Category talk:Harrogate (disambiguation)

 Oppose Harrogate, the settlement in North Yorkshire is the clear primary topic here. "Primary topic" means the overwhelmingly most significant topic of the name, in any context. If it exists, its not something that can vary depending on if you ask an English-speaking American or a French-speaking Algerian. Commons also does have a primary topic rule - Category:Cats, not Category:Cats (musical), is a prime example.

As for evidence as to why this Harrogate is the primary topic:

1. Its at the base name for all 26 Wikipedias with articles on it. By comparision, Harrogate, South Australia only has an article on en.wp and the Borough of Harrogate has articles on 6 wikis, all disambiguated.
2. Harrogate, N Yorks is an important regional centre and has a population of 71,000 compared to 300 for the Australian town - over 200 times bigger!
3. Harrogate, the district, is the subsidiary meaning of the 2 UK terms: If someone is from Ripon, they won't say they live in Harrogate. Harrogate would be understood to mean the settlement, not the surrounding area. Outside the UK, people are much more likely to have heard of the town than the district.
4. Page view of the en.wp articles, and usage of the term externally (eg by the BBC) both support these assertions.

Incidentally, the propose move will not fix the apparent flooding of this category - as these files are all of "Harrogate, North Yorkshire". To prevent that will require the category tree being fixed, so that this category is added as a parent to the relevant location cats.--Nilfanion (talk)

 Support There is no formal Commons rule that allows for priority or "primary topic" on Commons. Commons is a category system, not a lottery. We are only more tolerant and make a couple of exceptions for major capital cities for historical, practical and national symbol reasons. --Foroa (talk) 13:26, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Our category system can and does include the concept of a primary topic. It is hardly the case of a "couple exceptions" for capitals, the "practical reason" you mention is actually primary topic in the wrong form (its about benefiting users of our content, not ourselves). I could easily give dozens of examples from across the project where the primary topic rule is applied and gives the "right results".--Nilfanion (talk) 21:00, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

"Harrogate" is too insignificant to be eligible for a "Primary topic" clause. --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 21:38, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

70,000 population vs 200 population? That's rather more clear cut than London, England vs London, Ontario. Size doesn't really matter, relative size does.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:00, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I did not talk about relative significance. Size does matter. --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 22:05, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes size isn't totally irrelevant, but answering the question "is this topic primary?" doesn't mean "is this topic more important than (threshold value)" but "is this topic significantly more important than all other topics with similar names", that is a relative question. Primary topic determination is a relative judgement not an absolute one.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:09, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

No. First of all you have to determine whether a topic has any significance in the grand scheme of things. Only after that the question of primary topicity can be discussed. --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 22:18, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Nope - please read w:Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary topic for the reasoning. The other language Wikipedias use similar terminology, so this isn't a "follow en.wp" - you can prefer es.wp's phrasing if you prefer ;) There is no threshold. "I haven't heard of it so it can't be primary" is irrelevant.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:22, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Look, this is not the first time I have this kind of discussion. And while it is sad that you don't understand why a topic has to have at least some threshold relevance it is hardly suprising. But this follows straight forward from the reason why there is a primary topic rule in the first place. So you can't have both. A rational reason for a primary topic rule and no threshold. --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 22:31, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I'd be interested in seeing that prior discussion? I'd point out it is feasible to rate some topics in order of importance relatively easily: When one settlement is two order of magnitudes smaller than another its probably less significant by a major margin. The threshold is "much more significant than the other terms". If both terms are "completely irrelevant" then of course there's no primary topic - WP doesn't have that problem, because in that case both topics would not have articles at all. Harrogate, South Australia isn't "completely irrelevant" and neither is the English one.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Okay, so why do you want to determine the primary topic? --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 22:44, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Why do I want to determine the primary topic? The major reasoning for a primary topic is in terms of navigational utility for users of our content (not Commons users but our "readers"). If a user enters "London" in the search box, and 95% of them want media about London, England it should take them to the relevant location, if it sends them via a disambiguation, its counter-productive. That's true if its 19,000 out of 20,000 users or 19 out of 20.

IMO, this may actually be more significant for us than for WP: WP users generally find articles from external searches or via wikilinks. Our users are more likely to be following links from the various Wikipedias (and that's true whether they are readers of WP looking for some more pics of that topic, or if they are wikipedians looking to illustrate it). If they are following a link from WP, such as that at w:London#External links this then can have the same effect as using our internal search function.

Also, consider uploader behaviour. The upload wizard doesn't make a distinction between normal or disambiguation categories, users may hardcode the category in (blindly assuming it matches their home wiki) and so on. If a topic is disambiguated, then it might end up in the disambig cat not the correct subject cat - and so require cleanup by the uploader or someone else. If its a primary topic, then the benefits of making it primary (vast majority of users get it right, some get it wrong) outweigh the negatives (most users are liable to get it wrong, unless they know our category schemes). If 95% of images of "London" uploaded are of London, England, then its likely that ~95% of images placed in Category:London) are of the English one. Again, that's just as true if its 19,000 out of 20,000 files or 19 files out of 20.

