Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/10/Category:Facilities
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What is the difference between Category:Facilities and Category:Infrastructure? Both seems synonyms to me. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 14:14, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
- Water pipes for ex. are not facilities. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:34, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
- @Prototyperspective: But how? I see water pipes as facilities as they are built to serve water to different buildings, thus consistent with the definition of "facility". Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 05:09, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- You have a strange understanding of 'facility' then. As ENWP says, A facility is a place for doing something, or a place that facilitates an activity. Types of facility include:[…] highlighted the part that makes it more clear. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:40, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- @Prototyperspective: Thanks, but the dictionary I've cited talks about "something designed, built, installed, etc.", which may or may not be a place. The Wikipedia article looks more like an unsourced w:WP:DICDEF to me, which is not useful when defining this term. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 17:11, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- One of the linked articles, telecommunications facility defines the term "facility" as follows:
- A fixed, mobile, or transportable structure, including (a) all installed electrical and electronic wiring, cabling, and equipment and (b) all supporting structures, such as utility, ground network, and electrical supporting structures.
- A network-provided service to users or the network operating administration.
- A transmission pathway and associated equipment.
- In a protocol applicable to a data unit, such as a block or frame, an additional item of information or a constraint encoded within the protocol to provide the required control.
- A real property entity consisting of one or more of the following: a building, a structure, a utility system, pavement, and underlying land.
- Many of the items listed are not really "places". Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 17:16, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- I never understood this term in any other way and if it didn't have its current meaning then there would be a major gap in words, no other word can substitute it. I'm quite confused by that anybody could think "facility" to refer to any kind of infrastructure and it's exhausting to argue about things like this. Authors of medical facility and wiktionary item @Op47, Slowking Man, Atitarev, Widsith, and Ncik: has term "facility" the same meaning as "infrastructure"? Prototyperspective (talk) 21:13, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- The supporting structures there refer only to the local structures at the place location, i.e. in and underneath or around the building. Cambridge Dictionary defines facility as a place, especially including buildings, where a particular activity happens – the things not considered here underlined. Prototyperspective (talk) 08:10, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- To the extent that I understand the argument… "facility" does not refer exclusively to places. The fundamental meaning is of (to use the OED definition) "a service or feature of a specific kind, or a building or establishment that provides such a service". That said, while there is some overlap with the word "infrastructure", I definitely wouldn't consider them synonymous. 2A02:1210:26FF:8200:5873:155F:69F:456A 08:14, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- That definition does not spell it out but a building or establishment are at concrete places (places one can go to which can have geocoordinates, not areas, regions or large networks) and I think that is a defining characteristic for the physical meaning of the word even if the key semantics is about the service-provision. In the case of telecommunications facility, the facility when it comes to networks is about network-provided service, not the physical infrastructure. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:31, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- To the extent that I understand the argument… "facility" does not refer exclusively to places. The fundamental meaning is of (to use the OED definition) "a service or feature of a specific kind, or a building or establishment that provides such a service". That said, while there is some overlap with the word "infrastructure", I definitely wouldn't consider them synonymous. 2A02:1210:26FF:8200:5873:155F:69F:456A 08:14, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- One of the linked articles, telecommunications facility defines the term "facility" as follows:
- @Prototyperspective: Thanks, but the dictionary I've cited talks about "something designed, built, installed, etc.", which may or may not be a place. The Wikipedia article looks more like an unsourced w:WP:DICDEF to me, which is not useful when defining this term. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 17:11, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- You have a strange understanding of 'facility' then. As ENWP says, A facility is a place for doing something, or a place that facilitates an activity. Types of facility include:[…] highlighted the part that makes it more clear. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:40, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- @Prototyperspective: But how? I see water pipes as facilities as they are built to serve water to different buildings, thus consistent with the definition of "facility". Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 05:09, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Purge and disambiguate. Much like Category:Wallah (below), the word "facilities" has very little meaning on its own; it's generally used as a filler word to mean "place" or "capability" (or occasionally, through the power of euphemism, "toilet"). This isn't a good basis for categorization; the topics of subcategories like Category:Beach facilities or Category:Immigration facilities or Category:Transloading facilities have almost nothing in common with each other beyond a coincidence of how they're worded. Omphalographer (talk) 19:12, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- This makes sense and there's a nonsmall number of categories that have the same problem. However, I think the current subcategories all relate to the meaning of facility as a place. A good thing to do may be moving it to e.g. Category:Facility (place) or Category:Facility (building). Is there any subcat that wouldn't fit into that cat? It should be removed even before merging but I couldn't find one. The ones you named are all about the same thing, I'm really very surprised that you also seem to have some strange understanding of that word – all of those three match the described meaning. Basically means facility means building except that it's a bit broader and also includes other physical local structures such as, probably, a telephone booth (telecommunication facility) or waterpark (recreation facility). Prototyperspective (talk) 21:45, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- Moving it instead to another word that also is for buildings and other local physical structures may be better, what about:
- Physical structure sites (a network of cables is a physical structure but the scope here is a place where one can go to)
- Constructed sites
- in German the word I think would be Einrichtung but the best translation for it still is facility
- Prototyperspective (talk) 10:19, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- Moving it instead to another word that also is for buildings and other local physical structures may be better, what about:
- @Omphalographer: It would be great if you explicitly comment on the CFD on Category:Wallah, since closing editors will look at category discussions separately without much connections. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 06:14, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- This makes sense and there's a nonsmall number of categories that have the same problem. However, I think the current subcategories all relate to the meaning of facility as a place. A good thing to do may be moving it to e.g. Category:Facility (place) or Category:Facility (building). Is there any subcat that wouldn't fit into that cat? It should be removed even before merging but I couldn't find one. The ones you named are all about the same thing, I'm really very surprised that you also seem to have some strange understanding of that word – all of those three match the described meaning. Basically means facility means building except that it's a bit broader and also includes other physical local structures such as, probably, a telephone booth (telecommunication facility) or waterpark (recreation facility). Prototyperspective (talk) 21:45, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- Ping response: "facility" in English is a very generic "fuzzy category" word. In the broadest sense it just means "place, method, means, for/of doing a thing". (Something for facilitating a task goal etc, you might say) The etymology may help illustrate: via French, from Latin facio, "to do, to make, to produce, to compose" etc., ultimately from Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to do, put, place". Not sure it makes a good category, being so generic. Compare a Category:Objects, Category:Places, Category:Entities. Slowking Man (talk) 23:37, 19 October 2024 (UTC)