Wikidata:Project chat/Archive/2014/08

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New initiative to promote friendliness >> Wikidata:Lounge

Worried about the harshness that lately has been developing, I have started a new initiative to counter that by promoting more dialogue, civility, and friendliness >> Wikidata:Lounge

When you are with friends you don't need to put any rule or condition, because they are people you like to be with. If each one does a little effort to become someone who everybody likes to be with, then all harshness will disappear and Wikidata will become even more wonderful \o/ And even if we don't reach utopia tomorrow, at least we'll be on the right direction :)

I would like to invite everyone to participate in this initiative and to come up with new ways to reduce conflict before it happens. --Micru (talk) 13:25, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: Is this like the Teahouse? --Jakob (talk) 01:32, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

@Jakec: Yes, and no. The teahouse is mainly focused on mentoring beginers, the lounge is more focused in mentoring ourselves about how to create a positive environment where everyone can feel welcome to.

The aim is not to rely so much on rules, but to create dynamics that will be more effective that any rule. That will affect beginners, perhaps not as directly as a Teahouse would, but if we manage to welcome anyone offering help, with nice words, and with guidance instead of with policies, that will be a big win for everyone.--Micru (talk) 10:12, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

A few thoughts from sister project en.wn. Sorry if I ramble a bit; Big Picture is hard to come by.

Bravo to thinking of a wiki as a self-organizing system. I firmly believe this. I've observed the most prominent rules matter for their psychological influence, but that's a lot different from thinking of a large body of rules as if it were a program to be followed (aka bureaucracy). The two most influential priniples on Wikipedia, as best I can figure atm, are Assume Good Faith and Be Bold, neither of which has primarily the effect it was intended to produce. (The best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft a-gley.) en.wn has explicitly rejected AGF since way back (from the start as best I can figure, but I came in a few years after that), and has Never assume instead. Which for the past few years (since explicitly drafted) seems to be working pretty well; we maintain a pleasant working atmosphere much of the time — but troublemakers used to being tolerated on Wikipedia are likely to go back to Wikipedia and report that Wikinews has an unfriendly atmosphere. One of a variety of examples I've noted of social problems on Wikipedia spilling over to sister projects. That's something to watch out for: you may well find, if you trace social problems back to their source, that their source is (in one sense or another) on Wikipedia. I don't altogether know what one does about that, in general, but being aware of it may be of use.

Being more specialized than Wikipedia may be socially valuable, as it gives a stronger sense of common purpose; Wikipedia is at a disadvantage in this regard, as its goals are comparatively nebulous (though its technical challenges may be less than those of more specialized sisters). I have considerable sympathy for this social challenge facing Wikipedia; though as a practical matter that makes me no less wary of their problems spilling over.

I'll be most interested to see how your Lounge experiment develops. Good luck! :-)  --Pi zero (talk) 11:50, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

@Pi zero: Thanks for sharing your insights and your nice words! As you I also think that "bureaucracy" is not the right answer to the human condition, because bureaucracy is the assumption that there is always "something wrong" with humans that has to be "repressed" for they to fit a mold. And I totally agree with that brilliant quote, it just becomes an arms race from which it is no longer possible to escape. The only winning move is not to play.

In our case the most effective axiom that we could use is: everyone can be a perfect person, they might not know how to act as such yet. And of course never assume that you are perfect yet (I am not there either!). That shifts the perspective, because that jerk could be a very nice person, he or she doesn't know yet how to act properly. And if we want others to learn how to reach that level, first we should work on ourselves to be a model for them.

Of course we are always limited by time, and we know too little of the people that is behind the nick. Is it worth to be patient with them? And is it worth to spend time improving oneself? I think that can only be answered by getting to know each other better and improving trust in others and in our own actions. Avoiding rules is as scary as removing the training wheels. Yes, you will fall a couple of times until you learn how to do without, but without removing them you will never know what is really like to ride a bike :)

IMHO, Wikipedia is not the "root of all evils", just the consequence of living in a world full or rules and bring those "bad practices" into the digital world. Governments usually have no trust that you can be a good person, or that you can learn how to be one, or that by being in other environments it would be easier to become one.

The Lounge will be only as successful as we want it to be. If we start reading articles or books about how to improve practical wisdom, we apply those new principles into our daily actions, and learn what works or what doesn't by experience or by dialogue, all that will act as a snowball effect much more effective and satisfying that any of the thousands of rules that wikipedia has developed over the years.--Micru (talk) 14:25, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: Oh, Wikipedia for all its faults is a great thing because of all the great people who contribute to it. The flaws in its infrastructure have had lots of time to accumulate their effects, and those on the inside of it often can't see the problems because they're on the inside. Contributing to other sister projects, very different from Wikipedia, has given me breadth of perspective, and some glimpses of insight into Wikipedia, that I wish I knew how to apply to helping Wikipedia improve its infrastructure; but that big an infrastructure has a lot of momentum, and I've got plenty on my plate as it is.

It's interesting you should say that about people perfecting themselves. It's sometimes occurred to me that Wikipedia tries to attract users and then use them largely as they are, whereas Wikinews, with its technically demanding tasks, invites users to come and learn how to contribute. My own major initiative on Wikinews over the past few years has been developing software tools to make wiki pages interactive, for the express purpose of then using interactive wiki pages to teach-and-assist users. --Pi zero (talk) 21:42, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

This is a good idea. The problem with Wikidatans is often a language issue, since I think most of us come from home wikis where we tend to hang out in one language. Commons has a similar problem, but because it's so visual, it's a different dynamic. Here the way the data links up (or not) is sometimes hard to imagine and articulate. Jane023 (talk) 12:35, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

@Jane023: Totally true! The only hope is that we can reach a critical size of people who can spread it into other language communities... or that automatic translation becomes much better...--Micru (talk) 14:25, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I've added myself... great idea Micru! --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 22:34, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Funny thing... just a few days ago, an editor at the English Wikipedia expressed interest in having what he called a "chatroom" for editors. The post is here: en:WP:Village pump (idea lab)#Chatroom. If you're an editor at English Wikipedia, please go visit that post and chime in with some encouragement. Also funny: while reflecting on that post, the name "WP:Lounge" actually came to my mind as a possible name for such a feature! — Jaydiem (talk) [en.wp:(user)(talk)] 07:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Items with no interwiki

I have 2 questions:

1. How can i find list of items which doesn't have interwiki link like Q17143521?
2. How can i find list of items which are used with Property:P31 for example Q2176891 used with Property:P31 in Q17143521?

