Category talk:Structures by length

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Jump to navigation Jump to search

kilometer/s[edit]

German

@AnRo0002: Bei structures und tunnels stehen die kilometer ohne s, bei bridges stehen die kilometers jedoch mit s? Hat das einen grammatikalischen Grund oder liegt ein Fehler vor, der korrigiert werden sollte? Gruß -- Triple C 85 | User talk | 19:20, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

in den Längen-Kategorien herrschte ursprünglich ziemliches Chaos. nach meinem Sprachgefühl wäre 0.X kilometer richtig und nicht kilometers anro (talk) 21:04, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Mit Schnellschüssen erreicht man das Gegenteil, von dem was man will. Ebenso mit der Unfähigkeit zu diskutieren. Das Sprachgefühl täuscht: es handelt sich nämlich nicht um exakte Längen, sondern um Längenklassen womit der Plural sehr richtig ist.
Als Beispiel diene eine Menge mit drei fiktiven Bauwerke von 0.412 km, 0.475 km, 0.401 km Länge. Im dt. Sprachgebrauch sind das 0.4er Kilometer Bauwerke (Kilometer ist hier der Plural), also engl. 0.4s kilometers structures.
Ein analoges Beispiel ist bei den Jahresdekaden gegeben: man spricht von den 2010er Jahren, weil sie die Menge der Jahre 2010, 2011, 2012, etc. umschließen.
Den 0.x kilometers .. Kategorien kann ein s an die Fließkommazahl angefügt werden, um zu verdeutlichen, dass es sich um mehrere Einzelwerte einer Menge handelt (wie bei den Jahreszahlen gehandhabt und wie bei den xxx meters .. Kategorien bereits in Nutzung).
Das bisherige Kategoriensystem mag sprachlich nicht einwandfrei sein. Es ist einfach, auch mit guten Absichten, daran etwas zu verschlimmbessern (oder neue Probleme einzubringen, die erst später als solche erkannt werden). Insofern sollte man Einwände bei Vorstößen nicht wegbügeln.
Ein anderes Thema sind Klammerzusätze, sie dienen in der Dokumentation üblicherweise als de:Qualifikator und werden sonst mehrdeutigen Deskriptoren hinten angestellt (suffix statt infix - diese 'Regel'/Konvention ist auf Commons aus Automationsgründen des Öfteren schon gebrochen, wo möglich sollte man aber auf die Infix-Form verzichten.)
Im vorliegenden Fall wäre zu überlegen, ob das Kriterium 'Länge' tatsächlich als Qualifikator in Klammern angegeben werden muss. Es ist stattdessen auch denkbar, es als Teil des Deskriptors zu formulieren: 1 Meter Breite, 1 Meter Höhe, 1 Meter Länge (statt 1 Meter (Breite), 1 Meter (Höhe), 1 Meter (Länge)). --91.55.161.189 00:06, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
siehe auch / see also #Alternative to infix bracket usage
English

@Joshbaumgartner and Storye book: In this category: In the case of structures and tunnels, kilometer is written without s, in the case of bridges, kilometers is written with s.

Is there a grammatical reason for this? or is there one case with wrong spelling, that should be corrected? Greets -- Triple C 85 | User talk | 19:20, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For example:

