Wikidata:Requests for comment/Place of the property documentation

An editor has requested the community to provide input on "Place of the property documentation" via the Requests for comment (RFC) process. This is the discussion page regarding the issue.

If you have an opinion regarding this issue, feel free to comment below. Thank you!

THIS RFC IS CLOSED. Please do NOT vote nor add comments.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

From the below discussion, there is consensus that documentation should be stored on the property through statements. This also link to the Property metadata discussion and should be taken into consideration by the Wikidata development team when design property metadata. John F. Lewis (talk) 15:28, 24 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The key for valid statements with proper formatted values are properties. A specific property defines which values are allowed and how they have to be formatted. But since we didn't have any automatically condition/constraint check at the moment a statement is created, there is only hope that the user which create the statement understands the property he is using. So it's important users are able to quickly and easily inform themself about properties. While someone is typing a property name, he get some basic information about this property via a popup message. By clicking the property he lands to the property site, which doesn't give any more information than the popup message beforehand. The real information about the purpose, handling and constraints of a property is hidden in the discussion site (at most cases, e.g. Property_talk:P458). However, since there is no notification for that, users which aren't familiar with Wikidata wouldn't expect such important information in the discussion site. Thus, the information should be more obvious. In my opinion bringing the property documentation nearer to the user could improve quality of statements. I already mentioned this on the project chat and on the contact the development team site, but it didn't get much attention. But since it also need some changes on the technical site, I opened this RfC. So if the outcome is we should change something, we can ask the development team to realize this. It's not the question what the content of the property documentation should be, but if we should move it to the main site of the property.

In a second question I've an idea how we could realize this very easy. My suggest is to use a standardized subpage, which will automatically included in the main page if it exist. E.g. we could save the property documentation under Property/Documentation. Doing it this way, it's also easier to track changes in the property usage. --Nightwish62 (talk) 10:47, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Include property documentation by subpage edit

Support --Nightwish62 (talk) 10:47, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support Unless the devs come up with a way to include this info directly on the main page --Filceolaire (talk) 10:48, 1 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Contributors read main and talk pages. Without a clear link or an automatic way to display the content of the subpage on the main or talk page contributors will lose some information because they won't search it in the good place. Snipre (talk) 12:18, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Snipre --دوستدار ایران بزرگ (talk) 20:04, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously, I was misunderstood by all three persons above. My intension was: If you vote this option here, this will become a demand to the development team to add the content of subpage automatically to the main page. --Nightwish62 (talk) 21:57, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support yes, but add the content of subpage automatically to the main page Michiel1972 (talk) 10:38, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Include property documentation by 'statements on property page' (see comment section below) edit

Support --Nightwish62 (talk) 21:57, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support Labels woulbe more consise and precise with no technical information. One of the properties would be : applies to, possible values, constraints ( if this property is present then another should be present ), etc..... This approach offers much more flexibility for properties and for future use ( automatic checking, ... ) --Thieol (talk) 21:57, 11 Juillet 2013 (UTC)
Support --4th-otaku (talk) 14:30, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support--Micru (talk) 02:47, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Tpt (talk) 15:44, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support--GZWDer (talk) 10:34, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support if this approach is possible Michiel1972 (talk) 10:39, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Include property documentation by any other solution edit

No need for any changes, property documentation should remain in the discussion site edit

Other comments edit

Logical connection between items and properties edit

There is currently no logical connection between items and the equivalent properties, for example, for ORCID, Q51044 and P496. This could be considered part of the documentation, but should be in a discrete parameter, that is queryable programmatically (e.g. via the API). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:06, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Use statements for documentation edit

I asked Denny Vrandečić if it is possible to enable Statements on property pages and he said yes. Using statements all constraints and the documentation could be expressed in a very flexible and efficient way. User talk:Denny Vrandečić (WMDE)#Statements Sources and Qualifiers in Property namespace --Pyfisch (talk) 14:24, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.