I want to translate these labels to use the in local wikiYamaha5 (talk) 21:17, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Question 2: I don't understand the question because it sounds like you want to search for all items where P31:Q2176891, but in your example of Q17143521, it does not link to Q2176891 anywhere, and neither does Q2176891 to Q17143521. Did you copy and paste the right link?

In any case, probably you want to use Autolist. This is the newer version: http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/autolist2.php --Haplology (talk) 06:16, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Question 1: Special:ItemsWithoutSitelinks. If you are looking for items that don't have a sitelink and no labels and descriptions, there's User:Pasleim/Items for deletion/Almost empty. Bonus answer: If you're looking for items not having a certain sitelink (e.g. no enwiki link), there's Wikidata:Database reports/Missing links or the Terminator. If you're looking for items with only one sitelink, there's Lonely Interwiki links and Lonely items. --YMS (talk) 08:02, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

I want to find all items (like Q2176891Q3504085) which are used with P31 like P31:Q2176891 P31:Q3504085 . Yamaha5 (talk) 16:31, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

instance of (P31) Gmina Dziemiany (Q2176891) makes no sense. Michiel1972 (talk) 16:53, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Excuse me I mean instance of (P31) :rural municipality (Q3504085) Yamaha5 (talk) 17:19, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

In that case, you want this: http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/autolist2.php?language=en&project=wikipedia&category=&depth=12&wdq=claim%5B31%3A3504085%5D&mode=undefined&statementlist=&run=Run&label_contains=&label_contains_not=&chunk_size=100

Hope that helps :) --Haplology (talk) 01:05, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

I want items which can be used with P31. For example I want QXXXXX in P31:QXXXXX relation. In last case wanted result should be rural municipality (Q3504085) Yamaha5 (talk) 07:49, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

What to do when an item refers to two things in one Wikipedia article?

Q4010540 The Wikipedia article on this topic is about both the fictional character named Vext as well as a comic book series entitled Vext. In part, this is due to parameters in the infobox that collapse together fictional characters as well as series when they have the same name (note also that sometimes, there will be more than one comic book series with the same title—they are usually disambiguated by volume). What do we do on Wikidata about this? Is this data item about the character, the series (there is only one volume), both, or neither? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:25, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

In my opinion, the item, in general, should be about the larger concept. An article about a city and the same name surrounding county would link to an item about the county. In this case the item linked to the article would be about the comic series with a separate item for any characters notable enough to have their own items (do we know enough about them to make three statements?)

On the other hand, in this case the article starts by talking about the character, not the series so maybe...

On the third hand the article goes on to describe 17 other characters as well so by the end of the article it does seem to be about the whole series.

All the above influences whether the enWP article is linked to the wikidata item for the series or the wikidata item for the character. Either way we still need separate items for these as statements about one are not true for the other.

Hope this helps a little. Filceolaire (talk) 21:12, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

On the specific question you asked: This is what is known as the "Bonnie and Clyde problem". A wikidata item should not refer to 'two things' though it may refer to a pair of things or a bunch of things where we can make statements about that pair or that bunch. If a wikipedia article refers to two things then the item linked to that article will in turn have 'consists of' statements linking separate items for those things. Where an article discusses one class/group/big thing and also a bunch of other things that can be considered to be 'part of' or 'instance of' or 'subclass of' the group/class/big thing then the Wikipedia article should link to the wikidata item for the group/class/big thing. Filceolaire (talk) 21:22, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

@Filceolaire: But this isn't like w:Coen Brothers/Q56095 where there are two things (Joel and Ethan) who have some separate properties (e.g. their birth years) and some common properties (e.g. awards that they have won together or occupations that they have shared separately): it's not like a comic book series is an aggregate of comic book characters. One is a publication, the other is a fictional entity and they both just have the same name. I would guess that the series is the "main" topic but that's more or less arbitrary, really. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:40, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Note: I actually looked up that Wikidata item and there are parts segregated out to Q13595531 and Q13595311 even though neither has an independent Wikipedia article, Commons category/gallery, Wikiquote listing, Wikivoyage guide, or Wikisource bibliography... —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:42, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes Justin except I didn't talk about the 'main' topic. I said the article should link to the group/class/big thing and that is the series. Each of the characters is featured in the series (and listed on the page). Each individual comic is a part of the series (and referred to in the 'publication history' section of the article). so the series is the group/class/big thing and the wikipedia article should link to the item for that.

I can imagine a language wikipedia with an article about Captain America which includes discussion of his appearance in his own comic, the Avengers, movies, TV series etc. where the article should link to the item for Captain America and not to one of the comic book series. Either way Wikidata still needs a separate item for each series, each character, each edition. Wikipedia can combine these topics in articles in many different ways and which of these items each article links to is then a separate question. Filceolaire (talk) 09:47, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

@Filceolaire: Ah. Thanks. That makes sense. So I can/should split this single item into two? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:09, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Statements in this wikidata item should (in my opinion) be about the series. If you have statements you want to make about the character or the individual comics (publication dates) then you will need to create separate wikidata items for these topics. Can you make enough statements about the character to justify creating a separate item? Filceolaire (talk) 07:28, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Also makes sense separation of the english article. Infovarius (talk) 21:44, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Nationality of companies

Gränges (Q10509721) had the properties, country (P17) Sweden (Q34) added yesterday.

