Seav

Welcome to Wikidata, Seav!

Wikidata is a free knowledge base that you can edit! It can be read and edited by humans and machines alike and you can go to any item page now and add to this ever-growing database!

Need some help getting started? Here are some pages you can familiarize yourself with:

• Introduction – An introduction to the project.
• Wikidata tours – Interactive tutorials to show you how Wikidata works.
• Community portal – The portal for community members.
• User options – including the 'Babel' extension, to set your language preferences.
• Contents – The main help page for editing and using the site.
• Project chat – Discussions about the project.
• Tools – A collection of user-developed tools to allow for easier completion of some tasks.

If you have any questions, please ask me on my talk page. If you want to try out editing, you can use the sandbox to try. Once again, welcome, and I hope you quickly feel comfortable here, and become an active editor for Wikidata.

Best regards! Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:38, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Previous discussion was archived at User talk:Seav/Archive 1 on 2017-02-20.

Hi again. I asked the question about using multiple "instance of" entries on the talk page for the "instance of" article a few weeks ago. You can find it here Property talk:P31. Although there were some nuances to it, the general consensus there was that there is no "over categorization" rule for Wikidata and that it's not an issue to use multiple "instance of" statements. Which is exactly what I had thought. The Wikiproject for businesses page even says that the "instance of" entry should have "instance of business" in it and last time I checked it's considered an authority. So, I'd appreciate it if you refrained from removing valid "instance of" entries on articles from now on, like I originally asked you to. Including "instance of business." Otherwise, if you have a problem with it take it up with business Wikiproject or start another discussion about it on the instance of article, but in the meantime the important thing is that I was correct and you shouldn't have deleted the information you did.

Thanks for the information. Although I am currently very busy with other matters that I really do not have the time to edit at Wikidata, except for some minor edits at Wikipedia. I'll keep your advice in mind when I become active again. Kind regards.

Hi there. I couldn't help noticing that you modified a lot of banking entries that I have edited. A few things that I think are worth mentioning that you changed are 1. banks can both have an "instance of bank" and "instance of universal bank (or whatever bank subgroup it is)" at the same time. As both are correct and both provide legitimate ways to organize the entry. So, it is needless to remove "instance of bank" in favor of "instance of universal bank" like you have done a couple of times.

2. I noticed that you reverted some of my translations of the English labels back into their original language. Therefore, making the English language label entry not English. Which isn't correct. The name of the bank (or whatever) should be in English in the English language label field. That's the point in the thing. It's important English labels do not get polluted with none English labels or there's then no way to find the company in English. It's not about "what the company is called" either. Otherwise, instead of translating the title of Italian company into Chinese, we would just paste the Italian name into the Chinese label field and call it a day. English is no different. It's not Italian (or whatever). Even if it might share the same letters. It's also important to keep the labels "pure" because other projects besides Wikipedia uses them. Including one I am working on that currently uses a database of over 600 banks based on the Wikidata entries and its important for the project that English labels are in English. Other language labels should really go in the proper label entry for their language. Not be moved around or modified in any other way. Same goes for the "instance of" entries. Generally, you shouldn't remove something someone else adds, unless it's outright wrong or doesn't match a valid Wikidata entry. Even more so you shouldn't do it "just because." It looks like you also added a bunch of labels for new languages that aren't Chinese, English, or Spanish where they don't match the language either or are redundant (like with abbreviations). That's something you have to really watch out for Also.

Btw, if your really interested in editing bank entries and adding information to them etc, maybe we could work together to improve coverage of them and the depth of information available in the entries or something. I noticed earlier that even many important related entries, like ones dealing with kinds of banks etc, are lacking basic information. So, let me know if your interested.

Anyway, thanks,

Adamant1

P.S. In case your interested there's a short name statement based off of the OpenStreetMap tag for adding the short name to entries. Sometimes it's better to use that then have a bunch of redundant English letter abbreviations added to the "also known as" labels for a bunch of different languages or you could also use the "name in native language" statement where it's not an abbreviation.

One more thing, I noticed you changed the English description of a few entries and didn't change the description for other languages along with it. You really shouldn't do that because it's important that they match. So, if you can, make sure when change one languages description that you also change the other ones. Otherwise, things don't really work as well.

