Why specify "token or medal" in the title for the exonumia?

According to the exonumia guidelines : The field “title” should be filled as close as possible to the coins or banknotes guidelines. Start the title with the face value if the item has a face value, even if the value is not expressed in an official currency. Otherwise, start with the nature of the item, for example “Token” or “Medal”.

I wonder why we have to specify whether it is a token or a medal since they are now classified by type that already define their nature. This was entirely justified in the old classification system because the Exonumia section was included in the Coins section.

Since the new classification system, in my opinion, it no longer serves a purpose. It elongates the title and does not add any additional information. It might be useful to specify a type of token that is not on Numista yet (e.g., beer token, pool token, etc.), but as stated in the goals for 2024, the types will be further refined, and most will be added. Therefore, for the vast majority of cases, there is no need to add this specification.

For example: N#324808

The title is already long, and adding "Medal" in front of it serves no purpose.

What do you think?

I understand that “medal” in the title doesn't bring additional information to the information already provided on the page. That's not an issue in my opinion. Many coins have the denomination and ruler as title, and these are also available in dedicated fields on the page. I believe the title should provide key information about the item. Just mentioning the commemorated event is not enough to understand what is the object: are we talking about a commemorative coin, a medal, a souvenir note? I like having “Medal” here in place of the face value to clarify.

Regarding your concern about the length of the title, the guidelines also recommend a “brief description of the [commemorated] subject”. In the example you cited, we could probably at least remove “and Canton” from the title.

Since it's categorized as a "Souvenir medal > Commemorative souvenirs," which is clearly indicated below the title, I don't see the point of reiterating it within the title itself. Moreover, simply adding "medal" to the title doesn't specify the nature of this medal (Achievement medal? Company medal? Event medal?), which is why I find this mention superfluous.

In the case of coins, we don't include "Circulating commemorative coin - 1 Franc (Charles de Gaulle)" in the title. The nature of the coin is typically indicated just below, and I believe that is sufficient.

This can be useful only when there is ambiguity about the nature of the object or when it is not listed among the types in Numista, but I don't think it necessarily has to be applied to the entire catalog.

This is related with:

davidhs https://en.numista.com/forum/topic142370.html#p1138408

Idolenz

If we add more and more and more languages automated titles will be inevitable. There is no way I curate in a dozen languages I might know nothing about.
Problem will be that they might be very long especially if they are commemoratives and in a series also a new field for fast identifying markers for similar entries should be introduced (like it is used often right now). The titles on the catalog page itself should also not be like the ones depicted in the search otherwise there will be an enormous amount of redundant information in the title. Or the whole build of a catalog page has to be rethought.

Current titles of pages of coins and banknotes have the denominations at the beginning. These can be removed from the title and display the denominations of the page (which will translate) in the same position (before the new title):

 

For example: N#1

Current title = 1 Centime (5th republic)
New titile = (5th republic)
New title displayed = denomination + new title = 1 Centime (5th republic)
Same result, less translation work.

 

More things can be done, but it this is a start:

• remove from titles the name of rulers, commemorative events, series... that are in the page and can displayed in the search results or within the title…

Of course, if this does not slow down the search or page loading.

Some data (type of object, denomination…) can be removed from the title field of the item and added by code.

N# Number · Country · Type · Denomination Title

For example:

• Instead of N#324808
  show: N# 324808: Switzerland · Commemorative souvenir · Proclamation of the Republic and Canton of Neuchâtel (silver)
• Instead of N#1
  show: N# 1: France · Coin · 1 Centime (5th republic)

Same in any list of items.