Agreed. This is demonstrated even more clearly by the subcategories - 'Human bodies', 'stones', 'astronomical objects'? This category is useless in its current state, and if everything inside objects was moved to it in order to make it useful we wouldn't gain much. In my opinion this should be deleted as it seems to have been created solely from the Wikipedia article, but that article doesn't benefit for this category. YuriNikolai (talk) 01:21, 31 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
BFO-based ontologies are making a distinction between "Physical objects" (as defined in physics), depending on their material or immaterial nature.
What we have in "Category:Objects" are in fact "Material objects": they have a non-zero mass, normally measured on our common "static" reference frame on Earth, ideally in absence of any acceleration was it causes an additional "tidal effect" caused by other masses moving in our accelerating referential causing changes of shapes or mass density dispersion, but usually it is ignorable under some level of precision (and also ignoring the tiny but unpredictable quantum variations all around our "real" but very limited space-time referential frame, which can considerably change all our measurable material properties, including the mass of objects, or even their observable existence in our physical frame of space-time): this includes "massive particles" in the standard model of physics, and all their compositions on larger scales (but not their interactions).
But "Physical objects" also has a separate subclass for "Immaterial physical objects" (only indirectly observable by their effects on "material objects"): these "immaterial physical objects" are not directly observable, but only conjectured (according to some "physical models and theories" with which we can make predictions for their behavior and effects on material object properties, and where need to make lot of experimentation, observations and measurements, to tune these models as precisely as possible); for example: radiations, photons, fields (physical objects that may have physical dimensions, but that don't have their own individual mass), physical space/time referentials, "forces", moles, and almost all physical measurements (with the exception of measurements of mass and space-time, which are the only thing we can directly observe in our referential frame, within well known limitations of scales and precision that physicists try to extend with better models tuned by more experiments)...
Other "Immaterial objects" include more "abstract" concepts, that are still not physical objects, as they have no provable and predictable (direct or indirect) observable effects on material objects (but they may still eventually be countable, studied to found models, based on "meta-theories"), such as: the object properties themselves (isolated from these objects), assertions, axioms, definitions, theorems, conjectures, theories (including "physical models"), demonstrations, truths/fallacies, systems, processes, recipes, knowledge, ideas, law, semantics, languages, texts (independently of their material support), beliefs, culture (excluding their material expressions)...
Good point, one could subcat the Organisms accordingly but since that hasn't been done removing the cat for now may be best. I think there should also be a note in the Objects by type and Objects cat that this is about the large-scope concept of objects in the sense of physical objects...I think many people at least colloquially distinguish between objects and living things. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:36, 23 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
That seems reasonable. I'm not so sure it would be worth creating specific "Inanimate cats" categories for dead animals or whatever, but you make a valid point that people usually distinguish between objects and living things. I just don't think this category is the best way to do that. Maybe there's a better way though. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:52, 23 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Adamant1 and Prototyperspective: Yes, I have created this category to distinguish between organisms and other objects. Actually, there are various terms that can include or exclude certain things, depending on context or use:
The term "animal" includes humans in biological contexts, but exclude them in other contexts. Currently Commons adopts both definitions inconsistently.
The term "country" always includes sovereign states, but some people or organizations also include dependent territories and some even include constituent countries.
The term "road" includes streets in some contexts, but exclude them in others. Commons has recently adopted the former definition, while Wikipedia adopts both definitions inconsistently.
The term "structure" includes buildings in some contexts (especially formal ones), but exclude them in others. Commons adopts the former definition, while Wikipedia adopts the latter.
