[edit]

Dear Foroa,

Thank you for participating in the development of the Valued images project by test nominating one or more candidates. We have used the input from the test reviews to fine-tune the guidelines, process and templates used, hereby hopefully improving the setup.

We have now decided that on June 1, 2008 at 0:00 (UTC), the valued image project will be opened for official nominations. To get ready for the grand opening, we will close down the last remaining open test candidates in a few hours, such that the candidates list pages are emptied and ready.

Since there has been a certain amount of instruction creep over the course of the test review pahse, we have decided that all promoted and declined candidates from the test review phase will be reset to the so-called "undecided" state prior to the opening. This means that test valued image candidate review pages all end up in Category:Undecided valued images candidates and the test sets end up in Category:Undecided valued image set candidates.

The votes from the original test review will be archived in a previous reviews subpage and reset upon renomination.

Although all nominations will be reset, you, as a test nominator, will still have the advantage that each candidate can be re-nominated beginning June 1 0:00 UTC. The votes from the original test review will be archived in a previous reviews subpage and reset upon renomination. Click on the links to the aforementioned categories for instruction on how to renominate.

In addition, the project has decided to re-nominate all candidates, which were test promoted, unless you tell us not to do so on my talk page. Also, do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or problems relating to valued images.

I hope, you will also take part in the project once it goes on the air, either as nominator, maintainer and/or reviewer.

Happy editing, -- Slaunger 21:49, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

VI seal

Re: Categorisation work[edit]

Thanks, --Tano4595 18:10, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wat een gedoe[edit]

Dag. Ik zie dat je de vaudeville een beetje hebt gevolgd. Soms vraag ik me hier af wat voor zin het nog heeft om goeie bijdragen te leveren en consciëntieus aan projecten bij te dragen als er hier trollen en beledigende personen (één en dezelfde in dit geval) constant je welgemeende arbeid teniet trachten te doen. En tussen haakjes, Alzeheimer heette Aloïs ;-). Groeten. Lycaon 13:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wat de Korstmosafbeelding betrof: De regels van QI schrijven een zo goed mogelijke identificatie voor. Ik ben al enkele dage met B.navez in samenwerking om die zo goed mogelijke identificatie te achterhalen, maar dan slaat mevrouw weetal er haar haken in en tracht zoals gewoonlijk tegen ieders (of eerder mijn) schenen te schoppen, door prematuur 't een en 't ander unilateraal te beslissen. Dat kan voor mij echt niet meer. Groeten. Lycaon 13:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Eigenlijk is het Alois Alzheimer, niet Aloïs Alzeheimer, maar je antwoord is goed genoeg: je kan nog efkens doorwerken. ;) Ik hou al een tijdje je vriendinnetje in de gaten omdat ze een natuurtalent lijkt te zijn voor ongelukken, ik begin ze al een beetje te begrijpen (olowel daj'oltemets zoe peizn da'ze 'n vyze te letter eit). Het ziet er naar uit dat jullie tegenpolen zijn en dat ze de juiste manier gevonden heeft om je met een minimum aan energie maximaal op stang te jagen. In het begin, na verschillende vruchteloze pogingen, heb je nog inspanningen gedaan om hoffelijk en verdraagzaam te zijn, maar je geduld schijnt op te raken. En juist geduld (of eerder over laten waaien) schijnt mij de meest efficiënte manier te zijn. Als je minder snel reageert, dan kan er ook eens iemand anders reageren, en dan ziet ze tegen een groep aan in de plaats van altijd dezelfde persoon. Persoonlijk denk ik haar ooit op een vriendelijke maar strenge manier vast te zetten, maar dat kan nog een tijdje duren. Ondertussen: vooral je niet op stang laten jagen en anderen de kans geven om te reageren; als de anderen het niet doen is het misschien ook de moeite niet. --Foroa 13:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wieze road... Lycaon 13:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have changed the scope on this one and you may want to have a look at it again. Cheers, -- Slaunger 14:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I also changed the scope here: Commons:Valued image candidates/Cheating.JPG (although I doubt that will change your opinion, which I respect). -- Slaunger 14:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So...[edit]

The admin bit - I guess you are not going to self nom. Do you want me to & anything I should know beforehand? Cheers --Herby talk thyme 10:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

VIC: DaVinci MonaLisa1b.jpg[edit]

[en] I changed the scope of Commons:Valued image candidates/DaVinci MonaLisa1b.jpg slightly, adding the word "comparison" to make it a little clearer, in case you'd like to recast your vote. — Loadmaster 23:10, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My RfA[edit]

Thanks for supporting my RfA. --Túrelio (talk) 15:52, 29 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

e

Category Cities in Italy[edit]

Hello, I saw this edition, and I want to tell you that is over-categorized (all Cities in Lombardy are Cities in Italy, and so on). Regards, --Tano4595 (talk) 07:04, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See my comments on your talk page. It is clearly the intention of category:Cities in Italy to have a complete list of all Italian cities. This is in my opinion lacking in some countries and extremely handy to find/browse cities, even if you don't know the geographic country organisation. --Foroa (talk) 07:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I was writing here when you wrote the message in my page. I agree about provinces and regions, but not about the others items. I think the rule of avoid over-categorization is usefull and independent of the persons or the nacionality of the persons. Regards, --Tano4595 (talk) 07:11, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I absolutely disagree, and looking in many countries, I am not the only one. Don't forget that categories are equally used for quick browsing and finding.
It happens very often that I try to categorise in a country (for many pictures, you know only the (beginning of) the city name and the country name) which I don't know (especially in Germany and France), and I have to give up because I don't know the arrondissement, province of region, so I cannot find it.
Whatever position you take on this, this impacts the work of most people organising their country information, so I don't feel I have the right to force them one way of another. So, so far, I will respect the Italian organisation until they decide to change it. --Foroa (talk) 07:23, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don´t understand what you are talking about. I'd read Commons:Categories#Over-categorization again and I don't see where are the rules about diferents contries or preferences. And last but not least, ¿what about Commons:Categories#Why is over-categorization a problem? So, if you know that there are many categories having a problem, the best way is solving it. --Tano4595 (talk) 08:16, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am not very happy with the wording in Commons:Categories#Over-categorization as it is not clear at all. In fact, what is unclear in the text is that the overcategorisation concerns one single categorisation rule/organisation. I have no time right now, but this evening, I well produce a more detailed explanation how many valid categorisation organisations can co-exist in a country; over-categorisation is not the same as overlapping category organisations. In the mean time, I would invite you to try to find the right category for a picture which has only a town name such as Castillon, Châtel, Beveren, Berchem, Jemeppe, Meuse, Frankfurt, Berchem, fr:Villers, Colleville, Crécy, Cérilly, Naves ...
Anyway, for me, the most important categorisation organisation is the one which is used by all people visiting another country, which is the same used by the postal services: the name of the country and village/city is sufficient to find the place. And this is even more important for people that try to categorise pictures in a foreign country. --Foroa (talk) 08:51, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I know, my friend, that categories can co-exit (v.g. Category:Province of Reggio Calabria = Category:Provinces of Italy + Category:Provinces of Calabria -> Category:Calabria -> Category:Regions of Italy); this is usefull and don´t break the rules. Is not the same when somebody categorizes in all of them at the same time (Provinces of Calabria + Calabria + Regions of Italy). Such a way makes no sense, in our world, today... if I want to find a city, and I know the city name, I just use a search engine.
In the other way (city name and country name) it will be thousands of pages in each country category, and this is no usefull at all. If I wish to hide somebody, I command him into a multitude :) Regards, --Tano4595 (talk) 12:39, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As I stated, for us, the most important categorisation scheme is the town/country categorisation as its saves most time in searching and browsing. Even with thousands of items in it (only textual subcats), each item is only one to three clicks away. Don't tell me you can replace this with the search function. Try to find the As, Our, Villers, Saint-Denis town in Belgium. And this will even get worse because I guesstimate that only 10 to 20 % of the towns in Europe are in the category system. So I would certainly suggest to each country to have a country level city and towns category as this has a proven efficiency effect on categorisation. (which is not a luxury if you know that commons has a categorisation backlog of hundreds of thousands of images).
In parallel of this, in Belgium we use a categorisation system that matches plus minus the structure of the legal/administrative hierarchy: Provinces-Municipalities-Towns-Hamlets (with an exception for the Brussels pseudo-province). 35 years ago, the 2600 villages have been artificially regrouped into 589 municipalities, but most people keep adressing the original village so does the postal system). There have been attempts to add overlapping region (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels) and community (French, German and Flemish) organisation category systems, but so far, we managed to keep out of politically dangerous situations, because we have a simple two way category system. (there are other potential cat systems such as juridical areas, church areas, regions such as Ardennes, Kempen, ...)
Anyway, I feel that if in a country, they feel that they should do their geographical categorisation in a certain way, I will not change that behind against their way of working. The most important is that they feel at home here and that they find their optimal way of working. --Foroa (talk) 18:22, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That´s fine, I agree each country has it own legal/administrative hierarchy, but you are pushing me in another way, the way of over-categorization. I feel not undertanding the subject you want to (or the reciprocal, you don't undertand the subject I'm trying). Perhaps you are talking about categorize "Cities of Italy" in "Italy", instead of "Geography of Italy"? --Tano4595 (talk) 21:23, 7 July 2008 (UTC) PS: By the way, "Tano" means "Italian" :)[reply]

(Reset indent) Indeed, I am discussing about cities of xxx that should contain what the names says. The more I look at it, the more I see a big mixup. You have the category:Cities by country, category:Cities and villages by country, category:Villages by country and even category:Municipalities by country. What I am talking about is about the first two ones which tend to be overlapping/similar.

My personal primary need is to accelerate my categorisation work. Most of the time, when you have an image pertaining to a location, you have the (essential part of the) village name and the (guessed) country. So, I look in "cities in xxx". This works perfectly for a number of countries, such as Poland, the Netherlands, Russia, Israel, Lithuania, Belgium, Turkey, Serbia ... Basically, their clean "Cities in xxx" category contain what the names says: the list of cities (and villages) of that country.

In France, this is well organised, but you have to know the name of the region or the departement, which is often a problem, especially with often recurring names (such as starting with Castillon, Châtel...). In the municipalities of Germany, it is well organised too, but you need again to know the names of the state, region or district, which is often a problem if you know only the first part of the city name (I.e. Frankfurt/Frankfort). On the other hand, in the cat Cities in Spain and Italy, I am completely lost. So I hardly categorise images in those countries because it is just too time consuming to find things. (In Belgium, we created the categories for most villages upfront so categorisation work is now much quicker too)

In parallel to this "city of xxx" list which should be as flat as possible, we need the traditional hierarchical administrative/geographical cat organisation (subdivisions, regions/provinces, districts/arrondissements, municipalities, towns, hamlets, ...). But don't tell me that, because we have a proper hierarchical/administrative categorisation organisation, that we have to give up our most important flat list: cities in xxx.

In conclusion, what I am saying has nothing to do with overcategorisation but with several category systems in parallel, such as a city that can belong simultaneously to the region, province, district, aggrandisement, cities in xxx ... category organisation. And in that context, the official text in Commons:Categories#Over-categorization is very incomplete as it discusses only the problem in one single categorisation logic to which you refer all the time, but nobody seems to mention the natural "parallel" and overlapping organisation schemes you will find in most mature categorisation systems. --Foroa (talk) 08:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I think I understood what you said, although I disagree about the usefully. The way proposed ("city that can belong simultaneously to the region, province, district, aggrandisement, cities in xxx ...") is a typical over-categorization problem. Parallel and overlapping are different tools. For instance, Category:Dunhuang works in a right way with Category:Cities in Gansu + Category:Cities along the Silk Road ("parallel" categories, OK), but is overlapped with Category:Cities in China and Category:Cities in Asia (over-categorization problem).
Search of categories (and files) is easier when the subject is well know by the editor (where Dunhuang is), but the categorization in overlapped categories is a big problem in the general plan of Commons. Please, note that the problem is not only for cities; each file must be provided with correct categories when somebody upload it, and must be searchable. But the tool is not over-categorization, it's a search engine. If don't, we'll have thousands and thousands of files not only in "Cities" but also in "Physics", "Science", or any other topic. Look, for instance, Category:Plantae... We can´t handle 105,180,953 files showing them in two or three clicks! So, the system is supported in sub-categories. I agree with the official text in Commons:Categories#Over-categorization. Regards, --Tano4595 (talk) 20:56, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that a simple two level category system (country and cities/villages) is useful is proven by:
  • the consensus of all the Belgian contributors
  • a similar approach used in several other countries
  • the fact that I (and others) refrain from categorising in other "complex" countries as it is too time consuming without a detailed knowledge of the country
I should add that this is simplified by the fact that Belgium is a relatively small country and that this primary simple two level category system is used for all geographical related items (churches, castles, town halls, market squares, windmills, rivers, farms, statues, art related items, parks, houses, painters, writers, musicians, priests, factories...). Although some of the categories are getting quite full, this disadvantage is outweigthed by far by its simplicity, efficiency and elegance (and generates less errors and requires less maintenance).
So the secondary country/subdivision/provinces/municipality/villages/hamlet hierarchy and category scheme is only there to structure the administrative related entities.
I think that you underestimate the importance of a category system in its role as aid in quickly browsing through structures (and don't tell me we have other good means of browsing in the commons other than the cat system). As you will see on many web pages: web sites which are over-structured and have too many category levels are very bad for browsing. Modern good sites ensure always an overlap of roughly 50 % towards the 1,5 higher and lower levels/categories. --Foroa (talk) 16:04, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Undercategorisation - overlap - browsing - visual search[edit]

Forgive me for entering this thread -- I really was trying to think of more that was nice to say for my entry here and accidentally read the last part of this. Where the categories will fail is where there is a lack of overlap. That is a good word here, I am glad I read it, it isn't mine. I am making several branches of categories, but it is necessary to put them all into the other categories they should go into. Overlap that is the right word in English. Strict and nested categories are scary, but the categories that branch out into many different subjects (while still being accurately categorized) is fast, educational and also, complete. Thank you for this word! Overlap! -- carol (talk) 07:55, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So now, you have your own thread. (search for carol on this talk page if you have a (very long term) memory problem).
Overlap is a funny word. Overcategorisation is a badly misused/abused word and the best way to make sure that you don't find back your stuff. As far as as I know, there have never been a discussion about the needs for several categorisation dimensions, browsing aids and visual search categories. --Foroa (talk) 08:28, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for stepping in[edit]

Thank you for stepping in. I don't know what more to say. :) -- carol (talk) 07:49, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh Carol, I am sure that you know by now that sometimes, less is more. --Foroa (talk) 08:01, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment[edit]

Hello,

Could you please comment your edit ? What is useful in such a page, compared with the category plus the wikipedian articles on the same subject ? Mutatis mutandis 14:39, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Mutatis mutandis,

Although I understand your logic, I had several reasons to undo your blanking of the page:

  • The page contains a nice header in 4 languages and a number of interwiki links, none of them are on the category page, so no reason to throw them away. I spend a lot of energy adding interwiki links as they are extremely helpful to categorise in a domain or language in which one has little background. Titles in a few languages are equally helpful.
  • Although I am a firm believer of the fact that categories are the primary driving engine and glue for the commons system, galleries (articles) are still the best way to present nicely the content of commons to a visitor. If you look in Richard Wagner, Brugge and Köln for example, you will see that the same effect cannot be achieved with categories. This result can only be achieved with a high follow-on and maintenance effort, very often combined with a personal involvement.
  • Most galleries start with little information and they run constantly behind the contents of the related category; this is normal with a two step process. If you keep deleting galleries as long as they don't have substantial added value in respect to the collection of pictures in the category, then very few galleries will survive and more importantly, nobody will bother anymore to create them.
  • Finally, someone made the effort to create the gallery, so by my very nature, I would prefer to help to support and maybe help the author, in stead of deleting it with a potential disregard of the value he added.

I hope this clarifies. --Foroa (talk) 16:23, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The four galleries that I emptied today (Zachary Carrettin, Sayaka Katsuki, Samvel Yervinyan, Armen Movsessian) are about not very famous violinists, so are theses galleries needed, the question is still asked ; unlike Ysaÿe, there was nothing, and especially no photo, no drawing, no text : yes, I've seen that CommonsDelinker worked on this pages, but now, they were taking some place on the category Violinists to show no content, and particularly no typical Commons content (no media such as photos and recordings). If you want articles about these guys, it's on Wikipedia, not here ; if you want photos of these guys, you will surely be disappointed to find nothing after clicking on the blue link. Don't you ? Mutatis mutandis 18:16, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I prefer to find an empty category/gallery than no category at all. I can assure you that the pictures will come back one day. Searching otherwise takes much more time as often, those people are referred to in other galleries/images. I would leave the galleries, but if you prefer to delete them, fine also. But don't blank them so we have less cleanup work behind your back. --Foroa (talk) 18:23, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you delete them, it should be better to remove the commons references to these galleries in the concerned wikipedia's (I noticed that there are referenced in the english wikipedia) --Foroa (talk) 05:52, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

in / of discussion[edit]

Thank your for your comment. It's nice to see that some of my categorisation efforts for "Megaliths" have been noticed.

In the "in/of" discussion I have been following the Common guidelines for categorization, from which I include the relevant part below. Is that wrong?

" Modularity principle This principle apply to categories which combine two (or more) features of different kinds. We'll call them “compound categories”.

Example1:

First feature: to be a church (root category Category:Churches) Second feature: to be located in Russia (root category Category:Russia) The modularity principle asserts that a compound category name is made up from basic names (matching the features), which are put together according to a fixed form. Forms are specified in general rules or schemes.

Example2:

According to Commons:By location category scheme, the pattern, for the category name which matches example 1, is: “[object] in [location name]”. Therefore, the category name will be Category:[Churches] in [Russia].

Regards Xvdvoort (talk) 08:47, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I replied on your talk page where the discussion started (it is hard to follow a discussion spread over several pages). Keep up the good work. --Foroa (talk) 08:53, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

enthusiasm[edit]

I have provided documentation. I have made numerous attempts to communicate. I also, to be very honest, have little respect for an individual or a group of people who when provided with an open door of communication and access to documentation continue to pick and pick and pick at one little tiny area that seems to be (without my involvement) inconsequential.

I am in need of a person or a group of people who have access to the same documentation that I have and have an open door for communication and who also have the capacity to see the whole world and the whole collection.

Is the current focus of the participating individual and group of individual a reflection of the size of the enthusiasm and of the ability?

In the real world in which I have lived in, functioned relatively well in and had success in with accomplishments -- the simple statement of "hey, what are you doing" is very effective for joining and contributing to systems and other functioning things.

Do you have any ideas about the smallness of communication and the smallness of focus and about the rewards that come from the inability to communicate with enthusiasm one simple statement "hey, what are you doing?" -- about the origins of this and about the constant support of it.

Ants[edit]

you were the person with the ant article, i think. is that accurate? -- carol (talk) 17:40, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's correct. I will reply tonight in more detail on the section above this one. Anyway, lately, you don't behave like a standard ant, don't follow the ant communication standards and rules and so, I am not surprised to see come clouds hanging above your head. Most ants are hard workers in the first place, so they communicate hardly and when really unavoidable. If and when they communicate, it has to be efficient, to the point and short. --Foroa (talk) 08:07, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am not an ant and I understood the original exchange to be more of an exchange of simplified examples of the environment. I suspect that if there are real human beings typing at keyboards who are supposed to act like ants that they might remember what their species is. The ants that are here are not like the humans I have known. The cover that I put over their food to keep the birds from taking it also seems to overheat them if they are there when the sun hits directly on it. The living ones walk around the carcasses and continue to work and this batch does not have "problems" with each other. I don't see one watching another or changing the others work or direction. I never see wars or wrestling. The human species tends to bury their dead and take a little break if it was someone who was special. I missed an event like this for one of my family. The family history for that man was that he was in the part of the war that picked up the dead of our soldiers at Normandy. My parents and their parents and their parents brothers and sisters were not ants.
So, as I said, one human being to another -- I took that to be a simplified example. If you are really an ant, let me know and I will try to figure out how to not offend an online ant (I seem to be doing fine with the real live ones, just like I usually have with the species of human beings). -- carol (talk) 08:43, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You will have to think harder; with your second paragraph, you are on an interesting way. And who is claiming that an ant colony has simpler rules than a human colony ? And is an internet colony like the commons closer to an ant colony than to a human colony ? Internet is a strange animal and quite different from your current or past home town (why you are lurking here I guess). --Foroa (talk) 09:42, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The rest of the story for my fairly recently passed away great-uncle (and he was great to me, not just as a birth order ranking) was that he thought when he entered the war that he would be given special privileges due to the people he knew. So, it was a family story that was to 1)be nice to a fun old guy we had access to and 2)assume on the side of hard work and actual accomplishment. The world that I woke up in which was not mine in October of 2003 was a world that doesn't seem to acknowledge 2). I continue because it is good to believe in a world that is like the second and one filled with humans like that should be a good one.
Did you see my ant photographs? I am not taking pictures of the recent "farm" because the cover that was put in place for the birds makes uninteresting photographs. It is mostly the same as those first 'graphs. The day they "came back" for the food, I got to watch a similarly sized spider encounter an ant -- it was funny and thankfully they were both the same amount of frightened of each other. I am not sure how the ant rules work to define those situations. My exboyfriend once (or I saw it, the memory is murky) described seeing a group of horses running from a group of deer in a similar situation. Heh.
I like humans; and I find it interesting that if you take Europe out of the 20th century you also remove most of the wars, with a few exceptions. My dormatory had only one European in it; quite a few European descendants and a Canadian. Our Mexican was from Texas, but other than that it really was an international cross-section of a larger world. Everyone got along fairly well compared to all of the fears of not getting along and of misunderstanding that I read of on this "internet". -- carol (talk) 17:42, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This category contains nothing. Trouble-free we will manage without it. Categories without images are very ugly, arduous and unnecessary. --Starscream (talk) 10:51, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I corrected already dozens of faulty systematic categories (related to years, ages, paintings, ...). If the people that need them have to create them, they waste their time inventing them (such as Births 1997, 1997 born, ...) with other templates and other capitalisation. Those empty systematic categories will eventually become not empty. I prefer an empty category 1997 birth than having to search for people that are born in 1997. Anyway, at the speed that uploads are coming in, the best way to streamline it, is to have a maximal of accommodating categories. Nowadays, I spend a major part of my wiki time in correcting categorisation, creating cats, mostly because there is no prepared structure, so people don't find their way. Photographers want to drop their images here, the rest they don't care that much. After all, the backlog in categorisation here approches 1 million images, so lets not waste time on deleting things we will need in a couple of weeks or months time.

I fail to see what is ugly and arduous on an empty category, and for me, anyway less ugly than a bad or badly linked category. As far as I know, there is no commons rule for empty categories. --Foroa (talk) 11:10, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RfA thanks[edit]

Why aren't you an admin yet?[edit]

You do tons of great work here. I'm sure those extra buttons would come in handy. May I nominate you? Rocket000 (talk) 01:14, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Where I am living, we don't tend to propose ourselves. I would accept. --Foroa ( ) 05:50, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly my feelings ;-). And I would support. Lycaon (talk) 06:08, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Commons:Administrators/Requests and votes/Foroa - just transclude it when your ready. :) Rocket000 (talk) 07:45, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I added it to the list. Good luck! Rocket000 (talk) 08:00, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Questions about categories[edit]

I encountered Daphne (plant): 0 and Daphne: 0 and Daphne (Thymelaeaceae): 63 today which also involves Daphne (mythology): 20 and I am here for guidance.

Today, I thought through the interface options and started to think that perhaps disambiguation should be used when there are three (known) options or more. With two, the disambiguation page means that 100% of people searching for those images and looking at the disambiguation pages need to go via link to the images they want. If one of the options is located at the name, then only 50% of the image searchers will need to be redirected.

I realized that the half and half was probably not very exact for counting how many people are looking for certain images when I saw the category for Dracula: 24. In spite of the fact that those galleries or articles do not exist for Count Dracula yet, and also, in spite of the differences in opinion between the legend from literature and the local telling from the people of that person, I really think that more will be looking for the Count instead of the Orchid and in that situation the Count should have the name space (instead of 50-50 it might be more like 95-5).

It is a lot of thoughts that I am clear about but perhaps not expressing well yet. That being said, your thoughts or questions or even decrees will be gladly accepted right now. -- carol (talk) 01:37, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I think that with the current Commons organisation and tools, redirect and disambiguation pages make no sense; they just cause more pictures to be placed on more and wrong places, and with all the little Java tools like HotCat that don't know the different types of categories, people are lured into (and learn) the wrong names. My experience with those disambiguation pages is that they are either ahead of time (pointing to non-existing planned categories) or too old and incomplete to reflect the current situation. Just look on the disambiguation pages on other wikipedia's and you will quickly understand that in that respect, we are standing nowhere. Within 6 to 9 months of time, we will have to spend 20 % or more of our energy to rename categories each time a disambiguation is to be solved. I noticed for example that in Florence, they removed almost everywhere the word Florence in the categories (names of squares, churches, streets, museums, ...); sooner or later they will to have to put it back which keeps us all busy. For some reason, people try to get the exclusivity of a name to avoid the disambiguation term, although in the long run, they will be glad to be able to put it back. Redirect and disambiguation categories just "attract" more media and pages than the other categories.
When looking to the many thousands of disambiguation terms, I think that we will need, probably in a dedicated name space, a system that keeps track of those terms and give an easy/practical search for them . I am not going to preach (this doesn't work anyway), but since 6 to 12 months, I noticed that in many wikipedia's, the categories, which used to be something marginal, are getting developed quickly. This means that sooner or later, they will get into problems too, and finally, the basic wikimedia software will be adapted to cope with that. I have several ideas on that, but if already the basic category display and search result display are clumsy and buggy and get no attention, it makes no sense to try to go a step further. --Foroa (talk) 17:41, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So which do you suggest? I think you suggested to go ahead and use Daphne: 0, but my certainty of this is not large.
There are about 14 categories that have the word Daphne in it, so either way will be wrong. By the end of the year, we will have about 25 categories containing Daphne in the title. Disambiguation categories are always to be standalone, so no part of another category. So, the choice is yours. --Foroa (talk) 07:11, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I probably have a tendency to "get exclusivity" of a category but that is due to the taxonomy navigation template. Recently, I have learned how to work with that so a few instances of the genus page having more words than just the genus name is kind of fun. But, even that kind of "fun" starts to be confusing and it makes a template filled with conditionals. -- carol (talk) 19:29, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
PS
Carol, the big title on your talk page is shouting so loud to me that I can't stand to stay there for more than 10 seconds. If this is the objective, I admit that it works very well. --Foroa (talk) 17:49, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
On photographers, art, ethics and commons
A few months ago there was an image nominated for QI of nest photography. It was the birds legs and the eggs and some of the nesting matter which surrounds it. A discussion took place and the image did not qualify due to the pressing of and passing of photographers ethics that have been pushed here in the last year and a half or so and an agreement by most participants with it. Achieving status seems to have little to do with the amount that these different images might manifest themselves in the days that follow such a discussion as that nest photograph received. I found myself in a situation which can be described best as this photography with the exception being that the "bird" was sitting on my eggs.
That's typically commons; we make a supernest, and sometimes, you lose your way in it. --Foroa (talk) 07:11, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am working on two trees, one (in my opinion) could use a little uniformity and a some work now makes it easier for uploads later. The other tree, brand new with many problems including that I don't know where the upper portions should end. Almost everything else I do works with the existing system and is like tidying. I know where I am at on commons. I know that the same kind of organization of images for Michigan, a state in United States should also work for Hidalgo, a state in Mexico -- perhaps I do not know Hidalgo personally, but the same tree should be there and no bias from me should prevent me from working with both locations here. Simple. -- carol (talk) 08:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I "shamelessly stole" that request/sign. When I first saw it, I did not sense a loudness instead I sensed that a bizarre and wrong situation had caused it to be there and respected the request it made. Response to a sign is interesting, eh? When I am walking on a sidewalk, and I see a sign that says "No skateboarding" if I am not skateboarding, the sign means nothing to me. Am I unusual this way? -- carol (talk) 19:29, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The subject was not the content of the sign, but the shouting presentation. --Foroa (talk) 07:11, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It took ten seconds to get it and put it there; including my input into the design of it which involved the possibility of contacting me at English wikipedia -- which cannot be done right now so potentially, I am shouting and should have been shouting years ago. Being blocked because another user is being offensive and non-communicative in a public access project like this has a (non-literal) stench to it. The large size perhaps assists in that there is no fine print to it. And, also, the sign is stronger than my feelings about it. Like I said, my input was about 10 to 30 seconds for a grab, quick strip of the inaccurate information and a thank you to where I got it from. If you know of a nicer one which will have the affect I desired by placing it there, let me know!!! -- carol (talk) 08:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed that your shouting label attracted a vandal tonight. (Verbal) Violence calls for violence, they say. --Foroa (talk) 07:14, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

a recap[edit]

You don't really have an opinion or a care about the Daphne question? I find it interesting that I seek advice and am asked questions about the way my talk page is set right now. Is it implied that you do not really have an opinion or a care about the original question or is my guess correct about the reason for the analysis?

