Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2023/04

Javad Nazari

With regards and respect, an article named Iranian actor and composer Javad Nazari [1] was published in German Wikipedia and even the admins there edited it. Contributed to this article [2] after a few months by one of the admins who confused Javad Nazari with another person named Javad Ramezani who was forging and tried to Deletion of the article is controversial and this was despite the fact that these two only had the same first name and the rest of the specifications were completely different from each other and it was a sign of the admin's mistake. The admin in question says that you have made a mistake. He doesn't listen at all. He doesn't give any convincing reasons. Can you please tell me what to do? I really don't know much about Wikipedia, thanks. 5.74.207.57 05:06, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

• I see no connection between this question about the German Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, the site on which you have asked it. Who is the "you" being referred to? - Jmabel ! talk 05:37, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

  As I am active on German Wikipedia, I had a quick look - there seems to be some kind of scam going on with someone using sockpuppets. Here you can find more information (mostly in German, but also helpful links to Meta and en.WP). Kritzolina (talk) 06:05, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Globally locked LTA, see Category:Sockpuppets of JavadNazari. But one should take care, there is another person with the same name. --Achim55 (talk) 13:08, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

And the Commons concern here is...? - Jmabel ! talk 15:50, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

None, really. Just someone trying to raise dust across several projects and Commons being affected on the side. Kritzolina (talk) 16:05, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

As this doesn't seem to be a proposal affecting the Wikimedia Commons in any way I am tagging it as "Resolved". I don't see much use in discussing the German-language Wikipedia here if it doesn't really affect any categories or files here. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 22:04, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 22:04, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia maps Update

Hello,

I think Wikimedia maps (commonly used in Template:Maplink) could benefit from the inclusion of names for some large/notable parks, rivers, etc... Without context, a lot of these areas blur into one color when in fact, there are multiple different parts to them (especially the green color for parks and protected areas). It might look a little like how Google Maps makes their map but with far less named areas and no pinpoints. Thank you for your time and have a great day! DiscoA340 (talk) 03:56, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Removal of links to discussion pages on deletion requests

Despite the existence of warnings, few users still post their responses on the "discussion/talk pages" of deletion requests, even if they are supposed to respond on the requests themselves. See this for one very recent case.

I am proposing the removal of links (or better, the tab) to discussion pages for all pages under "Commons:Deletion requests/", so that no more incidences of respondents posting on discussion pages instead of the deletion requests themselves can occur. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 23:36, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable if technically feasible. - Jmabel ! talk 00:47, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I think if for some reason a discussion page exists, the tab for it should be visible. But no otherwise objections against hiding the tab/redlink to prevent people from creating them in the first place. --El Grafo (talk) 09:16, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

We could build an abuse filter to prevent all not autopatrolled users to create these pages. GPSLeo (talk) 11:20, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

@GPSLeo: that sounds reasonable too. A pitfall though is a stubborn user trying to bypass the abuse filter though. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 12:38, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Limit audio and video uploads under time restrictions for new users without (auto)confirmed/patrolled rights

During the ongoing sockpuppet cases, I'm filing this as similar to that topic dating back to 2017 here. Many times ago, I saw recent changes and the abuse filter log to find them. They made throwaway accounts as sockpuppets to evade blocks using proxies or VPNs and uploaded files containing copyrighted (non-libre) works that don't belong to what they claimed as their own. I and a few others tagged those files as copyright infringement to notify them as warnings. What's worse, they ignored multiple warnings and did it again.

The goal is to make an abuse filter to prevent new users from uploading audio and videos for more than 30 seconds or one minute. - The Harvett Vault | he/him | user | talk - 03:26, 8 April 2023 (UTC); edited: 04:44, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

We may consider this in light of meta:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation. One feature set being clamored for there consists of a wider set of browser fingerprinting that can differentiate and uniquely identify users/devices. Browser fingerprints and other technical aspects of the editing sessions are currently used by CheckUsers. Elizium23 (talk) 23:55, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

How much risk the said copyright violations pose to us? I do think they should be deleted as soon as possible and prevented as much as possible. What I don't understand is the degree of urgency. whym (talk) 11:57, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

