[Commons-l] 'Did you know?' ... The family tree of [[Category:Copyright statuses]] and our broken category system.

[samuli at samulilintula.net]

[[:category:Copyright_statuses]]
->[[:category:Free_licenses]]
->[[:category:GNU_licenses]]
->[[:category:GFDL]]
->[[:category:Periodic_table]]
->[[:category:Chemical_elements_by_periodic_table_row]]
->[[:category:Periodic_table_row_1]]
->[[:category:Hydrogen]]
->[[:category:Hydrogen_compounds]]
->[[:category:Water]]
->[[:category:Bodies_of_water]]
->[[:category:Islands]]
->[[:category:Islands_of_Europe]]
->[[:category:Ireland_(island)]]
->[[:category:Ireland]]
->[[:category:Culture_of_Ireland]]
->[[:category:Languages_of_Ireland]]
->[[:category:English_language]]
->[[:category:Literature_of_England]]
->[[:category:Writers_from_England]]
->[[:category:J._K._Rowling]]
->[[:category:Harry_Potter]]
->[[:category:Harry_Potter_Characters]]

> I don't think most people realize it... But our category system is
> terribly broken today.  I have provided just a few example which are
> fairly easy to fix, but everywhere you look in the category system you
> can find problems like this.

> Direct navigation is nice, but it doesn't scale to millions of images.
> For people to be able to find images on commons they will increasingly
> depend on search.

What is the problem? If people look for Harry Potter images characters,
they don's start from [[:category:Free_licenses]]. They go straigh to
[[:category:Harry_Potter]]. 2 levels deep!

Really, our system is far more useful than what Gregory suggests. I know
this because every week I transfer tens of images from fi.wikipedia to
Commons and I will have to find categories for things whose name I don't
know in English (or even in Finnish).

In fact, finding a category is often hardest when the categories aren't
specific enough. And when it comes to finding an image, for example, for
an article about art nouveau/jugend windows, [[:Category:Windows]] is just
useless. We do need categories like [[:Category:Jugend windows in
Finland]].

-- 
Ystävällisin terveisin,
Samuli Lintula