User talk:Andy Dingley

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Some changes this week

Hello Andy Dingley, you make some changes this week to vehicles in the Musée National de l'Automobile.

1. Deletion request to Category:Lotus 33 (Musée National de l'Automobile) in the Musée National de l'Automobile (for pictures made in the museum) and changes in Category:Lotus 33 (Musée National de l'Automobile).
   Please note that in the last category there are also pictures made at the Paris Motor show, definitely outside of the museum. According to the main categories which you added all pictures must show: 1960s Lotus automobiles in the Musée National de l'Automobile, 1960s automobiles in the Musée National de l'Automobile, 1963 automobiles in museums, Formula One cars in the Musée National de l'Automobile. It was a hard fight for me in the last years to correct all such mistakes made by User:Finoskov in these categories.
2. You created Category:1960s Lotus automobiles in the Musée National de l'Automobile without Category:Lotus automobiles in the Musée National de l'Automobile. Regards --Buch-t (talk) 16:36, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for starting this discussion. I'm receptive to any ideas you have for how best to do this.

• I see no point in having Category:Lotus automobiles in the Musée National de l'Automobile. All of their Lotuses are from the 1960s (AFAIK). I created one 1960 Lotus category for the museum, which is also in Category:Automobiles in the Musée National de l'Automobile and sorted as L for Lotus. In which case, creating the category for all Lotuses in all decades there would have no point, other than to add additional layers of navigation overhead.

The only drawback to this is a truly trivial aesthetic one, of the wording used for the link from the all-cars page including the prefix '1960'. This is just one of the limitations that we have to work around with Mediawiki. It's a lot less of a drawback than the extra baggage of additional navigation layers which are adding nothing.

There is a similar issue with Category:Violet-Bogey type A torpedo (M.N.A.) and Category:O.M. type 665 SS MM roadster (M.N.A.1322) 1931, where these are the only cars of that marque in the museum, thus I did not create the intermediate categories for them.

I would like to see Category:Automobiles in the Musée National de l'Automobile expand so as to become an all-marques listing for the museum. Groups where there are multiples; single pages for single cars where there are not. That would have value to our readers. I found the structure very hard to follow before my recent visit because there was no complete list of marques. It is not useful to our readers to hide all the Audis from them (a marque with a long history under that name) and expect our readers to guess the decade they might be under! It's not too hard to guess that Lotuses were in the 1960s, but for Audi this would be guessing that a 1913 model was filed under 1924, for a maker far better known in the 1930s or 1980s. That's an unreasonable requirement.

• As to the Lotus 33 (and any general principles involved in that category) then it is (in the broad sense) the regular problem that we have to manage content which doesn't perfectly fit the structure we've built. In this case, the example of a museum exhibit that travels to other exhibitions.

I see no point to concerning ourselves with this. The issue is simply trivial. Mediawiki categorisation is also (as always) navigational, not defining. It just doesn't have the capabilities to cover such situations in a useful manner. Attempts to do so (not unusual here) just make navigation unduly complex. If we had content of this car racing in the 1960s, then that would be different. Even if it came out to events like Goodwood and was photographed in action there, it would be worthwhile to separate them. But for two images of the car in Paris, looking identical to how it looks when also at rest in a different museum, there is no point in splitting.

The category names are tautological anyway. If the content is so fluid that it can't simply be grouped under one, then why have the name of that venue in the category, implying that's where they are anyway? Are you advocating a training course being necessary for our readers before starting, lesson one being "The category with MNA in the name is the one that doesn't involve the MNA. You need to look instead at the one labelled twice as 'MNA in the MNA'." If we can't explain to our readers on sight that the category labelled 'MNA' is the one for images not in the MNA, then we've failed.

This is particularly bad if, like here, Category:Lotus 33 (Musée National de l'Automobile) becomes inconsistent with Category:Lotus 18 in the Musée National de l'Automobile in that the category with the simple name [<marque> <MNA>] transforms into being the one that isn't at the MNA. That is a broken and ridiculous naming system. The only thing worse is the one where trivial and overlooked syntax such as '(...)' means the opposite of 'in the'. There is no way that that system would be any sense to anyone other than you, completely ignoring our customer here, the readership.

As usual, our guiding principle should be that of defaults and refinement. For a museum collection, the default assumption will be that exhibits are in that museum. We make that the basic behaviour for the parent category (the top level for any Lotus 33 content within this collection). The exceptions to this then become the exceptions. If we have coverage of a museum collection car in its racing heyday, then we put those in a subcategory beneath. Likewise if one makes a loan trip elsewhere. But the starting point of this tree, for all exhibits equally, should be that its content of this car in this museum. If we distinguish anything within that, we make those the exception and leave the default in place.

I am open to any discussion of these issues, but I am unconvinced by your points here. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:59, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

You created Category:1960s Lotus automobiles in the Musée National de l'Automobile with the main Category:Lotus automobiles in the Musée National de l'Automobile, but this category does not exist. It is a red category. Where is the sense to use red categories? You can remove the red category and this problem is solved for me.

When I look at your last edits then I find more examples where you use red categories without creating them: Category:Tower blocks in Somerset, Category:Telephone exchanges in Gloucestershire, Category:Methodist Chapels in Devon, Category:Lock-up garages in England. I am wondering. But this categories are not of interest for me.

Please look at Category talk:Musée National de l'Automobile. Last year, when there was the disput with User:Finoskov, I started to write my thinkings about the category system for this museum. He did not answer. Nobody answered. I did some changes but I did not change the wholly system. Now, 14 months later, it would be necessary for me to think from the beginning again.

Now to the bigger problem: pictures in museum and pictures made elsewhere.