The copyright risk is on the uploader and possible reusers, not on us, but we want to avoid copyright violations sitting around. If they aren't found promptly, they may stay for a long time. But aren't abuse filters 180 and 192 working? Do you want to have the upload blocked, to avoid having to look in the logs? –LPfi (talk) 17:47, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

•  Comment, I think that the negatives outweigh the benefits. Imagine if there are users that only want to upload audio and / or video files and then never edit again, some of the most common users here only upload one (1) or a handful of images and then never edit again. Imagine someone is very active at the Wiktionary or just someone that wants to add the pronunciation for a missing word but then find out that they can't upload it because they didn't have enough edits to autoconfirmed. The higher you raise the bar to entry the less people you'll have contributing.

I think that the costs are much higher than the benefits and we shouldn't let a few bad apples ruin it for everyone, that or we must include a guide for uploading audio and video files for excluded users, if such a restriction were to be implemented.

Alternatively, we could simply automatically tag all audio and video files by new users to be manually reviewed by humans, this would allow us to catch those sockpuppets more easily and it wouldn't exclude anyone. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:16, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

This sounds like a bad idea just going by gut instinct. Stripping new users of random rights is rarely helpful. Dronebogus (talk) 17:31, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

@The Harvett Vault, please don't change the substance of your comments after people have replied to them. You're changing the context for the entire conversation. Elizium23 (talk) 04:43, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I apologize to you and everyone, as I didn't mention limiting time restrictions for this. - The Harvett Vault | he/him | user | talk - 04:55, 13 April 2023 (UTC); edited: 04:59, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

No worries; you can always just post a followup comment, in the thread chronology, to say you want to add more information. Elizium23 (talk) 18:57, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

audio files are harder to check, so definitely yes for some restrictions on uploading them.

videos are a little easier, so i dont have an opinion.--RZuo (talk) 19:24, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

You can use reverse audio search like Google, Shazam, etc., to find it before being identified. - The Harvett Vault | he/him | user | talk - 00:23, 18 April 2023 (UTC); edited: 00:27, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

At least I, hence, got a partial victory because Krd blocked a few IP ranges located in Honduras to prevent them from doing so for six months. - The Harvett Vault | he/him | user | talk - 23:35, 26 April 2023 (UTC); edited: 23:37, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose - Ludicrous idea - I'm all for preventing socks from doing things but not at a cost to new/1-time-uploaders, Why should new people suffer because of a few idiots ?.

Here's a much better proposal: Going to WMF, airing your concerns and gain traction for much better CU tools. (CU can only do so much and imho the device fingerprint is a fantastic idea but will that be implemented here ? ... Probably not). –Davey2010^Talk 18:32, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

New UI for User Uploads Page

Hello, Is there a way to make a user Uploads page look like a standard category page without having to manually input every image into a self-made user category? While the current UI is alright, for someone with a lot of upload of images, it can be cumbersome to find a specific one, even while viewing 500 at a time. I believe that a lot of space is wasted on image specifications because all the data can found on its file page. I'm not saying to permanently update and change the page, but rather have it as an alternative option which can be activate and deactivated in the "Preferences" tab (like how Wikipedia Skins are). Thank you for your time and have a good day! DiscoA340 (talk) 22:46, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

You can create a user cat for your uploads. You can also create a user license template that uses the cc-template and contains you user cat. then you can go to upload wizard and choose "not my own work". Additional input fields will show up. Enter your user license template into the license input field. Upload wizard will remember this preference and offer it as preferred choice in the future. Your uploads will automagically categorized in your user cat. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm) (talk) 07:40, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Male humans with helmets and Male humans with M16 rifle categories

I came here rather than CFD based on the advice of User:Explicit who described CFD on Commons as a ghost town. This obviously can be moved to CFD if anyone objects.

The category Category:Male humans with helmets was previously Category:Males with helmets. I regard this as a completely useless generic category that should be deleted. The majority of military photos since World War 1 would fall into this category, because unsurprisingly soldiers wear helmets. If thoroughly applied, we would have hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of photos categorised this way, not just soldiers but also motorbike riders, construction workers, astronauts, divers, etc. etc. How is that useful to anyone? The recent change from Males to Male humans just makes the category seem even more ridiculous, what other males could we possibly be talking about? Dogs? Cats?