Greets -- Triple C 85 | User talk | 19:23, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(1) Adjective. In English, when "kilometre/kilometer" is used as an adjective, it has no "s" at the end, and a hyphen is used. Example: "0.1-kilometer bridges". For that phrase, the rule would be the same for any number of kilometers and any number of bridges. Therefore the usage above is wrong.
(2) Noun. In English, when "kilometre/kilometer" is used as a noun, it has no "s" when singular, and it has an "s" at the end when plural. Examples:
Singular noun. "This road measures 1 kilometer".
Plural noun: "This road measures 2 kilometers".
Plural: "This road is among those of 2 kilometers in length." (2 as an exact value)
Plural: "This road is among those of 2s kilometers in length." (2 as a range)
  • informally the twos as a quick way to express a range of values between two and three (three exclusive)
  • this does not contradict the s suffix on decade ranges: 10s between 10 and 20 (20 excl.), 200s for values between 200 and 300 (300 excl.), because the number of zeros between the first non-zero digit before s marks the decade you're in (tens, hundreds, thousands, etc.) - for a more vivid example cp. 1900s (i.e. all years of the century or, ambiguosly, years of the decade 1900–1909 which, in the context of a timeline, seems to be a litte more common) and 1910s or 1010s (just all years of the decade)
  • en:Decade_(log_scale) is another source exhibiting suffixed s to decimal fractions. It contains a picture with a grid box (4 columns, from left to right: 1000 rows, 100 rows, 10 rows, 1 row) and explains, quote One thousand 0.001s, one-hundred 0.01s, ten 0.1s, one 1. - in this particular case the s is used a plural for the exact value, because in the specific context the exact values repeat. But this 'exactness' is not a necessary condition to use the s suffix (the timeline example illustrates this: 1900s (regardless of whether it is used as 1900..1999 or 1900..1909 range) uses that plural without the exact value 1900 repeating)
  • In the past only the plural (1 kilometers bridges) has served to signal that the range is meant. This fact is silently ignored when labeling category titles with the attribute wrong as above. Please recognize that the categories have not held structures/bridges of exactly 1 kilometer length, but all in the range of 1..2 (2 exclusive) kilometers. It seems as if this was not understood and that 'sanitizing' was started on false presumptions. --91.55.161.189 02:06, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
and also: "These roads are all 1 kilometer long". Storye book (talk) 08:58, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Storye book: Thank you very much for the explanation. I suggest @AnRo0002: and I take care of moving all the wrong categories from the example above to the correct spelling (and we should also fix the templates) so that the misspelling is eliminated and does not continue or spread to country categories. Greets -- Triple C 85 | User talk | 09:11, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. And all the best to you, too. Storye book (talk) 09:16, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Now we can start with Structures by length @Triplec85, bitte helfe mit die "falschen" Kategorien entsprechend umzuwandeln, das sind einige hunderte... anro (talk) 21:53, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@AnRo0002: Ab heute oder morgen Abend kann ich mithelfen. Gruß -- Triple C 85 | User talk | 11:59, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the examples above, "7-kilometer structures" should be the correct format (for anything, including bridges, tunnels, etc.) Josh (talk) 21:49, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
actually I have finished 0.1-kilometer structures and 0.2-kilometer structures with no more wrong spelled subcategories except of bridges by length by country (esp. Norway has still many wrong spelled categories). @Triplec85, wenn ich auf Brücken und Tunnel in der Schweiz, in Österrreich und in Frankreich stoße, landen diese in den jeweiligen Landes-Kategorien (vgl. 0.2-kilometer structures), und auch gleich mit rail und road nach Jahr für das jeweilige Land, deswegen dauert das ganze bei mir entsprechend Länger. anro (talk) 23:52, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hyphen[edit]

There are reasons to avoid this character, esp. in combination with numeric values. For one this is very easily misinterpreted as the minus sign (for the same reason * + / should be used rather carefully). The other reason is the plethora of scripts, templates, lua modules and string processing on Commons that tokenize based on whitespace, typically and most prominently the single space character. Yet another reason is the convention to separate quantity and unit names by space, see en:International_System_of_Units#Lexicographic_conventions and there is no need nor benefit to break with this convention in the cases discussed here. 91.55.161.189 00:27, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative to infix bracket usage[edit]

Instead of using the infix qualificator (example 70s meters (length) structures) the adjective forms may be much nicer to read and handle, this means:

  • 70s meters long structures
  • 70s meters wide structures
  • 70s meters high structures

In addition to getting rid of the need for a bracketized version of the qualifying noun, it uses less chars, which also has a small impact on the appearance of a sub-category tree: Compare (length) (8 chars repeating on each instance) to long (4 chars repeating).

The (probably neglectable?) cost of this is adjusting some template code. Neglectable, because it needs to be done only once.

To think of other 'cons': For hypothetical templates branching on parsed qualifiying nouns (e.g. sort in template code .. (height) .. to by height, .. (length) .. to by length, etc.), the parsed result would instead need a straight-forward translation step (infer from .. long .. to .. by length for example). The present templates mostly relate to a single criterion, e.g. there is not one template handling all dimension, but templates for each of the dimensions. Although a non-issue, this helps pinpointing to the scope to also be considered before adopting to different cat patterns.

In the past it has been a (silent) implication that omitting an adjective in likewise category titles means the most prominent criteria. The following category titles were not wrong just because they have been less explicit:

  • 70s meters bridges (prior art title implying range 70 to 80 ( [70 .. 80) ; 80 exclusive ) meters long bridge structures
  • 7 kilometers bridges (prior art title implying range 7 to 8 ( [7 .. 8) ; 8 exclusive ) kilometers long bridge structures

Relying on implication arguably is a source for error. But being more explicit in the category titles comes at the cost of repetition (sloppy: more 'clutter').

The typical (natural language) use of implication is to specify extra attributes if and only if they differ from the attribute used most frequently. In natural language this serves efficiency of communication, although it sometimes leads to errors. To reflect this onto Commons category titles, as has been relied upon in the past: bridge structures 'length' criterion is/was assumed to be the most frequent criterion. For the category tree this means/meant opting for either

most prominent attribute implied all criteria explicit
  • 70s meters bridges
  • 70s meters wide bridges
  • 70s meters high bridges
  • 70s meters long bridges
  • 70s meters wide bridges
  • 70s meters high bridges

--91.55.168.184 11:56, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category_talk:Structures_by_length&oldid=860634252"