Also, anything else you would like to know about the reason my personal area is like it is, I will do my best to answer. And, a suggestion of who to consult about that Daphne problem from would be well received. -- carol (talk) 08:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As I stated, I feel that we don't have a good solution here. For sonsultancy on the subject, I would suggest to go to the categories for discussions thing or the Pump. Before opening a debate, I would suggest to clearly list all the uses of Daphne here and what should eventually come from major wikipedia's. --Foroa (talk) 08:50, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
An apology
I just read the fine print of your talk page. I am laughing (more like smiling though) at you but not for your German. -- carol (talk) 08:33, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request comments on Megaliths[edit]

Following your suggestions, I reorganized Category: Megaliths, put the scheme into Commons:Category scheme megaliths and moved the type descriptions and example images to Megaliths by type.

I would appreciate your comments on this set-up.

Xvdvoort (talk) 17:02, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed ongoing changes that looked normal to me. I will try in a couple of days. In the mean time, I noticed that you are going to great lengths to make nice displays and layouts. Be advised that the layout (and the tens of blank lines to enforce the layout) works only on your computer configuration. If you don't believe me, try on your system with the browser display option large fonts and the option small fonts, and you will see that your technique is not very versatile in that respect. Blank lines are evil for formatting screens. --Foroa (talk) 17:47, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, already some first comments.
In Category: Megaliths, I did a small modification (and big visual simplification) to show how some sections can be addressed directly, thereby reducing the needs of many documentation files.
There was a problem with "The" czech republic and Tunesia/Tunisia.
Finally, I am wondering in your "Megalith types" file, if the texts can not be put on the side of the examples. Too much white space to my taste. (but that's me). --Foroa (talk) 10:38, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your quick comments and tweaks.
By showing me to adress sections directly, do you suggest that I move Type documentation back to Commons:Category scheme megaliths?
I redid the Type documentation. I could put the text to the side of the examples, but I anticipate that for some types I will put up 1-3 examples, or examples of sub-types. These images will fill up some of the white space.
I cleaned up the Tunesia/Tunisia typo.
I put in "The Czech Republic" (hope this is what you meant), but left the Category name still "Czech Republic".
Could you advise me on which one is generally beter: [[:Category:The Czech Republic|The Czech Republic]] or [[:Category:Czech Republic|The Czech Republic]].
Thanks for your helpfull comments.
Xvdvoort (talk) 17:13, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is commons (is a working community with a certain common goal) and I am not your belle-mère (mother in law). You did a great job and you are quickly making progress. It is up to you to decide how you will organise your files and what will cause minimal maintenance troubles/efforts. For the Czech category, I meant something like the other cats as in Category:People of the Czech Republic --> Category:Megaliths in the Czech Republic
I am not a specialist in the html things for pictures in wikipages; the only thing I know is that it generates a lot of troubles. On User:Lycaon and User:Lycaon/Gallery, you have very nice examples of pure picture presentation, but I have never seen clean wikipages with the layout you want to achieve. Trial and error I guess and searching a bit on Wikipedias. nl:Lijst van parochies van het bisdom Brugge might give you some other ideas. --Foroa (talk) 17:44, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your comments, and putting me on the right track here. Your "schoonmoeder" advice was certainly appreciated. See ya around.
Xvdvoort (talk) 21:43, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Commons Scope - Pdf and Djvu files[edit]

I have added some text dealing with these based on the discussion on the talk page. Users are by no means unanimous about which files should be allowed, and I have tried to follow the majority opinion. Thus, the suggestion is that if a Pdf or Djvu file is educationally useful even to a single other Wiki it should be kept. Would you like to comment before this page goes live? Please do so at the bottom of the talk page. Regards, --MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:51, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks[edit]

) Thanks for this ! i am under attack --Mardetanha talk 08:05, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cross-categorisation[edit]

Hello, Foroa, have a look at User talk:Multichill at Cross-categorisation and give me your opinion on this. Greetings, Havang (talk) 09:35, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Havang, it is not looking simple at first glance, I'll try to spend some time on it tonight. --Foroa (talk) 09:40, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You push me to try to simplifie: I can simplify. The aim is to have treecrossing shared-item (A<->B) as Category:A<->B in Category A and as non-category (A<->B) as pageA<->B) in Category B. This is possible by a pageA<->B to categoryA<->B redirect with the appropriate cats and one link under CatA<->B towards catB. In such a way, items will appear in each tree only once, I hope. Havang (talk) 11:37, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Havang, in the Limoges things, I removed circular references as they are very confusing (and probably confusing the system and bots). They are a nightmare for maintenance too as you are trying to hide that you are linking back. Your scheme looks pretty complicated to me. We see the problem all the time where you have regions crossing countries (Ardennes, silesia, rivers) or parallel categories (juridic arrondissements, church and administrative arrondissemnts that are not identical in terms of covered cities)...
I fail to understand why you don't split your Via Lemovicensis‎ in the necessary subcats (xxx concerning Via Lemovicensis‎), possibly combining on each arrondissment a category that contain de things which are really specific for the Via Lemovicensis (stops, pannels, indicators, ...)‎, the latter being linked to the local and the top level category.
In terms of the category names, I am not keen on the word "concerning". I would rather use Via Lemovicensis‎ in Limoges. But I am not sure I really understand your objective. --Foroa (talk) 18:00, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • AD 1. You removals further simplified, improved my model. In fact I must avoid the A-->B-->C plus A-->C-->B catstructure; one catline breaks by interposing a page garanteeing the backlink. (Catscans come out nicer this way).
  • AD 2. I am splitting Way-of-St.James-in-Fr in Via-Lemovicensis parallel to Fr:Via Lemovicensis and Fr:Category:Via Lemovicensis, and Via Podiensis, Via Tou.. etc. People want to have all items on the road, churches, bridges, landscapes, crosses, touristic items, etc., ordered by cities and villages according to the french page; the road is thus a geographic sidecat. All items come categories which are already in the departmenst cats, I dont'like to let these return a second time in the departments cats.
  • AD 3. Choice of better name is of later concern.
  • If you think that all this is not going to work, tel me. Havang (talk) 19:43, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is certainly doable (otherwise we better stop all commons work now), but because the via has a complex structure with several parallel branches, I think you better make an article that describes the structure, probably better something that fits into Category:Commons category schemes. If this is not properly documented, it will become quickly a mess, as you cannot understand this without reading a lot of pages. Anyway, this sidecat brings us back to the parallel categorisation scheme discussion we had very long time ago.

In some of the catsorts, I inserted a blank that you removed, to differentiate "ordinary" (end leaf) items from higher level (branches) items. I do that all the time to create informal subcat levels within one category, as for example in Category:Brussels and Category:Belgium. Enjoy. --Foroa (talk) 07:31, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

But you break down the alphabetical order I made, doing that. That's why I made the title start with "Limoges ..." Havang (talk) 07:49, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No problem, as you prefer. But changing the commons naming logic (topic in/of/.. location) to facilitate catsort sounds a very bad idea to me. (comfort is het kussen van de duivel) --Foroa (talk) 08:05, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • You have good reflexions: Limoges first is unusual; but I choosed churches in Limoges --> Limoges --> Limoges on the way as an ascending tree, and I wouldn't Limoges on the way let return to category Limoges. a possibly better name Limoges on the Via Lemovicensis comes spontaneoulsy, thanks to this discussion. .
  • Someone deleted and restored the page Bourges concerning Via Lemovicensis; that proofs my page-category solution fails, unless I go back making the page a gallery page, where I had begun, see its history: [3]. What do you think about making gallery pages instead of empty redirect pages?

Havang (talk) 10:06, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To me, these "side cat pages" are not absolutely necessary but can be used. I am shocked by the inversion of the commons naming logic (topic in/of/.. location). --Foroa (talk) 12:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A similar problem can be found in Category:Rhine and within a couple of months in Category:Meuse (River) --Foroa (talk) 13:11, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, category-overlapping; at least I am aware of the problem, how to get every item appears only in the right upper and lower categories and not pop up elsewhere. It's a bit like turning Rubik's cubes Havang (talk) 13:48, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category "Chaussée Brunehault"[edit]

Bonjour Foroa. Dank u. This category is good idea. Are you interesting about old roads, or antiquities ? Do you know de romeinse kassei between Tongeren and tienen ? Jean-Louis Hens (talk) 18:49, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The power of the Commons is that it will, in the long run, reveal and document relations between all sorts of items which we cannot foresee beforehand. So any theme (category) that helps to document relations is more than welcome if you have a reasonable perspective of having soon a couple of images along that theme.
There are several "romeinse kassei" in Belgium, for example between Kortrijk and Ieper too (see nl:Categorie:Romeinse weg), so you should take care with the naming taking into account what is used on various wikipedias, but personally I have no time to work on that, as I don't really have the time to complete category:Chaussée Brunehault (exercise hint).
Specialists are always welcome to expand on that. I created a subcat Category:Ancient Roman roads in Belgium which could be used to see what we have already available at the Belgian level. If you are in doubt, you can always start with a gallery/article that is easier to manipulate and rename. This will lead over time to inspiration for other articles in the Wikipedias. I appreciate your enthusiasm.
Concerning antiquities and the like, I see no difference with artist, painting, architecture or any other historical categorisation schemes. --Foroa (talk) 07:07, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I’m nearly a « specialist » with my long time enthousiasm for the old roman road of northern gaul. But I really have difficulties with the names. For example, the « Via Belgica » is know as « Chaussée Brunehault » between Bavay and Gembloux, then it is know as « Chaussée romaine » from Gembloux to Tongeren. This look simple but is not. On old map from Ferraris, we find the both name along the whole ancient road. Orthograph is an other matter, Brunehaut, Brunehault, Brunehaud and many more. The academic name of the keen is « Brunehaut ». All this names are wild flowers, out of any garden. Your help is welcome. On the other hand, I really don’t know how to name my geo-localisated photo on commons. It is an important matter because the filename is what we see on google-earth. Any suggestion ? Jean-Louis Hens (talk) 08:34, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Any information on the ancient road betheen Ieper and Kortrijk is welcome too. I have hear of it sometimes but I can’t find it. Jean-Louis Hens (talk) 08:51, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I know the Ieperse steenweg/heirweg by accident. Some 40 years back, we've done a couple of times a walking trip from Kuurne to Zillebeke over that road. That's all I know of it and it's kind of vague. --Foroa (talk) 08:59, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As an example, I changed Category:Ancient Roman roads in Belgium as a flat category system combined with a hierarchical system in Via Belgica. The latter might belong in a bigger inter-country schem I guess.
I don't see the problem with file names on google earth, can you give an example ? Anyway, the non-formal file name convention we use for geo related items is "place" "what it is" "details", such as Tongeren Crossroad xxx Via Belgica nn.jpeg. --Foroa (talk) 08:59, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion about #Cross-categorisation above concerns a similar problem: the roads to Compostella. --Foroa (talk) 09:02, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I have found the « Oude Ieperstraat » but nothing to do with the 30 km straight-lined way from Tongeren to Tienen.

Sure, there is somethings to do with roman roads categories, but it is not so easy. In your example, Via Belgica is a Ancient Roman roads in Belgium but Via Belgica is a special way from Köln (in Germany) to Boulogne (in France) and cross over Belgium and Nederlands. It is also know as Via Agrippinensis but only from (german ?) historians. The new name Via Belgica seems from german authors and is absolutely not know by common french speakers. Google search ["Via belgica"] 2780 item, ["Via belgica" voie] 8 item (2 from me (wikipedia), 2 form euregio (de-fr-nl), and the last form « Fédération Wallonne des Guides Touristiques ». The other have nothing to do here : 1 via « Belgica » station at Bruxelles and 2 not in french). This name seems spread out by Euregionale initiatives. Google search ["Via belgica" euregio] 885 item. Personally, I like this name.

For the filenames, I have uploaded them with geographic name like postal numbers. You may take a look at [my gallery]. I would like to be more consistent with filename, But I don’t know any convention. Jean-Louis Hens (talk) 10:18, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PS : consistency : The two following images are on the same way.

  • (diff) (hist) . . m Image:F-59570 Bavay, rue de Maubeuge.JPG‎; 08:45 . . (0) . . Foroa (Talk | contribs) (Removed category "Ancient Roman roads"; Quick-adding category " Chaussée romaine" (using HotCat.js))
  • (diff) (hist) . . m Image:B-6560 Montignies, chaussée Brunehaut arrivant sur la vallée de la Hantes.JPG‎; 18:12 . . (+2) . . Foroa (Talk | contribs) (Removed category "Ancient Roman roads"; Quick-adding category "Chaussée Brunehault" (using HotCat.js))

I really don’t know if you are making a good job here. Jean-Louis Hens (talk) 10:37, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

These recats have been done in a hurry to show quickly the idea. And indeed it proves, that we cross the Belgian border near Maubeuge. Concerning the names and their hierarchy Via Belgica --> Chaussée xxx --> chaussée xxx in yy département. I would suggest to see on the Wikipedia's if you can find a category naming scheme that is +- compatible with the English wikipedia + the wikipedia from the country where the road runs. And if you document this scheme, you will have less troubles later on.
Concerning file naming conventions, the solution with the postal number in front is technically the best, especially for machine processing. In practise, putting the name of the commune in front simplifies the alphabetic sorting in all sorts of displays (why it is becoming the "the facto" standard as it works best in most cases). After all, most people know only a limited postal numbers by heart.--Foroa (talk) 11:20, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ok, nice to know that functionality, but it is early for me to work on recats. Next week I will may be. Now I have some maps to make and upload. With them I will show the reality and complexity of this old roads. Is this hotcat.js accessible to non-admin users ?

Hotcat: See top of screen --> my preferences --> tab Gadgets
I am not admin so far, but this should not change anything. --Foroa (talk) 12:54, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now I have a question on Categories. Is this system only hierarchical ? by example Category:Ancient Roman roads in Belgium belong to Category:Ancient Roman roads. But I had Categorized with both Category:Ancient Roman roads and Category:Belgium that semantically is the same but technically ? Jean-Louis Hens (talk) 12:34, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are no hard rules for category relations: it as you set it up. The Ancient Roman Roads in Belgium lead to Category:Roads in Belgium, and could be added somewhere in the history of Belgium and other Romans related items. Routing everything to the Category:Belgium makes no sense. I catogorise rivers as a flat system (rivers in Belgium) AND as a hierarchical system; which river flows into which one. --Foroa (talk) 12:54, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A similar problem can be found in Category:Rhine and within a couple of months in Category:Meuse River --Foroa (talk) 13:11, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, then only hierarchical. We can’t say show me items that belong to Category:Ancient Roman roads and Category:Belgium. It’s a pity, because there are other caterogies useful like the name (brunehaut etc), the historical knowledge (Peutinger etc.), and aspect (straight-right or like the one near Ieper). We are going to get too many categories.

  • Ancient Roman roads
    • Ancient Roman roads in Belgium
    • Ancient Roman roads in France
    • Ancient Roman roads in Germany
    • etc...
  • Ancient Roman roads in Peutinger Tabula
    • Ancient Roman roads in Peutinger Tabula in Belgium
    • Ancient Roman roads in Peutinger Tabula in France
    • Ancient Roman roads in Peutinger Tabula in Germany
    • etc...
  • Chaussée Brunehaut
    • Chaussée Brunehaut in Belgium
    • Chaussée Brunehaut in France
    • Chaussée Brunehaut in Peutinger Tabula in Belgium
    • Chaussée Brunehaut in Peutinger Tabula in France

Many images are photographies on the roads, but some are map of the roads. then

  • Maps of Ancient roman roads ?
    • Maps of Ancient Roman roads in Belgium
    • Maps of Ancient Roman roads in France
    • Maps of Ancient Roman roads in Germany
    • etc...
  • Maps of Ancient Roman roads in Peutinger Tabula
    • Maps of Ancient Roman roads in Peutinger Tabula in Belgium
    • Maps of Ancient Roman roads in Peutinger Tabula in France
    • Maps of Ancient Roman roads in Peutinger Tabula in Germany
    • etc...
  • Maps of Chaussée Brunehaut
    • Maps of Chaussée Brunehaut in Belgium
    • Maps of Chaussée Brunehaut in France
    • Maps of Chaussée Brunehaut in Peutinger Tabula in Belgium
    • Maps of Chaussée Brunehaut in Peutinger Tabula in France

And it’s not all. We have some painting of this roads. Image:Maisieres_MCL01.jpg, then we need the catégory Category:Painting of Chaussée Brunehaut in Belgium to put it in Painting, in Belgium and in Chaussée Brunehaut catégories. I really can follow this Hierarchical view. Ican’t see this painting in Category:Paintings_in_Belgium, Category:Paintings_by_year, Category:Expressionist_paintings, Category:Water_color, etc... but how to ?

Straight-right look like a lunatic catégory, but take a look at the two path between bavay and Tongeren on Via Belgica Image:Tongeren - Gembloux.svg and Image:Bavay - Gembloux.svg. If I really add this category, what will look like the hierarchy ?

  • Straight-right Ancient roman roads ?
    • ????

If Categories work like this, there are useless.

Jean-Louis Hens (talk) 15:09, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I added a couple of cats to Image:Maisieres_MCL01.jpg as an example.
This Peutinger Tabula seems a supercat to all the roads. Anyway, most media we have here relate to actual pictures of remains and remains of those old things, so no massive volumes. Maps will be limited in quantity, so we don't need a massive cat system.
Commons is a fast and extremely simple system with few search facilities. The search is in fact "pre-wired" through the category relations. Straigth lines and not so straight lines to make intersections: forget that with the current commons technology; probably within one or two years with post processing tools on the tool server. --Foroa (talk) 17:05, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Searching in Google with "Ieperse OR Ieper AND heirweg OR heirbaan" might help you. Heir is an old flemish word for troops (army), weg or baan is road/via; they mostly refer to Roman Via's I think. Steenweg (stone-way) was the used term for older chaussées. --Foroa (talk) 08:42, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Roman road categories[edit]

Sorry, I really thought categories was keyword to find item like in Google.

Now I will try to put more precise geographical category for the shoots then just Belgium.

  • Subdivisions of Belgium
    • Provinces of Belgium
      • Hainaut (Province of Belgium)
        • Mons (Hainaut)
          • Maisière

For the subdivision of [Ancient Roman roads], I don’t believe that [Ancient Roman roads in Belgium] is very pertinent because that roads don’t know modern administrative divisions. It’s useful in Italy maybe and certainly in Great-Britain because they are big countries with geophysic frontiers But in Belgium this roads are often going out. Now, the shoots are effectively in Belgium or not and then I will use it

How to use hotcat ?

I am working on some maps and I need a subdivision

  • Maps of Ancient Roman roads

Thank you very much for your patience.

heerweg and the like are very confusing terms. They are very old roads, but rarely old roman ones.

Jean-Louis Hens (talk) 09:58, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As you can see towards the bottom of the #Category_Cities_in_Italy discussion above, the major categorisation logic in Belgium is in two levels: Belgium and cities/villages as used by the postman and used for almost all Belgian items; churches, buildings, artists, .... In parallel there is a hierarchical administrative cat system regions/province/municipalities/villages. In parallel, there could be others, such as the Belgian communities but sofar, we managed to avoid that as it is pretty much confusing.
I think that it might be better to subdivide long roman roads in pieces that cover the parts in each of the current countries as this is easier for people to relate to. If need be (when we have to many images for a trunk in a country), we could subdivide it further down.
Hotcat use: On the bottom of all the image/cat/gallery screens, you have the parent categories. If you click on the minus sign next to each cat, it gets removed. When clicking on the +- sign, you can edit it with some helpful, sometimes ennoying, suggestions. Trying is easier than explaining ;) --Foroa (talk) 11:02, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just have created two sub-cat but have made an error: [miliarium] must be [miliaria] plurial. Some help to rename is welcome. Jean-Louis Hens (talk) 12:27, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK,I'll change that. For Hotcat (and many little tools here, you need to have Java installed on your PC (you can check if in a category display, you can expand the subcats by clicking on the + in front of them).
I am a bit surprised by the hierarchy of the roads as you made it:
  • Chaussée Brunehault
    • Via Belgica
      • Chaussée romaine
I thought that Chaussée Brunehault was only a section of Via Belgica. Proof that we we need specialists here.

--Foroa (talk) 13:25, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I’m a specialist ;-), but it’s not easy. More than half of Via Belgica is a Chaussée Brunehaut and Via Belgica is only a very small part of the whole Chaussées Brunehaut. Don’t know if you get it. Most of the roman roads of northern france are Chaussées Brunehaut and two or three of them are used to get Boulogne from Köln. Hierarchical system is hard to use. And yes I can extend the [+]. Jean-Louis Hens (talk) 14:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Chaussée Brunehaut and Via Belgica are names. I don’t know who and when the former was created, but the second was by some german who wanted to create some sort of cultural link in heart of europe. (I think so) Jean-Louis Hens (talk) 14:24, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

University of Pamplona[edit]

Who told you that the University of Pamplona is located in Spain?!!

--> es:Universidad_de_Pamplona

--Torax (talk) 02:20, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I can't possibly know everything and I do make mistakes. I should have been more careful though. But at least, it started the categorisation process going. Luckily, I am not the only one working here ;). --Foroa (talk) 06:37, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody is perfect - suggestion to use names as "Pamplona, Colombia" and "Pamplona, Spain" to avoid interference with the Spanish Pamplona, and avoid mistakes from ignorants like me. see my last changes on the university. Keep up the good work. --Foroa (talk) 07:42, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Odd things in categories[edit]

Foroa, I study now on categories by double cat scans; sometimes I stumble on odd things, like: Category:Rivers of the Netherlands and Category:Streams in the Netherlands; should these possibly merge into one category or otherwise brought in direct relation? Is it OKE, that I put odd things in categories here for your judgment? Havang (talk) 12:19, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Traditional problem with refined cats. The difference between stream/river, stroom/rivier, fleuve/rivière is clearly not appreciated correctly. Because the rivers flow into the streams, I connected the rivers to the streams cat (full of xxx-beek's). Should the streams be connected to their seas ? Up to you, but this sounds a bit of an overorganisation. --Foroa (talk) 12:28, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Fleuve/Rivière/ruisseau (Fr), the dutch stream cat concerns beken = ruisseaux and smaller rivers, not fleuves. As for me, they can be transfered to the rivers cat. Havang (talk) 12:35, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Foroa, look at this double scan: Geography of the Netherlands - Rivers of the Netherlands; half of it are Belgium items - is this odd or is this normal? It relates to your category:Meuse problem. Havang (talk) 13:47, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To me, that is not abnormal:
  • +- 100 Belgian images (out of almost 800) are added because Meuse and Schelde belong to both countries
  • + 200 Belgian images added because we use a cat logic that show what rivers are flowing in which ones. So in your catscan, you see all the images of the Dutch rivers starting from their source.
It might interest you that if you use in Catscan the CSV output option, you can cut and paste (and sort and count) the results in Excel. --Foroa (talk) 12:34, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations, Dear Administrator![edit]

An offering for our new administrator from your comrades...
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Foroa, congratulations! You now have the rights of administrator on Commons. Please take a moment to read the Commons:Administrators page and watchlist related pages (in particular Commons:Administrators' noticeboard and Commons:Deletion requests), before launching yourself into page deletions, page protections, account blockings or modifications of protected pages. The majority of the actions of administrators can be reversed by the other admins, except for history merges which must thus be treated with particular care.

Please feel free to join us on IRC: #wikimedia-commons @ irc.freenode.net. Also consider joining #wikimedia-admin, the cross-wiki coordination channel for Wikimedia administrators. Any member of the channel can invite you in temporarily, but you need an invite exemption from a channel operator to get in whenever you want. Please come to #wikimedia and ask for an invite. Any admin from any project is welcome.

You may find Commons:Guide to adminship to be useful reading.

Please also check or add your entry to the List of administrators and the related lists by language and date it references....
& thanks for helping. Do ask if you need any help. Regards --Herby talk thyme 07:58, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I'll do my best. --Foroa (talk) 08:48, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations! Rocket000(talk) 09:07, 15 August 2008 (UTC) and Havang (talk) 09:25, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, but no need to; finally, this is what you asked for ... --Foroa (talk) 11:30, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Vreemde edit[edit]

Ehm, dit gaat niet helemaal goed. Het is misschien wel netjes om even een berichtje bij de orginele uploader achter te laten. Multichill (talk) 18:06, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ik had wel geverifieerd dat die niet echt gebruikt was. Deze keer verwittigd op nl: maar ben zeker niet van plan dit systematisch te doen voor verdere dergelijke onzinnige en onbruikbare foto's waar er niet eens een beschrijving bij staat. --Foroa (talk) 19:03, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Beste Multichill, bedankt voor je interventie. Overigens wist ik niet eens dat dit warrige plaatje, dat ik ooit tijdens een wat hilarische trolachtige discussie als hapax uploadde, op Commons stond. Achteraf kan ik een en ander uiteraard weer wel reconstrueren. BesselDekker (talk) 00:10, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

End of try-out[edit]

Foroa, for Via Lemovicensis try-outs: I follow your advise and make it Category:Via Lemovicensis in Limoges and similar for Bourges etc. I'll empty pages and categories with concerning. Havang(nl) (talk) 08:09, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Out of scope stuff/spam[edit]

I notice that you have found some of the buttons :) If you come across "commercial" pages (user or mainspace) it is sometimes worth checking whether there is any cross wiki element to it. There is a link to the SUL tool at the bottom of the "contributions" page so it is quite quick & easy to check. If you find anything that makes you suspicious feel free to let me know (or Mike).