Similarly the category Category:Male humans with M16 rifle was previously Category:Males with M16 rifle. Again this is a completely useless generic category that should be deleted. The M16 type rifle entered widespread use in the early 1960s and by the mid-1960s had become the standard U.S. service rifle as well as entering service with numerous U.S. allies. So if this category was thoroughly applied, we would have tens or hundreds of thousands of photos categorised this way for the U.S. military alone. How is that useful to anyone? There are specific categories that can be used e.g. Category:M16 rifle by country of service, but do we really need to also add a category to distinguish by sex? The recent change from Males to Male humans just makes the category seem even more ridiculous, Category:Male dogs with M16 rifle anyone? Mztourist (talk) 06:37, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

For some context, Commons:Categories for discussion/2019/12/Category:Male humans determined that all subcategories of Category:Male humans should match the parent category and use "male humans" instead of "males". As I mentioned on my talk page, I have seen a recent push crop up on my watchlist to reflect this result, which created inconsistency within the trees. This became inconvenient when I created categories, as some subcategories concurrently used both "males" and "male humans" in the same parent category. I decided to just synchronize the sets to match the consensus at CFD. I recently moved Category:Males with helmets to Category:Male humans with helmets, along with dozens of other subcategories (I finished at the Category:Male humans with objects level, but subcategories further up the tree remain untouched, like Category:Males with microphones by country). I'm guessing at least one of the affected files caught Mztourist's attention. While I do share their sentiment, the decision was made and I'm simply putting in the work to reflect that outcome.

I don't quite understand the gripe with Category:Male humans with helmets, though. All categories have potential to contain thousands upon thousands of files. Most files are undercategorized and there is potential to split them if they become too large. I also don't see what is being proposed in either case.

Pinging Joshbaumgartner and Shāntián Tàiláng (who is currently blocked), as they are two of the users I saw on my watchlist implementing these changes and may be interested in this thread. ✗plicit 07:21, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm proposing that the categories are deleted. Categories with thousands of images aren't in any way useful or educational. I don't see how you would split down Category:Male humans with helmets, Category:Male human soldiers with helmets just pushes the same problem to a lower level. Soldiers wear helmets, lets just take that as a given, without the need to add a helmet category to every picture of a soldier wearing a helmet. Mztourist (talk) 07:29, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

If I really need to search for 'male humans' with helmets, my first attempt is the category "Men with helmets". We have "People with helmets", and subgroups of "People" are by Common's standards "Children", "Men" and "Women". Everyone in the world who knows basic English words should be able to understand our category system. We're using "Men at work in Iran", not "Male humans performing their labour duties in modern Persia".
As for the question whether or not we need the categories? No idea, but when in doubt I'd want to keep them. Are they possibly useful to someone? Yes. We also have "Portraits of men with moustaches" and "Portrait paintings of women with hats". Some people like to categorize images that way: let them. --Enyavar (talk) 14:20, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

+1 to Enyavar's comment. Adding the word "human" to a category name where it's assumed the images in the category is of humans is needlessly redundant and not how English works. Although that's not to negate the fact that there are images like this one of non-humans wearing helmets, but then is anyone going to argue there's a way to determine the gender or sex of that chicken and does anyone really care what it is anyway? I assume the both of those questions are no. Category:Male chickens wearing helmets would be a totally useless category regardless though. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:08, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the categories seem very odd. I don't think that "Some people like to categorize images that way" is enough reason to keep a category tree. There needs to be some use except the joy of the categoriser, especially if their labour makes files more difficult to find for real-world users. "Male humans with helmets" is too broad a category to be useful on its own, it needs to be subdivided, and the question is how to do that sensibly, and how useful the subcategories become.

Now, Category:Men wearing helmets by country‎, the by-country subcategory, covers only four countries, not including Category:Male humans with helmets in Taiwan (as there might be children in that category, I suppose. The subcategory Category:Military men wearing helmets has only 69 files and Category:Paratroopers at the Western Wall‎ (where one image has a helmet only on a poster in the background). Category:Male humans with sport helmets seems possibly useful, most of the rest should seemingly go into Category:Men with hard hats, which mainly isn't subdivided‎: no subcategories by profession or situation (or even posture).