My Question is: What makes the nationality of a company?

• Which jurisdiction it's main office/board or directors is related to?
• Where it was founded?
• Where is has it's main production?
• The nationality of the owners?
• The nationality of the company culture?

As far as I know, the main office of this company had until recently it's main office in Oslo, Norway. (Now it's in Stockholm, Sweden). The owners are Norwegian. The juridical peron of Gränges of today was founded in Norway, but the original history of the name "Gränges" is Swedish. The production is mainly in Sweden and PRC today. The result is reported in Norwegian money, NOK. The company will soon be listed in a stock market, most likely in Nasdaq, Stockholm. Thoughts? @Väsk:.

Another example is IKEA. Many think of this Dutch company as Swedish, why? -- Innocent bystander (talk) 16:50, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

I can't say I disagree with any of the points you raise. The nationality of companies can certainly be ambiguous and it has probably been debated several times before on Wikipedia. However, I think companies should be tagged with nationalities. I also think you should be able to tag companies with a nationality that isn't necessarily shared with the city where its head office is located. I. e. you should be able to tag Ikea as a Swedish company even though they have established their head office in the Netherlands and their brands are owned by a Lichtenstein-based foundation. There are lots of companies that have relocated their head office to London or the Netherlands for tax reasons, yet they were founded and established elsewhere. Modern corporate governance allows for a great variety of structures which further confuses the issue. There obviously needs to be some debate about ambiguous cases that should lead to guidelines.

As for the specific case: The reason I tagged Gränges (Q10509721) as a Swedish company was that it was categorised as such on the Swedish Wikipedia and that its history there was mostly Swedish. Locking back at that article it is clear that it is about two different companies, one historical Gränges that operated between 1896 and 2005, and a later company that changed its name from Sapa Heat Transfer to Gränges in 2013. This is not an uncommon practise, but can be confusing. Wikidata should obviously have separate entries for these companies, Gränges (Q10509721) should be about the historical company while a new entry can be created for the former Sapa Heat Transfer. Väsk (talk) 19:03, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm not saying that you or anybody have done something wrong anywhere. But we need to find a way to be consistent in this matter. We have to say in what way IKEA and Gränges is/was Swedish/Dutch. Separating old Gränges from the new is one way, but it does not solve every issue. In the case with IKEA, we maybe have to separate the different parts of this company? -- Innocent bystander (talk) 12:15, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

AIUI, Wikidata is time neutral, so you can also include historical nationalities. One solution could be to use qualifiers. For example, Ikea could be classified something like country (P17) Sweden (Q34) [because: country where it was founded] and country (P17) Netherlands (Q55) [because: location of head office]. I'm not entirely certain if the terminology for that exists yet or not. I don't think it gives complete picture to say that Ikea is only Dutch or only Swedish, but I agree that we should try to be consistent. I don't think we should split up IKEA (Q54078) in this case. Väsk (talk) 17:58, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

I think that in these cases companies need to have multiple values for this property with a qualifier like Wikidata:Property_proposal/Event#specifically used to indicate in what way they are associated with each country. Feel free to support the creation of that property if you agree. Filceolaire (talk) 08:40, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

I would not use country (P17) for anything that is not a geographical object. country of origin (P495) are much more apropriate for companies. /ℇsquilo 18:56, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Premierships and presidencies confused with persons

I've done a search over premiership data elements (you can also do a search for presidencies, same result). I've found elements like Q7240404, which show "alma mater", and a gender. A presidency has neither, the president has both. It has a start date and an end date, but no birth date. And it is also no member of a political party. Even if you say that "birth date" can be interpreted as "start date" of the presidency, the data are wrong. For example Q7240396. If you compare them with the dates on Q244689, you will find they are the same, so the entry for "birth date" does not show the start date of the presidency.

Non-exhaustive list of "suspects" is: User:RobotGMwikt, User:GerardM (Operator of that bot), User:GPUBot and User:Dexbot (evidence). I think the bots are doing good work most time, but their creators weren't aware of this issue. I'll contact them. Muelleum (talk) 21:01, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

I think it's because the articles themselves on enwiki aren't just using categories for people (variants of en:Template:Infobox person), but also for some idiotic reason categorized as people – en:Premiership of Tony Blair is in en:Category:1953 births and Category:Living people. This leaves the bots with little chance to understand that the item is not in fact a person. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 05:40, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

It all comes from the harvesting of data from templates like en:Template:Infobox officeholder. For example, Q7240401 contains the information in the infobox on en:Premiership of Stephen Harper. The same method would have been used to populate Q206 with the data from the infobox in en:Stephen Harper. Most of the time, of course, the bots get it exactly right. But in this case I think the bots need some sort of whitelist for the articles that appear in en:Category:Tenures in political office by individual. Another example for bots to be careful with would be articles about murders and assassinations which frequently contain infoboxes for victims and perpetrators. 130.88.141.34 08:05, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

For my bot I use categories to see the article is about a person or not. I can exclude some regexes in title. I will fix it Amir (talk) 18:51, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

This is regex of the excluding list (ignore uppercase or lowercase): "(premiership|presidency|murder|death|assassination)" Amir (talk) 20:12, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

I have been weeding out those items in my own scripts. From my own experience I would suggest including these too: career|case|controversy|brothers|legacy|scandals|apogee|government|conspiracy|abduction|history|saints| v |government|attack|speculations|players|kidnapping|honor killing|massacre|shooting --Haplology (talk) 04:27, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

The best whitelist is providing such items with another value associated with "instance of" (P31). I will not touch an item that does have a P31 and is not a P31:Q5. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 19:58, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

new "game"? problems with adding of multiple images (P18)

i noticed that some users started recently to add dozens of images for image (P18) to items (in some cases more than 80 images), see eg. Q2138582 Rijksmonumenten in Hummelo, Q104731 Gorzów Wielkopolski and Q713127 Santa Cruz (only examples, not wanting to blame these users), also see [1] for a comment.

