Ruling authority on exonumia items

Hi all, I would like to know your opinion on ruling authority on exonumia. Currently the guidelines state that the ruling authority should not be mentioned if the item does not explicitly show on the item. For some countries, British exonumia in particular, reference catalogs and auction houses alike sort medals and tokens, even local and anonymous issues, by ruler (the Brown, Eimer, Whittlestone, Grant catalogs to name a few). This is particularly crucial for tokens and medals commemorating the royal family (visits, expositions, etc). Additionally, when sorting exonumia by ruling authority, items which do have the ruling authority listed can be separated from modern tokens and medals. This particular sorting feature becomes virtually useless when applying the guidelines.

Personally I would like to see ruling authority indicated on all pages for these reasons. Really I ask this question to see where everyone stands on the subject and out of curiosity why ruling authorities should or should not be listed, regardless of the guidelines, as I see no benefit or good reasoning to not include it.

Thank you

Kenny

KennyG

Personally I would like to see ruling authority indicated on all pages for these reasons.

I agree with that. If the ruling authority is known, I see no reason not to mention it, even if it doesn't appear on the token. 

Not sure it's necessary at all, what's more I'm not sure it's needed in the title either.

For example: N#428970

A medal with the subjects of, George Gilbert Scott, Art Union of London and Saint Mary's Cathedral.

I'd me more inclined to go with the pictured subjects of the medal:

Medal - Sir George Gilbert Scott (Saint Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh)

Victoria isn't mentioned by effigy, monogram or name, she was simply alive at the time it was minted.

I'm not sure that's enough to justify the title, or the need of a ruling authority… 

I would also very much appreciate admin input on this issue.

@ArsenEverlast @Compendium @Indomini16 @Jarcek @tdziemia 

Hi everyone. Thanks for pointing me. 

Guidelines are very clear about that: the reason why we add ruling authority only when mentionned on collectible is precisely because, at the difference with coins or banknotes, most exonumia have nothing to do with official authorities of a country. They are just coin-like or banknote-like objects. 

In a nutshell: of course we want to see Louis XIV attached to an official medal commemorating a battle for instance, but we definitely don't want to see French 5th Republic attached to any medal or token produced these past 70 years in France. If I remember well, last time we had such a discussion on the forum is because some contributors were attaching rulers to casino chips…

So to answer OP question about benefits: 
- Because we don't want to pollute rulers' page referecing all items issued by them
- Because also it brings nothing to the knowledge of the object itself, as this ruler had nothing to do with this object's issuance (like Dan underlined above with his example)

The very reason they are even selectable is just because there are coins or notes issued by this ruler, which make this name appear also in Exonumia selector (but if it was not the case, we would not even create this ruling authority in our Database, so it would not be selectable for this country and we wouldn't have this conversation).

And to conclude, in a more high level policy: we should never add information not linked to the collectible but simply deducted from other fields (in this case, date and country); collectors know the country, know the date, I see no value in reminding them who or what was ruling authority at the time.