So, in this case, you'll get a more or less random (although not random by any stricts definition) assortment of a thousand plus a thousand photos. If those who "like to categorise in this way" don't have enough will, skill or time to get to a coherent useful category scheme, then they shouldn't create this kind of categories at all, at least not without discussing it.

In most any category about people wearing helmets (or hard hats), I assume you will find many "male humans" – much easier than in this category if you want some specifics.

–LPfi (talk) 07:17, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

I was rather flummoxed by the overcat on File:Meeting with Benedict XVI on 10 August 2019.jpg as well as its companion, File:Georg Ratzinger (2019).tiff (to a lesser extent.) AFAIK, this is pathological and not normal; I mean how does it help users navigate? Is there really someone who's going to enjoy all the photos with "coffee tables" or "open books"? And who's going to exhaustively categorize every single photo that contains every single element listed here? It's absurd and unmanageable. It's tech debt, that's what it is. enwiki has a very pragmatic restriction on categorization called WP:DEFINING. If a quality does not define the subject then it cannot be categorized that way. I think this is a good concept to import. Elizium23 (talk) 07:25, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

It is not that simple. You might want a photo with an open book or coffee table, to illustrate, say, en:Book or en:Coffee table (cf stock photos). For that you don't need the category to be complete (which seldom is true on Commons for any category) – but if you want an image of a coffee table, you hardly want an image of a meeting with the pope, and if you want a "man smiling while sitting", you hardly want a recognisable celebrity. For "male humans with helmets" you probably want a soldier, a miner or something else specific and, regardless, you will easily find helmeted persons in such categories. –LPfi (talk) 07:55, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

With things like "coffee tables" or "open books", I think the problem is that some people see categories and depicts either as a way of training AI about the content in an image, or [my girlfriend's theory] as a way of getting a dopamine hit by adding categories. - Jmabel ! talk 16:02, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

If it weren't for dopamine addiction, Wikimedia wouldn't exist, am I right? Elizium23 (talk) 00:22, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

@Elizium23: Yes you are right. Krok6kola (talk) 02:13, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Every cult/religion provides it's adherents with menial and arbitrary tasks in order to keep them hooked in to the system. So it comes with the turf and the dopamine hit is just a side benefit of the person racking up edits so they can get a special place at the right hand of Jimmy Wales in Wikimedia heaven or whatever. That doesn't make the whole thing any less pathological or abnormal though. Not to mention completely unhelpful. Really, there should be a guideline not to add more then X number of categories to an image. Otherwise your just increasingly getting diminishing returns. Personally I like Elizium23's idea that if a quality does not define the subject then it shouldn't be categorized that way. Or you run into issues like this one and the huge mess with File:Meeting with Benedict XVI on 10 August 2019.jpg. The fact that there's like 5 categories just for the door is totally ridiculous. Especially since it's mostly hidden behind the Popes hommies. There's really no excuse for something like that. Dopamine hits be damned! --Adamant1 (talk) 02:50, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

I completely agree with Elizium23's comment on pathological overcategorisation. One of my major focuses is the Vietnam War and some Users insist on adding the category Category:Men at work in Vietnam to soldiers in the war. I regard this as completely ridiculous, do we tag WW1 and WW2 photos of the war in France with Category:Men at work in France? I also agree with Adamant1's suggestion that "there should be a guideline not to add more than X number of categories to an image." to limit this useless nonsense. Mztourist (talk) 04:12, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Wikivoyage has an interesting policy: Whatever you do on the project, the traveller comes first. A lot of what is going on here on Commons is the complete opposite of that. There's a nice German compound noun for that: Selbstzweck. It's all a matter of perspective: If you want to describe the contents of an image, adding those coffee table categories makes sense. But if you're actually looking for good image of a coffee table, they are horribly counter productive.