If you do not have the time or inclination then that is fine. Thanks for helping & regards --Herby talk thyme 12:14, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am, in general, prudent to ensure that I don't chase a potential media provider away. I have my doubts on most toolserver tools as the server fails so often and the tools quality is not on the wikipedia level, so I try to avoid them. --Foroa (talk) 05:07, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is not about people who are "contributors". This is about people whose only contribution is a promotional page (possibly with associated images). I saw you had deleted two pages that were promotional as out of scope which is exactly what I would have done. Whether you care to consider the impact on other projects is of course entirely up to you. Thanks --Herby talk thyme 17:43, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I noticed the merge from allotments. Allotments may be city gardens, but they can occur in any town or city, not just garden cities which are new places designed with a lot of green space integrated with other developments. For example Image:GardenOfEdenBedford.JPG is from Bedford, an old market town. I think the merge just doesn't make sense. --Simonxag (talk) 22:36, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was just cleaning up/executing some of the merge requests that are mostly standing there since a long time. I had my doubts on the allotment merge request you did install, and I should have checked more thoroughly. Anyway, I have my doubts about the clarity and the naming of those categories, especially with the current level of documentation. Allotments is a very broad term; they are not very much existing in Belgium and only around a couple of major cities. In my context, I interprete allotments like "Allotments are characterised by a concentration in one place of a few or up to several hundreds of land parcels that are assigned to individual family houses", although you have the same system for campings/Caravan parks in holiday resorts. So I would suggest a renaming to "Allotments (gardening)" or better "Garden allotments" (versus "Garden cities"). Garden cities might need more explanation too, as the old garden city concept will compete soon with the modern energy fiendly/durable "green" low energy houses and cities. --Foroa (talk) 05:01, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation Deurne[edit]

Hello, Foroa, can you check Category:Deurne, the Belgium part; this is my first cat disambiguation, so please, check also if I did alright. Havang(nl) (talk) 17:03, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looks great. I added IW's. Personally, I never create (only correct) disambiguation categories as I hate cat redirects; I put it all at the gallery level. But that's just me. --Foroa (talk) 17:09, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can you give a link towards an exemple of "at the gallery level". Havang(nl) (talk) 18:16, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Try Limburg or deurne (brandnew ;). Just type Deurne or Limburg in searchbox. --Foroa (talk) 18:21, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. You now may eliminate Category:Deurne, I presume. Havang(nl) (talk) 18:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Underwater diving equipment[edit]

Why did you delete Category:Underwater diving equipment? There doesn't seem to have been any deletion discussion, or even a mention on the talk page. I was never notified.

The category was not incorrectly named. It was expressing an important distinction between underwater diving equipment, like a SCUBA tank, and diving equipment, like a springboard. I have recreated it. Superm401 - Talk 01:36, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I executed the merge requested in Category:diving equipment. It's normal to delete merged categories to avoid confusion. Meanwhile, I restored it. Glad that you take the time to reorganise that area properly. --Foroa (talk) 06:08, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

After a closer look:

  • 80 % or more of the images in "diving" and its subcats belong to underwater diving, so as an outsider, I would suggest to merge them with the underwater cats (why I proceded with the merge)
  • I think that you better make underwater diving equipemt a subcat in diving equipment so that it rings a bell for people adding pictures (most populated cats)
  • there should be some link towards submarines

--Foroa (talk) 08:41, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thanks for your message.
I've mistakenly created this page while I wanted to welcome Khayman :)
Best regards from France,
-- AlNo (discuter/talk/hablar/falar) 09:22, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Pas de problème; si on ne fait rien, on ne fait pas d'erreurs. --Foroa (talk) 09:26, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How the best way to make SVG test ?[edit]

Is this Category:Test_images suitable for testing ? I have some problems with svg ability and Mediawiki (see my user page). Jean-Louis Hens (talk) 05:49, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have no real experience with svg files but your files seem to give a problem for scaled down displays. The indicated test images look great. I would suggest:

Foroa, can you correct this category? Havang(nl) (talk) 14:16, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for pointing to it. I am wondering if this is not a more intelligent way of doing disambiguation. They don't pop up as first element in HotCat and searches, they are dynamically constructed (the cats connect themselves and you don't have to edit in several places). This might be a superior way of doing disambiguation. --Foroa (talk) 17:27, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, except for the title: the tree cat Category:Places is very chaotic. Havang(nl) (talk) 17:41, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think that we have to come up with a naming scheme indeed. --Foroa (talk) 18:17, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

why should delete empty "category redirect" ? As I said to Rocket000, these categories are very useful to avoid dupe.

Why not use a bot for clean up these category redirects ? Please remember that a lot of users of Commons are NOT native english speaker and have some difficulties to find the correct cat. {{Category redirect}} is very useful for us...

Cheers.--Bapti 15:24, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am not a native English speaker and I understand perfectly the problem. For more arguments, see indeed the discussion on User_talk:Rocket000#.7B.7Bcategory_redirect.7D.7D

I will try to produce here an extensive report about redirects and their side effects within a couple of days. Meanwhile, I can assure you that I currently only delete a minimum of redirects that attract bad categorisations all the time (several per day) AND are against the basic categorisation naming/spelling rules (plural/singular capitalisation) or against the name forming rules (topic of/in/from xxx) or against the conventions (if all countries use "people of country", then it makes no sense to maintain a couple of "people from country"). Simularly, if one choses to use everywhere "Flora of country", then it makes no sense to maintain for a couple of countries a "plants of country" and a couple of "plants from country" redirects.

In the mean time, I would suggest to spend an hour or so on (re-)categorisation work using HotCat or look to the categorisation suggestions you get in the search tab on the lefts side when you enter category:people ... or category:plants/flora ... You well see that you well end up in many cases with the wrong category. --Foroa (talk) 17:18, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you want people stop using {{Category redirect}}, please request deletion. But speedy delete a redirect created by an user (not a bot !!!) is really improper.
"it makes no sense to maintain for a couple of countries a "plants of country" and a couple of "plants from country" redirects." : of course, it make sense ! It's not obviousness for a not native English speaker !
Do you want that not native English speakers stop to categorize on Wikimedia Commons because they are unable to find the correct category ?
A bot can transfer the pictures in a category redirect to the correct one if it's your matter ! Moreover, it's could be useful to add _NOINDEX_ on {{Category redirect}} to avoid the indexation of the cat redirect.
I feel that you forget that this template is the only way to get round limitions of Mediawiki. Please don't forget that the fault of this template can be solved.--Bapti 19:42, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Plants of Jamaica[edit]

Greetings,

Perhaps you can help undo some damage?

I recently put a {{category redirect}} in Category:Plants of Jamaica. You noticed this and instructed SieBot to move it to Category:Flora of Jamaica. Well, although I have not found any discussion, it seems that the consensus is for "Plants of xyz". For clarification see Category:Plants (for various common plant aspects) and Category:Flora (the Roman goddess Flora of flowers and the season of spring).

The move in itself would not matter too much but unfortunately either you or SieBot then deleted Category:Plants of Jamaica so the workaround of redirecting it to Category:Flora of Jamaica cannot be used. From where we are now, the best course of action seems to be to ask SieBot to move Category:Flora of Jamaica back into Category:Plants of Jamaica. I will then ensure that it is properly categorised as before.

More generally, it seems to me that in many cases it is best to keep empty redirects as they can often be an aid to finding the correct category for a file. In fact, Template:category redirect actually says "This tag should be used on existing categories that are likely to be used by other editors, even though the "real" category is elsewhere.". That wording implies to me "used and left on".

Thanks for your help with this and apologies for the misunderstanding. I'll be more careful next time.

-Arb. (talk) 16:50, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I restored Category:Plants of Jamaica. See the discussion above on which I will come back within a couple of days. Meanwhile, I can say that the redirects have been cleaned up a couple of weeks ago and they where hiding tens of thousands of images (images in redirected cats are not visible in cat displays, so almost impossible to find). The last couple of weeks, the redirect cats are again hiding 1000 to 2000 images and categories, which is even worse. --Foroa (talk) 17:23, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that.

I've read the discussion above and that on Rocket000's page. The tension seem to be that:

  1. Some users find clearly labelled redirects very useful
  2. Category cleaners find them a great problem.

Given 1, it would clearly be good if we could find a solution to 2. So, a couple of question:

  1. Why are so many images ending up in clearly labelled redirects? Are they being put there by people or by bots? If bots, could they be reprogrammed to follow the redirect?
  2. Can we not automate the movement of images from redirect pages to the category they point to? This would seem be a great job for a bot and there are plenty of them around.

Perhaps I'm missing something.

-Arb. (talk) 17:40, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, wait, part of the question has already been answered by Rocket000:

"Every single upload/categorizing bot puts images in them. Users put images in them with Hotcat.js or because they see a blue link."

-Arb. (talk) 17:45, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rocket000 also says: "one of the main reasons to get rid of poorly named category redirects ... [editors] will not know which category to add images to if both show up with Hotcat.js and both show up as blue links.

So it looks like Hotcat.js could/needs to be improved as well.

Alternatively, get a bot on the job as volunteered(?) by User:Fabartus at User_talk:Rocket000#.7B.7Bcategory_redirect.7D.7D

-Arb. (talk) 17:55, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We are getting closer, but there are many more aspects:

  • The suggested (blue) cats from tools such as commonsense
  • When doing complete categorisation edition, I fill often out categories and check only if they are blue in preview, no more
  • Hotcat and the search aid in the search window gives any existing cat
  • because in hotcat, the cat name in singular (redirecting to the plural) name is generally presented first, people add a space and think that there are no more deeper cats

Long time ago, I suggested to color code (or with italics) some category types, as is done in some displays on some wikipedias (for example the dutch category pages), but I got no response on that.

Moreover, if a bot does the moving work, and you decide some point in time to redirect all the flora in European countries towards one single flora in Europe country, a couple of hours later, the bot merges everything into one category. Good luck to restore that. A pretty good method for vandals.

Why I think we have to try to discuss about the complete picture as a whole. --Foroa (talk) 18:15, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK. There's certainly more to this than I'd realised. I'll await with interest the outcome of your discussions. -Arb. (talk) 19:55, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This work will have some delay, especially when considering reactions that focus on an immediate and mostly private need. --Foroa (talk) 08:15, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! According to the naming conventions the names of categories have not only to be in ascii but also in English. Gallery- and image-names can be in other languages too (ascii is preferred). So could you please create a new category for those images. And by the way: the parent category of your category is currently Category:Unknown, which contains images which are up to deletion. Other question: why do you create a category with cyrillic letters if you are from an area with non-cyrillic letters (according to your language babels). - Cecil (talk) 07:36, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Cecil. I discovered these uncreated category containing 16 images. Because I had not a very good idea what the images mean, I could not recategorise them neither. As I have done several times in the past with a bunch of pictures from which I don't understand precisely the meaning, I created a category with a bad name indeed in the hope that someone can clarify that. Once this is done, I move the whole bunch and delete the category. So this marvellous category is just a handle to treat the whole bunch in one go. --Foroa (talk) 07:52, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you fancy that type of work, I can give you a nice pointer: millions of fancy categories. Enjoy. --Foroa (talk) 08:38, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh great. Looks like we should find a few people who can read that. -- Cecil (talk) 08:48, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

American Mariner[edit]

Thanks for fixing up my page USAS American Mariner.Wikited (talk) 13:34, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are welcome. --Foroa (talk) 13:42, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion of category redirects[edit]

Why did you delete, e.g., Category:Australian women? That's the name of the category on Wikipedia, but instead of being told that there is another name here you just hit a red link now (and the search results, if you navigate to them, are not very good). Unless you plan to delete {{Catredirect}} itself, I can't understand why you would be deleting specific cases of it.

Please respond on my talk page. By the way, you should archive your talk page, it's becoming very long. Richard001 (talk) 01:23, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See from [[#.7B.7Bcategory_redirect.7D.7D}} onwards and the item below. A long talk page has the advantage that one has to repeat less the same things again and again. --Foroa (talk) 06:56, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I restored this cat : it is useful according to Richard001. Speedy delete a redirect created by an user (not a bot !!!) is really improper.--Bapti 10:46, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tired of explaining? Me too. ;) Rocket000(talk) 04:22, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Categorie documentatie[edit]

Hoi, nog bedankt voor je commentaren in m'n gebruikersconflikt drie weken terug, hier, maar vooral ook voor je ideeen over het categoriseren, en de categorie informatie. Ik vroeg me af of we hier eens met elkaar over van gedachten kunnen wisselen. In dat ene overleg stel je al dat je zelf veel werkt aan het oplossen van categorieproblemen, en ondertussen heb hierover ook ik redelijk uitgesproken ideeen. Maar het is een hele kunst zoiets in goede banen te leiden, vandaar dit verzoek?

Nu zijn er verschillende punten, waarover ik van gedachten zou willen wisselen:

  • Ik vind de drie weken terug gekozen oplossing in de Category:Maps weinig duurzaam: De (te) lange categorie introductie is er verplaatst naar de overlegpagina. Nou heb je zelf al een categorie subpagina voorgesteld, wat volgens Timeshifter niet werkte. Zou iets van een "Commons:Category Maps information" hier een optie zijn? Van mij kan die boel ook direct de prullebak in, maar dan heb ik de poppen weer aan het dansen. Het voordeel van zo'n aparte pagina is, dat in de overlegpagina ernaast de inhoud ter discussie gesteld kan worden.
  • Meer structureel, het opstellen van een beleid over categorie documentatie.
  • Nog radicaler, standaardisatie van de categoriebenamingen rondom de category:diagrams.
  • Verder ben ik ook beniewd naar je idee over het nieuwe {{On Wikipedia}} template. Denk jij dat dit een duurzame oplossing is?

Aldus. Alvast bedankt. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 19:25, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Bedankt. Ik ben langzaam aan het nadenken over het probleem van category redirects gezien ik er ook een soort van synthese van beloofd heb. Gezien het aantal bedenkelijke reacties hierboven, zal mijn reactie geen vluggertje mogen worden, anders wordt er (weer eens) vijf minuten oppervlakkig gediscuteerd en iedereen doet dan verder alsof er niets gebeurd is. Dit betekent ook dat ik de eerste volgende week (of twee) niet erg veel tijd zal hebben voor categorie documentatie. Toch alvast enkele stenen in de kikkerpoel. Je introtekst hierboven is op een aantal punten onduidelijk/incompleet, maar tussentijds (na edit conflict) verbeterd lijkt mij.

Persoonlijk heb ik mijn reserve bij een aantal van je megaliths intro veranderingen. tenslotte is slechts 15 % of zo nuttig, terwijl "See also", de meest nuttige lijn, als een onbeduidend zijsprongetje overkomt.

  • ik heb een hekel aan die categorise vierkante kwak in het midden van een pagina. Zelfs in het begin van een blad nemen die schreeuwerige dingen te veel plaats in en werken zeer op mijn systeem (Ik lijd aan formofobie ;).
  • Die vroegere verwijzing naar type, country en documentatie verduidelijking leek mij net goed en efficient en de essentie van de categorie documentatie
  • Ik heb mijn grootste twijfels betreffende de {{On Wikipedia}} template om verschillende redenen: Wij evolueren naar meer dan honderd (200 ?) talen, talen zijn geen landen, dubbel werk met de Interwiki's (vermoedelijk ook probleem voor bots), maintenance probleem

Andere dimensies/needs waarover gedacht moet worden;

  • erfenis (heritage) in subcategorieen, vooral als die diep zijn en geografisch/taal/land gebonden (heb nog experimenten daaromtrent gedaan met heritage van topcategory templates in Category:Rectories in Belgium, maar die zijn door substitutes vervangen geweest om voor mij onduidelijke redenen)
  • maintenance: hoe kunnen wij dubbel werk met Interwiki's vermijden en zelfs optimiseren

Zoals je ziet, meer vragen dan antwoorden, maar alvast (weer) geen discussie in het luchtledige. --Foroa (talk) 21:09, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bedank. Er zijn zo al een hoop onderwerpen aangesneden. Enige reactie:
  • Mijn intro: Hier heb ik slechts als voorbeeld een aantal punten aangesneden. Je hebt enige punten opgepikt en op de rest zal ik tzt terugkomen.
  • Category redirect: Deze heb ik tot op heden zelf niet als problematisch ondervonden.
  • Category:Megaliths: Ik ben met je eens, dat de "see also" sectie is/was ondergesneeuwd, met name door dat categorize template!?. Nu heb ik dit template bovenaan gezet? Het kan ook worden verwijderd? Of m'n hele wijziging kan worden teruggedraaid. Aan jou de keuze... Zeg het maar!?
  • Ik heb zelf ook zo m'n bedenkingen over het {{On Wikipedia}} template, maar op dit moment geen onoverkomelijke bezwaren.
  • Heritage/customisation: ook hier zie ik niet direct problemen (of mogelijkheden)?
  • Dubbel werk met Interwiki's vermijden: Welk dubbelwerk...!?
Dit zijn zo mijn reacties. Die Category:Megaliths zie ik als een interessante testcase. Ik ben wel benieuwd wat jou ideaal daar nu is? Of heb je die hier al getoond? -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 21:55, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Toch nog een korte reactie.
1. Qua layout en inhoud heeft voor mij Xvdvoort hier voorrang: hij heeft er meest energie in gestopt
2. 80 % van de intro is standaard tekst die niemand leest. Gezien er momenteel wiki's bestaan in ongeveer 250 talen, zal dit zeker niet verbeteren
3. Een verwijzing naar andere wiki's is niet voldoende om de inhoud van een categorie uit te leggen. Voorbeeld Category:Rectories in Belgium, Daar werkt het {{On Wikipedia}} template dus niet, toevallig werkt het wel met "exotische" onderwerpen als megalith.
4. In heel veel gevallen zal de het {{On Wikipedia}} template exact dezelfde lijst bevatten als de interwiki's. Hoedanook, templates en gelijklopende lijsten die door bot's bijgehouden worden geven mij de kriebels --Foroa (talk) 12:27, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Xvdvoort stem telt zeker. De exacte wijzigingen aan Category:Megaliths mogen van mij op die overlegpagina zelf besproken worden. Ik vraag jou naar jou ideaal daar, en ben benieuwd naar je achterliggende overwegingen, waarop ik later misschien nog eens door kan vragen?
Je laatste bezwaren tegen het {{On Wikipedia}} template begrijp ik niet? het template is ontwikkeld om op category pagina's de link te leggen naar artikelen. Het template is (voor zover ik weet) niet bedoeld voor artikelen/galleries. In categorieen behoren de interwiki's te verwijzen naar categorieen op Wikipedia. Zou zijn het {{On Wikipedia}} template en de interwiki's volgens mij complementair. Of mis ik hier iets. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 18:58, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Commons:Policy for category documentation[edit]

Een concrete vraag: Drie weken terug schreef je, hier, "there seems to be no clear policy in what can be in categories". Zie jij zelf mogelijkheden voor het opstellen van zo'n beleid? -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 18:41, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Exorcism of bad spirits[edit]

It is an interesting situation that I am in right now, where I have the perception that I am cleaning up a mess that was made while a stupid idea war between narrow minds was occurring here. The fact that in this same situation, I could write the software to accomplish the task I am asking the software be written to accomplish does not do very much to help the "bad spirits" I often somewhat see here.

I spent some time very recently trying to find where I read about categories being given a lowercase first letter. In that discussion, there was a mention of a "bot" (I assume software when I write that) who would change that and you were involved with this discussion. But that is my memory of something I read and I am not going to spend a lot of time to find exactly where it occurred. Instead I am here offering a view from a human being who can write software that repairs things and a situation where a bunch of undirected human contributors more than likely pasted something with categories that have lowercase first names. It is not unlike the removal of a bad spirit that exists here -- where instead of actually authoring software that accomplishes tasks, a mess was made and the human being who repairs it is dehumanized. Do you want to exist in such a situation? I don't.

So, here is my situation in which a bunch of misguided, poorly directed and "bullied" people pasted an error with lowercase first names included in a category navigation: Dipsacales. I am repairing these mistakes and I am a human being of at least average intelligence who does not want to nor enjoy existing in a situation where a mess was made and the retelling of the cleanup is potentially so dehumanizing.

I honestly believe that a software cannot be written that will make templates and sort through the history of the continual recircumscription the way that me, a member of the human species, is able to. I also honestly believe that the tree can be easy to contribute to, but it needs to have a person who can author software to complete it and to paste the instructions on the talk pages.

The fact that your communication is overlapping with people who should be able to easily write what I asked and occasionally feels dehumanizing to me is the reason that I am here writing about it now. I also understand that you are working on the whole tree, but I also can see that you also have not opted to use a template system to assist you in helping to make the category tree exist everywhere else either.

All of the "states of Mexico" can have the main categorization tree added to them so that the upload software and hotcat and others do not need to know the whole tree to put things in the correct place. That is an example that I ran into and I am wondering how to gain privs and respect here that can cause functional software to be written instead of discussions that tend to be dehumanizing -- carol (talk) 07:29, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have much time now to reply on fairly open question like yours. A couple of comments for now.
1. Uppercase. Folks are so much used to the fact that the system transforms all characters in the beginning of a sentence into uppercase anyway, so it doesn't matter anymore, why bothering ? In the end it works. Remember, "Comfort is the devil's cushion" ...
Paste makes continual waste. This mistake gets pasted into smaller divisions in the tree and also into templates where it is auto-errorred potentially hundreds of times.
Is the patience and self-healing capacity of the system not marvellous ? You can reproduce/paste the same errors over and over, but it still comes out right. Amazing.
2. Are you not trying to solve a problem that is not perceived as a problem ?
Man on the street interview says no, that the amount of research needed to find the part of the tree a new image of a species would go into and make it (or the genus even) is too much for a contributor. I am solving a problem for people not involved in the "talk" community here....
3. "Exorcism of bad spirits": people are all just working too much, which means no time for spirit(s). Instead of trying to get the bad spirit out, trying to bring in a good spirit might be more productive. Don't confuse your own (little) demon with all sorts of good and bad spirits.
The perception that software is being written and to not have the perception that a reliable human being is undergoing a description would be easier to perceive if software was actually being written and the talk of problems I am manually repairing were less. In short, I am wondering lately if there is anyone who is involved here who can write software.
Show me your clear specifications and we can judge the software then.
4. Cat tree's and auto-category generation: I am profoundly convinced that this is the future against our error prone "artisanal" creation and maintenance process. Is the time ripe to release such a powerful ghost out the bottle ?
Is that a ghost? It looks more to me like an adage we have "Hindsight is 20/20" meaning that it is easier to see what should have been done than it is to see what should be done. If a ghost is the shape of things to come (I have a difficult time making that analogy) then sure.
5. It might help us all if you, by the end of your writings, re-formalise in short the questions you want to be addressed --Foroa (talk) 12:56, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am trying to do that -- I am also attempting to get rid of really bad and wrong feelings. I also have been working with a User name instance here who claimed to have written a list writer. I know more about software than I do about being a bully (an enabled person who is being abusive to an unenabled person and using a lot of strength and talk but without a lot of knowledge) and I can honestly say that software can not dig out the information that I have dug out for what I have been doing. There will be some that disagree with what I have done but not so many as are already online at the sources for this who all disagree and have made their own version of this.
These ones need another couple of hours or so for my slow minde to understand.

Short questions[edit]

Hello, I am back :) -- carol (talk) 16:42, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  1. Are you participating in a discussion of what I am doing as if I am software and not a capable member of the human species?
    I am reluctant and don't want to be associated to that what you probably call software: those templates, magic words... Most of the many pieces of code that I have seen in assembler were clearer than what you see here. Anyway, I often have the impression that for many folks, it is easier to express the problem (or some sort of solution) they are facing in some sort of code than in some sort of human language. Code first and then try to understand. Is that what you need to do ?
    Your answer to this does not seem to be much associated with the question I asked. The person who asked the question (me) was given a situation of impossible tasks and failing to accomplish the impossible found herself in a land far from familiar with no credit for positive accomplishments (not impossible things that had been successfully completed). The refusal to make so many wrong things work or build on an unreal situation should be a good example and one that others should follow. I am on commons.wikimedia filling that time where my physical location is wrong and while I am dislocated from my stuff -- that stuff I collected so I would have personal things to do and tasks to complete when I was given time off from a life made busier with the hourly punch-clock tasks (the "day job"). The amount of wrong that is here is at least equal to the amount of wrong that made me relocate to this place. The work I am doing on commons could have been done from that other location, so doing that and making that work should be not affective in causing any success in this unreal/wrong physical location I am at. This part of the reply has so far been personal about me and also an explanation about the reason that the time spent working on this stuff is so great -- that time would not be spent working on other things. The few books here have been read. Television is that much more wrongness and not a good time-filler; entertainment like that should be a refreshment, and it has been non-existent here since perhaps June anyways so not even available as that refreshment.
    About the wikimedia software -- do you think that comparing it to assembler language is a good way to communicate about ways that it can function now? Is the writing of instructions for a mindless machine -- write the instructions first and then see if it accomplished what you wanted? Is that what you said?
  2. Have you considered what sort of category tree should exist at different locations in the great tree; such as in states of countries.
    With a good Atlas or basic geographic description, 99 % percent of the basic geographic categories could be generated automatically (and correctly). But because someone decreted (modern Eve) that we can only create categories when we have sufficient items to put it in, we are condemned to create them all by hand, very often in 3 to 4 times before we get it right. An innocent image provider that want to categorise properly his picture has to find his way in the category jungle with its many outspoken rules to find the correct spot for his image. For the poor people from countries under development, they have to sneek in other countries whenever they encounter their first vocalists, cuisine, food, church, art, sculptors, ... items so they can try to copy the structure from other countries. Anyway, the next two years, we will see that 15 to 25 % category management will go to renaming to avoid ambiguation battles: within 5 years we will be able to generate the Atlas we should have started with. And we will have found the ultimate solution for the question if people/artists/bands/writers are "from" a country or "of" a country.
    Heh, I was looking for a map of a location which had been renamed and the atlas page that is here sent me to English wikipedia which does not collect maps nor guarrantee to point to the collection of maps that are here. I am still kind of upset about that. Heh -- a pointer to the category would have sufficed for helping to find things here. I am actually back here right now for this specific answer you gave and will write about it in a new section.
  3. Have you any experience with templates that automatically add categories?
    Only bad experiences, but I think that you should start with a definition of your tree. The rest is hacking or some sort of. Templates are often a bad afterthought because you did not do the things right in the beginning.
    It has been really cool with the plants. A little research, a little switch and maybe a name expansion in the template and then with just a simple paste of a blank template and potentially three different navigational tree exist where the template was placed. I get a really great feeling when I see a complicated to construct template just seem to work when applied and put everything in the somewhat correct place.

