Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/04/Category:Books about military history by year
Subdividing by language is okay; but the major subdivision should be by book topic; I think subcategories of the military history "by publication year" should be abolished.
It makes a lot of sense to connect publication dates and publication location (as in Category:1920 books from London), but I see no benefit in combining the publication year and the topic in a category name.
In 1920, authors could choose to write about the military history of WW1, about the Siege of Metz and about the military equipment of Roman soldiers. These topics have nothing in Common, books about history can be written a thousand years after the events or just two years later.
Please also see Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/02/Category:Books about World War I Enyavar (talk) 16:17, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Support. The precise subject of a book is far more important than the year it was published. In fact, I'd argue that subcategorizing by year should always be treated as a last resort - not just for books, but in general. Omphalographer (talk) 21:40, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Comment@ What would we do with the books in these categories? Move them up to the decade categories or century categories? The same argument applies to "<decade> books about military history" and "<century> books about military history". Should we handle those the same? -- Auntof6 (talk) 12:39, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
- Sorting them by topic seems to be the best idea, in my opinion - for example, sorting them by wars. Those that don't focus on particular wars, can get sorted by warfare type (naval, air, artillery, cavalry, infantry), for example. Please compare Category:Books about World War I (sorted by year, ugh; and by language which IS useful) and Category:Books about the American Civil War. The WWI books have no breakups by theatre, by warfare type, etc, making them mostly unaccessible unless you click through all categories to find the topic you like to read about. The ACW book categories are admittedly more messy, but there is a basic structure in place so that you can have an overview about the topics covered: specific persons/generals? specific states? specific regiments? Personal war diaries from the trenches, or hurray-propaganda, or rather a cold historian's view?
- In short, merge them all back to military history, and then break them up by topic, countries etc. Some may even stay in the "books about military history" root category. The year part should be covered by another category (<year> books from <publication location>) --Enyavar (talk) 15:47, 24 May 2025 (UTC)