To categorize images in categories where they are not right according to the category name or category structure, is deceptive. (In German de:Täuschung, I hope that en:Deception/deceptive is the right translation.)

When we have a category which is in main categories like „in the Musee Automobile“ or „in museums“ then I cannot accept pictures made elsewhere. We have to find a way to prevent incorrect category assignments.

I will be back next weekend. --Buch-t (talk) 17:00, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Questions to the museum in Mulhouse

I think that you was there this month. Do you have visited before? Any important changes? What is the actual method of describing the vehicles? Written like here? Or displays or headsets or QR-Codes? In 3 languages? With the number of Palissy like PM68001640 for Category:Bugatti Type 23 skiff torpedo (M.N.A.0306) 1920 (chassis 765) or the number of MNA?
Perhaps I can visit again this year. Regards --Buch-t (talk) 17:00, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

This was my first visit. Overall it was just as I'd been warned: an interesting collection of pretty cars, presented with almost no labelling and no interpretation or explanation at all. As a museum, it's rather missing the target.

By the way, what about the Category:Bugatti Type 37A there? Is there a category for that? Andy Dingley (talk) 17:27, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Bugatti 37 in the museum

I found only pictures of one Type 37 from the Mulhouse museum at commons: Category:Bugatti Type 37 racing two-seater (M.N.A.0415) 1928 (chassis 37-314): Type 37, year 1928, MNA 0415, chassis 37314, PM68001672.

During my visits I made notes for:

• Type 37 from 1926
• Type 37 from 1928 with 70 hp
• Type 37 A from 1929 with 100 hp. I don't have pictures of this vehicles.

It is possible to search at PM. 431 results. I searched for " 37" and found PM68001672 and PM68001673. --Buch-t (talk) 07:33, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

I saw and photographed both a 37 and a 37A at the museum. The 37 (this car) is described on their display card as having gone to America post-war, then returned. It's also described as originally supercharged, but removed later, which surprised me. I don't understand why it's a two seater with that cockpit layout, if built after '25, but then I don't know much about Bugatti variations. My own photo is almost identical to the one here, so I didn't upload it.

The 37A is a car that's photographed in several racing books, not just Bugatti, because it was driven by Guy Bouriat. It's a supercharged 37A. There are a couple of photos of it on here in Category:Bugatti Type 37A, but I don't know the chassis number. I can't see a category here for that specific car, one should be created.

I'm unfamiliar with Palissy and that database. Those two links look like they refer to the same car?

I might go back in a year's time. I'm very likely to go back to Mulhouse then, might have time to go to the car museum. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:21, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Your picture of the 37A

I cannot find the 37A in Palissy. Perhaps it is not part of Palissy, but exhibited in the museum.

Palissy 1672: MNA 0415, high 120 cm, chassis 37314, year 1928.

Palissy 1673: MNA 0416, high 130 cm, chassis 37196, year 1926. No more differences found. --Buch-t (talk) 12:50, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

Whether it is in Palissy or not, there should be a category page for this vehicle in the museum. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:00, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

Now I have created Category:Bugatti Type 37A 1929 in the Musée National de l'Automobile. --Buch-t (talk) 07:08, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, I've added the others to it too. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:55, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Syntax errors

Hi Andy, could you please fix your edits: incategory:Pages_using_Information_template_with_incorrect_parameter insource:/Anefo/ --Leyo 13:56, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

These are still old problems from the original 2017 imports and incorrect authorship. The broken page record then (two authors listed) breaks downstream processing. Please tell me if you find any more. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:18, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. I try to empty Category:Pages using Information template with incorrect parameter. If I remember correctly, it contained approx. 2000 files when I started. You are most welcome to help. :-) --Leyo 14:34, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Many of those wouldn't be there if the |additional_information= param had been handled as it was supposed to be a few years ago. See the {{Information}} talk archive some years back. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:26, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

That's especially the case in the first bunch of files, where I fixed all the other issues. I hope these cases are fixed by a bot (see Commons:Bots/Work requests#Unsupported parameters in Template:Information). --Leyo 16:26, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

-insource:/\| *(Location|additional.information|Anmerkungen) *=/i incategory:Pages_using_Information_template_with_incorrect_parameter finds files with other issues than those unsupported parameters. --Leyo 06:46, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Re:

Hello Andy Dingley. I've taken note and will comply with what you've pointed out. However, as I've already mentioned, the user does whatever he wants. I've already explained what the user did a few days ago (he still hasn't given any explanation for why he did it), so it seems the rules apply to me but not to him. He can sabotage my work at will, and I can't touch his edits. And if I protest about his behavior, he simply deletes my messages, just ignoring me. CFA1877 (talk) 10:14, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

 Comment I have recreated this category. If user Tyk acts arbitrarily again in this or other cases, I expect a strong response, as I abide by the decision you and @Strakhov: have made. Kind regards. It still seems absolutely arbitrary to me to create hundreds of categories for a single photo, but as I said, I will abide by your decision. CFA1877 (talk) 10:38, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

User:CFA1877: I've made no decision (nor Andy Dingley, I think). I've commented on an ANI thread and suggested both of you to stop what you're doing. Strakhov (talk) 10:57, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Joseph Wright of Derby Blacksmith's

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:ABlacksmithsShop1771JosephWright.jpg&action=edit&oldid=1119533832

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:An_Iron_Forge_1772.jpg&diff=next&oldid=658252471

In the arts we have other rules. As you can see all files were sorted by other users by arbitrary number. I started to sort by museum and then by quality=pixels, in this case Google Art first Oursana (talk) 13:27, 21 May 2026 (UTC)