Thank you for your reply to my exorcisim of some really bad and wrong feelings, btw. It would be, in my humble opinion, that if what I outlined were happening that this world, this earth had ceased to be able to access those brains that many I knew of had been born with. -- carol (talk) 14:42, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You keep surprising me: in 26 minutes, you write something for which I need more than an hour to reach a beginning of understanding. On the other hand, if it is mixed up with good and bad feelings, it takes twice that long. --Foroa (talk) 16:31, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The only parts that need to be taken very seriously (in my opinion) are the parts where there is the suggestion of dehumanization. The species humans could not have built so many logic based systems and things without being a little logical themselves. When I came here, I did not know if you had been participating in the discussion that bothered me that it might be a little dehumanizing. The ability to work logically through things like the plate of spaghetti that the botanists made in the last few hundred years should be celebrated. I suspect that I am not the only person who could have done this, with the exception that not doing the impossible where I had been living put me into a very cruel isolation from loved ones and personal possessions. This one cruel and wrong situation gave me nothing else of similar "fun" to do so my persistence in completing it is perhaps unusual. It is the 21st century and the things that happened to me that caused the vacuum of time which makes this task seem fun simply should not have happened. So, perhaps I am the only person who could have done this. It isn't that difficult though. Also, I have seen some attempts to doing this via phishing information online and also, I have seen where human data entry (not unlike what is being done here) has made similar sites online elsewhere. The first one pulls in problems from online and since it is being done via phishing, problems get drawn in because the phishing script could not foresee it. The dataentry sites that involve real living beings -- I caught a misspelling in one of the best of those sites and this misspelling fanned out in an online world which phishes and makes sites. Such an interesting view of the information flow!!! I can honestly say that I only suspected automated "scientific paper" generators until I saw how that misspelled species was managed by other sites. It is difficult to say if that is funny or sad. -- carol (talk) 16:42, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Templates know about "of" or "from"[edit]

The "of" or "from" problem; you tugged at my heart a bit for that one. How dreary to discuss that for more than a few minutes and the discussion now lasts for years? It is too late for "Born in" and "Famous in" for people who were born in one location and became famous while living in another location. I suggest not discussing the "of" or "from" problem any longer. Rocket000 was able to make a list of all of the plant names that had parenthesis in them. If the same kind of list can be made of "People of" categories and "People from" categories and the longest list wins then set the recategorization bots onto making them all the same. The end of that discussion will almost be at that point; but will seriously end when every place has a "People <chosen preposition>" category, whether it has files in it or not.

The templates:

{{Born United States
| birthdate=
| state=
| city=
| lastdate=
}}
{{Occupation musician
| instrument=
| location=
| genra=
}}

Some of the people-based categories I saw from images uploaded here from English wikipedia had more biographical content (university alumni of was the exact example) in the categorization than it did in the article about the person. Building images can have a similar template, I think. It shouldn't be too bad or easy to write the wrong thing now with so much of the tree in place and over three million images that for the most part are in the right place, considering the situation. Heh.

It is really very fun and interesting to think about how to manage such an amount of information. Weird how surly the people can be. -- carol (talk) 16:42, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guesstimate that there are here close to 10000 categories that are by country: people of xxx, artists of, politicians of, churches of, bridges/plants/animals of,... So whenever you manage to make a reasoably accurate count on that, you will have to move/rename anyway many thousands of categories and their contents. Of course, the longer you wait, the worse it gets.

Concerning your structured documentation, you are right, but my simple soul is already reasonable happy if an image has already found its home in a gross category. What is frustrating to know is that all this structured information about locations, species and all classes of human beings and personalities is available on the wiki's and could be autogenerated here. This smells sometimes very much to the middle Ages. --Foroa (talk) 20:28, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Community of Valencia" versus "Valencian community" versus "Land of Valencia"[edit]

Métete en tus asustos. La "Comunidad Valenciana" se traduce en inglés como "Valencian Community". José Luis Abaixo (talk) 18:21, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry because my Spanish is too limited. As you can see in Category:People_by_country, we never use "American, Spanish, ... people" because this does simplify a lot. Moreover, Valencian xxx would not allow to differentiate between for example Valencian people/cities/buildings from the Valencian city, province, community but neither from the Valencia cities and regios in the U.S., Columbia, Philippines, Pakistan, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela (see en:Valencia). The same applies for Madrilian regio vs "community of Madrid", the latter being more Commons standard. In that respect, all Valencia related names will have to change overtime to distinguish between the Valencia's from other countries. --Foroa (talk) 07:56, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Métete en tus asuntos"... Translating it, he's saying "it's not of your bussiness" in Spanish and in this language it's a very unrespectful way to disappoint you. --Joanot Martorell 15:06, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Flora of categories vs Plants of categories[edit]

The Flora of categories belong to a different tree. Those all end at an Category:Ecozones. Will it be possible to undo those category changes? I put a lot of work into them and well, there were a lot of problems with the Plants of categories -- like states in the United States which had no plants (even after all of that time spent and supermanagement of those Plant categories). Poor Rhode Island, here at commons with no plants!! The Flora of categories were made with different land divisions at the end, divisions chosen by people who are more interested in the enviromental conditions than the political "things". Please, please, undo that merge -- they should be merged the other way or left separate!!! -- carol (talk) 17:55, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also "Flora of" is native plants (the subcategorization is at least). I have no idea what the plants of people were doing other than super strong handed management but those categories are not full of native plants. Three main ways a plant exists, Native, Introduced (for plants that grow and spread on their own) and "cultivated". The differences between these three are kind of important to adaptive evolution studies. Okay, the physicist and mathematician in me has some strong doubts about the way they define these things. If some seeds are on your coat (in this case cloth or leather over coat, I assume) and drop onto the ground and grow, it is an introduced species. However, if you are a bird and eat the seeds on one island and "plant" the seeds on another island, that species is "native". Heh. That being said, it is the biologists science and I have been really careful inspite of my doubts of their definitions when making these new categories. To merge them is not good. -- carol (talk) 18:04, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wrong desk: [4]. Cheers! Siebrand 19:33, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. I did ask for several categories that were made in 2006 and less than half made (alphabetically they did not get past C, so arguably 1/8 a project that had been abandoned) without talking about it with the creators of them. Those creators seemed to have opted to talk around the mess and not about the mess. This situation is hardly like that. Thanks for the link. -- carol (talk) 05:57, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I started this on Siebrand's talk page and was shown that the problem is here. Are you in trouble? Is there a reason that you can communicate about some things and not about others? Is it you who might be mindless (no original thought) software now since getting the privs here? -- carol (talk) 06:01, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a way to vote to have only communicative admin? I actually was communicating with you here and you were just what, talking crap? Heh, impressive. It is fairly clear what the differences are between the Flora of categories and the Plants of and the move is being done by people who are not afraid to say that they do not understand the differences. I understand one thing, no one asked me and everyone who is doing it was communicating with me. There seems to be a problem and it is this time, clearly not with me.

Once again, are you in trouble? Don't answer in the next few hours and continue to be heavy handed in your decision making and perhaps this will be treated as a plea for help since it is unlike you for most of your user instance here. Maybe a concerned party will locate you and help. -- carol (talk) 13:21, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed the problem yesterday, but had and still have no time to attend to it, I should have time tonight. In the mean time, the move was a legitimate request to merge a totally undocumented category into a widely used one. The move request was issued almost a week ago. As you are watching those categories and you did not react on that, I suppose you agreed on it. If we are not allowed to execute a merge which is not contested nor from an undocumented category, then we might as well stop this whole move business. I can perfectly undo the move, but it makes no sense to restore the previous situation if within a couple of days/weeks the move will be re-requested and executed for the same reason. You should not discuss the fine differences aboute flora and plants here; you need something like a category scheme, a consensus on it, and above all, an explanation in one or two sentences, which allows a poor uploader to grasp in a couple of seconds the difference and to chose one category above the other. Without the last criterion, it just makes no sense to make flora a top category. --Foroa (talk) 15:48, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, not necessarily they are not watched. I assumed good faith and that communication would not fail. Also, it is really clear that the Plants of are on a sphere which is divided politically and the Flora of are in a sphere which is divided environmentally. Plants of has been SuperHeavyHandedManaged so that much of what exists in those is strictly galleries (several of my subcategories were unmade simply because they were put there) and I really do not think that this is the way to maintain an accurate tree. That is documented clearly in edit histories of people. When I moved category trees which had been started and abandoned more than a year to years ago, it should be different than moving a mature tree which ends at a set of almost completed image map navigational aids. Or perhaps things work differently in what is known here to be a liberal and non-militant "the Netherlands".
How would you describe the failure of communication between me and you in this situation? -- carol (talk) 15:57, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't tell me you are not watching those flora categories because you, as the creator of a category, is automatically put on the watchlist. It is a bit easy to blame the others for things which you failed to document and failed to respond to properly. I was inclined to execute the move request immediatly, but I waited a couple of days to give you time to disagree if needed.

No, they aren't automatically put there. I saw a few species get their categories moved that did make it to my watch list. It took me a really long time to notice that categories even can be watched so without (as you dictated) telling you that they are not on my watch list, I would like to mention that I only noticed a couple of species getting category changes. It will be difficult though, if I am unable to tell you about factual situations. -- carol (talk) 05:53, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am pretty much convinced that the communication problem is on your side. First, you are telling that there is no difference in flora of or plants of, but that the difference in names hides the difference between a political and ecological zone categorisation. Your statement "It is really clear that the Plants of are on a sphere which is ..." is the first time I hear about such a categorisation system (I've seen some bits and pieces of ecozones) but it makes me laugh as this information is not available to an average user. That means that both names are wrong then; you can hardly expect that a user knows that "plants of" means political, "flora of" means ecozones that happen to carry the same area name as the political zones. I am certainly not a perfect communicator, but if you think that we have to try to read all possible talk pages when a contributor requests a move or merge in a category, then you have a quite utopic vision on the commons. I have no crystal ball neither and I don't hear all the gossip.

Yes, perhaps my answer when you questioned me about the difference between Flora and Plants catagories was confusing and probably you did say that I did not give a good answer then. Can you find when that question was asked so I can review it and 1)know when you asked and 2)see how confusing my answer had been? -- carol (talk) 05:55, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I checked, and I discovered that in "my preferences", tab "watchlist", the items "add to my watchlists when created, edited, moved, deleted" are not on by default. This watchlist is for me the base of all communication in commons. If those items are not on, I can understand indeed that there is some communication problem. They should be on by default.--Foroa (talk) 06:14, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So if in a while, someone does again a request to merge the categories flora in plants, and I find no rationale or argument in a category scheme or in the category descrîption itself, I will have no choice but to re-execute the merge again. After all, I consider my main job here to keep the category schemes in an acceptable tidy configuration in which an average downloader can find easily his way to a certain level. A second part of my job is trying to cut down backlogs to an acceptable level and respond to requests in reasonable time frame, as I did with Flora. --Foroa (talk) 20:02, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree completely with you Foroa. For the basic, average user it is not at all evident that Flora of should associate to ecoregions and plants of should associate with political regions. I have tried several times to raise this issue and related confusing aspects of flora of and plants of categories at the village pump. It has been in vain though as no conslusion has been reached in any case, as the threads have been detoured by irrelevant topics (I won't mention any names). I find this very frustrating. For me it seems clear that there should only be one of the two categories as the two words have similar meanings. I personally prefer Plants of because it is a better known word in a multilingual environment, but basically I do not care as long as we reach community consensus. The contents of the the two categories should evidently be merged. Just to list some recent (July 2008) threads (sigh)
-- Slaunger (talk) 22:11, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think Foroa needed to or should of contacted anyone beforehand. Those rename requests sat there for awhile and no one said anything. We expect those that care about certain things to be watching them. Not because it's their responsibility but because they would be naturally. I had no idea flora and plants meant different things in this context (I still don't understand how there can be "Flora by country" if it's not defined by political boundaries. e.g. How can it change the meaning of France?). Normally I would have done that rename request in a second. I did end up doing the fauna to animal ones. I left the flora ones for someone more knowledgeable to do it or at least give it more time for comments. I remember seeing carol make some recently, and I was going to ask her about it but it slipped my mind. So if anyone is to blame, it's me since I was aware of a potential conflict and didn't do anything. This is the main reason why I undid everything. I have absolutely no opinion on the matter except that some kind of discussion/agreement and/or documentation is needed to avoid this from happening again. I'm thinking about making a navigation template for these categories. This will help by the simple fact the flora categories are aware of the plant categories and vice-versa. Users will see that someone consciously made them separate categories for a reason. Regardless of whether or not it should be that way, people will at least know that it is. Rocket000(talk) 05:22, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

France is a small enough area that there is a Flora with that name. Canada is too big of an area so there is no Flora for Canada. Plants of let the people who know within the political divisions, ie the people who vote in Canada what plants are there. Flora lets people know what plants are native to Subarctic America, an area which includes one state of the United States, approximately half of Canada and the country Greenland. This area has a very different environment and seasonal expectations than Southern Canada does.
Once again, I should be interested to see where Foroa asked me about this (as was mentioned earlier here) so I can see how confusing my answer was. -- carol (talk) 06:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So, and I guess this is a question for Carol, in the case of Jamaica (which is where this all started what with me being new here and unaware of all the ancient history) what is the distinction between "Flora of" and "Plants of"? How does one know which plants (is that the right word?) should go in which category? -Arb. (talk) 15:10, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As explained above, the whole commons communication system depends on the watched items which works fine except for categories because even when watching a specific category, one can empty it completely and move the underlaying subcats elsewere without leaving a trace on the whatchlist. I will open a CfD in a while to close this endless discussion once and forever. In the mean time, I think that:
  • there is a consensus that in general, plants and flora means for most people roughly the same. Alhtough personally I prefer flora as a "wider" definition, plants seem to be the more popular name and anyway that is the "de facto" standard naming used so far. So no single reason to use flora.
  • the basic discussion concerns:
    • the fact if and how we can/could separate/indicate real native plants and plants that are just appearing in certain areas
    • how we can organise (geographical) ecozones besides the main "political" plants in xxx organisation.

It is clear that plants in xxx is the natural and main adopted categorisation scheme in commons

This discussion will not be carried further here on my talk page but on an appropriate CfD place. --Foroa (talk) 06:14, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is the original category scheme, it is a political based category scheme. It is not unlike galleries vs categories in which the two actually do exist together and the problems that are "imagined" about them are "imagined". The non-communicative category movements are an example of how to not communicate not unlike the category disembling has been previously by narrow-minded users. The discussion should start where you ask me questions about the new tree on my talk page before you move things and that is where the discussion will start.
A person who has presented him or herself as an expert on a certain idea (in this case, categorization) who is unwilling to answer simple and direct questions and not communicating before moving an active tree should (with self-censorship and abilities in mind) consider also not making decisions regarding movement of those categories. On the other hand, had the "expert" contributed by causing abandoned category schemes to be cleaned up without too much problem -- that person should be communicated with about other new things which the software and the contributors are now able to do. The conflict here, on talk pages and in COM:KISS MY ASS things has nothing to do with reality. If it is a way for you to leave good things alone, then by all means, go discuss it. You had plenty of opportunity to be the kindly expert you present yourself as but you opted to not do that. It is not a leader but yet another follower who works like that.
I will quickly answer any of your questions when you "stoop" to communicating with me on my talk page. It is my opinion that the decision needs to be made by people who can understand that a sphere can (and often is) divided by different definitions into differently shaped parts.
Also, if you can tell me what the problem is about "Plants from the Canary Islands" being equal to "Plants from Russia" you might start to understand the difference between scientific thinking and political thinking. You only seem to be able to think politically. It is a sad half of existance to only live on and not representative of the uploaders here. -- carol (talk) 06:41, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As I can conclude from the other discussions, you seem the only one in the world that has a problem with the fact that the main categorisation system is politically based. I am offering to reopen the debate elsewere on the plant/flora categorisation system to see how we can find a coexistence with your private ecological categorisation system. I will remove further comments on the essence of that problem from my talk page as you keep thinking that I don't understand the problem which most people do understand.
If there are discussions to be made about a category system, they are to be made on the category talk pages or in a CfD. Commons is a community and these are the rules.
Carol, you can try to challenge me with personal attacks and insinuations, but that will not work with me. I am hardened. --Foroa (talk) 07:18, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I challenge your willingness to communicate. I challenge your adoption of the ways of the gallery makers. I am suspicious of the colorful nicks of administration since I read that ant article. I expect better from you. I attack the person you are being these last few days not the person from the last year.
Here is a research item for you. Since you are working with such a well defined idea, can you poke around and find the reason that not all of the States of United States have a Plants of category?
There are questions like this that should be answered before the "talk about it" people begin to talk about it. -- carol (talk) 07:48, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In the end, all the water flows to the sea. Do you know the expression "If Moses does not come to the mountain, then the mountain will come to Moses". --Foroa (talk) 16:12, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Foroa, on a related issue. I do not understand what is going on here. Do you? -- Slaunger (talk) 19:43, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A little Blog[edit]

@Slaunger

I think that my mother would have used expressions like queen of Shiba and raped virgins. In Flemish politics, they would use the word caractériel, although they don't use the word correctly, I feel. Strangely enough, though we have more than one million words in Dutch, we often have to use words from other languages as we have no Dutch equivalent with the same nuances. In the end, those imported words start to have their own live and meaning.

Anyway, suddenly, I have seen indeed a vegetation tornado passing by, that reshuffled all the cards. Some would call that Deus ex machina. Some damage indeed, but only minor repair needed. I'll bet that within a couple of weeks, a renaming of all flora stuff to plants will be re-negotiable while the whole eco-region problem is gone. Strange how some poles can influence the logical flux of some thinking and decision making. In some cases, you can only move in the direction of the wind or the rotation of the earth, knowing that you keep running in circles but that you will ultimately cross again the same point where you can settle then.

Just my little blog from today, a "clin d'œil". Slaunger, I can understand that you are obset, but consider this another chapter in your experience on decision making and consensus in a rotating world. I have not been playing Deus ex machina myself. --Foroa (talk) 06:44, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your blog. I think I agree that once the dust has settled the change is probably for the better. I disagree with how it has been done (I still do not understand what triggered the bot). I guess my frustration about this has not been so much about the move itself, but frustation over that the plant interested users have not been capable of reaching a consensus about this ourselves despite several attempts from me and others. -- Slaunger (talk) 07:23, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Is it triggered by a close minded and small abuse of the word Flora that I personally have seen used only in one place and for closed mindedness and abuse? -- carol (talk) 07:29, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As is often the case, I am not sure I understand exactly what you mean. I do think your editing has had quite an impact on what has happened, if that is what you are referring to. -- Slaunger (talk) 07:53, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Slaunger, my frustration is at least as big as yours. I even agree with the words of Carol, but not necessarily with their order, but this is not the topic of my blog. Lets move forward. --Foroa (talk) 07:39, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, let's move on. It is counter-productive to keep on dwelving on how things have been done and should have been done. -- Slaunger (talk) 07:53, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It was just a question and the answer to that question could have been a yes or a no or a "kind of" or ignored entirely. There are a lot of communication which perhaps should not be ignored that become ignored, however. Mostly, here, I am uncomfortable as I feel that I could be interfering and for that I would like to leave an apology and thank everyone for the extra time which the asking of that question has taken, time spent that was not actually necessary or productive. -- carol (talk) 11:19, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, the category was initially named as Category:Land of Valencia and all the categories inside there were named also with the name of "Land of Valencia". In the past there were reached a consensus about this category, with a very large discussion. But some users inserted the tag of {{Category redirect}} under another name, with no discussion to anyone, and one of them was not awaiting response from me (see it). I think it's reasonable to restore it to the initian status wich was under previous consens. Cheers. --Joanot Martorell 12:17, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I stepped in the discussion about the Valencia community area and the items around the Castelló(n) province because I was alerted by the improper use of category redirects (sometimes) pointing to non-existing categories. There was a incoherent naming (Land of Valencia, the Land of Valencia, Valencian Community, the Valencian community, ...). I could find no document in the category scheme class, and there was no real response against what I call some sort of vandalisme. If there is only vandalisme or abuse of commons features, I have no other choice than using the English names, the commons naming conventions and consistency with other regios. (such as community (lower case c) of Madrid). So I started to make this naming conherent with the mentioned rules.

I looked up the (unclosed) discussion on the Catalan naming and I will bring back the Land of Valencia category and its discussion provided we can start with a clean system state, finish once and for all this discussion and publish the consensus. Once we find an agreement, we can bring the naming coherent with the conclusions of the discussion. So far, the standard rules as I used them apply.

I will reopen a CFD tonight (or reopen the old one). The commands in the delinker will not be executed as long as this category naming is disputed. --Foroa (talk) 14:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not agree to reopen a CFD only because two or three occasional users from Wikipedia in Spanish dislikes (basically because of political or ideological reasons) to read the names of cities and towns from Land of Valencia in Catalan language, as these are legally recognized as native language. It's not a dispute, but just only a disorder. This category, with no problem, was categorized inside following the scheme using "Land of Valencia" and using the "legally native name" for each Valencian municipality during a long time ago. --Joanot Martorell 15:13, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
PD: The Spanish user from above, is talking you in Spanish in an unrespectful way. I've translated you what he's telling you.
PD2: You can see an exemple (and this or this another]) of using "Land of Valencia" name from the Department of Tourism of the Valencian Government. --Joanot Martorell 15:49, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, but I did not need your translation to see there was an insult. But those cat redirects and subsequent reverts are a far bigger insult to me.
I need some more time, but it looks that even inside Spain and even less on the en Wiki, where the name changed again (name of the day is "Region of Valencia"), there is no agreement. People think that they are commercial to try to translate (badly) into English, but to me, the best long term solution is to keep one single own name, such as "Comunitat Valenciana" or "País Valencià".
So far, I am inclined to stop this whole endless debate and to conclude on the situation from long time ago. I will study the problem further and try to take the necessary actions within 48 hours. --Foroa (talk) 16:44, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you consider some of my actions as an insult to your person, I apologize it. When you asked me for the things I was doing, I've stopped. I hope you see this as a proof of respect. I'm sorry. --Joanot Martorell 19:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I closed the debate in [[Commons:Disputes_noticeboard/Archive:_Catalonia. We have better things and more constructive things to do than edit warring and spend hours on cleanup. Although I would personally prefer "community of Valence" or "Comunitat Valenciana", I restored to a peaceful situation of 18 months ago. If I see again an edit war without following the proper procedures, I will react more quickly and install the name as I see fit if there is no civilised communication. Personally, I would prefer the Catalan names for the provinces too but the continuous disagreement with other Spanish folks forces us to be even more strict on it.

Note that I am always prepared to listen to people, but edit wars make me very nervous. --Foroa (talk) 18:49, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but there are several categories names that I think there are erroneus. I'm not talking about Catalan or Spanish but, by exemple, the category Category:Cities and villages in Castellón. There are an error of concept, because "Castellón" name alone refers to the city, and... how it would be able to put a city inside of other city? ;). IMHO it should be like this "Cities and villages in the province of Castellón", it means, more specific. And the same to Valencia and Alacant. I've noted that there are the category Category:Cities and villages in the province of Castellón already. How should I proceed?. A {{Bad name}} tag? When before I was more active in Commons, I used to change the category of every item. --Joanot Martorell 23:37, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
PD: I don't think there were disagreement from Spanish folks. During all this time until now, there were several Spanish users using the categories names in Catalan with no problem (such User:Kokoo or User:Pelayo2). But see it, about the moving made by occasional user (by now) User:Jose_Garzón, when he asks to User:Juiced_lemon (one of the part of the previous conflict) about what to do with Category:Alacant, read what he says to him. It's pushing him. I do not intend to move anything, but the perception of "disagreement" I think it's not true at all, only occasional users pushed from others in a no good faith action. --Joanot Martorell 00:45, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
PD2: I've stopped to contribute for now, I've seen the scheme of categories inside Category:Land of Valencia very disordered, specially Category:Alicante (formerly Category:Alacant) where it's a disaster in my opinion. I'm not feeling nice to contribute again at this moment, so I leave here for a while to think about if it's important or not for me to go back to Commons. Have a nice day, and thanks for your patience. --Joanot Martorell 00:49, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For names, I personally do prefer endonyms, so initially I was planning to restore the Catallan names. But then, I noticed:

  • Through all the edit wars and redirects, including many of yours that you failed to remove, the whole categorisation was (and still is) a mess
  • You managed to keep it peaceful on some of the Catalan named items because they where somewhat isolated and not easily visible by Spanish contributors
  • In Spain, most people seem to work in their little corner, few seem interested to step in and clean up the country categorisation. I feel sorry that nobody in Spain seems to want to have a properly categorised country. In that respect, it is a country under development.

Therefore, I felt that there was no other choice than to revert the clock, take as naming reference the English Wikipedia (to minimise disputes) and try to keep the Spanish categorisation scheme stable till someone is prepared to do a major clean up. I understand that you, like me, are tired about that but commons is not the place to fight the Catalan cause, with which I sympatise. I do agree that in Spain, there are plenty of mixups between city, province and communities. Although I don't have a lot of spare time, I will do my best to execute move requests that are non-political that you might put in User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands. --Foroa (talk) 12:30, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

lacking personnel[edit]

With all of the attention being spent on what one single user is doing (a whole discussion about an active and mature and sensible tree! for shame!). It seems to me to be more of an indication of how much neglect the rest of the category tree is experiencing. Now that there is an idea that empty categories can and should exist (for future uploads) it is too bad that instead of reflecting the larger tree scheme into the smaller parts of the tree (like cleaning up the states of Brazil, or whatever they call them) instead, a mindless group will discuss the work of one person.

Do, go talk and talk and talk about things -- but it is sad, ineffectual and there is more things that can be accomplished with the new mindset. You can vote and vote and vote and it is just a bunch of nothing if no one is actually doing anything.

Do something real. Reflect that all important original tree into the political divisions it and you so blindly embrace and endorse. The software here is so limited by people who it is "more intelligent than" -- make an attempt not to be one of those and do something productive. Please. -- carol (talk) 06:48, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

a respectful suggestion[edit]

Spend a week running your browser without javascript. Make a few categories and see what a barebones run is like. I predict that some of your assumptions will disappear, like that created categories are automatically added to watch lists.

I can find examples where my communication skills were not perfect but a goal of mine would be to say something like "Aren't all newly created categories automatically added to your watchlist?" Instead of saying (which has the very strong appearance of a personal attack, btw) whatever you said about that earlier.

