Category talk:Rolling stock

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[edit] Trains - here or in "rail transport"?

Gürbetaler recently moved "trains" out of this category and into "rail transport" directly. I oppose this change, as I consider it contra-intuitive to a high degree. Trains are a collection of rolling stock assembled together. Why should we move it out of where a user would expect it to be?

As usual, I won't revert (will grumble, but not revert) if most people agree that it should move to "Rail transport" directly. But I think we should discuss first whether this makes sense. Cheers, Ingolfson (talk) 11:09, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Please have a look at the category tree of en:Category:Rail_transport. Trains and Rolling stock are equally on the main level. This is, what "the user" expects. Rolling stock are the single vehicles. Trains are several vehicles rolling together and transporting people or freight. A single freight car standing somewhere to be loaded or unloaded isn't a train. You could compare this with "rails" and "railway lines", one is the component needed to form the other but not every rail is necessarily in use on a railway line.--Gürbetaler (talk) 15:16, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

And, concerning what the normal user expects: The category trains is older than rolling stock. Originally rolling stock was categorized as sub-category of trains! This reflects that a user not knowing all the details about railways will search trains but never rolling stock.--Gürbetaler (talk) 15:26, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Gürbetaler, whether one category is older than the other has no bearing on whether the sorting is correct. And while it is rather tempting for both of us to speculate "what the user expects", that is rather subjective. I do not approach this from this user perspective alone anyway, but rather from a sorting perspective. Should something that is the "sum of parts" be sorted into "parts", or above the "parts"? Ingolfson (talk) 22:30, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I also note that you simply reverted me when I reinstated the status quo, instead of comitting to a discussion here first, as I have asked. The fact that you yourself changed "Trains" into "Rolling stock" in the first place some year ago shows this is not as clear cut as it may appear. I'd like some more comments from others first. Ingolfson (talk) 22:33, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Ingolfson, you continue to completely redisign the categories of rail transport without having reached a consensus about the sorting principles. I will continue to revert your changes until a consensus is reached. Rail transport is a system and we sort it into its components, infrastructure and trains. Trains consist from single vehicles, called rolling stock. If we were very strict, we would classify rolling stock as a sub-category of trains. Likewise we put track and overhead line under infrastructure. But the problem is, that trains are a temporary appearance, after the train has arrived at the final destination, the vehicles my be uncoupled and stand around as "non-trains", but they still are rolling stock. This effect justifies to put trains and rolling stock on the same level. If rolling stock would always be part of a train (as catenary is always part of an infrastructure), I would vote to make rolling stock a sub-category of trains. And finally, sorting principles that no user safe one understands aren't what we need on Wikicommons.--Gürbetaler (talk) 22:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Gürbetaler, you changed this category, not me. Both ways - first TO "rolling stock", then back after 9 months. I certainly have the right to question your moves, just as you have done with mine. Regarding your argument that I keep changing the sorting structure: Yes, I proposed to change a number of things - via a category scheme. My other changes were primarily adding new sorting branches like "by function" (which is not the same thing as changing established patterns) or were freely discussed via move requests and so on. Also, once I see that people disagree with changes I make, I engage in discussion.

This is a WIKI. It is ALWAYS in flux, and change is ENCOURAGED. And please stop trying to hit me over the head with arguments like "sorting principles that no one understands." Argue the merits, instead of simply acting as if you spoke for everyone! We have disagreements over the complexity of the sorting system, fine. Let's keep personal feelings out of it. Ingolfson (talk) 06:29, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't want to hit anybody over the head, but I see here a discussion with two persons and that's just a dialogue. Now we know we have different meanings about a few things but there doesn't seem to be anybody around to give a third, fourth and fifth meaning. -- Concerning the changes I made, yes, I had moved trains to rolling stock because much rolling stock was categorized under trains. But after having sorted out some hundered pictures with bad categories and trying to put them in a better place I realized that it would be better to move out rolling stock pictures from trains than to categorize trains itself under rolling stock. I tried to explain why I don't (or no longer) see trains as a subcategory of rolling stock. This also depends on the discussion we had about the category tree. But I think it would be good if we had something like a rail transport portal to discuss such category issues in a certain context and with a few more persons... -- Gürbetaler (talk) 23:51, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that would make sense. But let's leave this on here for a while longer to see what third parties say (I hope we eventuallly get a few comments). Widening the dialogue should also help in ensuring we don't get into personal tussles, too. Ingolfson (talk) 05:39, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Hey, how you all doing, Moebiusuibeom-en here, new dude in town, third party maybe?; let me see if i can shed some light to this dilemma!, to begin with, I believe Trains and Rolling stock are two separate categories, ...and if rolling stock should be a sub-category of trains, maybe, let me put it this way, "my hypothesis"... lets compare Trains to, lets say Cities, so what makes up Cities: Buildings, than in the case of Trains, what makes up Trains: Rolling stock, when you look up cities anywhere you get just that, then comes the buildings, and so on, do i make sense, so to me, Rolling stock is definitely a subcategory of Trains and both should be treated separately, regards ∞ Moebiusuibeom-en (talk) 06:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)