I don't think we'll be able to solve the problem of people adding categories or depicts statements for mostly irrelevant things in an image by setting up arbitrary limitations on the number of categories or statements. They don't see the re-users perspective and this whole dopamine thing is just way too strong. But maybe we can instead use it to the project's advantage:

For depicts (P180), statements marked as "prominent" will make files score higher when matched in search. Why not do the opposite for coffee tables? Allow adding a depicts statement, but encourage people to mark them as "incidental" or "in the background". Allow to filter for that in MediaSearch and other kinds of query. Instead of having two competing views on how to do things, the main problem would now be to actually do all the tagging - another great dopamine mine for all kinds of people to obsess about together!

As for Categories, maybe it's time to give up on the idea that they could ever be convenient for re-users or clean enough for computers to query them. They are and will always be a hot mess - and maybe that's OK. El Grafo (talk) 09:39, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

@El Grafo: Selbstzweck ohne Zweck. - Jmabel ! talk 17:09, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

No, no, it has a Zweck: doing it. And in the bigger picture, it keeps people engaged with Commons - hopefully also doing some more useful categorization work along the way. There's a lot of energy in that, we "just" need to channel it into a more useful direction. El Grafo (talk) 07:42, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

@El Grafo: that was sort of a paraphrase of Kant: "Zweckmäßigkeit ohne Zweck". - Jmabel ! talk 15:00, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Dang it, I knew there was a joke I wasn't getting! El Grafo (talk) 15:10, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

@El Grafo: I had suggested the "incidental" back when SDC was first proposed, but for some reason it wasn't adopted.

FWIW, there is nothing wrong with creating a subcat specific to incidental inclusion of something in an image. I'd never bother adding an incidentally included chair or stoplight, but I did create Category:Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition logo (incidental) and certainly have been the one who used it the vast majority of times it's been used. It seemed to me like it was worth noting the presence of that logo even when it was incidental, but separating these out not to be in the way for anyone who actually wanted a good image of the logo. - Jmabel ! talk 17:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

@Jmabel Maybe they thought "prominent" and "regular" would be enough. Now that we've spent some time with SDC, I think we can conclude that it's not. I think we should push to reconsider that.

Category:Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition logo (incidental) on its own makes a lot of sense, but if we were to apply that method consistently, it would basically mean duplicating large parts of the category tree thicket. It's probably better used sparsely. El Grafo (talk) 07:15, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

The first thing about SDC would be to consider what kind of depicts we want. As the developers seem to find adding "tree" as a depicts statement unproblematic, I regard the SDC as a lost case. –LPfi (talk) 09:53, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

That's indeed one of the most important unresolved conflicts around SDC, and it's not as simple as developers vs. Commons community. But imho that should not keep us from considering other problems. We, the community, need to step up and finally get into the SDC driver's seat. If there's something we can all agree upon, then we should push for the developers to implement it. El Grafo (talk) 14:49, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

I am terribly sorry for that Yfdhxfbz (talk) 13:01, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Regarding Category:Male humans, I wonder if there would be enough support to reverse the result of the CFD I linked above. That is, keep Category:Male humans as it is, but all of its subcategories should simply use "males" instead of "male humans" and "females" instead of "female humans". The closure cites the "universality principle" as its justification, but I don't see sufficient evidence to conclude that Commons follows this practice. It certainly doesn't exist in categories about animals (see Category:Panthera leo and its subcategories like Category:Lions in logos, for example). I find it highly unlikely that other animals would fit in most of the human categories. In the odd situation where there's a possibility, like in Category:Clothed animals, for instance, there is no split by gender at all and I doubt there's any demand for it. It would also be incredibly difficult to in most cases anyway. There really isn't much to justify using "[gender] humans" other than seeking uniformity; its application is not really helpful or useful to anyone.