And now, a respectful question. What software have you authored? -- carol (talk) 08:28, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As I told you, I made the wrong assumption about automatic watchlist additions. This user preference feature however should work with or without Java enabled. These options should be on by default as they are the basic human communication trigger mechanism of the wiki software.
I had Java disabled since a couple of months ago. I have only 29 years of system and software development experience in technical systems, the reason why I take sometimes wrong assumptions. I know that I still have a lot to learn. But I fail to see the pertinence of your questions. --Foroa (talk) 10:24, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Valencian Community[edit]

Esa comunidad autónoma se llama en español "Comunidad Valenciana", no se llama "Comunidad de Valencia". Por tanto, en inglés se llama "Valencian Community", no "Community of Valencia". Es un gran error, que puede llevar a confusiones a mucha gente. Yo creo que no sabes de qué va el tema, y no entiendo por qué te metes en este asunto, de verdad. Veggg (talk) 15:52, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In English: This autonomous community named in Spanish "Comunidad Valenciana", does not name "Comunidad de Valencia". Therefore, in English it named "Valencian Community", not "Community of Valencia". It is a great mistake, which can take to confusions many people. I believe that you do not know of what the topic goes, and do not deal why you get into this matter, indeed. Veggg (talk) 15:56, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Everything can be discussed in a civilised matter. Everything blocks when vandalisme and edit wars start. See equally above, "Valencian community" is not allowed in the commons naming rules and "community of Valencia" has exactly the same meaning as you can see in the french version too. --Foroa (talk) 18:53, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category redirects (again)[edit]

Hi,

(Again) please stop speedy delete category redirects, as Category:Politicians from Poland or Category:Municipalities of Alicante.

Destroy the work of other contributors without any agreement of the community< (Commons:Category redirects suck is not a rule) is clearly an abuse of your sysop status.

Please stop the speedy delete. If you think that {{Category redirect}} is a dangerous template, feel you free to create Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Category redirect.

Cheers.--Bapti 14:11, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Category:Municipalities of Alicante points to a non existing category and is the result of a clean up of an edit war and an attempt to destabilise the category system in Spain.

I keep useful redirects, I make sometimes new ones. I delete only the redirects which are fundamentally against the Commons naming or syntax rules; those help nobody, except learning wrong naming rules. --Foroa (talk) 14:20, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I delete Category:Municipalities of Alicante.
those help nobody it isn't true : Politicians from Poland is useful for a non-native english speaker (or a newsbie on Commons).--Bapti 15:04, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Municipalities of Spain[edit]

EN: What happen? I only try to homogenize the categories on the municipalities of Spain, and you sabotage me! Please, you stop reverting, or you devote a reason.

ES: ¿Qué ocurre? Yo sólo pretendo homogeneizar las categorías sobre los municipios de España, ¡y tú me saboteas! Por favor, deja de revertir, o da una razón. 79.151.43.231 17:04, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The last days, Spain is under attack from all sorts of activists and vandalists. Its category structure is very dispersed and I don't accept reverts and new category schemes till someone defines a proper structure for Spain which we all can agree and on which we can all work together. --Foroa (talk) 17:10, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

moving categories to non-English names[edit]

hi there,

you moved a number of categories in English [5] to non-English names, despite the policy on categories that exists to use English Commons:Language policy. Why did you do that? Gryffindor (talk) 13:22, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong desk, These requests were not issued by me as you can see in the history. Anyway, the French Cathédral is prevailent in those categories, so I don't think it really matters (and I will not waste energy on such discussions while this move list has to be cleaned up at least twice a year). --Foroa (talk) 13:31, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, sorry about that. Gryffindor (talk) 16:17, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No problem, we are all working too hard and have different priorities. At least, things are moving. --Foroa (talk) 16:21, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Basque Country talk[edit]

Hallo! You made also a change in a comment of Theklan which I think you should undo. I would understand it if you changed country ==> county, but you changed something important. Dank u wel --Unai Fdz. de Betoño (talk) 17:20, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I corrected my mistake. I don't know much about it, just trying to get the discussion going and to find an acceptable category tree. Thank you for your cooperation. --Foroa (talk) 17:29, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Traffic circles[edit]

Could you undelete Category:Traffic circles? And I don't suppose you might have any bots handy that could track down and revert all the edits that depopulated the category? There are major differences between roundabouts & traffic circles. Cheers! --Bossi (talkgallerycontrib) 23:55, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Restored. I did not know that there was a difference, and the person that emptied the cat probably neither. The easiest to restore is to follow the contributions of the person that did them. Should be fairly easy once you found one of the mover images. Sorry I can't do better. --Foroa (talk) 08:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Set theory[edit]

I will be honest with you, I wasn't always so good with this stuff while studying the higher level mathematics. To be even more honest, I might have not been very good at the "teaching examples" though, like I had a heck of a time with and never completed the class who my teacher liked to call "How to do proofs" yet, I was pretty good at actually making proofs for the classes that required them so, maybe I am good at the actual task just not good at the "See Spot Run" portions of the training. What I am about to show you, however, was not from my college classes and I think I first saw it when I was 13 years old (actual years not some psychological profiling of an age).

This is an important idea for category merging. en:Bijective function (just the introduction) every member in one set has exactly one matching member in the second set. An example which is not bijective is the set of the absolute value function with the set of integers (whole numbers which also include negative numbers). An example which is bijective is the absolute value function with the set of natural numbers (whole numbers which are non-negative). I have had about 40 years of experience with |Absolute Value of Things| and the last five years have been a very intense experience with this idea; where there really hasn't been much else -- where the negative and the positive is stripped from the whatever and the value of the message, object, person, etc remains and is seen.

Category moves must be Bijective. Thank you for your time and consideration in viewing this or reviewing this. -- carol (talk) 05:56, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. --Foroa (talk) 18:13, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tusheti[edit]

Hello Foroa,

Tusheti is a historical region. The Tush people are the etnic group. Geagea (talk) 08:39, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I checked again and indeed you are right. I hate to remove dismbiguation things because we have to add them continuously, but in your case, the risk is minimal. Best regards.

Thaks. Geagea (talk) 13:12, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So whats the "right procedure" to move all the cats like explained on the disc page? TomAlt (talk) 12:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Inserting redirects in non empty categories is the same thing as moving and deleting it without any prior warning nor consensus of the community. This attracts of course vandals and we have to react strongly on that. Moreover, you are making changes that impact the whole world categorisation system. See my comments on Commons talk:CommonsProject Architecture.

For changing, you could go through a Commons:Categories for discussion procedure, a delete request or a move request. --Foroa (talk) 17:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion tags[edit]

Why did you remove these speedy deletion tags such as California State Route 14? The user request answer is mean't to be used for the author who created the page and is requested for speedy deletion. --75.47.212.7 20:49, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As I told you already several times on your IP addresses (and which you blanked immediately): once that a page is in the commons community, it belongs to the community and it can only be deleted using the appropriate procedures and when the community accepts to delete it. Speedy delete is only accepted in very special cases and when there is a valid reason. A reason of "User request" is not acceptable. You have no single proof that you are the author of the page neither because you seem to prefer to troll around as an anonymous user. --Foroa (talk) 21:01, 7 September 2008 (UTC)--Foroa (talk) 21:01, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you obsessed with me if so then quit stalking me. My IP address changes everyday such as 75.47.145.100 (talk · contribs) and now as 75.47.212.7 (talk · contribs). Keep giving me this nonsense talk again and i will report you for trolling. The community doesn't care much of about these pages anyway such as state routes and interstates. --75.47.212.7 21:30, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

thanks!!!![edit]

thanks for your help!! cheersSheepunderscore (talk) 12:12, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, you deleted this cat but gave as reason only "Incorrectly named". Why is that? What's incorrect about the category's name? And why do you believe the new Category:Cycladic figurines is correct? --h-stt !? 06:51, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This move request was outstanding since 4 months without protest. I have not looked in the problem and executed only the move request. I restored the original and made it a redirect. I don't think I am qualified to discuss its proper naming. --Foroa (talk) 07:11, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - I've never seen that request and think the reason is not valid. But I can live with the new (less common name) but have to adjust some links. Thanks for restoring the old one as redirect. --h-stt !? 11:03, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanx for yr suggestion[edit]

Hello, thank you for your advice. After your last message, though, I'd rather use the old method. It is less open to dispute, anyone can object when I post a warning and wait for the move to be done.

As for the grammar, the correct grammar is in fact Category:Baptistries in Italy, Category:Baptistries in Milan, but Category Baptistry (Bergamo). A big part of the moving I am doing is to change things such as "Baptristy in Bergamo" into "Baptistry (Bergamo)", since I was told by other users that the grammar with "in" only belongs to upper categories, whereas for single monuments I should use "Building, Place" or "Building (Place)", like in en:Wiki. Don't ask my why, things in WikiCommons never have a reason and nothing makes sense. I merely adapted. I hope I'll be left alone with my work to do, which is a lot... Best wishes. --User:G.dallorto (talk) 17:36, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. A couple of comments.

I understand that you have your categorisation system in Italy and I can live with that. If someone disagrees on some moves, he can move it back.

Since two months, I am spending a majority of my commons time to get these damned maintenance (non-empty, move requests, merge request, disambiguation, speedydelete, ...) categories empty so they can function again as they should do. I reckoned to have today at least this move request cat empty. And what do I see ? That you manage to fill it up faster than I can empty it (today, 32 of the 33 requests are yours). So if you are unwilling to take a shortcut and work on the suggested more efficient cooperation scheme, I better stop because it is just hopeless. I have no intention to become a professional category mover. No thank you. --Foroa (talk) 21:14, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you![edit]

Thanks for supporting me in my successful RfB. Cheers, Rocket000(talk) 21:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations and enjoy before you realise what price we will request from you in return. Wait and see. --Foroa (talk) 21:36, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Uh-oh. ;) Rocket000(talk) 22:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Statues in Hoeilaart[edit]

Dag Foroa. Ik zag dat jij de categorie "Statues in Hoeilaart" hebt gemaakt en ook foto's van het beeld van Nero. Het lijkt mij misschien beter om die categorie direct onder Hoeilaart te laten vallen i.p.v. die van Gebouwen. Ik beschouw standbeelden niet als een onderdeel van gebouwen. Verder vraag ik mij af of de copyright het toelaat die foto's op te nemen. De Freedom of Panorama voor België http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Panorama#Belgium zegt: not OK There is no panorama freedom in Belgium. The modern pieces of art cannot be the central motive of a commercially available photographs without permission of the artwork copyright holder. Ik heb zelf ook een foto van het beeld van Felix Sohie, maar wil die niet in Commons zetten vanwege copyright. Wat is jouw mening daarover? --Wouter (talk) 10:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dag Wouter, twee discussies waar ik mij niet meer mee moe maak.

  1. Bij mijn weten is er op commons geen duidelijke definitie van building. Ik definieer building als alles wat met mensenhanden gebouwd is, dus ook bruggen, tunnels, fonteinen, sokkels en standbeelden. Dat is opportunistisch maar praktisch in steden omdat je snel twee of drie duidelijke hoofdcategoriën hebt. Als je een andere definitie hebt, verander je het maar.
  2. Freedom of Panorama. Volgens mij is heel dat wettekst gedoe en zijn interpretatie volledig uit onze tijd, vooral als er een textuur of 3D dimensie bij te pas komt. De bedoeling van de wet lijkt mij dat je die dingen niet reproduceert, en met een reeks foto's ga je niet snel een tapijt, beeldhouwwerk, ... namaken. Bovendien is het triestig dat wij het werk van onze kunstenaars van de laatste honderd jaar niet kunnen voorstellen. Back to the future ? Ik heb nog geen enkel geval gezien van een beeldhouwer die klacht indiende omdat zijn werk in een encyclopedie stond. Ik begrijp wel enkele uitzonderingen zoals het atomium en dergelijke, maar om daarvoor alle encyclopediën te gaan censureren lijkt mij nogal dark age-achtig.

--Foroa (talk) 12:35, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Memorials in Coburg[edit]

Hallo Foroa, wat is voor jou de aanleiding om de categorie te ontlinken. De verdedigers van de redirect Category:Denkmäler in Coburg hebben het toch volkomen bij het verkeerde eind. Er zijn t.a.v. sculptures in Germany slechts twee cats Denkmäler en dit volkomen ten onrechte daar zo'n Duitse term toch absoluut niet op Commons thuishoort. Je gaat locaal gewenste termen toch niet belonen op de Engelstalige Wikimedia. Bovendien, er zijn reeds vele tientallen Memorials in ... ( in alle deelstaten)m.b.t. Duitsland. Ik had liever gezien dat je reageert op mijn bijdrage op de overlegpagina. Graag je commentaar. Groetend--Gerardus (talk) 11:35, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oei. Betreffende Category:Denkmäler en niet Engelse categorienamen geef ik je volledig gelijk. Alhoewel ik een stuk meertaliger en toleranter ben dan de meeste wat betreft dat aspect, denk ik dat er ooit gaat moeten drastisch ingegrepen worden (met globale bot acties zoals onlangs gebeurd is met de werelwijde renaming van plants in xxx naar Flora of xxx..).

Een redirect wordt per definitie gebruikt voor een secondaire (transit)naam die de weg toont naar de echte naam, dus geen enkele reden om hem in andere categoriën te tonen. Beelden die in een dergelijke cat zaten werden gewoon niet getoond en dat waren er toch vele duizenden op een bepaald moment. Eindelijk zijn ze er in geslaagd om een systeem op poten te zetten die die zaken uitkuist (honderden beelden per week) zoals je kan zien in Category:Non-empty category redirects. Dat er hier en daar redirects zaten die toch in categorieën zaten was niet erg. Het systeem is ook vandaal bestendig omdat het ook zou kunnen gebruikt worden door vandalen om massive moves en merges te veroorzaken.

De laatste tijd stellen wij vast dat er meer en meer bots de diepst mogelijke categorien proberen te vinden, hetgeen maakt dat ze dikwijls belanden bij de redirects met een categorie. In jouw geval gaat de ene bot dus beelden " dieper" categoriseren op Memorials in Coburg en een andere ze dan weer terug zetten naar de plaats waar de redirect naar wijst. De snelste oplossing was dus om bij redirects de supplementaire cats te verwijderen, hetgeen dus ook aansluit bij de logica van de redirect.

Je kan natuurlijk foeteren op die bots, maar dat zijn nogal experimentele ontwikkelingen. Hoedanook, met ongeveer 300.000 beelden die totaal niet gecategoriseerd zijn, en weet ik veel hoeveel slecht gecategoriseerde beelden, is iedere verbetering, hoe miniem ook, welkom. --Foroa (talk) 12:19, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nicolò dell'Abate[edit]

Hello :) the correct name of this mannerist painter from Modena (as I am) is Nicolò dell'Abate, and not Niccolò dell'Abbate with 2 c and 2 b, and even the catalogue of a exibithion says so: http://xoomer.alice.it/dicuoghi/scandiano/UtPicturaPoesis.htm Bye bye :)--Icco80 (talk) 13:28, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are most probably right. I cannot afford to check each and every name. I mainly try to improve naming coherence and avoid double naming. It is easier to change the name of one coherent group than have to merge all sorts of different names. Some of it should be corrected by the time you read this. --Foroa (talk) 13:44, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Moult versus moulting[edit]

It seems that you think that the words moult and moulting (molting) have different meanings. Also categories should be used according to their names (not the actual content or intention of some Commons users). Please see my comment Category talk:Molting#Moult versus moulting (molt versus molting). Thank you. --Pabouk (talk) 11:07, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I answered on the same place as not to splinter the discussion. Regards. --Foroa (talk) 12:29, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Loop[edit]

There is a loop in Category:San Salvatore della Scala Santa and Category:Scala Santa (Rome). Can you look at it? Greetings, Havang(nl) (talk) 18:12, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One name for all: prehistoric Sweden, Royal Prussian train, Roemerstrasse, Way of St. James in Germany. How to solve this? Havang(nl) (talk) 10:12, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No idea yet, maybe start with a small (informal) category tree(s) on the talk page. Just to have an idea about the relations as I am somewhat lost there. --Foroa (talk) 10:34, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for deletion! ~~×α£đ~~es 16:18, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deer[edit]

[6]: huh? There is no such word as "deers", at least not in English. "Deer" is both singular and plural, and is the most common English word for the Cervidae. (Several similar animals also have the same word for singular an plural: "moose" and "elk" for example, although in the latter case "elks" is acceptable.)

Mind restoring the {{Seecat}}? And there is no reason for a Category:Deers, unless you think it is useful for possibly confused non-native speakers of English. - Jmabel ! talk 20:01, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I have been too hasty in cleaning up. Restored by now but I leave the deers for non-natives. --Foroa (talk) 06:10, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

VI organization[edit]

Hi Foroa,

I consider you a good partner in discussing the organization of images. We are working on organizing the VIs better (á la QIs). I was wondering if you would have the time to look at Commons talk:Valued image candidates#VI categories organisation proposal and tell us what you think?

Best wishes, -- Slaunger (talk) 20:53, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I see, that you removed template {{Speedy}} from this category. I think, that this cat. in current form is useless. Greater Poland is a historical region in Poland and contains area of three voivodeships (see map). I'm making cleaning in Category:Cities in Poland, so I want to clean subcategories first. I suggest to make two categories: "Cities in Greater Poland Voivodeship" and "Villages in Greater Poland Voivodeship". Yarl 08:35, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, sorry, but I had/have little time. I answer in more detail tonight. Anyway, I am reluctant to delete geographic related categories if there is no description on how the cities/villages/cities and villages/municipalities in country/regions/provinces/districts in country xxx are organised. I noticed that in many countries, each regions/district try to do it their own way without any sort of concertation which results in continuous deletion/emptying/recreation/moves and sometimes edit wars. Examples are in Commons:Category scheme France and Commons:Category scheme Italy which are incomplete but at least, there is something. --Foroa (talk) 07:54, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Regions of Poland and en:Category:Regions of Poland show something completely different. Category:Villages in Poland by region and Category:Cities in Poland by region doesn't look very consistent neither. --Foroa (talk) 08:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I know. I'll try to fix this. Yarl 15:10, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Don't fix it alone in your corner. Try first to make a short description and/or simplified category tree explaining what goes where. Then you can discuss and cooperate with all Polish contributors, there are many overhere. --Foroa (talk) 17:52, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Plateforms[edit]

Thanks a lot for your patch :) ~ bayo or talk 16:23, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's the commons community: a bit from here, a bit from there ... --Foroa (talk) 16:25, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How to merge?[edit]

I am not sure about the procedure for categories to merge. Till now, I put the template on both pages; but others don't do that. Tell me, how to do. Greetings, Havang(nl) (talk) 16:36, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not too sure. I would say:

  • Merge one cat into another where there should not be too much discussion, such as Folded bikes, Vélo dépliant into Folded bicycles: Just an ordinary {{Move|category:destination cat}}
  • Merge from into another where the source and/or the destination might be contested: {{mergeto|destination}} and {{mergefrom|source}}. (Only the mergeto pops up in Category:Articles to be merged)
  • If the destination is not likely to be contested, then you can forget about the destination information (less work to remove it)
  • When not too sure what should go where, use {{merge|:category:other cat|:category talk:destination}}.

Not too sure about syntax as it seems to inherit the name space of the page where it is on (mergeto and mergefrom seem to have the easiest syntax). See en:Help:Merging and moving pages. --Foroa (talk) 17:20, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

category redirect bot[edit]

Responding to your message on User talk:RussBot:

  1. Would it be possible to run the category redirect checking/repairing once a day ?
    • Certainly.
  2. Would it be possible to run the image move over redirecy a couple of times per day ?
    • The way the script is written, both functions run at the same time. I'll try running it once a day for a while and see how that works.
  3. Do you have an idea why the empty redirects don't disappear from the not-empty category list, while they used to disappear in the past ?

Foroa, Siebrand runs commons_category_redirect.py four times a day and it removes checked categories from Category:Non-empty category redirects. So it takes care of all your points. Multichill (talk) 11:59, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that since a week or so, it is rare to find non-empty categories in the list (there remain on average 10 to 20 empty categories). But it is not cleaned out regurlarly (until an hour ago), meaning that the same empty categories stay there for several days. It used to go away when I did one or two dummy edits on the category redirect template or after a Siebot run, but not any longer. I appreciate the detailed reporting of the converted hard redirects and the categories that are redirected to galleries from each RussBot run. --Foroa (talk) 12:10, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Foroa, i modified the bot. Now also categories in cooldown get a null edit (and are being cleaned out of the category). Multichill (talk) 12:25, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks but there are still quite often inconsistencies such as empty cats that are on the list, wrong counters and empty categories that say that they are not empty. I have been monitoring this list for two months now and did spend significant time per day to keep it at an acceptable level (why I put it on the Category:Commons backlog). Now that the bots are working properly, I still monitor it to prevent hidden moves and vandalisme, but hopefully, I will spend less and less time on it. --Foroa (talk) 14:52, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I was trying to follow the edits you did on Category:Cuisine by country. Until Category:Food by country gets merged into Category:Cuisine by country, it seems logical that the two categories should cross reference each other. Once Category:Food by country is cleared out, then it makes sense to remove Category:Cuisine by country from it. Don't you agree? Please respond (or at least notify me) on my talk page. Thanks! --Willscrlt (Talk) 09:34, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed that you reverted a lot more than just that one category. You basically undid all the work I started on the merge of Food into Cuisine. Why? Food is the less populated one, they totally overlap, though Cuisine is broader in scope, and it is silly to have two such nearly identical categories in place. Not to mention, all the empty categories that Food has in it. Cuisine is by far the more popular and populated choice. I agree with the other people who suggested the merge and started doing so on the smaller categories. Categories that were largely populated, I'd discuss it first, but there's surely no point in having two categories for the same country, when there are so few files to go within them.
At the very least, please do not revert the change to the Chilean food categories. I am currently doing a reorganization on them, and I don't appreciate having to go back and redo all those changes again. It was my work on the Chilean ones that pointed out to me what a mess the others are. If you don't want me to touch the other countries, that's fine. I won't. But I am going to reapply the changes to the Chilean foods and move them to Cuisine where they belong. I won't get into a revert war with you, but I would have greatly appreciated it if you would have discussed what you did with me before reverting my hours of work. It's not like I am a new user here, or a vandal. You may disagree with my changes, but as a long-time contributor here, I at least deserve at least a chance to discuss things before you unilaterally wipe them out. --Willscrlt (Talk) 09:42, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
On top of that, you REVERTED the changes I made. That was completely counter-productive. If you were upset with the change from Category:Food of Chile to Category:Cuisine of Chile, you should have edited the category names, leaving the rest of the changes alone. For example, in several cases, the categories appeared in the middle of the article instead of at the end of it. I added sort keys on all of the photos that provided me with a possibility, rather than having them all sort under IMG000XXX or something useless like that. I occasionally did other minor cleanup to the articles, too. Did you check any of that? NO. You just reverted EVERYTHING as if it was vandalism. I see that you are an admin here, and that is very surprising behavior for an admin.
I also don't under stand the edit summary that you left "updated since my last visit". Does that mean that you automatically revert all changes made to an article since your last visit? Is that why I fell afoul of your revert button? I just do not understand your actions. I would if I was a new account with a very short edit history. I still wouldn't think you acted appropriately (well-intentioned edits meant to be constructive should always be discussed before mass reverting), but I would understand how you might think it was the act of a vandal. There is no such excuse you can use for someone who joined in 2006, has over 850 edits here on Commons, and cumulatively over 5200 edits across all the projects.
As I said before, I am undoing your changes on the Chilean articles. You messed them up, and you broke some of the new categorization structures that are being built for that country's information. I am not touching the other categories, except to add the cross links between Food and Cuisine. Those need to stay, since without them, people who browse won't find a significant number of related photos. You're welcome to disagree, but if so, it needs to be discussed on the Talk pages (and it was because of prior discussion on the Food talk page that I even started to make most of those changes) or at the Village Pump. You may like the status quo, but I think that a lot of people would prefer consolidation. I could be wrong, too. I'm not afraid to find out. Sincerely yours. Willscrlt (Talk) 10:05, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I do agree that, by the lack of documentation, cuisine and food by country can be quite confusing. They are however two complete different but related categories. (why it is indeed useful to make food of ... a subcategory of cuisine of ... as already done in a couple of countries). I am sure that you will understand that categories and their structures that are used in 100 to 250 countries, and further herited in many country subdivisions, cannot be changed lightly. There is a procedure for that in COM:CFD and I plan to propose to make this procedure even more stricter for top level categories as too many people and categories are involved with such changes. It is not because there is little discussion somewhere on a lost talk page that there is a support for major changes. Because I had little time yesterday, I could only do the strict minimum to avoid further damage. I will explain and document further in the coming 24 hours, and I am sure that you will have by then the understanding about the meaning of those two categories. --Foroa (talk) 12:20, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category redirect[edit]

You reverted my edit to Tropical Storm Kyle, stating "Only redirect of empty categories allowed". This is incorrect. Non-empty category redirects are allowed, and are automatically corrected by bots in due course. See Category:Non-empty category redirects. Superm401 - Talk 23:31, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not true. There are the cfd, the move and the merge procedures to announce a move request on which users can react and which can take two weeks in theory, so users have the time to respond or object. This time is often shortened for obvious moves (spelling changes). A redirect has a cool down period before it effectively moves precisely to be able to prevent unannounced moves and vandalisme. The redirect cannot be used to bypass the move procedure. It is impossible to monitor hidden moves and vandalisme if we accept the bypass of the move procedure as you did; we could as well throww away the move procedure. --Foroa (talk) 06:10, 29 September 2008 (UTC)--Foroa (talk) 06:10, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What do you know about rendering?[edit]

Experience with templates and pre-rendering?

The file was deleted by an administrator who has almost a year more experience with deleting files and administration than you do. Do you think that experience increases understanding and qualification? -- carol (talk) 06:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a matter of long standing experience or know how. I just checked on a couple of the categories that where linked to the linked template (restored now) and they showed up in red. For the other template from which I removed the speedy template, I checked the linking (inclusion) categories, and they all showed up as speedy delete too. Templates have to be handled with care, especially their deletion, so I don't think that linked templates should be handled through a speedy delete procedure. --Foroa (talk) 07:04, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I clicked through on one and it was linked to the new article which is in the template. I am very thorough, much more thorough than many of the admin are about this kind of thing. There is no way that the taxonomy navigation template can be linked to that article unless my changes to that taxonomy navigation article were changed. It is too a matter of experience and understanding and know how. Or perhaps you are correct and the longer the recent administrators are administrating the less they know. It becomes difficult to know how to explain things and how to agree or disagree (so I agree here) and I am so not interested in explaining things to a voted in superior who often since then does things kind of thoughtlessly or too thoughtfully but without real understanding. Since you typed an agreement with me about bijective sets, have you considered how to undo the changes that your user instance made at near September 1 this year?

I don't care about talk page links. -- carol (talk) 07:11, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And you are not telling the truth. That was a link on a template and that template has changed. For whatever reasons that you are not telling the truth, it seems kind of silly as this is just a wiki. -- carol (talk) 07:24, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template deleted since all linked categories are disappeared now after my dummy edits. It makes no sense to discuss things you don't want to understand.
Right, since I am not telling the truth, I strongly advise you to stop discussing here and filling up my talk page. --Foroa (talk) 21:44, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Foroa[edit]

I have responded on my talk page re the castles question - the terms are in fact separate. Cheers and happy editing! Ingolfson (talk) 12:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category redirect[edit]

Hello,

by the way thanks for deleting my old template.

