Commons:Categories for discussion/2022/10/Category:0 people

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Category:0 people

I question the practicality of this category. The other categories in Category:People by quantity may be meaningful, but looking at the files in this category, it doesn't seem terribly useful to me. It's used arbitrarily. Of course we have millions of images where there are no people to be seen - why add a few hundred of them to this category? We probably have tens or hundreds of thousands of images of buildings without people, so what's the significance of having, for example, File:AppuldurcombeHouseExterior.jpg and File:048 2015 07 12 Am Markt 1.jpg in this category? (For the latter, it's not even true, there's a person at the very left of the image). Why add File:Gods own country.jpg to this category, but not tens of thousands of other landscape pictures? - I think that the category could be meaningful if used in a very restrained way, that is, only for places and situations where it's uncommon and significant, something special, that there are zero people. But maybe we don't need it at all? Gestumblindi (talk) 20:34, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

either  Delete or make it a {{Catcat}}. everything under Category:Empty that can fit a person inside, like empty bus, unoccupied new building, uninhabited island... would fall under this "0 people". rather useless cat. RZuo (talk) 15:49, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

@Gestumblindi: I agree that this category seems at first impractical, but that there may be a meaningful purpose for a category for images that specifically show an absence of something (in this case people). Of course, as currently set up as a quantity category, it clearly is not limited to such a purpose and strongly invites any file not depicting any people to be categorized here. Topical categories are supposed to categorize files based on what they depict, not on what they do not depict. Thus, if we are to retain this category, it should first be specifically defined to the limited scope appropriate, and should be renamed to reflect this limited scope (Category:Absence of people?) Josh (talk) 18:07, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, a category for something like "absence of people where people usually are expected" could make more sense, but maybe would still be difficult to handle... Gestumblindi (talk) 01:19, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

• Delete. We don't need a category for "zero animals" or "zero buildings" so I don't know what zero people accomplishes. No one is going to be looking for images of no persons. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:54, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

 Delete "0 vehicles", "0 animals", etc. Where does this stop? Cryptic-waveform (talk) 18:35, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

 Delete I totally agree: this is nonsense, we do not need it. JopkeB (talk) 04:59, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

 Delete Completely agree that this is a ridiculous category. BTW, isn't 9 months long enough to act on this consensus? Acabashi (talk) 06:52, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with Acabashi, 9 months is indeed long enough to act.

Conclusion, proposal and question

1. Conclusion: We agree that this category is useless, we do not need it and it should be deleted.
2. Proposals:
   1. Move the subcategories starting with "Empty" to Category:Empty, including Category:Unattended sales places.
   2. Remove Category:Train halts; there are indeed a lot of photos showing empty halts, but not all, and theoretically they do not need to be empty (then there should be a Category:Empty train halts).
   3. For the country categories: Make a Category:Absence of people by country (idea adopted from Josh), with as main parent Category:Empty and a good description like "absence of people where people usually are expected".
   4. Categorize the files better, remove them from this category. (If an image has a human on it, we usually give it subcategories of Category:People with objects; if no humans are visible, such images may be categorized in the object category itself.)
   5. Make a deletion request for this category.
3. Question for @Gestumblindi, RZuo, Joshbaumgartner, Ricky81682, Cryptic-waveform, and Acabashi: Do you agree? Or do you have better ideas?

JopkeB (talk) 16:13, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I do agree with this course of action, thank you. Gestumblindi (talk) 11:06, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

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