The additions always happened in a few seconds or minutes and are marked with "Widar [1.3]", so maybe there is a new game tool for doing such edits? If yes i think its a bad idea because all these items end up at Wikidata:Database_reports/Constraint_violations/P18#Single_value. And they are reported usually with timelags because there are already too many results on this constraint violations page (it seems newer records are skipped). Manually reducing these P18 images later to 1 "relevant illustration" can need much more time like adding them. I think if a tool for adding images exists, then it should only allow to add 1 image, not so many images (probably taken automatically from Wikipedia articles). Does someone have a idea what to do? Holger1959 (talk) 23:52, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Should P18 be renamed "image of the subject" to prevent it being used as "here are some images related to the subject" which should instead be covered by the Commons category property? You are right that P18 should not be used in the way you have shown it being used. We are not a Wikimedia Commons link farm. 130.88.141.34 08:20, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

@Magnus Manske: 130.88.141.34 09:53, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

There is an "image" game, but each image addition has to be clicked (no "add all" or somesuch). There is also this tool which can add statements (including images) through widar. The solution here is social, not technical; ask people who flood Wikidata in that manner to stop. --Magnus Manske (talk) 10:08, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Maybe small note (same manner as in merge game) to notify, that P18 is for one or few most relevant pics and not to mark all images showing the subject may help to avoid this. --Jklamo (talk) 14:03, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

@Magnus Manske, thank you for explanation! Good to hear that theres no "add all" :) Do you have a link to this image game? Maybe Jklamo's idea about a small note there really would make sense.

The problem i see currently with the obvious "social solution" is high workload. Its easy to revert such image additions and to notify users when you notice such edits at the same day. But it is complicated when you only see them weeks later and already further changes were made (growing backlog and very few users who take care about constraint violations), or if the users already added dozens of images to dozens of items (time-intensive and boring cleanup work).

@130.88.141.34: thank you for help! Holger1959 (talk) 15:27, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I've added a warning. The image game is part of the Wikidata game, here. --Magnus Manske (talk) 15:42, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

@Magnus Manske: thank you very much, looks good! Holger1959 (talk) 16:51, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

For people, it can be useful to add images taken in different years (i.e. at different ages of the depicted person). --- Jura 14:31, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jura: maybe, but P18 is not designed to store more than 1 image at the moment, see the constraint violations page. There is some discussion about images at Property talk:P18, maybe you can add your opinion there? Holger1959 (talk) 15:27, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

There is probably an easy way to fix the listings on that page. It seems the page already confirms that several images are listed. --- Jura 15:32, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I think qualifiers should used in such cases. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:04, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Request for patrol (?)

I may have been flagged for being too spammy or something. I got confused on Q15868740 (WikiProject Quebec alerts page) and originally mistook it for its corresponding talk page, which covers different ground for the project. After having corrected my error, the link is still showing up incorrectly on Wikipedia. I also created Q17480567 for the discussion page, which is also still showing up incorrectly. I believe they may require someone to patrol/approve them.

These changes were made because the English WikiProject has undergone a significant restructuring over the past month and I wished to link related pages between the two projects so that users could move more fluidly between them, as many residents of Quebec are bilingual and interact with both the enwiki and frwiki projects. SweetNightmares (talk) 19:06, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Is the problem the fact that the main page (W:WP:QWNB) is supposed to correspond to its talk page (W:WT:QWNB) on any given wikidata item? That is to say, since I have put the former at WikiProject Quebec alerts and notifications (Q15868740) and the latter at Q17480567, they are in conflict and will not work? SweetNightmares (talk) 19:08, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

merging request

Chiranjeevi (Q16200145),Chiranjeevi (Q17350160) and Chiranjeevi (Q313243), three of them should be merged, but I don't know how. Does any of you take care of?

 Done—Totemkin (talk) 17:50, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Issue with "instance of" for texts

Currently, Help:Sources say that items like. Even though there has already been long discussions about text-items, it seems that we have failed on this particular point. It is recommended that items like Hamlet or the Bible should be marked as instances of book (Q571). This is not correct. "Subclass of Q571" would not completely correct the issue as Q571 refers to "set of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of ink, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side.". What the Bible and Hamlet are is not a book but a text. I am not sure whether is should be instance or subclass of text (I would think "instance of" would be more convenient, but possibly not completely correct). Also, "text" seems a bit vague, so we could use some of its subclasses. What Hamlet is is a tragedy, what Ode to a Nightingale (Q3349126) is is a poem. So, it seems that the p31 (or p279) value should be the same as the p136. So I would argue that p136 is useless (at least for works) and that its content should be merged with p31, and that "instance of book" should be only used for iotems about real material books.---Zolo (talk) 08:10, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: I agree with you, it was a mistake from the early times that we should correct. We are also discussing here if there is a better label for "instance of/subclass of" which would avoid misunderstandings as these. It could also be considered to have a specific property for creative works. Notification Books task force participants--Micru (talk) 08:40, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

According to WIDAR autolist there are 38,000 or so items with instance of = book. Would many be solved by linking to Q8261 (novel), Q179461 (religious text), Q5185279 (poem) etc. instead? The novel is a more abstract concept e.g. JK Rowling has written seven Harry Potter novels which have been distributed via the medium of books. Therefore Harry potter and the Chamber of Secrets = Q8261. Non-fiction texts would be more difficult to specify without a new item. 130.88.141.34 08:56, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

We should probably have a generic "non-fiction text" item but many coulds have more specific values (biography, essay, handbook, etc.)--Zolo (talk) 09:25, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