My question: You removed the category redirect template ([7]) I had added. I chose this template because when I used it some time ago, it seemed to be right for non-empty categories. What should I do instead?

Regards, --MdE [de] [com] 12:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is nothing wrong with the template. The problem is that with the redirect template, as you used it, people could change the names of all the categories they want without real knowledge from other people. If I decided for example to change all the church names in kirche and all town halls in radtskeller, only the happy few that watch the categories would notice it. Therefore, to move/rename a category, one has to issue a {{Move}}, {{Merge}} or a COM:CFD so that the community is informed and can respond. Of course, for minor changes or correct spelling errors, we can proceed quicker. But anyway, the monitoring of the non-empty redirects is for me a major observation point of potential vandalisme, why I prefer to keep it clean and (almost) empty). So, in conclusion, redirect is only a way to route "misplaced" imaged to the good categories, not to execute renames. (There are 11600 redirects, and thats only the beginning) --Foroa (talk) 12:38, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I understand. I moved the few files by hand now because this was really a minor change.
Discussing in the community surely is good to prevent vandalism, but in the past I made the experience that those people who would know which name to choose don't care for the discussion. Also, I noticed bot-supported moves to new categories with absolutely bad names. A consequence of this was that many links to Commons in de.WP were wrong. And there was no discussion before. Regards, --MdE [de] [com] 15:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I do agree that very often, bad names are chosen. But on the other hand, with the delinker, renames are rather quick. We still have to find the equilibrum between good naming discussions and rules (that converge quickly to a decision) and the quick bot changes that can be easily undone or redone if needed. For the latter, we should find some sort of elegant system.
I don't care about the category to category connection between commons and the various wikipedia's. I consider a category system as internal kitchen and the connection between the two worlds should happen through galleries (and gallery redirects) in the proper languages as to isolate/buffer the internal naming and categorisation systems. --Foroa (talk) 15:25, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think there are no category to category links between de.wp and commons, the systems are really too different, you are right. But it affected links to commons categories in articles on de.wp. In many cases they are prefered there because - it's the same problem with the names - galleries get no ot not enough attention, while categories are often maintained. --MdE [de] [com] 15:37, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Commons:Guide_to_layout#Gallery_pages[edit]

Hi Foroa, on Commons:Guide_to_layout#Gallery_pages a template is included, which is not updating the content as on Commons:Guide to layout/Gallery pages, i tried [[Template:etc, but that isn't working, how can i acces it ? thanks Mion (talk) 07:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that this is typical a problem with nested/included subpages (both references point to the same thing but a different level). I think that you have to do a flush or so to force an update but anyway, I guess that those shortcuts work only at the top page level, not at the subpage level. --Foroa (talk) 08:17, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing the flush. Mion (talk) 08:25, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

*wappert stofdoekje*[edit]

Hey - Bedankt voor je bericht & gefeliciteerd (denk ik!) met het adminship! Goed wat bekende namen te zien :) -- Deadstar (msg) 06:48, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bedankt. Ik wou vooral niet denigrerend doen, maar een beetjes sarcasme kan ik toch moeilijk laten. --Foroa (talk) 06:54, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Loop[edit]

Category:Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (Venice) and Category:Libreria Marciana (Venice) form a loop. Can you look at it? Havang(nl) (talk) 13:36, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question transmitted to Giovanni. He is very good in categorisation. --Foroa (talk) 13:43, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I tried and clarify the point, see whether it is ok now. "Libreria Marciana" is the building, "Biblioteca nazionale marciana" is the library housed within the building, quite as the Louvre is the building and the Musée du Louvre is the museum housed within the Louvre. --User:G.dallorto (talk) 21:55, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If two categories point to each other, one has a loop which can be very frustrating for the users and impossible for bots. I took the "forward" reference Category:Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (Venice) away to avoid that. --Foroa (talk) 05:37, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Law enforcement agencies of Canada[edit]

Dit is nog de enige categorie die afwijkt. Ook omzetten naar Police of Canada? --Stunteltje (talk) 06:18, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Voor de Canadezen lijkt mij dit inderdaad aangewezen (samen met de Chinezen, het rijmt). --Foroa (talk) 06:28, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Klusje voor vanavond, veel te mooi weer om niet naar boord te gaan en daar te schilderen. --Stunteltje (talk) 07:00, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I noticed you deleted Category:Politicians from Italy, which was a redirect to Category:Politicians of Italy. Is there any particular reason why such redirects should be avoided? I never know whether to use "by" or "from" in category names (for example, it's Category:Actors from Italy), so I find it quite useful to have both versions available and let a bot or HotCat do the correction. If such redirects do need to be deleted, there are 59 other categories starting with "politicians from". Pruneautalk 13:58, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, sorry for annoying you with my deletion. The problem comes from the fact that there is no clean commonly redirect strategy as you might read in some items here higher up and Commons:Category redirects suck. As for your case, I delete several newly (and mostly not properly categorised) created "politicians from xxx" and "xxx (Italian, French, ...) politicians" per week that are created in parallel with the right "Politicians of xxx". I think that the reason comes from the fact that people suppose that because of "Politicians from xxx" of "French/American/... politicians" work, the categories they want to have still needs be created. In this case, I feel you should have:

1. At least all the naming "Politicians of xxx" uniform within the family, by preference uniform for all classes (either banning the 'from" or the "of").
2. If you want to have redirects for the alternate solution "Politicians from xxx" then you have to create them for all countries ensuring they are properly redirected and not exist as parallel categories.

Moreover, if one uses Hotcat or type "category:Politicians" in the search box on the left, the first suggestions you will get will be the "Politicians by ...", then the "Politicians from Axx" but never the correct "Politicians of xxx" ones. Personally, I feel that for obvious lower/upper case errors, obvious errors in singular/plural, errors in of/from, and errors against "french politicians" against "politicians from France", redirects should either be forbidden or should be there for all the cases (I guesstimate between 10 and 30000 categories). This is indeed an educational problem: do you learn the right basic rules or are you autocorrecting mistakes. Anyway, one way or another, we have to try to be coherent, so in a first intstance, we should try to make the whole from/of naming consistent and in that, we progressed significantly the last couple of months.

Anyway, suggestions are welcome because no matter what I do, some people are happy with it, a few are complaining. It should be noted that almost every day, I verify the botmoved redirects to check if there are not categorisations left that attract the bots even more and if they are justified. I add regurlarly redirects to help with translation and typical mistakes, such as sheep/sheeps, aircraft/aircrafts, ... --Foroa (talk) 17:22, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Violent crime rates[edit]

Hello. I created Category:Violent crime rate charts only a few days ago. I decided that there was no justification yet to create a separate category from Category:Violent crime rates. That is why I removed the parent categories from Category:Violent crime rate charts.

Someday if there are both graphs and charts then there might be a reason to separate out 2 subcategories for charts and graphs.

Category:Violent crime rates is a subcategory of Category:Violent crime statistics which is a subcategory of Category:Crime statistics and so on. I try not to create subcategories until there is something to put in them. Otherwise people see lots of empty categories and can give up trying to find something useful. This really messed up map categorization for awhile. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:37, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't get me wrong, I had no comment on your intention for deletion but on your blanking of a page. If a category (or any other page) is blanked, a couple of days later it appears on the Special:UncategorizedCategories list. When cleaning this list, we are trying to examine what happened (vandalisme, editwars, unmotivated moves, reduction of subcategories, ...) and we are trying to find out what the intention was and what the best solution is. All this takes quite some time. In your case, it would be much more efficient if you mark the page with {{Speedy|No longer used, Overcategorisation, ...}} or (preferred) {{Badname|Used category name}}. Those deletion request pop up immediatly in Category:Candidates_for_speedy_deletion which we try to keep empty all the time and require much less investigation energy. --Foroa (talk) 11:31, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the info. I did not know. Maybe a note should show up when people blank a category so they know to add in something like {{Speedy|No longer used, Overcategorisation, ...}} or (preferred) {{Badname|Used category name}}. I don't normally preview such category removals on already empty pages, so I wouldn't notice a note that only shows up in the preview. So the note would have to show up after I blank the page. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:33, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why I reverted your blanking ... It worked ... --Foroa (talk) 21:48, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

disrespect for the ToL project[edit]

Too difficult for your understanding?

User_talk:Orchi#Overcategorisation <--??

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category%3AOstrya_carpinifolia&diff=15136392&oldid=14923424 <-- They call "Europe": "Lebanon; Syria; Turkey, Azerbaijan; Georgia, Ciscaucasia, Austria; Switzerland, Albania; Bulgaria; Former Yugoslavia; Greece; Italy [incl. Sardinia, Sicily]" http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/taxon.pl?26162

In my mind, just because I do not understand what the Plants of categories contained does not mean they do not have a meaning. Apparently you know what those categories are and in that knowlege you also must know they are not the same as the categories that I made. The history of their maintenance was also impressive. That they do not communicate is a choice that they opt for but not the option that you choose.

While I respectfully put those Plants of categories back, you disrespectfully revert my changes. Or do you really think that Lebanon is in Europe and Spain isn't?

I remember some aggressive maintenance of those original categories.... -- carol (talk) 21:23, 14 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Precisely because nobody was able to tell the difference between plants in xxx and flora in xxx, someone, not me, activated a merge between them and installed the necessary redirects. So it makes no sense to revert them back in plants of xxx and/or to sabotage the bots by inserting {{Nobots}} in the redirected "plants of xxx" categories (see Category:Non-empty category redirects). I take no position in this plants of xxx or flora of xxx debate. I'm just trying to keep the system in a clean and consistent state. If you are not agreeing on Tol related situations, you have to open a debate on the appropriate place, not here. --Foroa (talk) 11:39, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{tl|template}} is the syntax to not get the template to be used here. (Just a little assistance with this complicated wiki stuff for you, I had a difficult time remembering how to use that long before you became a knowlegible administrator here, such is my patience with this.)
What user instance did you ask? Please be very clear about this, providing user instances and where you found the names of the user instances who were asked. I remember a discussion here with you where there was the appearance that you assumed "Watchlists" would be your communicator.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&dir=prev&offset=20080901124025&contribs=user&target=SieBot <-- When I asked who (the user instance) did this, your user name was there. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:CommonsDelinker/commands&diff=13884082&oldid=13882717 Are you able to communicate using user names and not "nobody" or "somebody" which are not proper names? -- carol (talk) 22:17, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A few comments:
1. The moves that I initiated in http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:CommonsDelinker/commands&diff=13884082&oldid=13882717 where a result of non contested move requests from various users that I simply executed. After your complaints, the flora/plant moves have been completely undone by Rocket000.
2. There has been no single action from me that caused the moves you are suggesting in http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&dir=prev&offset=20080901124025&contribs=user&target=SieBot and that happened almost one week later than my bot commands you are referring to in previous section.
3. So before accusing me, you might better check the facts first. --Foroa (talk) 07:15, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The plants of categories where in a constant maintenance of such that I assume there is a reason for and a definition of their existenance and what they are to contain. I think that any person with a junior high education could have easily seen that there were incredible differences between the two trees. With all of the respect and understanding you have of and for the ToL project here -- could you paste the section of their documentation here that defines what is to be included into the "Plants of" categories that you followed when you really did authorize this move?
I will not take lightly the time between 2004 and August 2008 that the "Plants of" categories were maintained and I am very sorry that you seem to have taken this lightly (lightly -- without due respect, as if it did not matter to others). -- carol (talk) 22:27, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Due to the fact that nobody was able to provide formally a precise definition of "Flora of xxx" and "Plants of ..." on the category talk pages, Cfd or pump, and even less a definition of their differences, it is completely normal that someone decided to merge them. Moreover, since the merge happened, I have seen no request, besides from you, to split them again. But again, this should not be discussed on my talk page. --Foroa (talk) 07:15, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What user instance did you ask? -- carol (talk) 11:30, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know what a user instance is. What should I ask to whom ? People express themselves quite openly without asking. I think that I am perfectly capable of reading all documentation without having to ask, even if 80 % of the discussion is not to the point. --Foroa (talk) 12:13, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"User instance" is User:Foroa or User:Botchill or my user instance User:CarolSpears.
I have found user names like this in the edit history of documents and categories and image pages. Often, before making any big decision about things (moving categories or maintaining a move as examples), I look to see how long ago categories were created (as in the case of the plant categories which had the (Indexed) in the names and which user instances were involved. I did not ask anyone when requesting and moving those (Indexed) categories but they had been started (alphabetically and not completed through the "C"'s in the plant names) and abandoned years before I moved them. That and one other case which I did not ask the users who were involved (and need to soon move them back into a more uniform system -- much research had been done for some of those) -- I consider this to be a sign of intelligence and the ability to work with a community, especially one which contains various experts on several things. I also make no claim of understanding what the "Plants of" categories contained enough to have initiated or to maintain a move of them.
I am here, requesting that the "user instance" of User:Foroa share the understanding of what the "Plants of" categories contained that should be the motivation for the repeated maintenance.
 Support The user instance: User:Foroa detailing their personal knowledge and understanding of what was not different between "Flora of" and "Plants of" categories. -- carol (talk) 22:34, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki takes Manhattan project[edit]

Thanks for your patience with everything we've been doing. I did try to improve on April's event, and in recent days I've been sketching out an even more sophisticated system for the next event, which should be easy to adapt for different places. Hopefully we can get that up in a month or so; I plan on developing it at Commons:Photo scavenger hunts. I think it might make sense if for the next event to upload everything with a "light" template, which will only give the team name and the event information, but where we can be assured that all of the fields are filled in and that we can upload all the images that night (currently, the remaining images scattered on half a dozen people's laptops). Then, we'll mark the tags for the location codes on-wiki (I would obviously do most of this work). What do you think of this idea?--Pharos (talk) 16:38, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Commons is supposed to be a growing community, so we have to stick together to make it happen. A project as yours, which I envy, is not the same as a commons server that has to serve thousands of providers and hundreds of projects. But in the end, it has to work all together. A bit more discrete templates may be a good idea, especially the slogan for improving Commons categories sounds a bit pompous; after all tens of people are working here very hard and every day to improve commons without leaving any marks on their improvement work (one of the causes of some resistance I guess). In terms of naming, you might consider the following:
  • File naming: target spot + team name (+ nr) (files can be easily renamed in groups using Picasso or even Explorer).
  • Description: a target spot (location code) template that is substituted by a bot when all things are settled
  • User: just a standard user name that you create and document, so every thing remains normal, documentation on the user page (should be no problem for your loader to use that name as well)
  • Categories: Same technique as for description
I think that if you prepare that carefully, it will not require more work and in the end, the pictures will fit in the system like any other picture. If you try to stand out from the crowd here, you will attract more problems. You might consider using Commonist for easier batch uploading. After all, many users here uploaded here more than thousand of images that fit in perfectly, so avoid privileges. Keep up the good work. --Foroa (talk) 17:11, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hoi Foroa, i just noticed this message please take a look at User talk:Pharos#Improve WTM. I've been playing around with templates to have everything fit in one default template which can be substituted. Multichill (talk) 20:07, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the cooperation. As I see that Pharos is proficient with AWB too, I think that he can manage the current situation but it would be a good thing to prepare and discuss together the next scavenger round. --Foroa (talk) 11:37, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think we'll be able to follow most of your recommendations in the next round. I've already made the improving Commons categories hidden. I'm not sure how easy renaming will be; can files be renamed after uploading? I'd also want to be careful about substituting the descriptions for the moment, because I'm not really sure everything is in the ideal categories yet, and that's why I've made a quick study of AWB. BTW, ideally, we really should try to coordinate these issues at Commons talk:Photo scavenger hunts as we progress. Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 01:20, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting categories[edit]

Ik weet dat Stunteltje bezig is met een omorganisering, en dat dat waarschijnlijk de oorzaak is dat je category:Electric motor is verwijderd. Maar dit veroorzaakt een probleem op alle wikipedias die een commonslink naar deze categorie hebben. Zoals ik al in de Kroeg geschreven heb, volgens mij zijn dit soort kosmetische wijzigingen niet zo'n goed idée. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 09:46, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ik verander tientallen categorieên per week en er komen 1000 tot 2000 categorieën per dag bij (ongeveer één per minuut). Dus moeten wij strenge regels hebben (en ze zijn nog niet streng en duidelijk genoeg volgens mij) om dat in de hand te houden. Het commonscat argument is een slecht argument omdat categorieën onze interne organisatie aangaan (en core backbone van de commons) die dagelijks moet kunnen evolueren en gereorganiseerd worden. Een commonscat daaraan verbinden is dus een bijzonder slecht idee. Het beste in uw geval lijkt mij in commons nederlandstalige galleries te maken met dezelfde naam als het nederlandstalig artikel en die dan te linken of the redirecten naar de interne categorie. Zo heb je meteen een vertaling en een eenvoudige regel in iedere betrokken wikipedia. Categorieën direct linken tussen verschillende wiki's is hachelijk omdat ook op de normale wikipedia's de categorieën sinds ongeveer een jaar versneld ingevoerd worden en aan iedere kant hun eigen dynamiek kennen. --Foroa (talk) 11:33, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dit klinkt wel erg arrogant, vind ik. Commons is een service, een media-bank voor andere wikipedias, en dat moet men hier goed in het oog houden. Er bestaat groeiende onvrede over de administratie van commons. Men vindt steeds meer dat er hier niet goed wordt omgegaan met wat men naar commons heeft overgedragen. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 12:02, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ik geef m'n Commonscat bot wel weer eens een slinger, Foroa, je laat redirects toch wel even staan zodat m'n bot ze kan oppikken? Dan is er geen probleem. Multichill (talk) 22:56, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Als er categories gemoved worden dan wordt er omzeggens altijd een nieuwe category aangemaakt en worden de IW's erin gecopieerd. De meest universele oplossing lijkt mij bij iedere nieuwe category (na een paar dagen of zo) de interwiki's te gaan nazien en dus ook hun retour (commonscat). --Foroa (talk) 15:23, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Once again[edit]

There is no "Flora of the United States" a category whose purpose is unknown. Flora of categories are of a certain land area and environment.

The "Plants of" categories were very carefully maintained for the years between 2004 and 2008 and most certainly have a different meaning -- I respectfully request that you provide the intentions of those categories before reverting my changes.

I was unable myself to find what those "Plants of" categories were supposed to contain. In my experience attempting to work the logic back to their meaning, I was unable to find any point to them nor any documentation supporting their contents. It is one of the reasons that I did not request a merge.

Since, I in fact know that the two trees were not equal, I am curious as to the section of the ToL documentation which you found that describes the contents of those original categories enough to give you the self-assuredness of being able to revert my changes. Please paste the relevant portion here to prove your research and knowledge of this. -- carol (talk) 22:13, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is my last comment on the flora/plants saga. I will not repeat over and over again the discussions as in #Flora_of_categories_vs_Plants_of_categories, the referenced discussions therein and the following pointless discussions and accusations. There is no documented definition what precisely is meant with plants of xxx and flora of xxx. From the discussions, it is clear that they are considered roughly the same, and will so interpreted by 99,99 % of the uploaders, and why there have been redirects installed from the one to the other. This is the system state right now and it has to remain coherent like this for the time being. If you don't agree with this system state, and you seem to be the only one, then you have to open a request for change, not sabotage the redirects.

Invitations are given to you. When the merge first occurred, no one mentioned it to me and you said that I must have known that things were occuring because of my watchlist. Yet, I see you getting invitations to things. It should be a golden rule thing. Where when people don't invite the obviously interested they also do not get invited to discussions they are probably interested in. Excuse my strong dislike for this user instance when the person at the keyboard refuses to use the indentations; it is the reason for the big text that I used which should not be interpretted as shouting but instead as highlighting author changes in the text. Many reasons have been for this merge but for instance, the pointer to the discussion is shown to me now, ~two months after the merge. When you are kicked and kicked and kicked and kicked when you are down, please remember me and your enjoyment of this. -- carol (talk) 12:52, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I do agree with you that the flora in xxx are making macro-zones that can be used to constitute political zones and ecoregions that are not necessarily a perfect overlap. Well defined alternatives and solutions will be certainly appreciated on the proper place, not here. But before you make further diversions, I would strongly advise to forward a definition of plants of xxx and flora of xxx, so at least people have a chance to understand what you are trying to say. --Foroa (talk) 06:27, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The proper place would possibly be where the merge was initially discussed. Do you enjoy being invited to discussions? Of all the claims you have made of discussions of the original merge, you have never shown any discussions of it. Thank you for agreeing with it -- please desist in reverting my changes especially those that violate the over-categorization thingie that you and Multichill tout so very often. -- carol (talk) 12:52, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am asking you nicely over and over again for the definition of "Plants of" categories. I say over and over again that I can not determine this definition. I cannot find anything online that collaborates with the stuff that was found in those categories. You have taken it upon yourself to undo my changes so the task of defining what those "Plants of" categories were is upon you.

The claim you make that you were not a part of the move is an easy claim to make, in spite of the evidence that I showed of the history of that move. As instigator and as a user instance which is trusted -- do provide the definition of the "Plants of" categories that enabled you to make this merge.

"Flora of" categories were made and maintained by one person. That person is willing to provide the any details that following those categories to their origin (original origin) fail to display. There are two to four online sources for the information that the original categories provided.

I look forward to understanding what you know that causes you to continue to revert my changes. -- carol (talk) 07:52, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I repair these problems, the bots and idiots unrepair them. - carol (talk) 08:00, 20 October 2008 (UTC) -- Ecoregions and political regions are two top level parallel categorisations that overlap each other. This has nothing to do with overcategorisation. --Foroa (talk) 09:58, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Plants_of_South_America&curid=55866&diff=15378742&oldid=15378287 The bot is ignorant as is anyone who just reverts this without knowing what the "Plants of" categories mean. If you look at the contents of the article that I do not think should be moved from there -- you will find that the bot is moving things from whatever "Plants of South America" used to be and into "Flora of South America" yet, the category is already subcated to many finer divisions of this land area. It says of the user instance who undid my changes that this "User instance Foroa" knows what the "Plants of" categories meant and yet was unwilling to follow that over categorization thing.... -- carol (talk) 08:00, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, you are saying that "Flora of Argentina" is not a subset of "Flora of South America"? Please restate what you are saying very clearly using an example like this. Or, leave things be until you know what is the intentions of both trees. -- carol (talk) 12:52, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please stop shouting here. Questions already replied several times (some in bold now). Obviously, I don't have the intelligence to explain you what all the other people seem to understand. Over and out. --Foroa (talk) 09:58, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not shouting, just attempting to work with your non-indenting occassional ways. I find it interesting that people invite you to discuss things they think you might be interested. Is this a good way to work and is it something that you can receive but cannot do? Once again, it was not shouting, it was making my text stand out from yours and you were able to see where my text started and yours ended? -- carol (talk) 12:52, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Foroa. I'd like to let you know you can now sign up as a participant in this new WikiProject. The WikiProject's talk page should be a good forum for future discussions. Thank you.--Pharos (talk) 02:09, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

on car repair and snake oil[edit]

There are stories in the culture of my country -- one about the turn of the last century about salesmen selling "snake oil" -- mixtures that were promised to cure ailments and that would make good things better than they were. Often when people "bought" these tonics it hurt them. Personally, I have bought a few ideas and devices which were not as promised and it has hurt me and I learned from it. (And keep learning and keep learning and keep learning enough that I am anxious for others to learn what I have learned since I do not think that I am the only person to make these same mistakes and it seems so wrong that I should get all of the learning from them....)

There is another idea about car repair. Sometimes, when a vehicle without problems gets "repaired anyways" the vehicle no longer works as well as it did before this repair. The rest of the machine might start to make noises due to the repair which was not needed.

About kicking people when they are down. I will never kick a person who is down, yet I am unable to prevent this from happening. Whatever enjoyment that has been gained from that merge, from the discussion in which I was uninvited to and to the people who still strongly (or weakly, your choice for this) have no understanding of what the "Plants of" categories were -- I am sorry for all of those who were involved in it. It was wrong and it still is wrong. -- carol (talk) 13:35, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

something different[edit]

You often delete my mistakes when I mark them; it is a good feeling that I am not leaving a mess and that you are helping with that.

