Category talk:Maps of the history of the Middle East

This category is populated exclusively by Commons media and should not exist. Tewfik^Talk 01:28, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There were also links to subcategories until you deleted them too. Also there is a link to even more images in the commons category.

Commons media in English wikipedia categories[edit]

Commons media are for the use of all wikipedia sites worldwide. The English wikipedia pages for those commons media list the English wikipedia pages on which those commons media are used.

The commons page for a particular image does not list the English wikipedia pages on which that image is being used.

There are images in English wikipedia categories that would not be accepted in the commons. Gif images, fair use images, etc.. So the link to the commons category allows for more public-domain images to be used in English wikipedia pages.

The existence of the English wikipedia category allows for links to be made to the commons category of the same name. So English wikipedia editors then know of the additional commons media available to them. Those images are sometimes better, as explained previously. Oftentimes there is a larger selection of images at the commons.

The existence of the English wikipedia category also allows a logical location for links to the English wikipedia subcategories.

Not all commons images are suitable for placement in English wikipedia categories. Images captioned in other languages for example.

As many others have done I put some of the English-language commons images in the English wikipedia categories. This saves editors time in finding images. Because they don't have to click many commons images to open them up and see what language is used on the image.--Timeshifter 07:59, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]