Help talk:Handling sitelinks overlapping multiple items

Cattle and related items

I've spent a large amount of time trying to clean-up the mess of items related to cattle on Wikidata, especially item Q830. Throughout this effort, I have been repeatedly reverted by User:Brya, who seems intent on exercising ownership of these items. I have explained multiple times why his definition of Q830 is both not in line with the Wikidata guidelines and does not reflect the consensus of reliable sources. He has edit warred over the description with multiple editors (in order to enforce his description of cattle as "species of mammal (or half that species) or a different species (or two thirds of that species, or one third of it)") and has resisted efforts to reach any sort of reasonable compromise on the talk page. The main issue is that the description, aliases, and interwiki links that he wants to use for Q830 create a completely ambiguous item with multiple conflicting definitions (and no clear disambiguation against other Wikidata items). As we have not been able to reach any kind of agreement or compromise, I would like to ask for other editor's opinion on what to do next (besides edit warring). Perhaps some 3rd party mediation could be possible? Kaldari (talk) 20:29, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Kaldari, running out of arguments? BTW: It would be nice to inform Brya about this and to mention that Ryan Kaldari (WMF) is your official account. --Succu (talk) 21:15, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

He should have been pinged by notification, but I'll leave a note on his talk page just in case. My work account has nothing to do with this. Kaldari (talk) 22:37, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

@Succu: I don't think coming like this in a discussion just to support a friend of yours is an appropriate thing to do. Please stay constructive. TomT0m ^(talk) 20:34, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

To keep you informed, dear TomT0m. --Succu (talk) 20:50, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, obviously cattle (Q830) is a mess. This is because across Wikipedia's it is treated in some five different taxonomic concepts (if I have counted right, see the Talk page of Q830), as either one or two taxa, and sometimes under a name that may not be used. Separating these out, according to concept, is quite doable, but would result in about five [?] different items.

        Q830 concerns one of the Big Topics: everybody on the world has a mental picture of what cattle are, so everybody on the world who ever contributes to a Wikipedia wants their page to be linked by iw to the enwiki page. No getting away from that. The enwiki page is one of the worst mixed up of this set, treating cattle as two subspecies out of three, using a name that may not be used. The other major Wikipedia's don't seem to have trouble just looking at the literature and following that.

        User:Kaldari claims here that he was trying to "clean-up the mess of items related to cattle on Wikidata" but I am not noticing much constructive input. In fact he made a page on enwiki which he claimed would comply with the facts and thus help towards a resolution but then instead filled this page with material which is making this worse (besides violating basic enwiki policies).

        The description "species of mammal (or half that species) or a different species (or two thirds of that species, or one third of it)" is functional, in that (a) it is accurate and (b) warns the user that it is a real mess ("booby trap here!"). - Brya (talk) 04:50, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't disagree that there are multiple competing ideas of what constitutes "cattle". As this guideline explains, we must choose one of those ideas as the definition for Q830. I'm willing to go along with any definition you want to choose, but we should choose one. Kaldari (talk) 07:38, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

It is a given that the huge majority of users have a mental image of cattle, and they are in broad agreement with each other. So, there is a common "definition", but it is very vague and does not translate into taxonomy well, and probably not in a useful form. - Brya (talk) 11:16, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Trying to figure this out with newspapers

I'm trying to figure out how to handle multiple Wikidata items for newspapers, and connecting them to redirects on English Wikipedia. An example: The Guard and The Register are both predecessors to The Register-Guard.

User:Ragesoss showed me Errol Musk, an example of a Wikidata item which is linked to an English Wikipedia redirect. It seemed to us that the thing that enabled the linking was the use on English Wikipedia of w:en:template:Wikidata redirect. I've added that template on the Wikipedia entries for w:en:Eugene City Guard and w:en:Eugene Register. But I am still unable to link to the redirect from Wikipedia.

