Category talk:Technical geography

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Categories[edit]

@GeogSage: This category should be categorized, i.e., put into a parent category. Judging by how articles are currently categorized, categorizing this category will probably involve removing some of the articles in this category from parent categories: per WP:CATSPECIFIC, articles should not be categorized in parent categories when they are in more specific categories (though it is fine to put them in multiple sibling categories). Biogeographist (talk) 13:58, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hello User:Biogeographist. Thank you for the guidance. This is my first attempt at creating a category from scratch, and I appreciate the guidance.

The parent category should be geography, I think, as it goes Human Knowledge>science>Geography>Branch>sub-branch>technology. Is this correct? GeogSage (talk) 14:43, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@GeogSage: At the moment I can't see any reason why the parent category shouldn't be Category:Geography. However, as an example of the concomitant recategorization that I mentioned, Category:Spatial analysis is also in Category:Geography, but would seem to logically go in Category:Technical geography instead of the article Spatial analysis. And then there is the question of how Category:Technical geography differs from Category:Geographical technology (which is also in Category:Geography), a distinction (if there is one) that is likely to be lost on many readers and could lead to confusion. Adding a major category generally entails reevaluation of other categories. Biogeographist (talk) 16:59, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Geographical Technology is an interesting category that I saw. My understanding would be technical geography is the branch that encompasses the study of methods and technology as they apply to geographic problems, so it would include Spatial analysis, geoinformatics, etc. Geographical technology would be the literal tools, so GPS, GIS, Remote sensing. This category would be a sub-category to Technical geography as I understand the literature. Could it be possible to merge the two categories into one for the branch to avoid confusion? Again, this is my first move on making categories. Apologize if I'm a bull in a China shop, unfortunately as I've been trained the cluster of geography pages are kind of mixed up in terms of organizational hierarchy. GeogSage (talk) 18:44, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

OK, the category move looks fine, but now it's necessary to remove pages from Category:Technical geography that are now in subcategories; I just did this for Geographic information system, Global Positioning System, and Remote sensing but there may be others. There are editors who specialize in cleaning up categories who may come around later and catch some others (I think they use specialized tools like WP:TW), but it's good to clean up as much as you can yourself when you're responsible for the changes. Biogeographist (talk) 19:59, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed that Category:Branches of geography exists, so I moved this category to there from Category:Geography, as more specific. Biogeographist (talk) 20:06, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@GeogSage: Do you think Category:Geographic data and information fields of study belongs in Category:Technical geography too? I think so. If so, that would leave few or no individual pages in this category since they would be in the subcategory. That's the way it should be for a high-level category like this. Biogeographist (talk) 20:29, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I will go ahead and move Category:Geographic data and information fields of study into Category:Technical geography. It's also in Category:Geographic data and information. Biogeographist (talk) 20:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding of geography in terms of hierarchy of branches, is Geography is broken in to technical, physical, and human at the highest three levels.

'Geographic data and information fields of study' would definitely belong to technical geography in the that model. If that means there are few pages in the higher order category then that is the organizational hierarchy.

I suspect there are similar problems with Human geography and physical geography, just seeing that animal geography is a page in geography, when I suspect it is a sub field within Physical geography. Philosophy of geography is a difficult one on that page, as technically, technical geography deals with high order philosophy and methods of pure geographic thought. However, I suspect a geographer highly specialized in philosophy of geography would consider themselves a critical geographer, and they tend to view themselves as the counter reaction to the quantitative revolution that spawned technical geography. GeogSage (talk) 21:57, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I moved Animal geography to Category:Biogeography. Thanks for noticing that. Biogeographist (talk) 22:05, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome! Thanks, as your user name implies, I think that would be a field you would be able to categorize. GeogSage (talk) 00:29, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]