Your bot hack for one of the too long lists of genera was very thoughtful and an interesting "hack" also. -- carol (talk) 07:28, 22 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cleaning up and rendering the system consistent is my major activity here. I must say that cleaning up requires often some investigation to check if there has been no conflicts, vandalisme or dependencies. In general, I trust your speedy requests almost blindly, except when there are still linked items.
While you are at the genera, you might be the most proficient "user instance" here to create the genera categories you did asked for in Special:WantedCategories or here. They will not need dummy categories. --Foroa (talk) 07:46, 22 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
First and foremost, I was frustrated with the APWebsite stuff long before I asked for its deletion and even longer before I displayed my continued frustration with it here. You were undeserving of this frustration at the point that it reached you -- to me, the deletion would have only left the same kind of red links that other deletions that have occurred leave; which is also a frustration which did not previously involve you. It is with much less frustration that I was and still am removing similar spam from the taxonomy categories (in my defense but not for the frustration I shared unwanted and undeserved here).
Second and currently, that list is really nifty; I hadn't seen a list like this before. Those red links in that list are categories which were added later and an indication of how versatile the templated categories can be. Having them in one list like this is very helpful, I was wondering how I would find them. This is a good task for those hours when I my body is awake but most of my brain is on vacation or whatever it does. I also concur that I am the best "user instance" to subcategorize them, especially since I created those red ones in about 2 to 10 minutes....
Third, and sadly, the request that list display 250 only shows entries "Aba" through "Lav"; only about halfway through the english alphabet. It is an indication of how much fun and real life there is where I am. The kind of fun and real life that makes making these categories seem like it is good to be alive and able to accomplish things no matter how incredibly wrong wrong wrong other things are. I suggest to any who read this that I could have accomplished this and enjoyed the life I had made also -- just not so quickly. This third entry here probably has little to do with you with the exception that you showed me this list, heh. -- carol (talk) 09:28, 22 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Frustration is not only frustrating, it is the seed for many conflicts and tends to produce tunnel sight and communication problems. Open communication opens up the horizon. --Foroa (talk) 13:11, 22 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Street or street[edit]

In e.g Category:Streets in Szczecin or Category:Streets in Lublin Street is used. I have no preference. Havang(nl) (talk) 07:42, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Commons rules state no title case, but most use title case. Another incoherency in the naming rules. In this case, I will maintain Street with capital, but this is fiddling work. --Foroa (talk) 07:58, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Check this[edit]

Orphan new Category:Rusałka Lake in Szczecin with 2 images,one is Image:Rusałka Lake in Szczecin.jpg -- Havang(nl) (talk) 21:00, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Because you have put {{Move|Rusałka Lake in Szczecin|distinct from Rusałka lake in Poznan}} in stead of {{Move|category:Rusałka Lake in Szczecin|distinct from Rusałka lake in Poznan}}, so by clicking on it, I created a gallery and not a category. --Foroa (talk) 22:06, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Info about deleting Category:Churches in Landkreis Lindau[edit]

Dear Foroa, I initiated a speedydelete for this cat after having moved the remaining content into the already existing Category:Churches in Landkreis Lindau (Bodensee) which respects the right naming of the Landkreis. Thank you --Fredou (talk) 23:11, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry dear Foroa, for the message above. I quite misunderstood the email that I received when you deleted the cat. Everything allright. Thank you once again. --Fredou (talk) 23:55, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Incorrect deletion of category[edit]

Hi, you deleted "Category:Old Supreme Court Building, Singapore" incorrectly. The outcome of the discussion at "Category talk:Old Supreme Court Building, Singapore" was that "Category:Old Supreme Court building" should be merged into "Category:Old Supreme Court Building, Singapore". — Cheers, JackLee talk 13:02, 27 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I noticed that there was an agreement, so I executed the move request as indicated. Too hasty, but should be corrected by now. (By the way, I prefer that name too as there is little chance that it has to be moved again) --Foroa (talk) 13:33, 27 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. That's what I thought too. There might be lots of "old Supreme Court buildings" elsewhere in the world. Have all the images that were in "Category:Old Supreme Court building" been moved over to the new category? I had the impression there were more images. — Cheers, JackLee talk 15:35, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I checked the moves, but there has been some system/bot blackout during the first move, so not possible to verify the 11 image moves. I checked the gallery and searched with ""Supreme court" Singapore" and that added a significant number of additional images. Does it look better now ? (and yes, in Ottawa and Norway, there is an Old Supreme Court) --Foroa (talk) 17:38, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, thanks! — Cheers, JackLee talk 19:24, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings[edit]

Dear Foroa I would like to thank you for your constant tries to reach a consensus in the talk about Basque Country and your constructive attitude. It is a pleasure to discuss with people like you. Thanks again, and see you at Commons!--Balbo (talk) 16:27, 27 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Same to you. Thank you. --Foroa (talk) 07:45, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Victoria Cross[edit]

I reverted you recategorisation of this as the category includes more than just people from the United Kingdom, all Commonwealth Countries have the medal. Gnangarra 00:10, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the mistake, a bad habit for categorisation work that is most of the time not "deep" enough. --Foroa (talk) 06:12, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

More suggestions[edit]

Hoi Foroa, ben bezig met wat nieuws. Zie User:Multichill/Category suggestions2. Ik weet nog niet helemaal hoe het gaat worden, maar misschien vind je het leuk om ook mee te denken. Het is voor de laatste loodjes in een uncategorized categorie voordat ik CommonSense ga aanspreken voor suggesties. Multichill (talk) 18:20, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Begrijp niet meteen wat je hiermee bedoelt. Natuurlijk staan wij altijd klaar voor verbeteringen. --Foroa (talk) 19:20, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Eskerrik asko![edit]

The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
For your patience in the basque affaire... Dank u wel! Unai Fdz. de Betoño (talk) 17:51, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ez horregatik. Thank you for your cooperation too. --Foroa (talk) 19:19, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks...[edit]

for this. Cheers. Dorieo (talk) 07:13, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are welcome. --Foroa (talk) 07:19, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Municipalities[edit]

Foroa, ¡basta ya! ¿Qué pretendes? Yo no soy una vándala. Yo no hago vandalismo. Sólo intento homogeneizar todos los municipios de España, y todas las categorías. "Cities and villages of xxxx" es mucho más ambiguo que "municipalities of xxxx". ¿No puedes ver que estoy haciendo un buen trabajo? Patricia Rios (talk) 13:05, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In English: Foroa, stop! What do you claim? I am not a vandal. I do not do vandalism. Only I try to homogenize all the municipalities of Spain, and all the categories. "Cities and villages of xxxx" is much more ambiguous than "municipalities of xxxx". Cannot you see that I am doing a good work? Patricia Rios (talk) 13:07, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry that I am not able to write in proper Spanish. 70 % of Spain is categorised in "Cities and villages in xxx". As I told you already, I am tired of all the Spanish moves and edit wars back and forward from "municipalities in xxx" to "cities and villages in xxx" and vice versa. Moreover municipalities is not equal "cities and villages". Unless there is a clear definition how it will be organised in Spain, I will block and revert any move at that level. I gave you a warning for that because I explained that already. Moreover, you keep removing useful Interwiki's and categories. --Foroa (talk) 13:16, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You are very short-sighted. I try "sanear" (saneado = select(Tax-free)) the categories on the municipalities of Spain, and you are sabotaging me. Spain divides in nineteen autonomies, these divide in provinces, these in "comarcas" (regions), and these in municipalities. The municipalities can have several nucleuses. My intention is of categorizing all the municipalities, and the rest of villages will be categorized in the categories of his municipalities. But you do not stop getting for way. Leave me alone!! Find out, and you will see since you do not have reason. 79.145.126.145 13:38, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Your logic is perfect, and this logic is applied in most countries: autonomies-> provinces--> municipalities->villages--> Hamlets ...
But in many countries, as is done in some provinces of Spain, they register all their villages and cities equally in "cities and villages in xxx" as this allows to categorise and find villages without knowing to what municipality/district/province they belong. So, unless there is a clear consensus, it makes no sense of destroying the work from the others. In some other countries, they have separate categories for villages and another for cities.
So my "sabotaging" is avoiding that you destroy the work from the others because you have another meaning how things should be categorised. After all, they got a good reason to use Cities and villages in xxx, and not municipalities in xxx. --Foroa (talk) 13:58, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Navarre[edit]

Please, do not vandalism any more. Navarre is a Spanish autonomous community, and it does not form a part of the Basque Country. Your ignorance —on this matter— is very big. 79.145.126.145 13:29, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Category talk:Basque Country/Category scheme Basque Country for the agreement on the Basque Country structure. You can discuss it further on Category talk:Basque Country. I'll try to get hold of a Spanish administrator to ease further discussions on Spanish categories. --Foroa (talk) 13:35, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Blocks[edit]

Can you please try and be sure to give a reason for any blocks you place - it is helpful to the user & others who look at such things. Thanks --Herby talk thyme 14:49, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I normally document a reason. This time, I was in a hurry as I don't really have time. --Foroa (talk) 15:16, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category redirects[edit]

I notice that you seem to be manually replacing a lot of code. Can't you get a bot to do this instead? It seems too automatic a task to waste a human on. Does it even matter if a redirect to the template is used? Richard001 (talk) 06:00, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I did so in a hurry because some of the auto-categorisation bots have a problem with some of the redirect syntaxes, and I wanted to eliminate quickly a potential auto-categorisation error source for further checking. I requested a RussBot change to do that automatically. Thank you for your concern and it is certainly not my intention to do that on a regular basis. --Foroa (talk) 06:42, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

By country opruiming[edit]

Hoi Foroa, m'n bot is nu de by country cats onder handen aan het nemen. Er wordt echt een heleboel gevonden. Multichill (talk) 15:38, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Had ik al in gaten. Mooi werk dat om de week eens mag draaien. --Foroa (talk) 16:03, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Dat is wel het plan ja. Kom een hoop rare dingen tegen zoals Category:Basketball teams, Multichill (talk) 16:42, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand what is the problem to reply to my request. דניאל ב. (talk) 12:51, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We normally don't delete user pages unless there is a very special reason. --Foroa (talk) 16:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I want to vanish. Daniel B (talk) 19:38, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
User pages need only be deleted if they contain personal information AND the user requests deletion. None of these conditions are met. --Foroa (talk) 22:18, 11 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
the page does contain personal information - my full name in hebrew. the user (me) did requests deletion. Daniel B (talk) 20:14, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Deleted now. I couldn't guess that the page contained personal information and the deletion request was not motivated (reason field was not filled out). --Foroa (talk) 07:08, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
thanks, I'm sorry I wasn't clear enough from the beginning. please Delete the talk page to. Daniel B (talk) 19:22, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
✓ Done. 80 % of the problems here boil down to communication problems. If you ever forget your real name, I can always restore your user pages ;). --Foroa (talk) 19:29, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
:) Daniel B (talk) 11:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks[edit]

Thanks for deleting the misspelled Sphingidae pages. I retagged Sphecodina abbotti‎ because it is a misspelled duplicate of Sphecodina abbotti‎i and the image with Sphecodina abbotti‎ in the title is tagged to be renamed. --Kevmin (talk) 21:21, 11 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

catalan-spanish war?[edit]

Je ne suis pas espagnol ou catalan (je suis argentin). Le catégorie c'est répétée. C'est la même, et il faut corriger ça, c'est tout. Si vous pouvez faire le catégori en anglès, pour moi c'est tres bien. Salut. ferbr1 (talk) 21:23, 11 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, mais je passe pas mal (trop) de temps avec des edit wars en Espagne. Category mergé dans la plus ancienne. --Foroa (talk) 22:13, 11 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unwanted changes[edit]

Seeing you've had a bit of history with this user, I've just noticed (s)he's been modifying some of my work as of translating headers from English to (just) Spanish, changing official placenames in Catalan for those in Spanish and either deleting proper categories or replacing them with nonexistent ones, so I'm adressing to you as administrator to keep an eye on this, revert all those editions or even re-consider blocking its account, since all its changes solely imply a political point of view; or, may I rather adress to a local administrator to sort it out? --Llapissera -> talk 17:59, 12 November 2008 (UTC) P.S: dank u wel![reply]

This user does a lot of good work but she seems to be rather Spanish-above-all and I did not managed to establish a dialogue with her. Moreover, she seems to have little community sense and damages quite some work from the others. I blocked her already for a short while but then she pops up as an anonymous user doing even more harm. I can only try to limit the damage. It would be clearly advisable that a Spanish speaking administrator steps in to try to calm it down (which I requested but without response), but I think that the Spanish community should step in too to establish a more cooperating constructive dialogue. I noticed already on several occasions (with the Basque Country as happy exception) that it is not easy to mobilise a community in Spain that tries to communicate and cooperate. Hopefully, the contrary will be proven real soon. --Foroa (talk) 07:38, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK then, I'll adress user Rastrojo instead: he's more open-minded than regular Spaniards in these matters. Tot ziens! --Llapissera -> talk 14:00, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

He is from a very good region, so that cannot go wrong. ;) --Foroa (talk) 16:14, 15 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:País Valencià[edit]

The real and official definition for The region of Valencia is Comunidad Valenciana and not Pais Valencia. --Ravave (talk) 18:12, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You watch the article in Spanish Wikipedia [8]. Please, can you move the title of the category?. --Ravave (talk) 18:12, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hallo, so far, the endless discussions about the Category:País Valencià, which is, like Category:Comunidad Valenciana, a redirect to Category:Land of Valencia, have never terminated in a fully agreed solution (see Special:WhatLinksHere/Category:Land_of_Valencia).

If you look in Commons:Disputes_noticeboard/Archive:_Catalonia and towards the top of this page, this discussion never ended. As we have seen with the Basque country discussion, even when the discussion is closed, there is always one or more other editors that try to force another naming or start with an apart parallel category system.

Moreover, because of the disputes between the Spanish and Catalan names, we are forced to be even more strict with the English name rule of Commons. Some moment in time, I suggested Autonomous Community of Valencia, which was rejected too. The name "Valencian Community" is, like Spanish writers, French sailors, ... not acceptable for the Commons naming rules as this does not allow for disambiguation: there are many en:Valencia's.

So in Spain, I avoid to accept any major changes as they unavoidably start new discussions and edit wars which consume a lot of wasted energy for many people. Of course, if there is a major community requesting changes or new agreements, I will not stop it. But please don't expect from me to start such an action, my Spanish, nor my knowledge about your lovely country, is just not good enough. --Foroa (talk) 18:56, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On this matter, to sum it up: conservative and Spaniard nationalists support the use of «politically correct» Comunitat Valenciana (officialy, in Catalan!), while leftists and sovereignists prefer cultism País Valencià, mainly used in local literature; anyway, we all say Valencia on a day-to-day basis, so I'd rather go for this historical, common, simpler form, seeing that possible confusion with the city (or, for name's sake, with the province) is already avoided. Just a contribution, though... --Llapissera -> talk 23:27, 15 November 2008 (UTC) P.S: do you dig Antwerp's own dEUS?[reply]

Well, if you want even more problems, then you can call it en:Valencia. I am not from Antwerp and I might be twice your age. I can appreciate en:dEUS but I would greatly prefer en:Ozark Henry, en:Zita Swoon and en:Absynthe Minded. --Foroa (talk) 07:14, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now that's exactly what I wanted to hear read from you: then I suppose you may not like Captain Beefheart or Brel; and any artists singing in Vlams or else? --Llapissera -> (chalk) 14:22, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Bach, en:Jacques_Brel, Edith Piaf, Django Reinhart, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong are my alltime favorites. Vlaams (dutch) is not a very good language for singing indeed. Arno cannot sing properly but I like his music. I don't know Captain Beefheart but I am kind of a cultural barbarian; spending too much time on work and wiki's ;). --Foroa (talk) 14:35, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for correcting the Commons article. I'm new to the Commons, and don't know what I'm doing. 19:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC) Stan

You are welcome. You could move the stuff you made in category:Frank Murphy to a gallery with the name Frank Murphy. --Foroa (talk) 16:12, 15 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am uploading stuff to Category:Koehler1887 almost every day lately but the descriptions I put on most of the images say 1883-1914 (an example is from today: http://www.illustratedgarden.org/mobot/rarebooks/library.asp?relation=QK99A1K6318831914B2).

Category:Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen might perhaps be a better name for it and pasteable from most sources. The thirty-one years makes more sense for the amount of information and illustrations available from these volumes. It is one of the plants super-categories which I have only a little idea of how to diffuse (is that the word?) and no desire to tackle that. A name change would be (in my opinion) a good move before diffusion.

The 1887 in the category name bothers me more and more each new day though. Thanks. -- carol (talk) 21:24, 15 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, this name does not seem right. I'll have a look to it in a couple of days. I added the Iw's but I have to look around for potential conflicting categories. de:Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen en:Köhler's Medicinal Plantsit:Koehler's Medizinal-Pflanzen ru:Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen --Foroa (talk) 16:38, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is a large task and the category has been there as it is for a very long while; I brought it to your attention with the intention to add it to your list of things to do with no intention for you stopping your current projects for this. Had I undertaken this task, I would have opted for the first few words from the actual name of the publication(s) (as every wiki in your list did with the exception of en) without the research. It is at least possible to move the category mechanically so it makes it not so large of a task as finishing my own "Genera of" mess that sits there waiting for me.... Thank you for looking into this, I appreciate the research you already did that I probably would not have done. -- carol (talk) 17:10, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Not a very large task, but when renaming, we better get it right:
  • There are hundreds of famous Köhlers, so potential conflicts might pop up. As happens often, later versions might be issued by other authors or his children.
  • It looks as if he issued one book in three bands: should we have a separate category per band (and is it realistic ?) Do you have the whole set or one band ?
  • "Medicinal Plants book by Köhler" might be a better name if there are several versions, volumes and similar books from other authors. --Foroa (talk) 17:55, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am sadly unable to confidently answer any of these questions. My knowledge of them starts here "Koehler1887", heh. Most of my thoughts have been in the ways that the inks might have been made then and how they might have degraded over time as well as the paper and the effect that would have on that. Many of the commons plant illustrations have been given PD-art license, however, these drawings should have been made for scientific purposes more than art. Science and truthful representations can also be beautiful which even for me can be confusing at times. My assumption is that they were painted as true to the actual colors as possible.
There seems to be three different sets of scans available, some are larger and some are great scans but not so large. One of these sites put the scans of the blank pages that were facing the illustration pages where the inks had bled into them. So, more technical inks, papers and color repair possibilities in my thoughts and no understanding of how things politically and economically came to exist in the publishing structures in late 18th century Europe.
Only one site seems to print the volume number and that information is presented in the library format which does not provide the year of the single tome or I am simply not understanding the information which I have occassionally been pasting from these sources. The diffusion of the super-category might be impossible with only the online sources and the idea of it makes (for me) thinking about the storage and age problems far more appealing. It is one of the reasons I dumped the problem here and you are asking many of the same questions I did.
Let me know if the ink problem becomes more appealing for you to think about so I feel less badly about dumping these problems here. -- carol (talk) 18:36, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion of "Churches of" categories[edit]

I noticed you've been deleting the "Church of" categories that I am in the process of moving. You might want to get these others too, most of which I redirected earlier:

  1. Category:Medieval churches of Denmark
  2. Category:Medieval stone churches of Norway
  3. Category:Churches of Buskerud
  4. Category:Churches of Aust-Agder
  5. Category:Stave churches of Norway
  6. Category:Wooden churches of Norway
  7. Category:Churches of Akershus
  8. Category:Churches of Wales
  9. Category:Churches of Northern Ireland
  10. Category:Churches of Rutland
  11. Category:Religious buildings in Sheffield

The last few were from Commons:Categories for discussion/Current requests/2008/05/Churches in the United Kingdom. Thanks! —Wknight94 (talk) 23:11, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, that seems to be a major cleanup. I will delete most of the moved categories when I have some more time. --Foroa (talk) 07:59, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Churches in Gotland sounds very strange. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 00:14, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But Churches of Gotland sounds even stranger, more like Church of England a.s.o. What about the alternative: Churches on the Isle of ....Greetings--Gerardus (talk) 08:15, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Gotland is a province on an Isle, so what is the correct name ? "Gotlander churches" might even cause people think that it concerns the landing area for God. Anyway, they seemed to be happy with Churches of Gotland, so Churches in Gotland is not that much different. --Foroa (talk) 09:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hanover / Hannover categories[edit]

Hallo Foroa, ik ben bezig met het beter categoriseren van sculptures in Lower Saxony en kom nogal wat foutjes tegen t.a.v. Hannover = Hanover, Region (duits) i.p.v. District en Churches of ... De 3 ergste zijn vooralsnog:

Category:Region Hannover moet zijn Category:Hanover (district).

Category:Churches in Region Hannover -> Category:Churches in Hanover (district)

Category:Churches of Hannover -> Category:Churches in Hannover

Kun je daar iets aan (laten) doen? Groetend,--Gerardus (talk) 08:23, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In Hanover / Hannover, there is a strange mix. In stead of doing some small partial patches, it might be better if a German commonist tries to harmonise it all (personally, I would favor Hannover over Hanover as this is a more elegant way of doing disambiguation). Anyway, I would not dare to move Category:Region Hannover to "Hanover (district)" without consensus. Long move lists can be placed in User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands. Maybe a topic for the German café ? --Foroa (talk) 08:44, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ik bedoelde deze mededeling als een signalering. Met de sculptures heb ik werk genoeg en café's, pubs en kroegen bezoek ik nooit, dus ook hier niet. Hannover oogt inderdaad mooier dan Hanover, maar die keus heb ik niet gemaakt en wordt al breed toegepast. Groetend--Gerardus (talk) 10:11, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re:Cities in Spain[edit]

Thank you for stopping the enthusiastic user because that warned me about all the moves she was doing. We'll see what happens but anyway, I'm afraid it's going to be a complicated change as there is a big chaos in the categories and little homogeneity. Cheers. Anna (talk) 00:06, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is probably now or never; people are aware about the problem and the chaos has to be adressed one day. I would suggest to start with a list that indicates per province (which are not always homegeneous neither) how the cities and municipalities are handled. I had already some thoughts in Category talk:Gipuzkoa. Only when one start to see clear at that level, you can add the regional Catalan, Basque, ... dimensions, but I feel that you should have it first right at the province level. I would insist too that any village, even very small, has to end up by having its category (In Belgium, we created most of them systematically, even when empty, as this is much more efficient and uniform) while detecting naming problems quite early and avoiding "amateur" category creations. --Foroa (talk) 07:24, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have been reading and untangling your texts in the Café, and I must congratulate you for the good work. --Foroa (talk) 07:58, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

US Navy ships and US Naval ships[edit]

I only noticed the discussion after it has closed, and which anyway seemed to run for only 10 hours, but there is a distinction between the two. US Naval ships are those with the USS designation and are commissioned warships of the US Navy manned by naval. In addittion there are ships with USNS designations which are not commissioned warships.92.1.174.25 03:27, 18 November 2008 (UTC)KTo288 (talk) 03:28, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see. Those differences are not apparent from the category name nor from the documentation in the categories. Only a few world citizens will know the difference, so with the actual description, there is little or no chance that categorisation would be correct. The best solution is to add subcategories with clear names so that specialists can categorise it deeper when the images arrive at the top level US Naval ships category. Sorry that I closed the cfd so quickly as it seemed so obvious. In general, one has a response the first days or never and I am working very hard last months to cleanup all sorts of backlogs. --Foroa (talk) 07:06, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I guess you're right few will know and few will care. Just me being a pedant I guess.09:42, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
That is the way it should work:
  • The big public categories that allows for gross categorisations (I am already happy that I can categorise a church in the right village category and proud if I can state that it is for example a gothic church, but that is about my limit)
  • The finer specialist work to deepen the categorisation work, by preference with very difficult (but documented) category names as not to attrackt mainstream categorisation (dropping, Commonsense). You see, Commons need pedantic people too ;). --Foroa (talk) 12:30, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please restore the category you deleted as it does have images in it. Evrik (talk) 14:34, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I was probably too quick and did not notice the interwiki's in it. I try to keep the list of uncategorised categories close to empty. As I had no immediate idea where this category belongs and since this uncategorised category with only one element in it was there since 5 days, I decided to delete it. Restored by now. --Foroa (talk) 15:32, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

cat suppression and cat redirects[edit]

Hi, I see you delete quite a lot of categories. As a simple user, I generally use {{cat redirect}} in the cases where you'd probably delete the category. Is cat redirection ok? Should I sometimes ask for cat deletion, and if so, in which cases? Doesn't category deletion potentially break interwiki links? I'm just curious about the right way to do things. Regards, --Eusebius (talk) 21:49, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As you can see in #Category:Politicians_from_Italy and Commons:Category redirects suck, there is no clear rule. I just try to get rid of the redirects that are (very) obvious spelling, capitalisation and plural errors. Moreover, I generally remove redirects that are using the wrong "xxx in/of/from yyy" as this has a very positive impact on harmonisation. Finally, (when I stumble on them) I remove newly created "American xxx", "English xxx" as the rule is "xxx from/of country" and most of them are even not correct (American points to North, South America, the Americas, the United States ?, English or British points to England or the United Kingdom ?) Moreover, because people see that there are already categories like French actors, French politicians, ... They continuously add French xxx categories because they think that this categories don't exist yet, causing all sorts of redundant categories and additional merging work. There seems to be some confusion about the difference of helping people that don't know English very well and compensating for downright spelling errors and errors against the naming conventions.

Concerning the interwiki links, yes there is a problem. The Commons categorisation is quite different from wikipedia's category organisations and they all grow quickly and reorganise constantly. We move hundreds of categories per week. Personally, I feel that there should be some worldwide matrix referring to places/topics but that category organisation should be internal to each wikipedia project. I feel that on commons, there could be galleries (even empty ones) in each possible language that link to their corresponding article on the wikipedia's and refer to the internal Commons categories. But as you know, there is no consensus. I think that the debate is biased because most people think that categories are fairly stable, which is the case for species, but growing very fast (up to 1400 new categories per day on Commons) for most other subjects. --Foroa (talk) 09:45, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your explanations, thanks for the links, thanks for the time you took. I have a better overview of the issue. --Eusebius (talk) 09:58, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bildlöschung[edit]

Hi, wollte das Bild "Image:Lago de Tenno Italien.JPG" wegen falscher Bildbezeichnug löschen lassen. Habe das richtig beschriftete Bild (etwas beschnitten) erneut hochgeladen "Image:Lago di Tenno Italien.JPG"..... kann man das falsche jetzt löschen? wenn nicht, warum?... naja, ist ja auch nicht schlimm, ebend nur doppelt :-)...bin noch nicht so mit den Abläufen hier vertraut..... falls nötig könnte ich dir auch in englisch schreiben, aber nicht wirklich gut :-) ... wer kann mir übrigens den Unterschied zwischen den Kategorieseiten und den Galerieseiten vernünftig erklären?? mfg Diether (talk) 14:18, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problems reading German. Writing correctly in German is a problem. I think that most help files exist (COM:G and COM:C) in German, there is a German help or café/pump/bistro forum. The best solution is reading a little bit, looking around and doing a lot of things. A gallery is the Commons name for an article in the wikipedia's.
Once you have "donated" an image, you cannot retract it without a very valid reason as it might be used on various wikipedia projects (Commons is a medium server for hundreds of projects). The fact that the file name is correct, almost correct or an incomprehensive number such as DSC2000326, or even in chinese idioms, does not change really its usability. If you insert {{Rename|Better name.ext}}, a bot will eventually rename it and make sure that all wikipedia's that use that image get updated, but personally I would not bother to change from de Tenno to di Tenno. --Foroa (talk) 15:05, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

okay....thank you Diether (talk) 15:15, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Volgens mij ging je de verkeerde kant op. Het moet zijn van Category:Church in Doubice naar Category:Churches in Doubice, niet andersom. Multichill (talk) 19:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Het was een specifieke niet gecontesteerde request van iemand die lastig kan zijn (er is daar maar één kerk). gemakkelijker toe te geven dan zaging te hebben. --Foroa (talk) 19:25, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Dat is niet helemaal waar. Als er maar een kerk is dan zou ik de categorie de naam van de kerk geven om verwarring te voorkomen. Multichill (talk) 19:31, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Barnstar[edit]

The Minor Barnstar
For your diligence and cleaning up categories, images and related bot work. Dank u wel! Gryffindor (talk) 01:53, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Welcome. Thank you. --Foroa (talk) 07:56, 24 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Duplicates[edit]

Hello. I think you made a mistake when replacing Image:Maria de Medici portrait.jpg with Image:Alessandro Allori 003.jpg. The first file has been here for a much longer time, and the filename is at least as descriptive as the newer file since it says what is in the painting. The newer file contains the name of the painter, but instead of saying what is in the painting it only has some arbitrary number. /Ö 22:06, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am afraid you are addressing the wrong counter. AFAIK, I have never been involved with those images or replacements. --Foroa (talk) 22:44, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about that. For some reason CommonsDelinker said it was you who ordered the replacement. /Ö 16:27, 22 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You are probably looking at this one. There can be a substantial time lag between the order and its execution. And because there are many users of the delinker, it is not always easy to trace the "pilot" back. --Foroa (talk) 17:03, 22 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Forora,

The category "Castles in Silesian Voivodeship" is not covering the historic region of Silesia in Poland. in the attached map you can see the red line which marks the former border of Silesia. Other Voivodeships are as well covering just partially the former Silesia, which are Opole Voivodeship and Lower Silesian Voivodeship. And a small part is lying today in the german state of Saxony. So at least it is not possible to categorize the castles of Silesia by Voivodeships. They only could be categorized individually, but then you schould know exactly the former Borders. Next Problem, which former border? before 1945 or before 1918... greets, --Ceterum censeo capitalismum esse delendam (talk) 17:41, 25 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For Silesia, I assisted only when there was an edit war whether Silesia should be a Polish-only or a transnational region. Since that has been settled, I did not saw a lot of recategorisation in that area and I connected a couple of categories to set the tone (but not necessarily correct). As I have seen with the Basque country, it is often touchy to define a region border because many people interpret a subcategory as belonging to, owned by ... and get nervous. If you want to really distinguish various region border definitions according to past and present definitions, then you are in for a long discussion and a lot of edit wars and very complex parallel categories. In the Basque country (so far), we managed to settle down for one global category that includes hierarchic (belonging to), historical and cultural/language links in one single top category. The best thing is to document it as you see as your current compromise (and include as far as possible complete Voivodeships subcats for increased comfort) and categorisation rule and go for it. If you don't document it properly, you will have fights sooner or later. Good luck. --Foroa (talk) 18:08, 25 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Kopjes afbeeldingsbeschrijving[edit]

Hallo Foroa, ik zie dat je hier de laatste tijd op commons een stukje actiever bent dan mij, daarom even bij jou informeren:

De Upload forms van commons plaatsen toch voor de overzichtelijkheid standaard de kopjes ==Summary== en ==Licensing== op de pagina's (artikels) met afbeeldingsbeschrijving?

