Category talk:History of photography

Limit this page to subcategories?
This page has two parts, subcategories and individual entries. Why? What is the justification for having two different reference entities (granted, hierarchically related) on one page?

While the first part currently has only 3 subcategories, it promises to be critically useful when completed.

On the other hand, are you telling me that the second part will be nothing less than a list of every Wikipedia photographic topic and name? Won't that be an unimaginable miscellany of applications, chemistry, clubs, companies, demography, economics, electronics, exhibitions, forensics, holography, marketing, the military, museums, photographers, popular culture, philosophy, prehistory, principles, psychology, publications, societies, stereography, subject matter, technologies--interfiled, and running in the thousands?

One subcategory--notable photographers in history--will alone have hundreds of entries. (Thousands if you let people add photographers they think are important, and are not.)

Such a list will require continual updating and be tedious to use. In fact, it's unwieldy already.

Also, I don't fully understand how you trust every Wiki contributor, when they add a new article, to remember to index it in -both- the individual listings and the appropriate subcategory (if they remember to index it at all).

Might this page be better limited to subcategories only? Individual topics will then be more manageably handled from each subcategory.

Wikipedia: Surely your interface includes a high-level Category page that does just that--comprises subcategories and prohibits individual entries?

Jimlue (talk) 05:59, 30 September 2010 (UTC)


 * You ask a number of interesting questions. But in brief, yes, you're right, this category should be limited to subcategories. -- Hoary (talk) 23:26, 18 November 2010 (UTC)