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And its subcategories. This seems to be a duplicate, redundant category tree. The subject has been discussed earlier for "Library exteriors vs Libaries" and "Church buildings vs Churches". This tree seems to be stillborn; its subcategories like Category:School buildings are underpopulated - content is in Category:Schools. Which, curiously, is also a subset of Buildings. Note that universities and colleges are not included (at least directly). I leave it to your judgement - should "education buildings" stay or should they go.

My opinion is, it's stillborn and has no future. There are no resources to deploy a fully grown cat tree and re-categorize countless schools, libraries, colleges etc. under "Educational buildings". There is, already, some experience with Category:Exteriors of library buildings. No go. The whole concept of "keeping buildings apart from organizations" seems counterintuitive, so images of school buildings will be categorized under "Schools", not "School buildings". NVO (talk) 19:15, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"The whole concept of "keeping buildings apart from organizations" seems counterintuitive" - I disagree with the very basic statement on which your argument is founded. Keeping organisations apart from their buildings is NOT counterintuitive. A school is more than it's buildings, and buildings are not the whole of a school. Neither, for example, are the castles of the crusaders the same thing as the crusader knights. And category:fire stations are not the same as Category:firefighting, they are a logical sub category.

You seem to argue from a "nobody will do the categorisation" point of view. That is an argument that is incorrect, because we are already seeing photos being categorised in subcategories that one would never have thought of years before. Arguing that some, or even many, images will not be categorised except in "Schools" (which I agree will remain the default) is not in fact an argument. Commons can never logically argue that it will be "finished", so the fact that, say, 90% of all given "school building" images will only sit in a "school" category doesn't make the "school building" category any less useful for someone who specifically wants that categorisation data, for the files for which it is available.

In short, I oppose this argument on two elements:

1. "Education buildings" is not a counter-intuitive category at all. In fact, it is very clear what you would sort into it.
2. It is helpful added category data, whether it is applied to most, or only some files. Not crucial for most users, but useful for the rest.

Regards Ingolfson (talk) 23:29, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a "finished-unfinished" dilemma. It's about the choice between a generally accepted and properly deployed category tree and another category tree, which is practically unknown to "most users". Last week, yours truly uploaded twenty-something photographs of schools. Persuade me (or anyone else willing to tag these pics) that they must (also?) belong to school buildings. NVO (talk) 10:21, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I understand the flaw in the use of a mixed category and personally don´t mind which way we do it. But I´d like to have it done in one of the ways. As the vast majority of School buildings in Bavaria (my home turf and the subtree in which I try to tag buildings) are categorized under "Schools", I tend to use this system, may it be perfect or not. And if nobody starts yelling within the next few days, I´ll actually start with it, as this discussion hasn´t become very lively in the past eight weeks and doesn´t seem to be concluded soon. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 23:26, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I mostly agree. I noticed the problem when I was working on some categories for Hong Kong. You have for example Category:Buildings in Shau Kei Wan which includes a School buildings category where sombody has placed a couple of schools. Then you have Category:Shau Kei Wan which contains a few more schools which with the current scheme could go in a "Schools in Shau Kei Wan" category. However all of the pictures show buildings, so they really belong under the buildings category. Notice that the problem doesn't arise for hospitals, since Category:Hospitals is a subcategory of Category:Medical buildings. I'm not sure if Category:Education buildings is useful or not, but Category:School buildings isn't, instead Category:Schools should be a subcategory of Category:Education buildings, if the latter is retained (the category zoos makes me wonder, but if it's not a school, it's not really an education building either?).

Most photos of schools show school buildings, exterior or interior, so it's reasonable to make them a subcategory of buildings, even if there are some photos that don't. Categorization is only to make things easier to find, it is never going to be a perfectly logical system. Compare again with other categories like hospitals and hotels where exactly the same issue exists. ghouston (talk) 23:17, 23 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the subcategories of Category:School buildings are OK however, I'd say School buildings just needs to be renamed to Category:School buildings by type to make it clear that it's not a duplication of Category:Schools, and then Schools needs to be a subcategory of Category:Education buildings, or of Category:Buildings by function. (Perhaps I could also make an argument for making Universities and colleges a subcategory of Education buildings instead of Schools). ghouston (talk) 23:30, 23 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't see Category:School facilities - that will do, School buildings can be deleted. ghouston (talk) 23:36, 23 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion seems to be dead. Here's another example. Category:Schools in New York is a subcategory of Category:Buildings_in_New_York and of Category:Education in New York. Does anyone think it would be a good idea to make a subcategory Category:School buildings in New York (it's currently just a redirection), and move all the images that show building exteriors or interiors from Schools in New York to this subcategory, and then replace Schools in New York with School buildings in New York as the subcategory of Buildings in New York? Perhaps this is logical, but would it make it easier to find anything? I think not, since if you are looking for images of school buildings, it's already easy to find them under Schools in New York. ghouston (talk) 02:00, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, the discussion does seem to be dead. There is no concensus as to what to do with the category:education buildings and the category:school buildings. --Mjrmtg (talk) 15:47, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I guess that since there was no concensus to remove Education buildings and its subcategories, then they'll have to stay and people can use them as they see fit. The logic of separating buildings is actually fine, it's only the practical utility that I questioned. ghouston (talk) 02:20, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For an example of how it can be done in practice, see Category:Schools in Southern District, Hong Kong, which isn't a subcategory of Buildings, but which contains Category:School buildings in Southern District, Hong Kong. It's not too untidy, but each building does need to be categorised twice. ghouston (talk) 03:05, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My 2cents. IMHO "University buildings" and "School buildings" are pointless repetitions of "Education buildings". Since "Schools" or "University" is normally referred to the institution rather than to the buildings, still IMHO we could keep "Education buildings" just as mere container of architectural elements of the school or universities. -- SERGIO ^{(aka the Blackcat)} 13:05, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly, the question is whether buildings like museums, zoos or a government education department are education buildings but not schools. If so, then school buildings isn't a duplicate. University and college buildings are taken as a subcategory of school buildings. --ghouston (talk) 21:06, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Closing without action, since the discussion is dead and there's no consensus for any particular change. --ghouston (talk) 02:35, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]