Category talk:Statue of Liberty

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This discussion of one or several categories is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive.

Category:Statue of Liberty[edit]

I would like to perform the following category renamings :

Rename Category:Statue of Liberty (talk) to Category:Statue of Liberty (New York) (0 entries moved, 120 to go) Warning: Please add a reason. Warning: Username of requester missing (user parameter). For transparency and to prevent abuse, please add your username.
Rename Category:Replicas of Statue of Liberty to Category:Replicas of the statue of Liberty of New York (0 entries moved, 0 to go) Warning: Please add a reason. Warning: Username of requester missing (user parameter). For transparency and to prevent abuse, please add your username.
Rename Category:Statue of Liberty in art to Category:Statue of Liberty of New York in art (0 entries moved, 298 to go) Warning: Please add a reason. Warning: Username of requester missing (user parameter). For transparency and to prevent abuse, please add your username.
Rename Category:Statue of Liberty on coins to Category:Statue of Liberty of New York on coins (0 entries moved, 14 to go) Warning: Please add a reason. Warning: Username of requester missing (user parameter). For transparency and to prevent abuse, please add your username.
Rename Category:Statue of Liberty on stamps to Category:Statue of Liberty of New York on stamps (0 entries moved, 56 to go) Warning: Please add a reason. Warning: Username of requester missing (user parameter). For transparency and to prevent abuse, please add your username.
Rename Category:Statue of Liberty costumes to Category:Costumes after the statue of Liberty of New York (0 entries moved, 59 to go) Warning: Please add a reason. Warning: Username of requester missing (user parameter). For transparency and to prevent abuse, please add your username.

The reason is that there are many other statues of Liberty in the world, as listed in category:Statues of Freedom.

Teofilo (talk) 16:54, 1 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  •  Support --Foroa (talk) 18:06, 1 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose This is the Statue of Liberty: in the USA, of course, but around the world as well. Look at the Wikipedia links at Statue of Liberty — none of those using the Hebrew, Cyrillic, or Greek alphabets have any form of "New York" in the name, and only three using the Latin alphabet. In my mind, this shows that it's generally known as the Statue of Liberty (or a translated form) around the world, even in France and Spain that have three statues in subcategories of Category:Statues of Freedom. Let's keep this category name consistent with the name most of the world uses for it. Nyttend (talk) 12:33, 2 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the world is ignorant of the existence of other statues of liberty. But is the purpose of the Wikimedia foundation to promote knowledge or ignorance ? Teofilo (talk) 19:54, 9 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikipedia article is not a container for files, like the Wikimedia Commons category is. "Statue of Liberty" is a perfect wording for any allegory of liberty depicted in sculpture, anywhere, at any time in the world so it leaves open the possibility that people will mix all kinds of statues of liberty into that category, whereas if we use a category name with "New York", people will know that this category is not suitable for other statues. Teofilo (talk) 19:50, 9 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
See into which category File:Fedipio.jpg is being inserted now. Teofilo (talk) 08:07, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That was done by an auto-categorizing bot. It's used in an article about the Statue of Liberty (which was it's inspiration but no one calls that "Statue of Liberty" too). At least it was a statue of some sort and the category wasn't something random like "Rail transport in England by county" which these bots tend to do a lot. Rocket000 (talk) 08:04, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose Statue of Liberty is only one, first and most famous. Every hearing this name, at once thinks about the New York City. Other monuments having the similar names or the similar symbolics, one modelled on this idea. --Starscream (talk) 16:50, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"Every hearing this name, at once thinks about the New York City. " Yes and this is a prejudice. Is the purpose of an encyclopedia to help prejudices or to fight them ? Teofilo (talk) 19:33, 9 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's like saying we should rename Category:Abraham Lincoln because other people have same name and going with the one that's unquestionably the most associated with that combination of letters is a prejudice. (BTW, prejudice is not really the right word. Maybe predilection or bias? Americentric?) The only thing it would do is make categorization harder and more work for everyone else since no one's going think something like this would be disambiguated. Put a see also hatnote at the top if you need to but don't disambig to make a point. Usability and accessibility are more important than political correctness. Rocket000 (talk) 07:52, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]