I don't know. This seems way to general to be useful. Otherwise essentially everything that isn't a living thing could go in the category, which makes it essentially pointless. Plus there's already a lot of other better defined top level categories similar to this anyway. There's absolutely no reason what-so-ever that things like Insignia and spikes should (or need to) be in the same parent category. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:18, 24 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yeah I don't really see the point in those categories either since there's no "human animals" categories on here that I'm aware of. So it goes without saying that any category for animals is "nonhuman." The word "non" is just pointless. The same goes for "nonbuilding structures." Ask yourself if Category:Nonbuildings would make sense or be useful? I'd say no. We don't categorize things based on what they aren't. Otherwise there's an infinate amount of ways you could do it with in increasingly less usefulness as you go along. That's not how people search for things or find media anyway. If someone wants to find an image of a bicycle they don't search for "noncar vehicles" or some nonsense. Your just creating a bunch of categories that are going to turn into useless dumps of random media and categories that don't ultimate have anything to do with each other outside of not being some other thing. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:26, 25 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
The issue there is humans are animals, so this is just a colloquial distinction widely known to be 'false' in some sense so I support the current solution of having at least that one category be named "Non-human animals". Prototyperspective (talk) 14:04, 25 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
I mean, I don't disagree in theory but then I have an advanced degree of any time I've heard anyone refer to humans as animals, let alone "human animals, and if your have a category called "nonwhatever" then the "whatever" should at least make sense and have common usage somewhere. Rarely if ever are things refered to that way anyway. Like there's exoplanets and then planets within the solar system. The later aren't generally refered to as "nonexoplants" though. marine life/terrestrial life, matter/antimatter, yin/yang Etc. Etc. Yin/nonyin is kind of funny but wrong. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:49, 25 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yeah I don't really see the point in those categories either since there's no "human animals" categories on here that I'm aware of. So it goes without saying that any category for animals is "nonhuman." The word "non" is just pointless.
If someone wants to find an image of a bicycle they don't search for "noncar vehicles" or some nonsense. Your just creating a bunch of categories that are going to turn into useless dumps of random media and categories that don't ultimate have anything to do with each other outside of not being some other thing.
Like there's exoplanets and then planets within the solar system. The later aren't generally refered to as "nonexoplants" though.
Yes, we don't call the planets of the Solar System as "non-exoplanets", and we generally don't have planet topics that are restricted to the Solar System. If there's such a topic, we add "the Solar System" in the category name. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 02:57, 26 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete Let's keep it simple and focus on end users: Who will search for this category? And moreover: who will search for calendars and masks here? Category:Objects by type is good enough to make differences, is clear and fits in the category structure. This category does not fit in the category structure (there is no parent for Inanimate). --JopkeB (talk) 06:08, 29 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Of coarse you can start a separate discussion on whether organisms can be considered objects as per ontology, please go ahead! JopkeB (talk) 16:58, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Objects are one of the fundamental entities in the ontology of Commons categories which manifest themselves as topics. Generally, objects can be further sub-categorized by several methods:
In combination with another object or concept using a relation, generally in the form "object 1relationshipobject 2". Ex. Category:Aircraft in France, where 'aircraft' is object 1 and 'France' is object 2, with the relationship 'in' indicating that the aircraft is within the boundaries of France.
In combination with a property, generally in the form "propertyobject". Ex. Category:Red trucks, where 'trucks' are the object and 'red' is the property.
Comment Category names may not exactly match the formats above in all cases.
Hi, as reported to Abderitestatos on his talk page 19:59, 24. Jan. 2013 in his mother tongue, his 'effort' in re-categorisation of the sub-categories of Category:Objects is (as of January 23, 2013) was not the result of a discussion respectively consense by the Wikimedians interested in that topic. As re-categorized by Abderitestatos, imho it's a very personal 'definition', p.e. to categorize 'Animals' and 'Fungi' in addition as a 'object' (they imho are not) respectively to remove existing categories and to re-categorize some former sub-categories (on country level) p.e. as 'Culture of Switzerland' etc.etc.etc.
As also pointed without any doubt in our commen mother tongue, it's not a problem related to p.e. 'Objects in India', pointed to that we have to find a consense in general and not for 'organismn' etc.
Taxonizing animals as objects is at the least an incorrect practice that has most probably not yet gained acceptance on Commons and should thus be avoided or forwarded to somewhere along Village Pump or equivalent. Orrlingtalk00:11, 26 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
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Comment Category names may not exactly match the formats above in all cases.