As far as imposing restrictions for the dopamine-seeking overcategorization goes, I think the category system is too far gone for that. ✗plicit 11:10, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

@Explicit: Yes, we can't underestimate the power of dopamine, and it's a legal pleasure enhancer! Krok6kola (talk) 17:14, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

@El Grafo: I completely agree that "incidental" categories should not be used for most things. - Jmabel ! talk 15:06, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

I initially did not weigh in on this because my only role on these categories was in implementing the 'male human' standard, and per the original post, this proposal was to delete the categories in question. However, it has drifted to cover a wide-ranging discussion on the retention, structure, naming, and content of the originally nominated categories and others at large. So here is where I am at on a couple of the issues at hand:

1. I oppose deleting the specific categories. This is mainly because I in general oppose sniping individual categories on claims of uselessness or clutter without taking the system those categories exist within into account. Without a comprehensive plan for what to do with the consequences of a deletion, I cannot support it. It's all well and good to delete a category, but what do you do with its contents? Do they just upmerge into the various parent categories? How does that solve anything? If you punch a hole in an existing schema by sniping a couple of categories without regard to this, then best case is that some well-meaning editor re-creates the same category to fill the obvious hole in the schema and we are back to square one, except that now a bunch of images are adrift and have to be re-sorted. At worst, you have orphaned images and categories and a mess that remains in place for who knows how long until someone can clean it up. The fact is that the nominated categories are consistent with categorization policies and do no harm, so deletion on the basis of 'I think they're useless' just isn't good enough, especially without demonstrating understanding of the bigger schema and a plan to handle the contents?
2. I oppose mixing "males" and "male humans" within the same tree. Universality Principle exists for a reason. Using a consistent reference to a given topic throughout the tree makes it far easier to avoid duplication and red links, employ templates and other automation, provide reliable search results for both human and machine interface, amonst other benefits. Deleting "human" from some categories and not others means that we need some sort of criteria for when "human" is or is not included. Is it a category exclusive to humans? If not, would those portions relevant to non-humans be reasonably or likely divided by gender? Does it sound better one way or the other? Is it worth changing an existing category name or should it just be applied to new categories? These criteria not only need to be defined and understood by those in this discussion, but ultimately by every user of this category tree or else there will be confusion and frustration by file uploaders, template writers, users looking for images, machine interfaces, category discussers, and so on. Even if widely understood, there will still be borderline cases that lead to wasting time and energy on back-and-forth debates. Yes, in many cases, a category may well be exclusive to humans, but even there, the harm of including "human" is negligible if even measurable. The harm of a mixed bag of different names within the tree is significant, as noted above. Thus my opposition to the mixed bag approach to this.
3. CFD is the right forum for this discussion, but the train has left the station, so I don't propose moving it there. If one feels that there is not enough participation there for a proposal, it is always a good idea to post on VP and other relevant forums to solicit participation. The CfD format and process provides a well-tracked and published record of all proceedings, making it easy for future users to read all prior discussions and see the results and why categories may have been changed or set up the way they are. Most importantly, it makes it clear to all users travelling to a category that the category is under discussion, and with a simple glance at the talk page, the history of that category's discussions are easily shown. VP can be searched of course, but the biggest issue is even knowing that a discussion has taken place in the first place. Once this discussion is archived, it will be hit and miss for people to find it even if they know it took place. If you link to it now, that link will not work once it is archived. This makes it labor-intensive to reference old discussions. For CfDs, whenever you link to them, that link is permanent regardless of where or how the discussion is archived. The reality is that category changes often have a lot of ramifications for the system that aren't readily apparent when a change is proposed, and those need to be dug into and addressed to make sure a change really does do good and doesn't create more problems than it purported to solve. Not everyone is up for that, I get it, but it doesn't mean we should do an end run around that process.

Josh (talk) 02:52, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

The discussion has moved away from my original proposal. In relation to the comment immediately above "The fact is that the nominated categories are consistent with categorization policies and do no harm, so deletion on the basis of 'I think they're useless' just isn't good enough." is not a valid argument for keeping these generic categories. Everything here on Commons is supposed to have a useful educational purpose. Having over-generic categories being filled with tens or hundreds of thousands of images just because some User gets a dopamine hit from doing so, doesn't serve any useful educational purpose. Mztourist (talk) 08:28, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

The Universality Principle needs to be balanced against common sense, although that seems to be a scarce commodity on Commons ;) Nosferattus (talk) 03:48, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Back to the original issue: I think the existence of the category is OK (I've seen a lot worse), but it should be renamed. For anything that is basically a human activity, "male humans" should simply be "males". What's next, Category:Male human authors? Category:Male human pianists? - Jmabel ! talk 14:31, 4 June 2023 (UTC)