  • the fundamental problem I do have is that for some names that exist currently in 13 places, but in practise in 20 or 30 places, augmented with various "Liberty Enlightening the World" variants, we disambiguate. I am really stunned if we have such series of categories and for one of them, we say, in our world (Western and US), we have a special rule that you have to know/guess: the category without disambiguation is the one from New York (I could live with a redirect to the New York one, but it contains already many images that are not in their right category). I can understand that for capitals with a very long history, we don't disambiguate but I think that can be the only exceptions. There is no rule in Commons that gives a priority for a name over another in case of disambiguation, and I see no reason to make exceptions on that because for each of the 700 projects Commons is serving, the priorities might change. The en:wikipedia is not necessarily the reference, because it is very much US/UK/Western world oriented (in that order) and it provides 3 million articles out of the 14 million wikipedia articles. I am moving almost daily such categories to avoid disambiguity without asking any questions (and I am spending a lot of time explaining to users why we cannot give priority to "their" item name). --Foroa (talk) 17:22, 19 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As mentioned “don't assume other users share your background” it means that the “oppose” and “support” mentioned here, is not a good representation in my opinion because just these other users do not read this. The best approach in my opinion is that as soon as the meaning of a category may be unclear for some of our users, the category should be disambiguated whatever the subject may be. Wouter (talk) 19:20, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, a great disservice for the great American cause. --Foroa (talk) 22:22, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
How ironic - you expose your own cultural bias while giving zero evidence of mine. I don't think there needs to be a Category:London, England any more than I think there should be a Category:Atlanta, Georgia - and I don't think we need Category:Red Square (Russia) any more than we need Category:Statue of Liberty (New York). Wknight94 talk 23:15, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose Mentioned above, Statue of Liberty (Budapest), the second largest category after New York, actually seems to be literally called the Liberty Statue, sometimes the Freedom Statue, but not the Statue of Liberty. All of the others that are categorized as a "Statue of Liberty" are located in non-English speaking countries. They could translated in a variety of ways, but, for some reason, their native names aren't being used to categorize them here. Altairisfartalk 03:38, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Commons:Naming categories says, "The real policy with regard to proper names of individual persons, places, buildings, organizations etc. and other stable specific names of local phenomena is multifarious, full consensus isn't achieved yet. See current practices and discussion pages." Walter Siegmund (talk) 05:56, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]