1. A "universal bank" is a subclass of (P279) of "bank", which itself is a sub-subclass of (P279) of "financial institution". So adding the "bank" and "financial institution" instance-of properties when there is already a subclass of (P279) universal bank (Q568041) statement is redundant. This redundancy is very similar to the over-categorization in Wikimedia Commons (see Commons:COM:OVERCAT) that Commons users are encouraged to avoid. Similarly, we should avoid redundant statements in Wikidata. In any case, it is extremely easy to create Wikidata queries that looks for banks such that they also include universal banks as well (or a query that looks for financial institutions that also includes banks) by using the subclass of (P279) property.

2. English is an official language in the Philippines and at least for the BDO bank, we call it "Banco de Oro" and never "Bank of Gold" in English. Filipinos would laugh at you, or just give you puzzled looks, for calling it "Bank of Gold" in English. This will be like changing the English label of San Francisco, California to "Saint Francis" or the label of San Diego, California to "Saint Didacus". Here are examples of recent news articles in English mentioning BDO that use "Banco de Oro" and not the laughable "Bank of Gold":

1. "…security agreement with Sy-owned Banco de Oro…"
2. "…it is the credit line extended by BDO [Banco de Oro]…"
3. "…Bank of Philippines Islands and Banco de Oro have issued advisories…"

Regarding descriptions, as long as the descriptions are not incorrect (they correctly describe the item), it does not really matter if they are not exact translations of each other. It is more important that the descriptions are useful for the readers of the language over being matches of other languages.

1. So, I take it something like a bank is a subclass of business? If so, does that mean it would be OK to not include an "instance of business" statement with banks or any other business type for that matter? I ask because I've edited over 600 bank entries at this point, along with other kinds of brands, and 99% of them had "instance of business" on them along with with "instance of bank." So, id like to know if that's wrong or not. My guess is not. The same goes for "instances of bank" added along with an "instance of financial institution" Which 99% of them had before I came along.
2. It would only be a redundancy if it was exactly the same thing. Just as having both "instance of business" and "instance of bank" isn't a redundancy. It's just two different ways to categorize something in different levels of the hierarchy. Btw, things can be a subclass and an instance of at the same time. Like you can add country to the headquarters location and also have it as it as it's own instance. That's not redundant just because it's stated twice. It's always better to give people options then not also. Especially since Wikidata entries are used as back ends for other things where they might use one statement but not another. Whereas that's not really the case as much with Wikimedia Commons. It's not based on a query language that is completely dependent on what we do or don't use to work properly.
3. Lets go with your query example for a minute. Say I want to look for all banks in the Philippines instead of just all commercial banks. I couldn't do that without adding your extra subclass of property to the query. Which isn't that big of a deal, I guess, except that's only if I want to find all commercial banks, but I assume that you would remove the bank tag from every type of bank that has a subclass. Not just commercial banks. So then if I want to search for all banks, I'd have to create a huge query that lists every single sub-type of banks because I couldn't just do a simple query for "bank" and get a list of all of them, because you removed it. So, how is that any better compared to just having both?
4. "Similarly, we should avoid redundant statements in Wikidata." If "we" actually do avoid redundant statements in Wikidata show me a source on Wikidata that says so. Wikimedia commons is a different system and I don't really care what their policies are. I care what Wikidata's policies are. This isn't Wikimedia Commons. Just like it's not Wikidata and we have loser notability guidelines here. So citing a source on Wikimedia to try and make an argument for notability on Wikidata isn't very helpful. Plus, like I said above if that's the case then why do like 99% of all the brand articles I've seen out of almost 1,000 that where edited by many different users all have supposedly redundant statements? you must know something literally know one else does.
5. Notice you said "we" call it Banco De Oro. It's fine if "you" do. Banco De anything isn't "English." You can think it's laughable to call it Bank of Gold, I admit it sounds a little laughable myself, but Banco De Oro isn't English. Banco is a Spanish word. It's not English just because you say it is or because some place says it is. The label says it should be in English and there's a specific entry for Tagalog that your perfectly capable of using if you need to. The English label shouldn't in Spanish though just because you think the way the English translation sounds is laughable though. Laugh-ability isn't an editing standard. At least not one I go by. I think of labels in other languages besides English sound funny, but I don't change them just because I think that. Neither should you. If nothing else you could at least put Banco De Oro in the Spanish label section and let other people decide what to do with the English label if you don't like it. Btw, I'm sure a lot of business sound weird, funny, whatever to Chinese people when translated into Chinese. That doesn't mean we don't translate it though. I add the translation. I have no clue how it sounds and I don't care. English shouldn't be any different. It's not some special language that has it's own special rules that only apply to it.
6. Although I agree that titles don't have to necessarily have to be a 1 to 1 recreation of each other as far as the guidelines go, it's still a courtesy and there is also an assumption that they shouldn't be to different from each other in describing the subject. So, it's definitely better if they match other. It's not like it's that much of a hassle either. Like, it's only an extra couple of minutes. So why not do it?
7. It's also worth mentioning that "financial institution" isn't a subclass of "bank" or visa versa. Neither is "business." So even if your whole subclass thing was correct specifically when it comes to banks, which I don't think it is, it doesn't apply to those instances. So you have zero valid reason for removing them. Plus, your sitting here making the argument that it's a subclass issue, but you didn't even a subclass statement to the article showing the thing you claim is a subclass. Which just makes the whole thing even less sound. Otherwise, you had have instead of just deleting everything you didn't like.
8. Also notice that on the instance of (P31) article in the instance of section Wikidata property for the relationship of the element to its class throws up a "subclass" warning. Whereas, commercial bank and bank don't. If it was a subclass that needed a subclass entry or if they couldn't coexist in the same "instance of" statement, then there would be a warning about it. There isn't one though.
   
