Commons talk:Categories

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Sortkey recommendations

Regarding this:

The special sortkey τ (lowercase Greek letter Tau) is used to sort templates at the end of the related Commons-category, see for example Category:Transport templates sorted in Category:Transport. (Sorting in Commons is not case sensitive so only uppercase Τ (Tau) is shown.)

I wonder whether this is a good recommendation. I tried it for a few categories and I found it quite confusing because the uppercase Tau is, in practice, visually indistinguible from the latin letter T. I see a lot of template categories with a sortkey of ~ and would actually consider that a very good idea because it's sorted after Z, it's visually recognizable, and it's a character which you probably can find on way more keyboards than the Tau.

On a side note, I would expect using three different dashes as sortkeys to create a lot of confusion, and for many people it will be hard to understand the difference between them. So I would also suggest to remove any mention of the emdash and the endash here.

Thanks -- Reinhard Müller (talk) 15:35, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

agreed. i think common practice is using ~ for anything commons-, or more broadly, wikimedia-related stuff.

the dashes were added by https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3ACategories&diff=prev&oldid=703824439 . RZuo (talk) 15:40, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

@W like wiki: any input from your side? --Reinhard Müller (talk) 15:53, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Grüß Dich @Reinhard Müller: Yes, I agree. I can't remember on which Commons page I read this recommondation with the Greek Tau before including it here, but I had always the same problems, need to copy paste it from here or even made a copy of this on my user page. And also about the equal look to normal "T" I was not so happy, but when I wrote this chapter I can not create a new rule. But when we do this now I appreciate!

Same with the dashes. Maybe some have an idea if they are useful, but also here I would apreciate a changing, deletion in this case. Best Regards -- W like wiki  ^{Please ping me! • Postive1 • Postive2}  16:25, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to everybody who commented! I updated the page and hope that I didn't mess up anything regarding the translation. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 18:15, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Controversial categories

Hi, I'd like to get feedback regarding categories that can be seen as controversial. On en-wiki, there is a rule that

Categorizations should generally be uncontroversial; if the category's topic is likely to spark controversy, then a list article (which can be annotated and referenced) is probably more appropriate.

As far as I can see there is no such policy on Wikicommons. Is there some other policy which deals with this issue? What is the community consensus?

To provide a concrete example, this edit added back the category Territories under occupation by Russia to the category Abkhazia. This is controversial, since while the overwhelming majority of countries consider Abkhazia to be a part of Georgia, only a minority explicitly said that it's occupied by Russia (see Wikipedia:Russian-occupied_territories_in_Georgia#International_position).

I believe that this category isn't helpful since the category name cannot explain all these nuances. It would be better to create a page/gallery with the related media. I'm pinging User:Laurel_Lodged who has added this category. Alaexis (talk) 09:21, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree that some such policy is needed in Commons. I agree that "Categorizations should generally be uncontroversial". But one editor's uncontroversial is another editor's hot potato. Unlike Wiki, Commons does not lend itself to list article creation. So the likely solution is a case-by-case evaluation and an agreement to adhere to community consensus. By the way, regarding Abkhazia, Wiki itself says, "On 23 October 2008, the Parliament of Georgia declared Abkhazia a Russian-occupied territory, a position shared by most United Nations member states. So it's not just me. Laurel Lodged (talk) 15:05, 28 May 2024 (UTC) Laurel Lodged (talk) 15:05, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Ehh, where do you see that in the source? I've tagged it on en-wiki. If I'm missing something and the source does say it, then indeed it wouldn't be controversial and I would not object to placing Abkhazia in this category. Alaexis (talk) 20:23, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

"Georgia asserted that the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, including the upper Kodori Valley, were occupied by Russian forces. On 23 October, the Parliament of Georgia adopted a law declaring Abkhazia and South Ossetia “occupied territories” and the Russian Federation a “military occupier.” This claim was reiterated […] In describing the “current occupation” Georgia also stated: “the western part of the former ‘buffer zone’ (the village of Perevi in the Sachkhere District) remains under Russian occupation." If Wiki is making claims not supported by sources, then Wiki is the place to make those edits. Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:30, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely. But there is a difference between *Georgia* considering it an occupied territory and "most UN members" sharing this position. I never argued with the former. Alaexis (talk) 08:42, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

References

FYI: Moved historical page, redirected that target to this page

"Commons:Naming categories" now redirects to this commons: ns page. It was problematic for the number of links (internal and from WD), and the confusion being caused with the pre-existing arrangement.

The page that was at that space is now at Commons:Naming categories (historical). The number of links to its detail are minimal, and it should not be problematic for functional management of this site having it moved.  — billinghurst sDrewth 00:02, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Sortkey recommendations

a question that bounced around in my mind a few times is what are the purposes of each of the symbolic sortkeys? the most commons ones I see are '(space)', '*', '+' and '~'. what are their roles?

So far, that's not clearly defined, and different people use completely different sortkey prefixes for the same purpose.

I have collected a few ideas about what could be seen as "best practice". I don't know whether we actually want to come up with a policy or at least a recommendation, but if, then this list might serve as a base for that. Thanks --Reinhard Müller (talk) 07:02, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

another thing while discussing sorting is a common thing that I see in category pages with accent marks in the titles: they use {{DEFAULTSORT:}} to exclude remove the accents. simple example is 'café' which is turned into {{DEFAULTSORT:cafe}}. if this is something that should be encouraged in the wiki, please feel free to add it to the policy! Juwan (talk) 10:11, 8 July 2024 (UTC)