Image categories

[DrBob]

I think it's time to retire a few of the less well-defined and less useful image categories: [[Category:Sprites]] and [[Category:Models]]. Nobody's ever been able to use them properly, and they don't help anyone.

[prod]

Yes, please do
I'll set my bot on it if we decide to.

[DrBob]

I'll set my bot on it if we decide to.

It's definitely a bot job.

[Notmyhandle]

Well what are you going to categorize those images under? Hah, why would you remove them if we have no substitute?

[DrBob]

Well what are you going to categorize those images under? Hah, why would you remove them if we have no substitute?

There doesn't need to be a substitute! Currently, all images should technically have a category describing the type of object (model, sprite), a category describing the type of image (screenshot, artwork, etc.) and an optional game category.

[Procyon]

Then I fail I can't imagine the backlog of images that I'm going to have to fix up as a result of this...

[Notmyhandle]

Right, but you're getting rid of the spirites category... and most of them don't have any other cat... Can we make like a units and an enemies/monsters category?

[DrBob]

Right, but you're getting rid of the spirites category... and most of them don't have any other cat... Can we make like a units and an enemies/monsters category?

Sounds good, although we do already have a Characters category, so I think we'd only really need a Monsters category.

[prod]

So, what's the final decision on this?

[Dukeruckley]

A Monsters category doesn't seem useful... Neither does the characters for that matter. Who wants to look through a category of 1000s of monsters from different games? I think the most important category is the Guide-specific one. Do we need any more than that (besides SW images)?

[Notmyhandle]

Either we accurately categorize them, or we throw them into one giant category. Typically we've been against the latter.

[Dukeruckley]

I just don't find a characters category necessary... Unless it is a guide-specific category. I can understand box artwork, artwork, sprites, models, etc., but anything that doesn't describe the type of category seems rather unnecessary. Save those character, monster, item, etc. categories for a game wiki.

If we do decide to keep characters and whatnot, I would then recommend we change the name to "character images" to be more accurate, since we are describing the image not the character really.

[Notmyhandle]

I think that would be a good change, as it is more accurate and more like our other image category names (Guide-specific images, system images, accessory images...).

[Vizeroth]

I would prefer the guide-specific category and, if needed (because a specific guide has enough images to justify it) sub-categories. I don't think anyone's really going to spend time looking through the current batch of image categories looking for something unless they absolutely have to (because the image category is the only thing they know about the image they're looking for).

[najzere]

tl;dr: Right now the categories are kind of useless, but in the future if that changes, we will wish we had more categories.

In my mind, the intent of any image category tag is to organize that image. That implies that someone will use the category to find all images of that specific type. Does that happen? Like it's been said before, I only imagine people looking in specific games' image categories. If we had the functionality to use categories as filters, then that would be somewhat more useful, as you may be looking for just characters in a certain guide or series, for example. If there's a way to tell the wiki to combine certain categories and exclude others and put the results into one page, I don't know how to do it.

I'm a fan of many categories and very specific ones, just in case we ever get any tools to make them useful. I also agree that Sprites isn't a very intuitive category, but I think Models is understandable. My problem with Sprites is that to me it implies a small image with poor graphics. Some images are huge and beautifully rendered in thousands of colors, but because they are two-dimensional they're supposed to be categorized as Sprites (I'm assuming this from the process of elimination, as they're definitely not Models and they're supposed to be one or the other).

Here are useful categories to me, with new ones bolded:
-Achievement images
-Arcade controls
-Bosses
-Box artwork
-Characters
-Company logos
-Controller buttons (and all its subcategories)
-Controller images (or could be included in System images)
-Diagrams
-Enemies
-Fan art
-Flyers (or Arcade flyers or Game flyers)
-Game logos
-gamename images
-Hand drawn
-Icons
-Items
-Maps
-Marquees (or Arcade marquees)
-Official art
-Photos
-Playable characters
-Screenshots
-Series logos
-seriesname images
-StrategyWiki images
-System images
-System logos
-Trading cards (the kind that can be used outside gameplay)
-Units
-User images
-Vehicles


Here are categories I don't find useful:
-Artwork (too vague)
-Fighter portraits (why)
-Guide-specific images (going through a list of all games with images is the same as going through a list of all games)
-Models (who cares)
-Sprites (who cares)

I also don't like any category you put in another category, like putting an Icons category in the Controller buttons category, but this is currently the only way to "drill down" to more specific categories right now. Ideally, I think an image page should be built upwards with including the specific categories you want and filtering out ones that also include the categories you don't want.

On an implementation note, if we ever have a way to use a bunch of specific image categories, we should put checkboxes on the upload page to make it easy for people to add categories, as well as a separate field for the name of the guide its for. On the multiple upload page, it could be a dropdown list where multiple categories could be Ctrl-selected.