In general, I am in favor of adding instance of (P31), even if the item used is overly generic or slightly "off". Items without instance of (P31) are hard to find, if you look for something specific; but making instance of (P31) more specific is much easier if you have an "anchor" to work with. Maybe not the best example, but instance of:book in en:category:Poems gives us ~270 candidates. Autolist2 can add and remove statements, so selecting the poems in that list (or de-selecting the non-poems) and changing instance of (P31) is straight-forward. In the future, we could even have a tool list us "usual suspects", such as "instance of:book" automatically, and suggest "popular" replacements. --Magnus Manske (talk) 12:21, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

@Magnus Manske: The thing is "instance of book" is supposed to mean a material book like Lorsch codex (Q538377). These call for properties items about text do not (for their physical location and their material description). I am in favour of adding a generic p31 in the absence of a generic one, but I think it should be text (Q234460) rather than book (Q571), so that we do not mix differnt classes of objects. --Zolo (talk) 15:11, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree. There are a few physical books which have their own articles and these particular tomes should be 'instance of:book'. Items about a text should be 'instance of:novel, poem, etc.' and 'subclass of:book, ebook, etc.' Filceolaire (talk) 21:34, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

@Filceolaire: Text is an abstract object if it is not a physical text, so "instance of" is wrong as it is for most books. Tamawashi (talk) 14:16, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Tamawashi An abstract object can be an instance of a class of abstract objects. A book is a physical object so a book and a text must be in different classes. A whole taxonomy for books has been developed by librarians but I've lost the link. Filceolaire (talk) 19:39, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

@Filceolaire:. I don't think texts should be subclasses of books,~ebook etc. either, as they are conceptually independent from their physical materialization (they would remain the same text if they were written on a wall or recited aloud). However, in the terminology of Help:Sources, instances of {Q|3331189}} could be subclasses of books or ebooks. --Zolo (talk) 20:43, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

@Filceolaire: If an abstract object can be an instance of another abstract object, then how can editors decide whether to use "instance of" or "subclass of"? Tamawashi (talk) 02:18, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

@Filceolaire, Zolo, Tamawashi: There cannot be instances of abstract concepts in Wikidata, although instances of abstract concepts do exist in real life. For example, let's take a look at The Raven (Q22726):

• if I memorize it (the process of transfering it to my pasive memory), I encode it in my neuronal circuits (as material substrate)
• if I recite it (the process of activating passive information), other sentient beings or sensing devices (recorders) can become affected by the organized patterns of sounds that is my performance and perhaps create new instances of it
• if I write it down, then again I am modifying a material entity (paper) to encode passive information that can be eventually decoded by someone else.

All those are instances, but if I want "something" to represent all of them, then I need a class, therefore <The Raven (Q22726)>subclass of<literary work (Q7725634)>. Same applies to music, movies, etc. which might be confusing to users (even for me it was confusing until not long ago), that is why I suggested above changing the label of p:p279/p:p31 to something easier to distinguish.--Micru (talk) 08:32, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

@Tamawashi, Micru: I really do not understand why an instance should be something with a location in space and time. Beside that would not be identical with being a material object. A football match can be located in space and time but it is not a physical object.

It seems much more useful to define instances and subclasses in terms of logical implications (like in Help:Basic membership properties). This is the cleanest way to use these properties for making inferences. Instance = the item has this feature. Subclass = Instances of this item has these features. A text is a defined sequence of word. Everything that is a defined sequence of word is an instance of text. Everything whose instances have these features is a subclass of text.--Zolo (talk) 08:55, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: There are not only material (or boundary-defined) objects, there are also processes. A football match is a process that is voluntarily engaged by agents (players) according to agreed rules.

There are two views: either we have models and we "create" things from those models (instances of a model), or instances exist on their own in real life and we create models from them. In practice it doesn't matter much, because you can express reality one way or the other and still reach the same reality representation. However, for the common mortal (non-IT people), the notion that the reality comes from the representation of it, it is, to say it in plain terms, a bit weird.--Micru (talk) 09:50, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: as you say, the way we see the causal structure of the World does not really need to show in the use of the properties. I am just saying that the simplest and most useful definition of a an instance is "something that has the features defined by a class" An irrational number is a number that cannot be expressed as a ratio of integers. "Irrational number > 3" is not a number, so not an instance of irrational number. Other the other hand pi is an instance of irrational number. Adding requirements about physical location does not appear to have any practical benefit. Moreover, OWL now allows something to be both a subclass of X and an instance of Y. It is hard to see how an object with a physical location can be a class, so it must be that something without one can be an instance.

If we define a text as a unique sequence of words, or something like that, an instance of text must be an abstract object, not a physical one. This would make "Ode to a Nightingale" an instance of poem, and that would tell us that it is a unique poem, not a type of poem the way ode (Q178985) is. It would also permit additional constraints like "values of the has edition or translation (P747) property must be instances of text". -Zolo (talk) 11:26, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: If you define an instance as "something that has the features defined by a class", then what is a class and a superclass?

"Irrational number > 3" is a "subclass of:mathematical concept", when you write it down or, when you read about it, think about it, or otherwise create it in your mind, then you have an "instance of:Irrational number > 3". Pi, as any other irrational number, is also a "subclass of:irrational number concept". When I write down "Pi", that is an "instance of:irrational number concept", when I calculate it and write down the value that becomes an "instance of:approximation to irrational number".

The instances of the neurological processess of John Keats combined the linguistic patterns that he had acquired through his life to give rise to the first instance of "Ode to a Nightingale" in his mind. He penned it down and created another instance of "Ode to a Nightingale", then it was printed and more instances of "Ode to a Nightingale" were created, each one of them had a different material support, but all of them have a strong simmilarity and for that we can speak of a "the class of all instances that exist of 'Ode to a Nightingale'".

