Board Thread:Support Requests - Community Management/@comment-23932365-20141129182929/@comment-1038387-20141130151425

452 wrote: Tupka217 wrote: Properly categorizing images is a good way to clean up duplicates As I said, I do not understand how this is any easier than how I do it, please educate me.

Your steps are:
 * 1) Add images to appropriate articles
 * 2) Check if there is a similar existing image in an appropriate article before adding it and delete one of them.
 * 3) Use a coherent order in all galleries so that any duplicates would naturally group together

Cumbersome - you have to check multiple things. If you categorize all images by source (or character), you can see duplicates or close duplicates in one view, you don't have to check a episode/issue/story/level/whatever page, one or more character pages, and an assortment of other relevant pages, such as item or event pages. Your "straight to the most specific page" argument has a flaw in that what this specific page is, is subjective. Imagine you have an image of Bob holding the Cosmic Sword of MacGuffin in the Castle Dungeon level. Is the "specific page" the dungeon level? The character? Or the sword? You declare it to be the mission page, but it might just as well be the others. If instead you categorize the image by character and/or level (or even item), it's much easier to find.

As for some of the other points:
 * I think categories should be used for orgnaization/storage. I definitely agree (character) galleries shouldn't use all images: they can highlight different appearances, alternate costumes, different models, that kind of stuff.
 * If an image has no specific use on the wiki, it can be deleted. I know from experience on Avatar Wiki that all images are actually used - on character pages, on episode pages, on event pages, whatnot. Their UnusedFiles is empty. Adding a link to the category simply lumps all of the images together.
 * My main points are still: sourcing the image and crediting the artist (though it can be done in a filename) is IMO essential to citing it as fair use, and making this information searchable is a service to the reader.