Category talk:Images

I just wanted to start a talk page here to avoid confusion or needless work for people adding or changing image categories. Also, as this is a very broad topic and concept, likely to be a long term WIP, any major changes or updates to image categorisation can be documented here for reference and guidance. Llamageddon (talk) 14:37, 27 September 2023 (CEST)

Supercategories and Subcategories

Overview

I'm giving this its own section on the talk page as a specific overview/mini-guide rather than a typical discussion.

The foundation for this was the result of a concerted effort by Harakoni to start organising all wiki images into categories for easier searching and uploading by wiki editors.

• 'Supercategories' refers to categories that are intended to only contain other categories, as is the case with the article page being discussed here, Category: Images.
• 'Subcategories' refers to categories that are contained within a supercategory but are intended to contain links to pages on the wiki, rather than other categories.
  • Due to necessity or pragmatism, the lines between these two category types can be flexible. For instance, adding an image to 'Category: Images' temporarily, if the correct category is unknown or doesn't exist, is preferable to uploading it without a category.

The main goal is to have most images under specific subcategories of a related supercategory. The intended result of this is that images can have a single specific category on their page, whilst still being sorted and navigable under related supercategories, such as:

• Game files such as "Faded" and "Unfaded" tooltips, and Icons being individual subcategories of the "Images" supercategory.
• Specific item images being able to be sorted according to their item categories:
  • E.g. - Category: Images ⇒ Category: Item Icons ⇒ Category: Equipment Icons ⇒ Category: Armour Icons ⇒ Category: Light Armour Icons.

In the above example, an uploaded image file of the icon for a piece of light armour can be given the single category of 'Light Armour Icons' and still nominally and functionally be under all the preceding categories as well.

An added benefit to all this is that it often makes it a lot easier to reorganise categories without needing to individually edit hundreds of pages (you can just change what supercategory a given subcategory is subordinate to. Llamageddon (talk) 15:19, 27 September 2023 (CEST)

Discussion

Manual Categories and Supercategories

At least one editor has been quite vocal about disliking manual categories, and I tried to take this into account. I made a Category: Supercategories, as they are the most page-independent "cats" in use. This may appear counterintuitive, but is intended for easier management of "supercats", especially if broad changes to the current system ever arise. This seemed like a potentially valid use of a "category category", as an exception. I am not advocating for any "Category: Category Category Categories" though.

Despite images having a manually assigned category, as long as it conforms to a logical style convention, they should only need to be assigned once on upload. Supercats have no directly related file uploads, though should also require minimal oversight after creation. In the case of image cats, it is probably more helpful than usual to include a sentence on intended usage to some pages. I thought it might be helpful to just mention all of the above somewhere. Llamageddon (talk) 16:11, 28 September 2023 (CEST)

Generic and Shared Images

I've noticed that a lot of images that are shared between multiple items are being uploaded individually per item as duplicates or shared between items with an illogical name. As a hypothetical example, a book image might be uploaded as 'Book of Dragon Slaying Faded.png' and also be used for the "Book of Cat Healing", using the 'Book of Dragon Slaying.png' as its referenced image.

This is obviously confusing and not very intuitive to editors, and also leads to even more duplicates being uploaded. I read up about this on some MediaWiki help pages and related sites, and redirects for file pages (no longer) have any issues and cause negligible server overhead, just like any other redirect.

I recommended in cases like these (using the above example) that a shared image is moved to a descriptive image page name: 'Book of Dragon Slaying Faded.png' and 'Book of Cat Healing Faded.png' would be added to the wiki as file page redirects to the main generic image page. This would mean that those item pages can still link to intuitively named images, whilst avoiding duplicates or confusing/illogical image names being used for the main shared images. Llamageddon (talk) 15:51, 27 September 2023 (CEST)