If you think about it, the only reason we have the sepparation between "instances" and "classes" is because for some things we have the factual certainty that they exist (instance, token, empirical evidence, phenomenon, the actual thing, reality) while with the others we imagine or suppose that they exist (class, type, kind, rational evidence, nuomenon, fabrication). Even the concept of gravity is a class that we have inferred after seeing instances of its effects repeated times. That is the basis of the scientific method, create classes from the observation of repeated instances. If you don't make that distinction, then it is equivalent to say that there is no difference at all, and in that case we can just use one property for everything and rely on bottom concepts.--Micru (talk) 12:08, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: An instance is "something that has the features defined by a class and a subclass is something whose instances have the features of a class. Pi is a unique number and it is irrational, so it is an instance of irrational number. "Irrational number > 3" is not a itself a number so it cannot be an instance of number, but everything that meets the conditions "is a number", "is irrational" and "is > 3 is an instance of irrational number. So "irrational number > 3" is a subclass of irrational number.

Is the mental representation of an armchair -or the neural configuration producing this mental representation- an instance of armchair ? No because a mental representation cannot have a back and two arms. But just the same, how can a mental representation be an irrational number or be > 3 ?

That said there are certainly issues with allowing something to be both a class of something and an instance of something else. How do we know that the the statement "is > 0" means "this item is > 0" for pi (Q167) and "all instances of this item are > 0" for natural number (Q21199). That may not be trivial, but it appears to be a practical issue as opposed to the logical dead-end that seems to be created by requiring instances to be phyiscally localizable objects. --Zolo (talk) 14:02, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: Saying that "an instance is something that has the features defined by a class" is the same as saying that you have an object because you have a general representation of it... It doesn't seem rational to say "I know that the Mona Lisa is a painting because I always knew what a painting is". When I was little and I had no knowledge of language I wouldn't have been able to recognize the Monalisa as a painting, so most probably someone showed me a painting saying "this is a painting, and this, and this, and this", so that is why now I have a model (class) of what a painting is based on my exposure to the instances of that class and why now I can say "Monalisa instance of painting".

Pi is a pattern that happens in nature and we have idealized it (class). "Irrational number > 3" is a fabrication that you made up in your mind and I can replicate it almost identically in my mind (I say "almost" because I cannot have knowledge of your subjective experience while you are evoking that representation, so I cannot compare it to mine), for you that is enough to call both instances "the same", even if they are not represented with the same mind-substrate.

A mental representation of an armchair is the closest our mind can be to that existing armchair, that is why we call it "instance" and also because we can agree with others that we are referring to exactly the same object in time and space. Even if we now that it is a lie (our "mind object" or "object representation" can never be the object itself), it is "less lie" that pretending that things can exist without material substrate. In the same way, a mental representation is the closest we can be to an irrational number. If there wouldn't be matter where to store that representation, that representation wouldn't exist.

You cannot know the answer of "pi > 0" because pi is an abstraction and as such it has no value, but you can ask if "approximation of pi > 0", because you have executed some algorithm that gave you approximations of π (Q1130396) and you can use that as a value for the comparison. The comparison itself "z = (x > y)" is a subclass of all comparison algorithms (passive process) that give a binary value of z as a result of the execution of the comparison process. The algorithm has an agent that executes the comparison process. x and y have to fulfill certain characteristics for the agent to be able to perform the comparison, but most probably the conditions are to have enough memory to store the representation of both x and y, and enough processing capacity to manipulate both representations. "z = (x > y)" as such may represent 3 superposed states: indeterminate, true, false. The agent selects which one is active at a given time. But all in all you need an instance of that algorithm (implementation, be it in your brain or in a computer) to be able to use it, which requires matter, energy, and takes space.--Micru (talk) 16:01, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

@Pasleim, DavidMar86hdf, Zolo, Micru, Filceolaire: And now classification as an instance [2]. Tamawashi (talk) 16:53, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: I have a feeling that we do not speak the same language here. This is not about the psychological origins of knowledge. If we want to know if Mona Lisa is a painting, we just need to check whether it matches the citieria set in painting (Q3305213) or in some extrernal source.

"irrational number > 3" does not mean "someone's idea of a irrational number larger than 3", it means the set of real numbers that are larger than 3 and cannot be written as a quotient of real numbers. The neuronal circuit creating your idea of an irrational number may well be completely different from the one creating mine, but it is really irrelevant."Irrational number" is a mathematical object defined in mathematical terms. How the minds encodes it does not change a thing to its definition or its constituents. --Zolo (talk) 17:40, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: No, no, it is not about the "psychological origins of knowledge", it is plainly about the "origins of knowledge", or just about "knowledge". You are saying that it is possible to have information without matter to represent it - I am saying that is impossible. You are saying that if you write the number 3 in one paper, and the number 3 in another paper, you don't have two instances of the number three - I am saying that is impossible. You speak from the perspective of mathematics, where things do not need to exist in order to be imagined - I speak from the perspective of ontology, where even the concept of non-existence needs a material substrate to be represented. Our postures are very different, but it is not necessary to keep talking about this. Let's keep working on productive tasks and may some insight come to any of us that allows us some day to come closer :) --Micru (talk) 18:04, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

@Micru:, yes maybe it is better to focus on other things, but I am absolutely not thinking that we can have information without matter, just that:

a) The simplest and most productive definition of instance is "something that has the features defined by a class"

b) The simplest and most productive definition a subclass is "something whose instances have the features of a class".

c) A mathematical concept should be defined using the definition given by mathematicians.

d) Mathematicians define pi as "the unique real number whose value is equal to the ratio of a circle's conference to its radius", and prime number as "any natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself."

It directly follows from the points above that pi is an instance of real number and prime number is a subclass of natural number. These are plain logical implications. It does not purport to say anything about the nature of knowledge.

