Property talk:P47
Documentation
countries or administrative subdivisions, of equal level, that this item borders, either by land or water. A single common point is enough.
| Description | Territory that it shares border with. Countries or administrative subdivisions (of equal level?), that this item borders by land | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Represents | political border (Q1292279), border (Q133346) | ||||||||||||
| Data type | Item | ||||||||||||
| Template parameter | field "neighboring_municipalities" in en:Template:Infobox Swiss town | ||||||||||||
| Domain | According to this template:
geographic features/places: Place that is country or administrative subdivision.
According to statements in the property:
When possible, data should only be stored as statementsgeographical feature (Q618123), fictional location (Q3895768), constellation (Q8928), geographic location (Q2221906), map (Q4006), human-geographic territorial entity (Q15642541) or mythical location (Q3238337) | ||||||||||||
| Allowed values | places: countries/administrative areas (note: this should be moved to the property statements) | ||||||||||||
| Example | Pays de la Loire (Q16994) → Centre-Val de Loire (Q13947) France (Q142) → Germany (Q183) Ukraine (Q212) → Poland (Q36) | ||||||||||||
| Robot and gadget jobs | The consistency check gadget (see code) checks if the linked objects are linking back to the analyzed page (mutual/reciprocal relations), but does currently not discover if links are missing from the analyzed page to objects that are linking to it. | ||||||||||||
| Tracking: same | no label (Q42533266) | ||||||||||||
| Tracking: usage | Category:Pages using Wikidata property P47 (Q23908990) | ||||||||||||
| See also | located in or next to body of water (P206), connects with (P2789), direction relative to location (P654) | ||||||||||||
| Lists |
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| Proposal discussion | [not applicable Proposal discussion] | ||||||||||||
| Current uses |
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| Search for values |
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P47#Symmetric, SPARQL
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P47#Type Q618123, Q3895768, Q8928, Q2221906, Q4006, Q15642541, Q3238337, SPARQL
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P47#Value type Q618123, Q3895768, Q8928, Q4006, Q15642541, Q3238337, SPARQL
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P47#allowed qualifiers, SPARQL
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P47#Scope, SPARQL
if [item A] has this property (shares border with (P47)) linked to [item B],
then [item A] and [item B] have to coincide or coexist at some point of history. (Help)
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P47#Contemporary, SPARQL
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P47#Entity types
if [item A] has this property (P47) linked to [item B],
then [item A] and [item B] have to coincide or coexist at some point of history.
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P47#Contemporary, SPARQL
Item is a sovereign state but value is not (Help)
Violations query:
SELECT ?item WHERE { ?item wdt:P47 ?itemB . ?item wdt:P31 wd:Q3624078 . MINUS { ?itemB wdt:P31 wd:Q3624078 } }List of this constraint violations: Database reports/Complex constraint violations/P47#Equal level violation
What administrative unit to choose? edit
I'll use an example: One county in Norway, Østfold shares border with one other county in Norway (Akershus). It also shares border with Sweden in the east. Would you then use this property to insert the norwegian county, but also the country of Sweden? Or, do we use this property to insert the norwegian county and the swedish counties Østfold borders to? Of do we use both? --Kristian Vangen 05:22, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
- I simply don't understand the "equal level" in the English description of this property (and its translations in various languages). As far as I know, this is a naive way of thinking but very far of the rigour that could be expected in the making of a data bank. Loads of other examples of tricky questions can be easily thought of. I see that Maryland is supposed to "share border with" Washington, D.C.. OK - now can someone prove (or disprove) that US states and a US Federal district are of "equal level" ? This seems quite impossible. On another page I had asked how "levels" were supposed to be equalized among Netherlands, the kingdom of Netherlands, Niedersachsen and Germany and -as expected- got no answer. All this cannot work, or can work in a "good faith totally amateurish" way, with no pretension to be in any way helpful but being some fun for editors. Touriste (talk) 07:24, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
- I tried to join the discussion here as well. Yes, we do have some issues to sort out, I guess. The only thing I can think of being possible would be to have sub-properties or sub-items as well. I really don't know the best way, but I want to be able to list both national borders as well as sub-administrative regions bordering one another in the same item. If that made any sense.--Kristian Vangen 00:49, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
- I'd add the Swedish county, rather than just "Sweden". The question is more complicated when the administrative subdivisions aren't symmetric. -- -- Docu at 09:14, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
- Yes, exactly. With Sweden and Norway it might work, but when it's not symmetric, what to do? --Kristian Vangen 10:11, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
- We probably end up having several levels of administrative units.