What are we missing? -Pete F (talk) 01:26, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

These informations still can't help Hakka, Min Dong and Min Nan Wikipedias

Because as far as I've investigated from these 3 Wikipedias (Hakka Wikipedia (Q6112922), Min Dong Wikipedia (Q846630) and Min Nan Wikipedia (Q3239456)), what's the technical thing they really want to have is still entirely not reflected by this page, nor on other Wikidata: and/or Help: namespaces' pages:

What's the actual technical thing, that these 3 Wikipedias really want to see, is to let Wikidata provide the SAME numbers of language editions' links for random two or more same-meaning pages, as an example: For cdo:模板:Gì-ngiê and cdo:模板:歧義 (currently linked by Template:Disambiguation (Q6148868) and Q25712565, as well as both items are permanent duplicated item (P2959) linked each other, but then nothing more happened locally), we need to show same 210 other language editions, from abwiki Ашаблон:Аҵакырацәа to zhwiki Template:Disambiguation.

Let me find such a way to do so, please and thanks. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 11:11, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Maybe @C933103, Deryck Chan: should follow this discussion. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 11:15, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

 Strong support Any attempts to improve the situation but I don't know how to implement this. C933103 (talk) 12:25, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Don't worry, that's the reason why I still support phab:T54971 in the Attack on Titan (Q586025)-like way. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:30, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Also, on the opposite, it's preferred that zhwiki zh:Template:Disambiguation should have a way to show both cdo:模板:Gì-ngiê and cdo:模板:歧義 language links on the left (either when disabled Compact Language Links, or if a (wo)man is commonly navigating between zhwiki and cdowiki even by keep enabling CLL). --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 21:31, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

I agree we need some progress on this. If a Wikipedia article is linked to a permanently duplicated item, the interwiki software should find the sitelinks from the main item and add them to the page. In the meantime, it's possible to build a bot that regularly copies sitelinks to the pages that aren't linked to the main item. Deryck Chan (talk) 13:15, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

I disagree with this approach. Most situations if you drill into the data, have very good reasons for different articles. They are often related to language, but generally also include some cultural differences. This needs to be preserved somehow. I would be inclined to advocate for a super item being created for each case by the languages affected, and then the articles can each have their own wikidata item that is a part of the super item. This is how we handle pendant portrait paintings when the holding institution records them in one record while we want both images to have an item, but there are many other cases. Jane023 (talk) 11:16, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

@Jane023: "have very good reasons for different articles" just based on scripts? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:56, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

I didn't mention scripts. Not sure what ou mean. Jane023 (talk) 06:32, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

no good way to link part of a Wikipedia page that discusses an item to a Wikidata item on it

In the #Concepts section it says this:

Even if there is no disagreement between Wikipedias, there is no good way to link between part of a Wikipedia page that discusses an item (e.g., disposable plates) to a Wikidata item on it.

Maybe, but there is a way. I agree it's not a "good" way (not easy to use) so the sentence isn't wrong, but do we maybe want to link the sentence to some page on Wikidata which describes how to do it? I'm only assuming there is such a page here, although I don't know for sure, but I'm referring to creating a wikidata-linked redirect to a subsection of the page in question. The method I use, is creating a defective redirect page for "Disposable plates" with a missing hash which points into a subsection or anchor on the page (generally including {{R to subtopic}}, {{R with possibilities}}), linking the redirect via Wikidata, then going back and repairing the defect by adding the missing hash. I agree that that's not a "good way", but I don't know of a better one, and while that exists, maybe we want to link it from here, for those who would appreciate knowing about it. Mathglot (talk) 20:54, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Replacing this page with a redirect to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Sitelinks_to_redirects

Given that the page is outdated, I propose to replace it with a redirect to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Sitelinks_to_redirects which explains the status quo of how to deal with the problem. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 14:34, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Given that there were no objections in the last months I replaced it. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 21:05, 20 March 2023 (UTC)