Category talk:Fresco painters

I do not support this category. Too many painters from 15th to 18th century have tried their hands on fresco decoration to make the category that discriminating. I would be surprised is during the 17-18th century, nearly all Italian painters tried their hand at fresco. It would be like saying that Oil painters or Italian Roman Catholic painters should be a category. Rococo1700 (talk) 02:22, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually I would also like to see a category for Watercolor painters, but for totally other reasons than the one I had when making this category. With this one I am trying to assist discovery of specific frescoes around the world, that are mostly immoveable heritage sites. Most important oil paintings have been moved extensively, and though some frescoes have been hacked out of walls and moved around, most of them are still installed where they were created. Knowing who worked where on frescoes is one step in the discovery process. Jane (talk) 10:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I still disagree with this category: there are about 3000 Italian painters in Wikipedia from 1500-1800. I suspect over half of them worked on fresco. This category only has 200 or so. I do not think it has succeeded nor will succeed in your goal. I am going to nominate for deletion.Rococo1700 (talk) 04:20, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Moved discussion from talk page Jane023
I still disagree with this category: there are about 3000 Italian painters in Wikipedia from 1500-1800. I suspect over half of them worked on fresco. Many of them worked on sometimes a dozen fresco projects each. For example, nearly all quadratura painters are fresco artists. This category in the last year has only has 200 or so entries, some of them are paintings, others painters.

It has not succeeded nor will succeed in the goal you set forth on the talk page for the category, therefore I will nominate this category for deletion. This will give you a window in which to present a more thorough justification of your goalRococo1700 (talk) 04:28, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I still don't see your problem with this category. What is so harmful about having a category for fresco painters that it must be deleted because of the Italian painters? They are all still categorized as painters, so I guess I still don't follow your logic. Jane (talk) 16:57, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

It is not harmful: it is not helpful, it is not logical, it does not help clarify a useful category. It is clutter. For example, you could make a category of Painters who used a canvas, but really, does that identify a specific group. In the 17th century, many, if not most painters in Italy, my specific choice, painted fresco at some time in their life, I don't think this identifies distinguishing group of painters. You could argue that 20th century fresco painters is an interesting category. But again, I think in other centuries this makes as much sense as the category of canvas painters or brush painters. I have made arguments why this category should not exist, you need to show how this category adds information.Rococo1700 (talk) 03:43, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Rococo1700, I think we should keep the comments in one place, and it makes sense to keep them here. Otherwise, it makes it rather difficult for me to follow your objections to this category. As far as I can tell, your argument that the category should be deleted is based on your strong belief that all 1500-1800 painters of Italy were at some point also fresco painters. I disagree with this argument and would like to point our that the category is open to painters of other time periods and nationalities. As I stated above, I think it is important to differentiate fresco painters, because the nature of fresco paintings means they are installed permanently somewhere and contain geographical information that oil paintings often don't have (we don't know where paintings were made for many travelling artists). As for clutter, I guess that is in the eye of the beholder. I don't find this category to be annoying at all and barely notice it on my screen, since it is way at the bottom and quite short. As for usefulness, I find it useful as a way of locating fresco painters. Jane (talk) 06:46, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Overcategorization
The problem remains that the category title does not mean what you say it does. It has 200 entries. But weeks ago I pointed out there are thousands of entries,among Italians alone, that could meet this criteria.

Why don't you make it a category called painters that painted fresco that I randomly picked. Again the point is that for many centuries there were few non-fresco painters. You could nearly move every member of the Italian Baroque painter category into your "putative" category. In addition, many painters painted both fresco and canvas? Are they one or both? Fresco work often employed teams of painters, often younger painters in search for work. Do you count minor contributions or masterworks? All quadrature painters are fresco painters, but your category has almost none of these.

I do not care if the category is open to painters of ten centuries or hundreds of countries. The issue is whether the category will mean anything if it is a random list, missing thousands of entries that fall under label. And if you were to add all the painters in, then it would be an unwieldly mess. Fresco painters of the twentieth centuries have little in common with painters in 13th-century Siena. Again why not call it "painters who use only hair brushes."

I urge you to narrow the category. For example, fresco painting is not as common in the 20th century: that would be an interesting category. If you are interested in locating works, then make a category of fresco works by a specific artist or in a specific church.

Again, the clutter is in creating categories of little use. Please read the entry on Overcategorization. There is a reason why the Wikipedia community has set rules on category formation. To merely dismiss this as eye of the beholder is false. It is you who are setting up an arbitrary category and then claiming it is meaningful.

To quote from overcategorization: ''Overcategorization also has another unpleasant implication: It makes the system (for example Wikipedia) difficult to maintain in a consistent way. If the system is inconsistent it means that when the user considers the links in a given category, he will not find all documents relevant to that category.''

Here lies one problem: How does placing them in the same category help?
 * Michelangelo while also sculptor, architect, etc, painted few canvases, but meters of fresco
 * Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio painted many canvases, but maybe a single fresco

The second problem is inconsistency: unless you plan to make a category containing thousands of entries, it will be vastly incomplete.

Also, almost every palace and villa and church in the 14th-19th century Italy was frescoed, often many rooms, often different artists are you really suggesting that you are going to even scratch the surface of that. Venice alone has nearly 200 churches and 200 palaces. Rome had at one time over 900 churches and oratories alone. Small towns like Cortona in Umbria, in English Wikipedia has 9 churches listed. I expect that in its heyday, it had over fifty churches. Some of the larger ones had multiple chapels, each frescoed by different artists, plus frescoes in cloisters and sacristy, sometimes facades. I guarantee you that your choices of painters and frescoes will be random, highly selective and inconsistent. Rococo1700 (talk) 06:35, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I am sorry you feel this is clutter and overcategorization, but I believe I already explained why I disagree. Until we actually have thousands of painters in this category I don't see the point of objecting. When it gets too big, then splits per country or century can be made. Until then it is still useful for locating possible frescoes and may prompt others to document frescoes better. Frescoes are largely undocumented on Wikipedia, partly because they are often located in remote places where few Wikipedians might photograph them (and copyright rules may also apply). I see no reason not to be open to thousands of entries. Have you never used catscan for category intersection to look for things on Wikipedia? It's quite useful. Jane (talk) 10:01, 8 July 2015 (UTC)