- At Q12172, I first added "Alsace" (a French region) and then replace it with "Haut-Rhin" (a French department). Either could probably be considered to be the same level in some way. The choice wasn't too difficult, but at Q12755 one can add either 1 region or 2 departments. -- Docu at 06:40, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
- Another example: Campione d'Italia had at moment the 'shares borders with' and value canton Ticino (see here). But Campione d'Italia is an commune and therefore not at the equal level of canton Ticino. However, what could be placed instead of canton Ticino? As far as I see it shares borders with some Swiss villages. But are villages the equal administrative unit as commune? It's really complicated as mentioned already before. Therefore I support the proposal to remove the restriction "of equal level". --Nightwish62 (talk) 08:59, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
- I do also support the removal of the "equal level" restriction. In a query, one could easily require subject and object to be of whatever level is desired. Haansn08 (talk) 15:21, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
Separation by waterbody edit
What about places that are separated by just a few 100 metres of water at most? I.e. places that are separated by a lake, part of an ocean or a river. Should we have a separate property for places that "border by sea", defining a relatively arbitrary upper limit for what constitutes a "sea/water border"?
What about places that are connected by bridges and/or tunnels but are otherwise separated by water? --Njardarlogar (talk) 20:29, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
- The same question came up to me. I edited the 'shares borders with' properties of my home municipality and was unsure how to handle with another municipality which border to it just separeted by a small river. I like the idea of an additional property 'border by sea', however, then should also be one named 'border by land' and it should be possible in future to query to 'borders by' whatever by land ord sea. I don't know if this technial possible, such 'subproperties' (border by land/sea) of a superior property (border by)? --Nightwish62 (talk) 16:15, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
- Found this here and wondering if the qualifiers is something which can help for our case (different between water/land)? --Nightwish62 (talk) 19:54, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
No land borders edit
When there aren't land borders, like in Iceland, may I use no value with this property? - Sarilho1 (talk) 15:21, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
- Yes, I think so. --Nightwish62 (talk) 19:00, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks! - Sarilho1 (talk) 19:04, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
Remove restriction to land border edit
Can I remove "by land" from the description. Now that we have qualifier, that seems unduly restrictive (see talk:Q159). --Zolo (talk) 22:13, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
- You're right Zolo. There is no sense to that restriction. I removed it and we should use qualifiers to distingue between the type it is separated. However, how we deal with it, that all other language sites of this property also remove this restriction on their description? --Nightwish62 (talk) 08:28, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
- I suppose we should have some sort of central notice, when to warn about updates of properties, but it is true that it is not very easy to fix. --Zolo (talk) 10:39, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
- There is another question~: if we merge land and see borders how do we handle qualifiers: for instance, should we have:
borders:
- Belgium:
- instance of: land border
- length: 10km
- instance of: "sea border"
- legnth: 3km"
or
borders:
- Belgium
- instance of: land boder
- length: 3km
- Belgium
- instance of: sea border
- length: 3km
The advantage of the second format is that it makes it less ambiguous that the length refers to land or sea border --Zolo (talk) 10:39, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
- Since a script easily un-intensionally switch the order of the lines, I would say that we are not supposed to trust the first version. Maybe such bugs are fixed, but I do not trust them to not reappear.
- And I think this is nescessary, otherwise it is difficult to explain why Canada have a land border to Greeland. It has, but it is extremly small compared to the sea border. -- Lavallen (block) 10:50, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
- Since it's not possible to add qualifiers to qualifiers, I'm for the second proposal of you (two times Belgium). --Nightwish62 (talk) 12:46, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
You are forgetting two thing!:
- This property is reciprocal, what means that (I will use a local example) Portugal (Q45), which is a country, borders Atlantic Ocean (Q97), many districts also border it (like Porto (Q322792), Aveiro (Q210527), Braga (Q326203)...). Districts subdivides into municipalities and municipality subdivides into parishes. Just in Portugal there are, at least, 1.000 items that borders Atlantic. If we do that for all countries, continents and other oceans that borders Atlantic we may have 1.000.000 items, probably more. And now I ask: can we say that Atlantic borders all those items?
- This question rises another, if we remember the description "countries or administrative subdivisions, of equal level". Can we say that a country or a parish is at the same level that an ocean? At least we could say that Europe borders Atlantic and Atlantic borders Europe, but, even so, that is not really true.
So, I believe that the right thing to do is separate both properties, that would describe the nature of those items more accurately. Besides, how can we say that Iceland (Q189) does not border any other administrative division of the same level if we include Atlantic as a border? - Sarilho1 (talk) 16:01, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
Proposals for evolutions, using qualifiers edit
Hi, I've started setting this property for various administrative divisions of France, and I have run in some issues
Same level & symetrical contraint edit
Apparently, whether these constraints are necessary has been challenged already, but I don't see a conclusion. IMHO, we need to keep them (and the related violation reports), because strictness is what will bring wikidata to being reliable.
On the other hands, there are many cases where this is indeed an issue.
- Along frontiers, or on the seaside, you might want to indicate that there is "something" bordering (another country, an ocean). This might be used for display in an infobox. And in that case, symetry is not an option.
