Category talk:Japan

Is this category helpful?

I can understand why for example Category:Hungary could be a good idea, but there are squillions of Japanese cameras, so many that stuff now helpfully in this category (e.g. Fujimoto) can get lost.

I don't recommend scrapping the category. Rather, I recommend removing from it every model (aside, perhaps, from the few models whose makers can't be ascertained). The resulting list would be much shorter. It might then be moved (if that's technically possible for a sysop) to Category:Japanese_companies.

I'm sure that some change will be needed soon. The longer one waits, the worse the mess will become and the more time will be needed to fix it. -- Hoary 08:08, 2 June 2006 (EDT)

I completely agree. I won't do it immediately, but I will think about it. --Rebollo fr 08:23, 2 June 2006 (EDT)

I wrote: It might then be moved (if that's technically possible for a sysop) to Category:Japanese_companies. A bot (or very patient human) would have to look for every example of [[Category:Japan]] (plus orthographic variants) and change that to [[Category:Japanese companies]]. I for one don't have the bot-writing skills. A better idea (but one that probably still needs improvement) would be to do the following (not necessarily in this order):

• Remove "[[Category:Japan]]" from every model of camera (e.g. "Nikon F3") whose maker either has or could easily have its own article (as of course "Nikon" does); don't replace this with anything.
• Create Category:Japanese companies. For every maker, replace "[[Category:Japan]]" with "[[Category:Japanese companies]]". Put this new category within "[[Category:Japan]]".
• Create Category:Japanese people; for every Japanese person (such as Maitani) who has an article, similarly replace "[[Category:Japan]]" with "[[Category:Japanese people]]". Put this new category within "[[Category:Japan]]".
• Consider doing something analogous for anything else that is now in "[[Category:Japan]]" and that might usefully have its own subcategory. (But don't rush to do it: suggest it here first, and if nobody either objects or comes up with a better idea, then go ahead and do it.)
• Leave within "[[Category:Japan]]" only a handful of miscellanea. Later, some of these may be accompanied by other, similar articles, and get their own subcategories of "Japan".

How does this sound? -- Hoary 19:16, 2 June 2006 (EDT)

Yes it is the only way to proceed (bots excepted). It needs a good amount of patience though. We can begin by changing our help page about categories. --Rebollo fr 05:35, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

An alternative possibility for point #1:

• Remove "[[Category:Japan]]" from every model of camera (e.g. "Nikon F3") whose maker either has or could easily have its own article category (as of course "Nikon" does); don't replace this with anything. --Rebollo fr 05:59, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

I don't like that so much. Let's consider Takane's cameras, for example. We could create a Takane category, but this would be so small as to be a mere distraction. Or we could retain "Category:Japan" for the Mine Six and so on; the result would look like a kind of discrimination (!) against cameras from medium-sized and larger companies. -- Hoary 06:08, 3 June 2006 (EDT) Or create [[Category:Japanese cameras]]. No, this would be so big as to be useless, so yes, create it, but also create its sub-(sub-) categories: [[Category:Japanese leaf-shutter 35mm SLR cameras]], [[Category:Japanese 127 TLR cameras]], etc. etc. etc. -- Hoary 06:23, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

On further reflection . . . the idea of straightforward nation categories, such as "France" or "Japan", does not seem a good one. Rather, there should be "French companies", "French cameras", etc. While "French cameras" might later prove to be too wide to be useful, it's certain that "Japanese cameras" already is too wide to be useful. Instead, the camera subcategorization for Japan (or Germany) should be similar to that for cameras in general. Thus for example (and from memory, as I'm writing this offline) "Japanese 6x6 TLR cameras" would be a subcategory of "6x6 TLR cameras", "Japanese TLR cameras" and "Japanese 6x6 cameras". Anyway, I envisage "Japan" as only containing subcategories, and most of these subcategories ("Japanese people" would be an exception) as only containing subcategories. -- Hoary 20:59, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

PS Oh, hello, I note that Category:Japanese companies is blue. Good! But I'm not going to do any recategorization today, because I'm connected to the web expensively today and also because the weather outside in the real world is particularly pleasant. -- Hoary 20:59, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

Relying on the lens mounts

"For example, Minolta X-1 is within Category: Minolta MD mount (which is within Category: Minolta, which is within Category: Japan); another MD-mount camera would also go within Category: Minolta MD mount."

I think this is relying too much on the lens mount. The fact that a camera takes Minolta MD lenses does not mean that it was made by Minolta, and does not mean that it was Japanese: this page of the Manual Minolta website if full of examples. --Rebollo fr 06:14, 14 June 2006 (EDT)

Well, the paragraph that you quote was my firm belief ten minutes ago. But I've now rechanged my mind about this (quite independently, as it happens), so I'm about to revert some of my most recent changes. What a waste of time! -- Hoary 06:27, 14 June 2006 (EDT)

I think that the first thing to do, before any category change, is to merge some duplicate pages in the Japanese 35mm SLR field. For example, Konica Auto-Reflex and Autorex and Konica Auto-Reflex are genuine duplicates, and all the Konica Autoreflex series should go into one page only. We will create separate pages later if and only if somebody does a nicely presented page full of pictures of one specific model, like Driesvandenelzen1 did for the Zorki 4 or the Moskva-5. Once this is done, we will have less pages to work with, and less tedious category changes to apply. --Rebollo fr 07:00, 14 June 2006 (EDT)