Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/05/Category:Past

Category:Past

Merge it to Category:History. We generally don't maintain the distinction between past and history, and the Category:History category is already used for anything related to the past. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 08:50, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

 Keep History is the systematic study and documentation of the human past. The period of events before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. I didn't know the category does contain some categories I thought it wouldn't contain somewhere in its subcategories but that is despite this being inconsistent with definitions of "History". So even if it stays like that so that the category doesn't really match what "History" refers to, the Past category is complementary to it.

For example, Paleontology, Early Earth (not just geologically but e.g. relating to the origin of earthly life), and prehistory anthropology are all well in the scope of Past but not in the scope of History per its definition. Also history is kind of like narrative stories or chronicling but there's more to the past than that such as Interactive virtual past‎ where the past, not historical events are recreated. There's no good reason to merge this broader concept into the much narrower unfitting one into which a few unfitting categories have been crammed into. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:00, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

For further clarification and as noted at the Wikidata item:

Past and present

The issue is that "Past" here does not refer to 'one particular subdivision of time':

1. it is one subdivision of time in that all time until the latest planck second is "past" from some perspective (what some people in this discussion seem to have thought this cat only refers to)
2. it is also various subdivisions of time in that some times until some recent time is past depending on the scale...for example when talking about biological evolution "present" may refer to the current millennia or even larger time-scales or when plate tectonics is the subject 'the present' would refer to a quite long time-scale that includes many recent years – so for these subdivisions the meaning varies
3. (largely related to the second point or sub-aspects of it:) there are different ways one can relate things to the past: for example History, Paleontology, Memory, Nostalgia – all of these are somehow linked to the human concept of "Past" (and like for other categories they can be found together as subcategories here which is appropriate, reasonable and useful)

In short, the misconception I think people had to some extent is that this category is only about #1 instead of all of these three. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:01, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

 Keep I was going to agree with deletion or merge, as just about everything on here is depicting the past. I am uploading pictures from my museum trip only a few days ago, but a few days ago is still the past. But we do have images that depict at least visions of the future, or illustrate the concepts of past, present, and future as divisions of time. Thus, I think that as a period of time, it makes sense, and since we also have its colleagues Category:Present and Category:Future, I think it is warranted to keep this category.

I do think it is ripe for mis-use, as a lot of broad concept categories are, and it will require regular patrolling to keep on point. Josh (talk) 08:58, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

If this category will be kept, can both categories (Past and History) get clear descriptions showing the difference? What kind of subjects should be in one and which in the other? JopkeB (talk) 12:02, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

•  Delete Overly vague, can include everything from the Big Bang and earlier to 1 microsecond ago. I went through the category to see what could go into better categories, and wound up emptying this one. (About the only thing I was unsure of was Category:Nostalgia, but as it was already in Category:Time in life that seemed covered ok.) -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 01:02, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

  • Well, an informative description would be good, agree with JopkeB on that. History has an infobox which defines it as "past events and their tracks or records" and also see the quote from the ENWP article which is the more accurate outlining and what most contents in the History cat relate to.
  • Your unilateral undiscussed mass removals are problematic and you should have discussed them here before. Many of these were problematic, for example you moved Category:Origins, which relates to past broadly, to Category:Prehistory but origins aren't only or characteristically about prehistory. I'll undo your problematic edits which are most of them while trying to keep things in subcats of this cat where possible.
  • Differences for example I think people conflate History (the study of humans' past and historical events) and Past (no focus on the study/education of it, not just historical events but also e.g. daily life and developments/trends more than in the context of History (discussion about the history cat).
  • Your point has been discussed earlier. You didn't even leave Time in life in the cat which isn't only about Past but also about other things so this point also doesn't make sense. You also didn't leave cats clearly referring to this particular concept Category:Videos of past, it shouldn't be removed from here until it is moved if it is and then some category above it needs to be in this cat. Instead of some of the files directly being in this cat, it probably would be better to have some cat they're in be located in here (like "History" containing "Paintings depicting life in the past" where the whole relation now is missing from this example), but you only removed things. Please change things more carefully or better discuss them here before since this is an ongoing discussion. Let's first discuss how to move or keep files and subcats or finalize this discussion which is mute if this cat does not contain contents.

  Prototyperspective (talk) 10:52, 17 July 2024 (UTC)