 Comment Can we close this? The rename proposal doesn't seem to gain any consensus. The current title seems consistent with Commons Naming Pratices. -- User:Docu at 08:29, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  •  Support I very strongly support User:Teofilo proposal, or some variation of it.
Other people made this important point above, but those who think it is obvious that the New York City statue should have pride of place, don't seem to be responding this important point -- or even recognizing it. To non-English speakers, even those who might recognize the iconic New York city statue, the name "statue of liberty" is not obvious. They know it by the name it is known by in their mother tongues, which almost certainly won't translate as "statue of liberty". I am old enough to remember the Tien a Mien demonstrations that preceded the Tien a Mien massacre. Demonstrators dressed up to look like the statue of liberty: flowing robes, big pointy crown, upraised torch in the right hand. But, when the spoke about their appearance to western reporters, they didn't say: "I am dressed up like the 'statue of liberty'." They said, "I am dressed up like the 'goddess of democracy'." Presumably that was how "Statue of Liberty" is usually translated in China.
My experience, over at the wikipedia, with attempts by English speakers to deal with the non-English names for organizations, has made clear to me how problematic the translation of names can be. Certain organizations, through hard work, or having English language publicists, have escaped the problem of having their organizations' names randomly translated a bunch of different ways. But the vast majority of non-English names have multiple possible translations into English, and, on an International project we should be very sensitive to the flip-side of this for our users and contributors for whom English is not their first language. Let me offer some examples of some names of organizations counter-terrorism officials failed to realize were ambiguous:
  • The Uyghur captives in Guantanamo were all held in Guantanamo based on Chinese allegations that they were members of the terrorist East Turkestan Islamic Party. The troubles with this naming are that: (1) the name of this group was transliterated about a dozen different ways in the official US documents; (2) over the years the Uyghurs, an oppressed minority in China, who call their homeland "East Turkestan", face very similar problems to the Tibetans, but with no Dalai Lama. They have tried to organize dozens of liberation groups, most of which have had names that could be transliterated as "East Turkestan Islamic Party", or reasonable equivalent. These groups ranged in their belief in non-violence.
  • Khaled el-Masri who was tortured for five months in the salt pit is reported to have said on his application for German citizenship that he was a member of Zarqari's group. al Tawhid was the short form for Zarqari's group, prior to it being renamed "al Qaida in Iraq". It is also part of the name, in Arabic, of the Druze, a minority ethnic group in Lebanon, where el-Masri was immigrating from. Zarqari's group didn't even exist when el-Masri immigrated. Being part of a potentially oppressed minority ethnic group? That is something one would put on an application for asylum. Being a member of a terrorist group? This is a much less popular choice for immigration applicants.
  • A couple of dozen Guantanamo captives were held due to an alleged association with a charity called "al Wafa". Because the wikipedia is so frequently mirrored, if you google "al Wafa" now, you should find lots of links to the al Wafa charity the US put on its terrorist watchlist. But when I started the al Wafa article four years ago the only charities named "al Wafa" I could find were innocuous ones that had nothing to do with Afghanistan.
  • The story was similar for the "Afghan Support Group", or "Afghan Support Committee" -- an alleged association was used to justify holding captives in Guantanamo. I found that there were at least five different groups with names that transliterated into "Afghan Support Committee", in English. The dangerous one seems to have been the one that had originally been a CIA front, abandoned by the CIA once the Soviets were kicked out, which then found new sponsors in oil-rich Gulf. Geo Swan (talk) 17:37, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose both the move and the proposed choice of subcategory names if moved:
    • Against the move: I believe the statue in New York Harbor is by far the most common meaning of the Statue of Liberty as the stadium in Rome is the Colosseum. Just as there is not much chance that Category:Colosseum would get confused with Category:Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (even though it's larger) or any of the other 37 categories with the word "Coliseum" in them or 3 more categories with "Colosseum" in them, there is not much chance that the English name "Statue of Liberty" by itself refers to anything other than the statue in New York Harbor unless context shows otherwise. It looks to me like most of the other statues with a similar name are only subjective translations from other languages, and that they have been translated as "Statue of Liberty" only because that is the most common combination of "liberty" and "statue" in English, which is because of the one in New York. (How many of those other statues have officially been referred to as "Statue of Liberty"? How many are only called that on Commons because of the tendency towards English names on Commons even when no English name really exists?) Further evidence that the New York statue is the primary subject is the large amount of Commons media related to it, demonstrated by the fairly well-populated subcategories.
    • Against the proposed subcategory names: I assume those suggestions are simply examples, and not the literal names to be used. Nobody calls this statue "Liberty of New York" — that sounds like an insurance company or a car dealer or something. If they must be moved, maybe use "Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World" so at least it contains "Statue of Liberty", or maybe "American Statue of Liberty on <stamps, etc.>".
    Someone mentioned that a non-English-speaking user, trying to translate their native liberty statue names into "Statue of Liberty", may have problems. But how many times does that happen, compared to how many times a non-English-speaking user really is looking for the statue in New York when they type "Statue of Liberty"? I could be wrong, but I suspect that even non-English-speaking people searching for "Statue of Liberty" usually are trying to find the New York statue. (That being said: All the other "Liberty" statues in the world certainly should have redirects for their native names, since that would cure a vast majority of ambiguity problems and remove the necessity for subjective translation. And the name for the American statue should have redirects from as many languages as possible, especially the ones where that statue has a specific common name in that other language.) --Closeapple (talk) 06:11, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not done. I'm closing this discussion almost a year after it was started, with the last comment posted almost two months old. There is still no consensus that there should be a move/rename. It seems that the primary English meaning of "Statue of Liberty", and the one that is searched for the most under that name, is the one in New York. Zzyzx11 (talk) 08:25, 27 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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