Dus dit [9], namelijk het weghalen van die kopjes en overzichtelijke indeling, lijkt mij niet meteen de bedoeling? (zie ook tientallen andere edits van de gebruiker [10]). Of heb je recentelijk wat weten veranderen of een andere richtlijn ergens tegengekomen? Het omgekeerde (toevoegen van kopjes waar ze niet staan), zou met zelfs logischer lijken... --LimoWreck (talk) 18:58, 25 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hoedanook zijn er verschillende upload forms in verschillende talen en iedere bot en hotcat tooltje heeft zijn eigen manier om alles te herschikken, zodat het onbegonnen werk is om daar een systeem in te krijgen (en te houden). Ik vermoei mij dus niet meer met zulke details en als die kopjes er wel of niet staan tussen al die schreeuwerige boxen maakt voor mij niet echt veel uit. Ik ben wel bezorgder voor die subcat classering in de Belgische kastelen. Ik weet nog niet hoe ik het ga aanpakken, maar misschien moet ik eerst een mini category standaard schrijven voor België zodat die discussies voor eens en voor altijd opgelost zijn. Wat denk jij ervan ? --Foroa (talk) 18:54, 26 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

de subcategorie "Kastelen volgens gemeente" vind ik volslagen overbodig. Het is érg zeldzaam als er al meer dan een per gemeente staat, en meestal klasseren we niet volgens gemeente, maar wel volgens dorp of deelgemeente of kern. Ook in de praktijk associeert men kastelen meer met dorpen of kernen en gehuchten, dan met administratieve gemeenten. En als er dan al eens 2 per gemeente staan, dan kan het wel zo goed in "Buildings in dorp xyz", hoef je m.i. geen overbodige tussenlaag voor te maken (voor pleinen, gewone huizen, etc zou je dat wel kunnen).
Samengevat:
  • We klasseren in België nauwelijks volgens gemeente, dus municipality-subcategorie past nauwelijks in dit plaatje
  • Meer dan 1 per gemeente (of indien gecorrigeerd, per dorp) is te zeldzaam, dus m.i. een overbodig tussencategorie.
de subcategorie "Kastelen volgens naam" vind ik ronduit absurd. Natúúrlijk zijn dat kastelen naar naam, immers: alles op commons wordt geklasseerd volgens naam, dat is nu eenmaal de aard van het beestje ;-). Een artikel- of categorietitel IS nu eenmaal "een naam". What's next: alle zangers in Category:Vocalists from the United Kingdom verplaatsen naar Category:Vocalists from the United Kingdom by name ? Onzin natuurlijk op dit moment. Die horen gewoon in de hoofdcategorie, zowel de gewone losse media als de subcategorieën. Idem voor kastelen. Er is niets mis met een categorie specifiek voor 1 kasteel, maar dat hoort m.i. gewoon in de hoofdcategorie "Castles in Belgium" zelf. --LimoWreck (talk) 19:13, 26 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In één woord: onzinnig. Ik ga de komende weken een mini category standaard schrijven voor België en dan een botje langs sturen om die kastelen weer samen te trekken. Beste groet. --Foroa (talk) 10:05, 27 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Voilà, ik heb er alvast eens de borstel door gehaald:
  • de subcategorie naar gemeente was niet alleen ongewenst, ze was bovendien fout. Het merendeel van de categorieën ging om dorpen of deelgemeenten, niet om gemeenten
  • de subcategorie naar naam was gewoon absurd. Bevatte een paar tiental kastelen die gewoon tussen de rest horen, in de hoofdcategorie. Immers, alles is naar naam genoemd op commons, zoals hierboven al aangeven.
Ik weet niet of die pipo daar nu met zijn poten gaat van af blijven, ik vrees ervoor. Blijkbaar is hij niet geremd door gebrek aan kennis, en is het een zoveelste gebruiker die als een bezetene zit te categoriseren zonder te weten wat hij doet.
Ik heb trouwens gezien in bewerkingsgeschiedenissen van foto's dat hij al meerdere gebruikers heeft zitten reverten het voorbije jaar. Ook heeft hij ergens een toevoeging van jou domweg gerevert met als uitleg dat er "geen commons-wide consensus is" voor een bepaalde verduidelijking die jij had gemaakt. Wel, als hij nog eens zit raar te categoriseren of dingen weg te halen, dan geef je maar als repliek dat er "geen commons-wide consensus is voor zijn edits", en dat er integendeel zelfs meerdere gebruikers die beter thuis zijn in de materie het anders zien ;-) --LimoWreck (talk) 14:08, 30 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Een geval van categoritis inderdaad. Na een poging om per provincie te rangschikken nu dit onzinnig classement. Ik blijf bij mijn standpunt, en ging op dezelfde manier met een botje alles weer samen ge-"rangschikt" hebben. --Foroa (talk) 14:32, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yups, heb ik gelezen. Maar goed, ik kwam gisteren zo'n paar categorieën tegen tijdens het categoriseren van nog andere afbeeldingen die verkeerd stonden, dus had ik meteen maar alles in een trek meegenomen ;-) --LimoWreck (talk) 18:38, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Molentjes[edit]

Hoi Foroa, ik ben in het kader van het grote molenproject de molencategorieën aan het nalopen. Ik probeer als naamgeving aan te houden <naam molen> of als er meerdere molens zijn met dezelfde naam <naam molen>, <naam plaats>. Je zal dus nog wel wat molentjes gaan tegenkomen in Category:Requested moves. Een van de molens die ik hierbij tegenkwam is Category:Molen De Weert. Dit lijkt me geen goede naam, Category:De Weert leek jou geen goed plan, wat zullen we er van maken Category:De Weert, Meppel of Category:De Weert (windmill)? Kom je trouwens wel eens op irc? Ik ben regelmatig online op freenode in #wikimedia-commons, dat bespreekt soms wel handig :). Multichill (talk) 12:43, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

IRC is op veel plaatsen voor mij niet toegankelijk en ik ben er ook niet echt voorstander van, hoewel het inderdaad handig kan zijn, maar niet meteen de meest efficiënte tijdsbesteding (commons ook niet hoor).
Ik ben ook tegen "Eigennamen" zoals De Koe, Het Zweerd, De Weert zonder dat er bij staat wat of waar het is. Of er nu molen of windmill bij staat maakt voor mij niet uit, maar als je in het oostblok kijkt, dan zijn die onleesbare namen wel een probleem. Eigenlijk zou De Weert molen, Meppel de volledigste oplossing zijn, zelfs als er andere De Weert's in Meppel (boerderij, molenaar, melkboer, ...) opduiken. Je mag niet vergeten dat wij op commons uiteidelijk veel dieper gaan categorizeren dan op gelijk welke wiki omdat ieder onderwerp, zelfs als het niet de moeite loont om er een artikel over te schrijven, verder kan verdiept worden met media. Van vele molens kan je honderden details gaan fotograferen. Ben wel verbaasd dat er in Nederland nog geen standaard bestaat voor de plaatsnaam; tussen haakjes of na een comma. Ik verkies zoals jij (denk ik) de comma voor plaatsnamen. --Foroa (talk) 18:26, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
De Hoop, South Africa is ook te algemeen; ik ben er vele De Hoops tegengekomen. Zelfs in mijn dorpje zijn er geloof ik, twee. Beter een complete naam en uniform systeem dan alsmaar te moeten verschuiven en plaats maken voor nieuwe gelijkaardige namen. --Foroa (talk) 18:32, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bij gebrek aan feedback ben ik alvast begonnen met de move's en met een uniforme regel: "naam, gemeente". Waarom je het er het woord molen er niet bij wil begrijp ik niet. --Foroa (talk) 14:11, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nog even niet aan toegekomen. Ik gebruik trouwens gewoon de standaard naamgevingsconventies van nlwp en enwp als basis. Toevoeging van molen daarin hoort niet tenzij het deel uitmaakt voor de naam. In die naamgevingsconventies is de toevoeging van de plaats alleen nodig als er meerdere dingen zijn met dezelfde naam. Om dat te besluiten gebruik ik nl:Lijst van windmolens in Nederland. Op welke naamgevingsconventies baseer jij je eigenlijk? Multichill (talk) 21:13, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
De gewone commons naming conventies, behalve dat ik heel wat stricter ben voor eigennamen. Er zijn veel plaatsen/groepen/dingen die De Hoop, De Koe, De Bataaf, de Korenbloem, De Weert, Concordia, Aurora, ... heten (heb ik wel gecheckt met google). Zoals jij de naming voorstelt, moet er telkens als een gelijkaardige naam opduikt, van alles gaan verschuiven en hernoemd worden (eenvoudig voor artikels, heel wat ingewikkelder voor categories). Neem nu nl:De Hoop: deze lijst is zeer onvolledig en ook in België en zuid-Afrika bestaan er tientallen dingen (molens, cafés, restaurants, firma's, hotels, producten (olijfolie),instellingen, boerderijen, wijngaard, boerderijen, lokale verenigingen, ...) die De Hoop heten. Dus beter voor eigennamen meteen een duidelijke eenvormige systematische regel maken die ook meteen aangeeft wat het is, en in geval van molens, ook waar hij staat. Tenslotte is dat ook zo met de meeste kerken en molens die een samengestelde naam hebben. --Foroa (talk) 10:58, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Vermits er weerstand blijkt te bestaan om het woord molen in de naam te hebben, heb ik alles geuniformiseerd naar naam, plaats, ook voor ogenschijnlijk uitzonderlijke namen: beter één simpele regel.

Reversion of deletion[edit]

Dear Foroa,

I think there is a misunderstanding.

Colchicum brachyphyllum is an obsolete name for Colchicum szovitsii subsp. brachyphyllum.

The page Colchicum szovitsii, the content of which is the same as that of the page Colchicum brachyphyllum, is thus an obsolete duplication, the reason why I asked for its deletion.

Best regards, --Réginald (To reply) 08:21, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There was a misunderstanding indeed. I reverted primarily because I noticed the {{speedy delete|duplicate category}}, which makes no sense in a gallery. Moreover, often galleries are getting merged before the "bad one" is deleted, which seemed not the case, until I discovered just now that the Synonymum was already there. Deleted now. Sorry, but I try to be careful with speedy deletions of galleries. --Foroa (talk) 09:59, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category names in vs. of[edit]

Hey Foroa! Kanonkas directed me to you in IRC. There has been quite a wave of category renames from thing of place to thing in place. In most cases these seem justified and gramatically correct. After talking to some native speakers I think that the in version refers to generic objects of type thing at the location place. I.e. Gardens in Vienna is a category of all the various gradens in the city of Vienna. However there are exceptions. Category Gardens in Schoenbrunn was brought to my attention. This category is not about arbitrary gardens in Schoenbrunn, but about one specific place, which is named either Schoenbrunn Gardens or Gardens of Schoenbrunn.

Do you know if there is any discussion regarding these renames? A note should be added there to caution users who want to rename a category of these exceptions. --Dschwen (talk) 17:37, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The "wave of category renames" is mainly an action to harmonise things, and you are right, in most cases, they are correct. I have no knowledge of recent discussions on that issue.

Personally, I feel that we should use instead of "in" or "of" a symbol, such as @, OF, IN, ... In short, anything that is computer pars-able to open the way for multi-language category names. But I stopped to make myself illusions on that. I started some of those harmonisations, but I am by no means the main actor: you can clearly feel that many people seek for harmonisation and if possible simple rules. One of the other reasons why we have more harmonisations is that the "move requests" are now handled mostly in a timely manner, so it is getting more used.

So far, we use "Churches in xxx" and "Church of xxx", which is a more simple, less arguable example of what you claim. Similarly, you could state that "Gardens in Schoenbrunn" mean all the gardens in Schoenbrunn and "Garden of Schoenbrunn" would mean the one and unique garden of Schoenbrun. I guess that one can argue about the plural/singular form of garden, another subtle complexity.

The point is that what you are claiming is right, but is quite confusing for the hundreds of non-native English participants that don't have the time or knowledge to investigate the subtle differences. How can we get a uniformity that avoids the random mix of in/of/from's without adding substantial complexity.

Another way of naming could be "Schoenbrunn Garden", but this opens the way for Schoebrunner Garden, Schoebrunn's Garden, Schoebrunns Garden, ... variants.

Frankly, I don't know a general way out for the small percentage of exceptions, I know only that during the last months, we made significant harmonisation progress and yes, we need to address the exceptions. Restoring the special cases to their correct form is no real problem (as we did with some churches on Islands as for example churches in an Island is almost ridiculous, but that supposes that you know that the location is an Island) , but they might be victim of another "harmoniser" quite quickly. I doubt that a note with a caution will avoid harmonisation renaming: if one is working through lists of tens and even hundreds of wrongly named categories, the note of caution will not be seen. Suggestions welcome. --Foroa (talk) 19:04, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hallo. Blijkbaar heb je ergens op commons over de "in"/"of" bezig geweest de laatste tijd ? Ofwil misleidt bovenstaande post me ;-)
Wat er ook van zij: ik persoonlijk heb niet echt een voorkeur hoe het moet. Of het nu allemaal "in" moet zijn, of een meningvorm. Of gewoon geen voorzetsel, of wat cryptisch.
Recentelijk heb ik wel individuen stukjes uit een categorieboom zien hernoemen (of laten hernoemen) van "of" -> "in". Met als gevolg dat er categorieën bestaan waarvan de oudercategorie "of" heeft, de subcategorie "of", maar de categorie zelf "in.
Het zijn vooral geografische entiteiten waar "of" gebruikt wordt (bergen, rivieren, meren, etc). Waarom? Geen idee juist, wat ik wel weet is dat ik in het verleden nog oude discussies heb zien passeren op commons, en ook discussies heb zien staan van voor ik hier ooit actief was. Nu weet ik niet of er ooit een consensus was om het zus of zo te doen, al dacht ik wel dat men ergens wel overeengekomen was voor de "of" ivm geografische zaken. Maar misschien vergis ik me.
Wanneer bepaalde categorieën met soorten gebouwen van "of" -> "in" worden hernoemd, lijkt er mij geen vuiltje aan de lucht. Maar recentelijk zijn een paar enkelingen ook op de geografische categorieën gesprongen. En daar maak ik me een beetje zorgen om... niet omdat ikzelf het zus of zo verkies, maar wel het feit dat ik niet weet of daar recentelijk een consensus op commons is ontstaan om het zo te doen. Het enige dat ik weet is dat vele gebruikers er in het verleden hebben over gediscussieerd, en dat men toen alleszins blijkbaar de huidige naamgeving is gaan gebruiken... Wanneer er dan een hoop hernoemingen gebeuren op het initiatief van een paar individuen, dan riskeert men natuurlijk wel dat men al een jarenoud doordacht systeem zomaar overhoop te gooien. Gesteld dat men indertijd ooit die consensus heeft bereikt tenminste.
Tenzij het natuurlijk recentelijk gewoon ergens overeengekomen is om alles te hernoemen, en gezien we uit het verleden (zowel op commons, als op de wikipedia's in de verschillende talen) al genoeg geleerd hebben omzichtig om te springen met het zomaar omgooien van categorieën waar tientallen gebruikers in het verleden hebben over nagedacht, ben ik dus wat dat betreft wel wat bezorgd. (Maar niet echt om het uiteindelijk gebruikte voorzetsel zelf, zolang het maar duidelijk is). Enig idee of er recentelijk daar ergens een uitvoerige discussie of consensus is geweest op een van de commons talk pages? Het zou wel zo netjes zijn dat mijn bij hernoemingsverzoeken daar minstens naar kan verwijzen ;-) --LimoWreck (talk) 19:25, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The meeste moves ware harmonisaties, niet echte moves. Hopelijk brengt de discussie die je op gang getrokken hebt wat meer klaarheid in de zaak. User:Mircea is gewoonlijk zeer voorzichtig an bij het minste teken van onrust verdwijnt hij, met alle voor- en nadelen. Het is trouwens hoogtijd dat die zaak wat uitgehelderd wordt en iedere steun hierbij is welkom.

Beste groet. --Foroa (talk) 21:39, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Translation of your message[edit]

Dear Foroa: this is the translation of the message you left in Lmbuga's page. Feel free if you want to add it to the former. I offered to translate the messages from/to Lmbuga, in the hope that it will solve the main communication problems. Cheers! --Balbo (talk) 11:31, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Primero, tengo que pedir perdón por no ser capaz de comunicarme contigo en tu propio idioma. Eso no significa que no sea capaz de apreciar el valor de tu trabajo y más específicamente tus esfuerzos para encontrar un consenso en el debate sobre municipios en España y las necesidades de los diversos grupos lingüísticos en España. Siento que estás concluyendo demasiado rápido en lo que yo considero pequeños errores y unos cuantos problemas de comunicación. Por favor: tómate tu tiempo y reconsidéralo. Commons necesita gente como tú." End of the translation. --Balbo (talk) 11:31, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Balbo, I noticed your efforts and I thank you for it. Anyway, I am under the impression that Lmbuga has no problems whatsoever in reading English, but that he feels frustrated to write in English. I could be wrong though. --Foroa (talk) 13:59, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

19th Century photography in Brazil[edit]

I had a lot of work scanning and putting all those images in Commons and even more work on creating categories for each one to make things easier for anyone who would like to search for such images.

And now not only the category was erased, but also the sub-categories (Pedro II, Cities, Military, etc...).

Was that really necessary? Because it´s frustrating when you do something and then another person undoes it for no necessary reason.

Anyway, thank you for your time. --Lecen (talk) 12:17, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think that this is a misunderstanding. You created the category:19th Century photography in Brazil as a gallery. I just moved the gallery part into 19th Century photography in Brazil, a real gallery as indicated in the edit summary (log) (See COM:G and COM:C). So there where no real subcategories, but a gallery with several sections. And anyway, because the system keeps a history, nothing disappears permanently. Don't hesitate to ask for further questions. --Foroa (talk) 13:56, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Translation[edit]

Wrong translation, please change

  • Guipuscoa : Français : Province de Guipuscoa, en Espagne into Français : Province du Guipuscoa, en Espagne
  • Álava : Français : Province Àlave, à Espagne into Français : Province d'Àlava, en Espagne

Please add

  • Biscay : Français : Province de Biscaye, en Espagne

cause I do not have permission to edit this page. Thank you --Zorion (talk) 15:40, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Álava, Biscay, Guipuscoa, Basque Autonomous Community, Navarre and the Land of Valencia[edit]

Haz el favor de desbloquear momentáneamente las categorías de: Álava, Biscay, Guipuscoa, Basque Autonomous Community, Navarre y Land of Valencia.

Sólo quiero darle la misma apariencia que el resto de categorías de las autonomías y provincias de España (por ejemplo: Galicia, Extremadura, Almería o Alicante). Hartelijk dank! Patricia Rios (talk) 20:32, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

With pleasure. Hopefully, they can remain unlocked. --Foroa (talk) 23:05, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here we go again[edit]

Now he/she/it's been reverting valid editions and deleting select interwikis; guess he/she/it doesn't like a taste of his/her/its own medicine. --Llapissera -> (chalk) 12:57, 12 December 2008 (UTC) P.S: sorry to bother you again; I take it's a war you cannot step in but as an observer...[reply]

In such a war, nobody wins. There is sufficient place for all of us and all perspectives. She evolved quite a lot last months in the positive sense. Apparently, there is still a long way to go... --Foroa (talk) 14:59, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're right: sad news is that user could do a great task, but instead she (?) chose to be deliberately partial instead and now's started calling me things, as if we couldn't see yet what their true colors are; digging one's own grave, though... --Llapissera -> (chalk) 01:21, 13 December 2008 (UTC) P.S: on the category you just protected, there's still a couple of interwikis missing that were consciously obliterated after your previous revert; I just didn't notice them after my edition.[reply]
Land_of_Valencia unprotected again. --Foroa (talk) 09:33, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ya lo decía filósofo griego: Nada hay en el mundo tan común como la ignorancia y los charlatanes. Eso es lo que eres, Foroa, un pobre ignorante y charlatán, que se deja guiar por una manada de cínicos nacionalistas anti-españoles. Y pese a tu severa ignorancia, tienes gran parte de culpa del circo en el que se han convertido las categorías de algunas comunidades y provincias españolas, al "meter las narices" en temas que desconoces por completo. Pero bueno, ya se sabe que la enfermedad del ignorante es ignorar su propia ignorancia... Ojalá muy pronto logres ver el error en el que estás. Más trabajar en lo que uno sabe, y menos tocar los cojones al personal. Patricia Rios (talk) 20:34, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am honoured and touched by your verbal virtuosity and the fact that you seem to know most things better than the rest of the people of Spain altogether. I, I limit myself in an exercise of cooperation, democracy and protection of the Commons community. --Foroa (talk) 21:31, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am not the Spanish who better knows Spain, but I know him better than you. You are, undoubtedly, the worst of the vandals, because apart from being "the accomplice of the thief ", you are "policeman" too. But you are an incompetent "policeman". Patricia Rios (talk) 21:39, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, I am a bit of a Belgian idiot. I have only a little experience in a country with three official languages, I can only fluently read five languages, I have a limited background in latin and I am useless in Spain. The only thing where I try to be really good at is helping a colloborative community to make progress. One day, hopefuly, you might understand that. --Foroa (talk) 22:41, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've added almost every language interwiki to Land of Valencia in Wikipedia I could find but for the ones written right to left (didn't know how to make them work), so even a dunce could see every short line's taken from each version's page. Then I think that might better have been placed in category Land of Valencia instead, or perhaps in both. You can keep it protected for now, if there's no further betterment to be made... --Llapissera -> (chalk) 01:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC) P.S: thanks again; hope we haven't to discuss anything more (save for Flemish music or linguistics, of course)![reply]

Where to discuss deletions[edit]

Hallo Foroa! (In English because of possible Swedish interest.) Although I objected at Category talk:Members of the Riksdag for the Social Democratic Party, you deleted the category. The deletion is no big deal in itself. What I am wondering about is where one discusses these things. The proposition came from a person who does not react at User talk:Vogler#Kategori-flytt, and who is hardly active on commons. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 14:40, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The request has been made on 5 december. my understanding was that several of the politicians belonged to another party anyway. The request has been passed to the delinker on 9 december at 9h31 and executed in the evening at 22:29. Your request from clarification came on 9 dec 21:42 without a response. Several days after the transfer, I transformed the category to a redirect.
On 12 december, you transformed the category back to a move request, which made no sense anymore, so I deleted it.
We have daily people that feel that they should add deeper categories, others that are trying to collapse several categories into into one single one. Not always easy, but for a category with few elements, the reverting takes relatively little effort. It is difficult to keep the move request list manageable, especially because there is little reaction on comments and even if there is opposition or comments, people don't react and leave them "hanging" in that category.
It is clear that for "big" discussions and deletions, more formal discussions have to happen at another level: move requests are only for categories which should encounter little or no discussions (and are easy to restore).

--Foroa (talk) 18:38, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The category was a bit of a remnant from the time that member photos from the Riksdag were on commons. Mayby more than a hundred images of social democrat members had been uploaded, but those needed to be deleted. You are right that the little that was left could have easily been done by hand, and I can also easily revert it by hand. But I do not like to do that without discussion. Maybe a week is too fast for people that are not regulars on commons? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 20:00, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]


The move request category can only be maintained and remain responsive when the content and delay is limited and there are not too many requets. Right now, it is too big. If there are really (big) discussions, they have to move to Cfd or deletion requests. --Foroa (talk) 22:33, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bedankt voor "undoing" de bot-edits van Sz-iwbot[edit]

Hallo Foroa,

Bedankt voor "undoing" de bot-edits van Sz-iwbot. Nogal irritante bot, die orchideeen-galleries zijn een hoop werk en ik zie ze niet graag weer verdwijnen. Ik wilde ook een blocking-request op Commons:Administrators' noticeboard zetten, maar zag dat U dat al had gedaan, prima!
Vr. gr., maarten Sepp (talk) 11:47, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ja, werkt al maanden op mijn zenuwen, heeft al een of twee keer beterschap beloofd, maar zijn source blijkt niet veranderd (het Python framework vermoedelijk wel). Probleem is dat hij slechts sporadisch tussen schijnt te komen, dus moeilijker te traceren. De eerstkomende dagen vooral goed opvolgen om te zien of het effectief geholpen heeft en zoniet, blijven aandringen. --Foroa (talk) 18:43, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request for adminship[edit]

Hi Foroa, I'd like to tell you that I have recently made a request for adminship. You might want to express your opinion about it. Best regards, --Eusebius (talk) 22:16, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re:Cities in Spain[edit]

Hello Foroa, yes, I suppose it can be done, but first I think a category scheme should be proposed for Spain with the results of the discussion. I may do it this weekend and then I'll let you know. Cheers. Anna (talk) 21:26, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

File:Lion key Augusta Raurica 1.JPG[edit]

hi there,

thanks for your concern. I just received an email from the museum in Augusta Raurica explicitly stating that photography is allowed in the museum, just as I thought. I think some users are still not familiar with the Commons rule Commons:Image_casebook#Museum_and_interior_photography. Merry X-mas. Gryffindor (talk) 04:13, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the Christmas review![edit]

Hi Foroa/archive 2008. I would like to thank you for the interest you have shown in my request for adminship, and for the time you have taken to review my profile. As a Christmas present I've just been given the admin tools, for which I'm thankful as well. I have understood all the remarks that have been made during the review period. I will take them into account and begin using the tools with much care, until I gain more experience and self-confidence. Thanks again, and Merry Christmas! --Eusebius (talk) 15:12, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Images taken with...[edit]

Thanks for the info, did not know this. --Martin H. (talk) 13:56, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, as you can see in Category:Non-empty category redirects, typical problems with templates that include categories such as user templates and the ones of the German librairy. --Foroa (talk) 21:09, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]