Commons:Categories for discussion/2021/04/Category:Present-day Midi-Pyrénées in the 3rd century BC

Category:Present-day Midi-Pyrénées in the 3rd century BC

• Category:Present-day Midi-Pyrénées in the 1st century BC

Also including the 1st century BC category but it is very odd to organize France this far by a former region categorization used only from 1982 until 2015. We could use just France, the Roman category name, the six provinces that were used from the middle ages onward, the department used from 1790 until 1982, or even the current Occitanie region (I'd support just France at this point), it makes no sense for anyone looking at these images to even remotely think about Midi-Pyrenees which wasn't even discussed for over 2000 years. Ricky81682 (talk) 20:08, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

• Pinging @Birdie and Themightyquill: from this discussion. Yes, you have to go this far back and search within current regions, former regions, and departments to find these scattered categories. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:16, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Good evening Ricky. Well, this looks rather curious for sure. It was created in 2014, so Midi-Pyrénées was the region at the time. I think that when Midi-Pyrénées and Languedoc-Roussillon were put together, in 2016, these categories should have been renamed by a robot (the creator maybe doesn't know how to make a request?). Now, the French regions are huge considering Europe. I know Nouvelle-Aquitaine is bigger than the whole Austria so using regions from nowadays wouldn't be so weird. But categorizing by department like Haute-Garonne seems too precise, you couldn't fill reasonably every department for every century with enough images. Honestly, I don't see really the interest of these "in the xx century" categories. A house, a church, a castle, a painting may have been built during a certain century, I'm not sure it gives so many informations so many informations about the life then and there. --Birdie (talk) 20:45, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ricky81682: Well, I can imagine if you want to know the history of your current region, this would be the way to do it. I can accept that it looks silly here, but I can also understand why it has been done. I don't have a good solution. But in this particular case, using a region which no longer exists seems like a bad idea. We can categorize everything according to every regional border in history, or we'd end up with Category:Roman Empire in the 20th century. - Themightyquill (talk) 20:46, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

I still think it's better to use the naming convention/categorization at that time but this far back, no one cares beyond "France". The problem is these categories doesn't connect to France because it's looking for "Present-day France" in that time period which starts to get ridiculous even if it is technically accurate. It's much easier to find Roman maps using Roman descriptions of France than any document that tells you what it corresponds to today. The problem you get is something like this when there is a change in organization. - Ricky81682 (talk) 20:58, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Good evening y'all. If I want to know the history of a department, of a région, I can look at cat:XX century works in YY. We are on Commons, you won't find the history of YY here, just pictures showing things made in YY during the XX century. I'm not sure seeing a photo of the Sitting Scribe in the Louvre will tell me so much about life in Ancient Egypt. I should look at wp instead. Ricky's idea about using Roman territories seems a bad idea to me. Firstly, their limits were changing too. Secondly, who really knows the Roman organisation of Gaul or Germany I, II and III? Third, what about non Roman territories? Nobody can really know the borders between German barbaric tribes or between Slavic tribes. I think a robot should take care of the ancient régions' categories and change the names with the ones of today. Just the names, not with the present day precision. Things will be clearer then. Then, we could have a second look about the categories and decide what to do next.

@Themightyquill: Roman Empire in the 20th century seems weird for sure. But to me, Belgium in the 1800s or in the 1820s looks very weird also. These are two different kind of anachronisms, one putting past countries in the present (which is by far the worst) and one putting present countries in the past (which is not as bad but not really satisfacting). Anyway, the case of France seems not as complicated as some others like Poland with the country expanding to Ukraine and Lithuania then shrinking until vanishing, being reborn 130 years later then 25 years later being pushed to the west to be relocated on territories lost since the High Middle Age. --Birdie (talk) 20:07, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

• @Themightyquill and Birdie: You are right on the Roman description. I strike that. Looking at the one image here for the 3rd century BC, if I came about looking at Category:Celtic torcs. Perhaps rename the department and the region and also have it within Toulouse on its own (as a city of France). I could live with the department and the current region (both seem in use) if people want but without all the "Present-day" nonsense in the title since we don't use that for countries. I can't tell if it's in Toulouse because of the museum or because it was from there but that's another argument. :-) -- Ricky81682 (talk)

@Ricky81682: Interesting exemple Rickie. Generally, the museums out of Paris have also local collections. The Musée Saint-Raymond is located in Toulouse, one of the biggest cities in France. So the torques exposed there can come not only from an area around Toulouse but from a rather wider one. Wider than Toulouse for sure as Toulouse id the head of the region and not only of the department. So the category 3rd-century BC in Haute-Garonne seems absolutely not justified except if the origins of the torques can be given. Imagine a picture of Mona Lisa with the category 16th-century in Paris and see how stupid it looks. Birdie (talk) 22:45, 19 April 2021 (UTC)