- Different projets might have different rules. For instance, Italian contributors could consider that French "région" are the same level as italian "region", and use them in the property, while French contributors do not. And we have an edit war. Symetry means propagation of a single practice accross the project, and that's bad.
My Proposal: We should have a qualifier to indicate that a given relationship is assymetrical. A given city borders the Altantic Ocean, this "canton" borders Germany ... By default the property is considered to be symetrical, and both item shall have the same type of admin division. If the qualifier is set, the property is ignored by checks.
Issue with items which are at several levels edit
In France, Paris is both "commune" and a "département". So I had to set target items of levels in the "borders" property, with no way to distinguish between them.
My Proposal: Add another qualifier, "as a", to indicate which property of the source should be considered when interpreting the relationship. The value of the qualifier shall be an existing property of the item.
Feedback? --LBE (talk) 20:24, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
"Equal level", but what happens when the level changes? edit
The description says that values should be of subdivisions of "equal level", but what happens when the subject or object changes level? For example, a subdivision that becomes independent, or a country becomes a subdivision of another, or a subdivision otherwise changes level. We can't really put an "end date" then, as it's not strictly speaking correct. We also can't leave out an end date if it ceases to be a bordering subdivision sometime after the level change. Maybe just put both levels worth of bordering subdivisions? --Yair rand (talk) 04:53, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
- I agree that we should only include territorial entities whose levels are comparable at the same level (provided that such level exists on both sides, otherwise we'll need to choose an enclosing level: e.g. in Germany for Kreisen that don't exist in all Ländern), excluding subentities of another country.
- For example we cannot really compare French regions and Spanish autonomous communities, so both kinds (French regions and Spanish autonomous communities) will be designed by just saying "shares border with": "France"/Spain". The kind of subdivisions between distinct countries are not really comparable (look for example how it can be complex in the wiki documentation page of the "admin_level=*" tag in OpenStreetMap). Verdy p (talk) 16:08, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
- Note: this would also solve the problem with Paris (see above): is is a commune, a (departmental) arrondissement, and a department; but it should only be declared to share borders with other departments, not communes (the bordering communes themselves will symetrically share borders with Paris, the department).
- This solution is simple, and avoids the explosion of properties.
- The other solution would be to include only the **thinnest** administrative levels (broader levels are then infered), but there's no real limit to the level to choose (it could be as small as a housing block, in a subquarter, in a quarter, in a suburb, in a district, in a city, in...), independantly of their type. But it will even more difficult to verify for completeness or against partial mutual coverage by the listed entities. And the result would be even less reliable. Verdy p (talk) 16:17, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Streets edit
Take a look at the 30,000+ constraint violations. It looks like a bot co-opted this property for street intersections. Example:
⟩ shares border with (P47) ⟨ Avenue de Marigny (Q2873923) ⟩coordinate location (P625)
⟨ 48°52'4.1"N, 2°18'50.0"E ⟩Mrwojo (talk) 16:16, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
- Hi Mrwojo,
- I use a lot this property for streets that share « borders » (and for buildings, areas, territories, etc.). An easy solution to remove all this constraints is to put streets in the tree of geographical feature (Q618123) (above space (Q107) ? it doesn't feel exactly right) ; an other solution is to duplicate this property (but it doesn't feel right at al, for me be should able to use shares border with (P47) for every geographical feature (Q618123), no matter the level).
- Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 13:44, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
What about a quadripoint? edit
At a quadripoint (Q15664) four territories come together, only some of them don't share a border segment, but just a single point. Does this count as shares border with (P47)? Quercus mortus (talk) 10:46, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
- I came to the same question today and after some thinking about it I would say yes. Even if it is only a single point, that point is shared. --AStiasny (talk) 10:42, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
- I wasn't sure either, so checked for precedents - Colorado/Arizona are listed as bordering so I took that as a 'yes'! -- Chuq (talk) 01:35, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
I just came up with the same question and luckely found an answer here. So the shared border isn't reqired to have positive length. --Jobu0101 (talk) 12:04, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
Which values for ? edit
Wikidata:Database_reports/Constraint_violations/P5087#"Item_shares_border_with_(P47)"_violations has a couple of items left. I'm not sure what to add.
--- Jura 14:38, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
How to handle the direction of enclaves? edit
See Wikidata:Property proposal/surrounds the enclave. --GrandEscogriffe (talk) 15:34, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
wow, there are a ton of technical aspects to this. I tried to look them over, but I want to ask: can a qualifier be created that distinguishes "shares domestic border with" and "shares foreign border with"? This would be nice for US states (U.S. state (Q35657)), as a clean example. Some border foreign countries & provinces, but about 48 of them border at least one other Us state.
related question, is there an edit count threshold before I can make such contributions myself? thanks, Skakkle (talk) 21:11, 22 January 2024 (UTC)