Its easier to clean up misplaced files in a disambiguation category than in a primary topic category - but maintenance should be considered secondary to utility for users (its better they get to what they are looking for than have to go via a dab, than for us to be able to maintain more easily). If the primary topic has such a high quantity of media that it gets slapped with {{Categorise}} then it should contain very few files directly, so fixing rogue files is as easy there as on a dab category.--Nilfanion (talk) 23:23, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

"but maintenance should be considered secondary to utility for users" Sad that you left the path of rational discours although you did not really have to. If you think misplaced files in categories are a secondary problem I don't see that we have anything more to talk about. --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 05:07, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Our primary concern should be utility for "users" (users means people using Commons to find media, not users of Commons), maintenance is secondary to that. If something is clearly better for our users, even if it is an administrative pain it should be done. That doesn't mean that maintenance is irrelevant as ignoring it needs is not helpful for them (it would result in a hideous mess of course), but we shouldn't let maintenance get in the way of usability. Bot-ops, in particular, should do what is best for our users rather than make those users conform with what is best for the bot-ops. I could mention that this category, along with all UK town/city categories, belong in the "should be tagged with {{Catdiffuse}}/{{Categorise}} due to the Geograph upload meaning hundreds or thousands of relevant files - so the maintenance cost is not significantly different for a primary topic or dab in any case.

And that's a secondary point in any case and doesn't address my other points, which are the motivation for primary topics.--Nilfanion (talk) 09:10, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Using primary topics, like on google, makes in next to impossible to find other related items. What about Harrogate, Tenessee - Harrogate Lake, Ontario - Harrogate Springs, US - Harrogate BC - ... Again, we need a system, not a lottery. --Foroa (talk) 08:15, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Primary topic is not a lottery when applied correctly. Harrogate Springs, and Harrogate Lake are not "Harrogate" and no-one would call them the plain name (so they are not relevant - even though a dab might list them), Harrogate TN and BC are again very small compared to the english locality so its extremely unlikely that they are a priority (to anyone). If there is a primary topic, its significantly more likely than the others. There's dozens of things called "Sea" (including a hamlet in the UK, that the bot has incorrectly placed there) - that doesn't mean that Sea should be a dab. Why not? Because the body of water is the primary topic and its not helpful to anyone to make people looking for pictures of the big blue thing go through a dab.--Nilfanion (talk) 09:10, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

The discussion concerns disambiguation of place names. I challenge you to find quickly the Harrogates in Canada and the US that are not on your list (same problem on en:wikipedia). Through the massive amount of images such as from geograph, there will be plenty of hamlets/quarters that will pop up, such as Category:Belle Isle that was completely mixed up and that I had to disambiguate too. Or will you claim that Belle Isle, Leeds is a primary topic because it has the biggest population, most images, biggest surface, most money/inhabitant, most culture, most history, ... ? As another example, I might soon find all uncategorised en:Plymouth (disambiguation) images and drop them in Category:Plymouth: after all, this is the primary topic and it has already more than 700 images, so no worry to add a few hundreds. --Foroa (talk) 10:46, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Population isn't the sole measure of significance. In fact, its not that important for "primary topic" at all: What matters is what users want. If you read the en guidelines you'll notice their tests have nothing to do with the subject, and everything to do with "page views", "links" and so on. For settlements, its reasonable to assert it that if its much bigger (say 10,000 vs 100) its more significant (more people will look for it because its bigger, likely has a broader history etc etc. You'll notice I mentioned the raw page view stats above to demonstrate that yes this assumption is reasonable. The population metric fails completely with non-settlements: you can't compare Phoenix, Arizona to Phoenix, the bird, by saying Phoenix has thousands of inhabitants, therefore its more important than something that doesn't exist. The metrics WP use don't fail in that manner: You can directly compare the 107,000 who wanted the bird compared to the 97,000 who wanted the Arizona city, and conclude that neither is "significantly more likely" than the other. Commons "primary topic" should be different to en.wikipedia's "primary topic". To make up some numbers, if on Wikpedia it takes 75% of users to want a topic to make it primary, for us it should be 90% and for it to be unlikely that different language groups have wildly differing priorities (not a concern for en). That's a higher bar, but doesn't mean its not unattainable.--Nilfanion (talk) 11:08, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Commons is not a wikipedia, it is a media server that needs reliable access and properly named items that exclude as far as possible. The major category naming requirement in COM:CAT states In practice, it implies that you'll associate a single subject with a given category. The category name would be enough to guess the subject. The guesser can be anyone local to the subject but equally somewhere in Siberia. All primary subject discussions are in contradiction with this and irrelevant for the naming. --Foroa (talk) 12:28, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

• This discussion has been silent for over 50 days. If more discussion was going to make the consensus clearer, I believe it would have happened by now, though the requested move process isn't very visible, unfortunately. In terms of the written policy, Foroa is correct when he states that category names should "be enough to guess the subject" for users. Consensus here isn't crystal clear, but it is fairly so, that moving this category would be the best option. Courcelles (talk) 07:38, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Move back

It is silly having this page broken down. Harrogate in North Yorkshire is clearly the main subject matter. Why haven't we dabbed London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds etc in this case. I can see why Halifax is dabbed as there are two notable settlements with that name but it is silly for Harrogate. Mtaylor848 (talk) 14:51, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The category has now been sifted through so it could probably easily be moved back to the town being primary. Crouch, Swale (talk) 15:43, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

I am priopsing to move it back, to expand on before, Harrogate, North Yorkshire has a population of 75,950 (town) and 157,267 (district, of which is a sub topic) compared to 4,389 for Harrogate, Tennessee and 319 for Harrogate, South Australia. Harrogate, Tennessee would still be at that title even if there were no other uses per w:WP:USPLACE because it is common use to refer to places in the US with their state name, Harrogate, South Australia is similar although the naming conventions for Australia has been dropped. Harrogate in England would appear to be less clear what people would refer to it and sources are split. Would it be called Harrogate, North Yorkshire, Harrogate, West Riding of Yorkshire, Harrogate, Yorkshire, Harrogate, England, Harrogate, United Kingdom or Harrogate, Great Britain Harrogate the town appears to also be the original, it appears all others are named after it and Harrogate is an uncommon name unlike Stoke, Newton, Preston etc. Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:00, 15 July 2016 (UTC)