ITookSomePhotos

Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, ITookSomePhotos!

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-- Wikimedia Commons Welcome (talk) 18:53, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

File:Insect to be identified.jpg

Hello, ITookSomePhotos! I happened on your post on the enWP RD/S, and noticed that the file was uncategorized. You mentioned southern England; I believe we have a full set of Insects of (county) categories (maybe even Flies of (county)), so adding a suitable one of those—and possibly expanding the description—would be helpful. Also, if you happen to know what kind of flower it’s on, we’ll have cats for that too, and for flora of counties by season. Not only does this kind of information add to the value of our collection in general, but here it might aid an expert in making a positive ID. Happy editing!—Odysseus1479 (talk) 01:29, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

P.S. I just saw that you’ve uploaded quite a few images without categories, so am adding the following message template. One thing it doesn’t mention is the HotCat Gadget, which is very handy for the purpose, suggesting auto-completions (like a search box) and doing all the wiki-code for you.

@Odysseus1479: Thanks for your note. I have been meaning to go back and add categories when I get around to it, but I was slightly discouraged by my first encounter with the category system, see at Commons:Help_desk/Archive/2021/09#Search_feature, where I learned, amongst other things, that "Category:Places -> Category:Places in the United Kingdom" is not where one looks for, er, places in the United Kingdom.

Anyway, if you are familiar with the way the system works, could you help me with a couple of questions that I have?

At Commons:Categories#Creating_a_new_category, it says that one should "Do a thorough search, to be sure there isn't an existing category that will serve the purpose". How would I do this "thorough search"? I understand that for predictable category names one can start typing in the category box at file upload, and look for a suitable completion, but it seems this wouldn't work in cases where a category could be named in multiple different ways, or different word orders. Is there a more reliable way, or perhaps some way to search all existing categories for a particular string(s) anywhere in the category name?

Also at Commons:Categories#Creating_a_new_category, it refers to adding "Category-links that put it into one or more parent categories. At the bottom of the new page, insert lines of the form Category:Relevant categories." Are these "links to parent categories" the ONLY way in which the category hierarchy is defined, and the way in which pages such as e.g. Category:Topics are constructed? Or is there any other separate data structure(s) somewhere else?

Finally, I originally imagined that the same category name could potentially exist with different meanings in different parts of the category hierarchy (just like the same file name can exist in different folders), but now I am thinking that this is impossible, and every category name has to be globally unique, right? ITookSomePhotos (talk) 17:28, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

No fault for feeling intimidated; in many respects the system is a mess, or more charitably a work in progress, and the guidelines make things seem simpler than they are. To start with, the software substrate was designed for WP, in a rather inchoate stage at that, not for a media repository. Then, while there are many well observed practices and conventions here, there is also considerable heterogeneity or inconsistency according to the preferences & priorities of the editors who have built out various parts of the structure. The amount of detail in any given topic is a rather arbitrary product of editor interest and the quantity of files under it. Places by country is an example of a template-based scheme that has seen patchy development; the UK branch is rudimentary, as you found, and Places in Canada doesn’t even exist (yet?). In general my approach is to hope for no more than an incremental improvement, without expecting it ever to be ‘right’ … where there are inconsistencies I mostly try to find the best example to emulate in a nearby branch. When in doubt where to put an image I go up to the most specific category I’m sure of, hoping a ‘specialist’ will come along and refine according to the local scheme.

All I can really suggest for finding categories in general is to explore by guessing something semantically near or parallel (or following an auto-completed link from the search box, HotCat or Cat-a-lot), and navigating up and down that part of the tree. With experience your guesses will get better. The broadest categories tend to be the most disorderly-seeming; within narrower topics the patterns of naming and organization are often more apparent. In the standard search form you can choose what namespaces to search, including Category: (by unchecking everything else).

Yes, the entire structure consists in the individual child-to-parent links on each category page. That said, I believe there are plans to eventually migrate the system to COM:Structured data. At this stage it‘s being developed separately; most of the editing activity seems to be by bots ATM, copying the low-hanging fruit—machine-parsable info—from file metadata into a database structure that may be more fit for purpose. I know very little about this myself, but at this point it has no bearing on categorization as such. (Note that some cats are inserted via template, so their names may not appear in the wikitext of a page that shows them.)

Yes, every name has to be unique within the Category: namespace (there can be gallery, Creator:, Template: &c. pages of the same name). So intersection cats are usually named with some kind of compound of their parents’ names.

Sorry if much of my advice seems vague, but if you have a specific question or problem feel free to ask my opinion.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 03:26, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@Odysseus1479: Thanks very much for your reply. ITookSomePhotos (talk) 17:22, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Tip: Categorizing images

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Hello, ITookSomePhotos!

Tip: Add categories to your files

Thanks a lot for contributing to the Wikimedia Commons! Here's a tip to make your uploads more useful: Why not add some categories to describe them? This will help more people to find and use them.

Here's how:

1) If you're using the UploadWizard, you can add categories to each file when you describe it. Just click "more options" for the file and add the categories which make sense:

2) You can also pick the file from your list of uploads, edit the file description page, and manually add the category code at the end of the page.

[[Category:Category name]]

For example, if you are uploading a diagram showing the orbits of comets, you add the following code:

[[Category:Astronomical diagrams]]

[[Category:Comets]]

This will make the diagram show up in the categories "Astronomical diagrams" and "Comets".

When picking categories, try to choose a specific category ("Astronomical diagrams") over a generic one ("Illustrations").

Thanks again for your uploads! More information about categorization can be found in Commons:Categories, and don't hesitate to leave a note on the help desk.

—01:46, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Welcome, Dear Filemover!

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Hi ITookSomePhotos, you're now a filemover. When moving files please respect the following advice:

• Use the CommonsDelinker link in the {{Rename}} template to order a bot to replace all ocurrences of the old title with the new one. Or, if there was no rename-request, please use the Move & Replace-tab.
• Please leave a redirect behind unless you have a valid reason not to do so. Other projects, including those using InstantCommons, might be using the file even though they don't show up in the global usage. Deleting the redirects would break their file references. Please see this section of the file rename guideline for more information.
• Please know and follow the file rename guidelines.

rubin16 (talk) 09:34, 6 December 2021 (UTC)