Obviously, we could use choose other definition for "subclass" and "instance". We could say that an instance is something that has a location in space and time. But the latter definition has serious drawbacks, like not making the distinction between a number and a set of numbers, or between an individual novel and a literary genre. Given that definition b solves this issue, I really do not see any reason why we should not use it. --Zolo (talk) 08:02, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: After reading your comment, I think we are closer that we imagine we are. I agree with your inderdependent definition of class-instance. For a class to exist (in a representation system) it needs an instance, and for an instance to exist (in a representation system) we need a class to represent it with. Our difference is in where this inderdependece relation originates. You say that it can exist "in the void", where I say that they need to be "grounded", that is, that instances must exist first in space and time. The definition of Pi adapted to ontological language is "there is an (idealized) class that represents a unique (idealized) result equal to the ratio of an (idealized class of) circle's conference to its (idealized) radius". It is important to understand deeply that the definition refers to classes, not instances, even if the result seems to be a unique number, because it is not. I think what is confusing is that you can have an instance of Pi (the idealized class) and also an instance of Pi (the class of all aproximations). For instance if I write: π, π, π, π, π, π, π, those are 7 instances of the idealized class of Pi (the ones that we can only think about abstractedly), but if I write 3.14159, 3.14159, 3.14, 3.14, those are 4 instances of the class of all Pi aproximations (the ones that we can process). If there was not a Pi (the idealized class), I wouldn't be able to write instances of that idealized class of Pi. Notice also that all instances exist in time and space, where the class is a supposition that more instances might exist.

As of "the latter definition [considering instances in time and space] has serious drawbacks, like not making the distinction between a number and a set of numbers, or between an individual novel and a literary genre." I don't see those drawbacks. Consider the following:

• there is an idealized class of a set
• there are instances of that idealized class of a set
• there is a class of all real occurrences of a set
• there are instances of a real occurrence of a set

So now a practical example with a natural number "5"

• there is an idealized class of 5: the mathematical five
• there are instances of that idealized class of 5: representations of the matematical five (5, 5, 5, 5, 5....)
• there is a class of all real occurrences of 5: all fives that can happen in real life
• there are instances of that class of real occurrence of 5: five apples here on my table

Of course it wouldn't be practical to type in all this structure in Wikidata, because we just need the mathematical idealized class, but that one is clearly a class, not an instance, both a class and and instance otherwise we wouldn't be able to instanciate it. Remember your own definition: for a class to exist there must be an instance, and the other way round.--Micru (talk) 09:48, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: sorry, it is growing way too long for the Project chat, but we do not agree at all:

• Concepts and real objets are too disjoint classes. A material object cannot be an instance of concept and vice versa. Concepts do not have a material existence, they only have a defintion.
• Numbers are concepts, so no material object can be an instance of number.
• Five apple are five instances of apple or an instance of group of apples (with the property: quantity of apples: 5), but it is absolutely not an instance of 5.
• Writing "pi" on a paper does not create an instance of pi, just an instance of a depiction of the pi symbol. --Zolo (talk) 14:57, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: Yes, it is getting too long for the project chat. You say that concepts do not have material substance and I agree, but they can happen simultaneously in two different places. True that "concepts and real objets are too disjoint classes". Concepts are also both a class and an instance of themselves (recurrence), I corrected my words above to reflect this. Classes (group of apples) and their instances (five apples) do not show that property. What bothers me is the wish to use the same property both to relate classes with instances and concepts with classes. If they are two disjoint groups, why to use the same property?--Micru (talk) 15:26, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: If something meets the formal definition of instance, I do not see why it should not be called an instance. That concepts and material objects are disjoint classes is actually rather fortunate in that respect. This way the superclass tree of the p31 value of an item can tell us with certainty whether the item is a material object or not. --Zolo (talk) 15:50, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: I have made a drawing above. If the red lines were instances, then we would have instance of instance, which doesn't seem right.--Micru (talk) 16:40, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: Yes, as you had already noted, concept is an instance of concept and number is also an instance of concept so instance is an instance of an instance of concept. But that's ok, ask user:tomT0m about metamodelling :). But individual texts and individual numbers are really not classes so this is not an issue here (no a number cannot exist at several places at the same time, because a number, according to the standard definition, really does not exist in a spatiotemporal sense). --Zolo (talk) 17:20, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: A book may contain text and a text maybe published as a book. (But of cause you can publish a collection of pictures without text as a book and not every text is published as a book.) If you want a perfect definition for properties do not use Wikipedia. Why: Because WP combines articles in different languages. Abstract concepts are not existing like a single person and therefore they will always set apart. (German WP: book = printed book, German language: book = printed books and e-books, Unesco: only publications with more than 49 pages are "books" etc.) In our (WD) definition a "book" - book (Q571) - is a kind of work, the published book is called "edition" - version, edition or translation (Q3331189). Changing basic definitions is like shooting a running horse and than wonder why this horse didn't win the rase. --Kolja21 (talk) 11:08, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Kolja21: we may not always be able to get perfectly equal definitions among projects, but here pretty much every Wikipedia and "authority control" link define books as a sequence of sheets etc. Even if we add ebooks to the definition, we have something very different from book seen as a "kind of work, the published book is called "edition", the published book is called "edition". Beside we need an item about real material books like Lorsch codex (Q538377)) and it only makes sense that it is the one with the links to en:Book, de:Buch, etc.