9. Btw, I think it's also important to point out that your making the assumption people inherently know what a "universal bank" is in the first place. I know in America we don't make those distinctions. We just call banks banks. There isn't really a difference between a retail, commercial, universal, cooperative bank (I didn't know they existed until I edited Wikidata and I study this stuff), etc etc. People aren't going to search for things they don't know exist. So it's not really fair and kind of to rude to Americans or other people that don't know (or care about) the minutia of bank types to remove the more widely known and accepted term "bank" in favor of "universal bank" just because you think "bank" is redundant. People shouldn't go through an encyclopedias worth of banking terms (or banking history) just to be able to do a query search for "What banks are headquartered in the Philippines." Maybe it works for you to add "universal bank" to the query and that's great, but that doesn't mean it will work for other people. Some only slightly related rule about categories on another site and your perception of something being redundant isn't a good excuse make things much harder then they need to be for other people. Your not the only one using the site and it's not like it can't be both ways where you can search for "whatever bank" and other people can just search "bank."

P.S. I don't appreciate the edit warring when we are still in the middle of discussing it. Whatever your opinion about removing bank from it, it's pretty obvious that things can have both "instance of business" and "instance of something else." Somethings can't be added without the "instance of business" being there. So you can potentially screw up other fields by removing it and like I said above, 99% of pages about banks, restaurants, stores, etc etc have more then just one "instance of" value. One of them almost always being "business." So what's more likely, that the vast majority of other users are wrong and literally every article about brands is incorrect, or that your wrong?

Using

< subject > located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) < Mindanao (Q37274898)   >

is wrong as Q37274898 is not an administrative division. P706 is better

I had previously set island group of the Philippines (Q6083496) to be a subclass of both island group (Q1402592) and administrative territorial entity of the Philippines (Q1350310) so the statement you indicated is not "wrong". The latter subclassing is because the three island groups are treated as groups of regions by the Philippine government and are each effectively an administrative territorial entity (Q56061). Some examples:

• The Philippine Standard Geographic Code divides the 17 regions into these three island groups: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.
• Some executive departments/ministries have positions that oversee the regions under one of these island groups. For example, the Department of Public Works and Highways (Q3543840) (DPWH) has a position for Assistant Secretary for Regional Operations in Mindanao while the Department of Social Welfare and Development (Q3547113) (DSWD) has a position for Assistant Secretary for Luzon Affairs.

There could be an argument that an island group (Q1402592) should not be conflated with an administrative territorial entity (Q56061) and they should be split up into separate items. But the three major island groups are really arbitrary divisions of the Philippine archipelago with no basis in geology and are really used for administrative convenience.

Then it's ok. Thanks for the clarification

Please check the WDC programme for the Sunday - your lightning talk on OSM is scheduled at the same time as another OSM presentation.