| Going after your uploads - why do you get all the notifications?
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So, why did I suddenly pick dozens of your maps and/or other files that you uploaded and why did I maniacally categorized them all in one day, or over the course of a week or a month? (Or worse, deletion-requested all/half/a lot of them, see below.) Why did I focus on YOUR work? Am I mad and obsessed with you, do you need to be concerned about me stalking you?
Answer: No, I just think it is easier that way: I recognized that you uploaded lots of stuff and that it wasn't yet properly categorized (to my standards). I found out that it's just plain inefficient to just categorize one of your maps, and find another one later and then categorize that one, and then much later find another one or two: Each time, I have to find out what the map was about, where 'your' region is, and what 'your' topic is. (Most people do have regions/topics, believe me). Doing the categorization successively from your entire upload list at once saves a lot of people (or possibly just me) the work to go through all of them later individually, and I have the context of your other stuff right then and there as guidance. For example, sometimes people upload just a copyvio GoogleMap of their village and three fotos of the same village: After the map gets deleted, nobody can locate the images anymore, and they will never get properly categorized! That is why I go routinely after the upload lists, and that's what these are there for.
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| "Old maps" vs "Maps showing history"
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Okay, this is an established principle in the category tree, but not fully understood by many:
- Old maps of... categorizes maps by the date which they were created. Many map-categories have the sub-category "Old maps of region" which may then branch out into "19th-century maps of region" and be further subdivided into "1800 maps of..." and "1810 maps of..." If a map of Paris is created in the year 1812, it goes into "1810s maps of Paris"... even if it's a map showing Paris in the year 1792!
- Maps showing history of... categorize the maps by what is shown. The subcategories are usally not straightforward, but for example in the case of France, we have "Maps of 18th-century France". There are also "Maps of Ancient Greece/Rome/Israel": These maps are not necessary old, maybe they were created last week by another uploader.
- Old maps showing history is a topic that was originally intended in the category-system, but has not been fully implemented over the years: When the category tree was drafted, there weren't enough maps there to justify a lot of effort yet. By now however, there are many old maps showing history, so I singlehandedly created "Category:1890s maps showing history" and the like, and I sort all maps into those categories accordingly, when I come across them on my patrols. I estimate however that most "old maps showing history" are currently categorized in one of the other two categories, and probably in a wrong way. If you have a suggestion on the matter, please contact me.
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| "Old maps by decade" vs "Old maps by year"
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Okay, this is a tricky one. I am regularly moving files into parent categories (by decade or even by century), after they were painstakingly scattered into child-categories (by year). So, why would I do that?
The answer is that we are using categories in Commons to group similar maps together, in this many cases maps from a similar period in time of the same region. Separating them into single-file categories runs counter to that idea of grouping.
Let me expound on a fictional example: The category "Old maps of Nottingham" contains seventeen files, showing various maps of Nottingham from 1506, 1612, 1718, 1824, 1892, 1898, 1899, 1904, 1907, 3x 1915, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1942, 1948. In my opinion, that is a great category. And then there are users who think it is even better to break it up and create a subcategory for each year: "1506 maps of Nottingham" (with one file), "1612 maps of Nottingham" (with one file), and so on. Probably, they also use decade- and century-categories as well, and after "ordering" the category in such a way, they leave the place of destruction with a sense of having done their duty; and whoever wants to browse "Old maps of Nottingham" has to open and click a hundred times to look through seventeen maps, if they use the category tree. I do hope that this sound like madness to everyone who reads this.
But, this is done. Not in the case of Nottingham, but for example in the case of "Old maps of Serbia". Sure, I expect that for an entire country, there are a lot more maps around, than just for Nottingham. And there sure are. But if you look for "1505 maps of Serbia" and "1506 maps of Serbia": How many maps do you expect to find on Commons? If there is one, it may be sitting lonely in the "1506 maps of Serbia" category, which is again sitting lonely in the "1500s maps of Serbia" category, which is then sitting with ten other similarly "full" categories within the "16th-century maps of Serbia" parent category. Again, I say this is madness. When there are many dozens or even hundreds of files in the parent category, or when there is a group of several files standing out: then I concede the case there is a reason to create new subcategories. But. not. for. single. files. Period.
And hey, there is another nice reason to not scatter maps too much: take a look at this piece and at Category:Map of Constantinopel by Sebastian Münster: If you categorize them each into their respective publication year, it makes it much harder to find a certain pattern - like that it's each time the same map, or at least a copy/variant of the same map. If you have less than 4 dozen maps in your category, it is easy to spot them and group them. If you sort the maps strictly by year, you might miss out on the obvious. Pre-industrial publications were often republished in later years, or they show up in textbooks a lot. And that may even happen with maps today: The CIA world factbook is published each year, after all, with the respective country map often not changing each year.
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| Why am I removing categories of things that are indicated in a map??
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For example, why did I remove the "Maps of Tibet" category from your world map which clearly depicted the Himalayas? Or remove the "Maps of Lithuania" from after you already added that category to an old map of medieval Europe? To everyone who has never seen such categorizations: don't laugh that off! There are a lot of old maps of Europe where patriots from smaller countries apparently felt the need to point out that in "these many ancient maps, there is actually an inscription that notices the presence of my little country"! This is a regular case with Bosnia, Lithuania, Armenia, Tibet, Kosovo, but even certain cities: Lhasa is actually labelled in a 1896 world map? Quick, this is a "19th-century maps of Lhasa" entry!
Here's my point: Ugh, don't do that. There is such a thing as over-categorization, and if every label was worth a category, each map would have thousands of meaningless categories.
There are of course less sinister cases, but in the end we're in the same place: Take any map that shows the whole Caucasus. Of course, it necessarily shows the areas of the three currently independent states of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. But that doesn't mean we need to point out that belongs into "Maps of Georgia", "Maps of Azerbaijan" and "Maps of Armenia": It is a "Map of the Caucasus". In the same way, we don't need to categorize generic "Maps of the Balkans" with each single country that happens to be on the Balkans. Not even when it's a 1506 map of the Balkan, and you as a patriot are very excited to point out the faint label "Servja" with a "1506 maps of Serbia" category. The same applies to "Old maps of Scandinavia" (no need to point out Sweden!) or "Old maps of the Holy Roman Empire" (no need to point out Heydelbergh, and no need to point out that there is a label of "Poland" at the eastern side).
Please think of the people who will eventually browse the category that you filled with all the clutter: While I am still writing this essay, "Maps of Lhasa" is filled to the brim with maps of India, maps of China, maps of entire Asia and old world maps. And very, VERY few actual maps of Lhasa.
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