@Kolja21:It is true that we should try not to change the structure of Wikidata too often. If you do not want to change the statements made in other items, and the documentation pages, we can also move the sitelinks, statements, and labels to a new item, and move the content of text (Q234460) to Q571. That will affect less pages, and, with me at least, it would be perfectly ok. --Zolo (talk) 14:57, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: text (Q234460) has not been used for works/books yet. So there is nothing to move. For the book In Mexico (2010) Wikidata tells us that the author is a person called "text" but that is just one of the usual bot errors.[3] --Kolja21 (talk) 15:21, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

@Kolja21: Items like On the Origin of Species (Q20124) are marked as "instances of Q571". The Wikipedia and authority control links in Q571 say that a book is a material object made of leaves. On the Origin of Species (Q20124) is not a material object made of leaves. So we must either change the value indicated in On the Origin of Species (Q20124) or the Wikipedia/authority control links in Q571. --Zolo (talk) 17:04, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: As I said before you will never have a 100 percent match. Your definition of book is one possible defintion, but not the one of WD. Take for example the English description: book = "medium for a collection of words and/or pictures to represent knowledge, often manifested in bound paper and ink, or in e-books". (An e-book as you know is not made out of leaves.) This is the official English description - today. Tomorrow an editor might change it. And of cause the German description is different. So forget about the English word "book" and the rest of the 200 or 300 possible labels, descriptions and Wikipedia links. It's item Q571 and we are happy with it. --Kolja21 (talk) 23:20, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

@Kolja21: I am not sure that you have correectly read what worte. I said that (almost ?) all sitelinks to Wikipedia said a book is made of leaves, so it would make sense adopt this definition in the corresponding Wikidata item. And even when Wikipedia links do not match 100%, descriptions in Wikidata should. If the German and English descriptions in Wikidata do not match, then at least one of them should be changed. Beside, this is not an issue of not being 100% right. As I, and Filceolaire, and Micru, and other before have noted it is just 100% wrong to say that "The Origin of Species" is an instance of book - whether we include e-books or not. If we changed the definition of Q571 to make it mean "text" instead of "book", it may be 95% right. --Zolo (talk) 07:33, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

A text? Are you serious? If we have problems with a difinition of a simple thing like a book, don't even think about talking about a text. This term is so complicated you can write a doctor theses about it and we still wouldn't agree what a text is. The concept of WD is to connect properties with items. "Freiheit (German) = Freedom (English)" is not the same as "2 + 2 = 4." Move sitelinks as often as you like, split them up, rename them and later merge them again, but stopp changing the definitions of properties. We lost hundreds of working hours because of chaos resulting in these kind of changes. We said The Origin of Species is an instance of "book". That is a definition. It's good and it works. If we would have said it's a "work", it might be a the title of an opera. If we would have called it "literary work" it would exclude many types of books. If we would have said it's a "text" it could be anything, from DNA to an email. --Kolja21 (talk) 15:14, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

As it stands now,

⟨ book (Q571)    ⟩ subclass of (P279) ⟨ literary work (Q7725634)    ⟩

should be considered plain wrong for any of you. The German Language knows the word Schriftwerk implying a work predominantly textual in nature but not necessarily an intellectual or artistic work (think of a phone book which essentially is a database, i.e. the effort relies on the act of collecting). However this would also include individual articles (published in journals or newspapers) like essays, a generalization not everybody might find appropriate. The main obstacle seems to be to translate Schriftwerk into enough languages to pin down the meaning of the corresponding item here. -- Gymel (talk) 15:33, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

@Gymel:. Would "written work" sound ok in English ? Also, note that both the translation and the generality issue will not be too prominent if, as proposed, we recommend using more specific subclass like "poem" or "phone directory" (best avoid the word book :) ) for the value of p31.--Zolo (talk) 07:22, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: I'm by no means a native speaker. Work as it is used here is something extremely abstract and "writing" even in a metaphorical sense might not match it. (Also I have the impression that "written work" in english is used for homework at college level). -- Gymel (talk) 19:51, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

@Gymel, Zolo: I think we need a property to say "<book> embodiment of <literary work>". If you don't like that label it could be said as: "gives material form to", or "materialization of".--Micru (talk) 07:55, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: My objection above was that literary work is too narrow a superclass for "book" as subclass of a suitable generalization of work (Q386724). An embodiment property as proposed would apply to the different meaning of a book as a physical object. By the simplified model of Wikidata:WikiProject Books it (i.e. the book on my desk) would be an instance of a certain version, edition or translation (Q3331189) which in turn is related to the work. -- Gymel (talk) 19:51, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

@Gymel:. I was about to create the "Schriftwerk" item, but I just realised that we should solve hierarchical questions first: should it be a subclass of text ? How can a text not be a Schriftwerk ? Can a Schriftwerk have illustrations ? And if so is it still a text ? --Zolo (talk) 07:35, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

I can only give a subjective answer: For me DNA (or the specific DNA of my dog) is an instance of text, but not an instance of work even in the broadest sense I can imagine. Thus Schriftwerk being a subclass of text could be worth a try (but verifying that text is represented by text (Q234460) would not be trivial). As for the illustrations: For a certain work a combination of text, music and visual content may form an unit. And for another work illustrations are "only" added. Both may be reduced to their textual content by disregarding their other parts and whether this reduction is still a representation (or expression) of the original work will be open to debate. Or think of a poem where the words are arranged in a way to yield the graphic image of an apple: There is no purity but the thing would be still considered as mostly of textual nature? Of course there are printed books filmstrip (Q860594) without any text content not to mention artist's book (Q1062404)... One word of warning against Schriftwerk: It seems that at least linguists reason along the language content of text as being the fundamental characteristics, not its written-ness. That would be "Sprachwerk" in german which even more than "Schriftwerk" is mostly used in the context of copyright law and therefore stresses the work-ness more than will be helpful for our purposes (which still would be to catch the non-physical aspects of a general "book", which should include written-ness (or only the possibility of written-ness?) but work-ness only in the very broad sense of "result of a controlled activity"). As a consequence of the two points you raised I don't think any more that we can define book in a meaningful way: Something abstract is a book if and only if this something has been or could be instantiated / made manifest in a book as a physical object - defined by its sheets or pages of what material ever bound together. Unfortunately audio books or e-books would be books only very indirectly and most unfortunately the DNA of my dog would directly qualify as a book since now any text of finite length could be printed out and bound together effectively turning text into a subclass of book. Urgh. -- Gymel (talk) 07:24, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

@Gymel: ok, I would propose that we recommend using a new "Schriftwerk" item as a subclass of "text" and maybe rethink it scope/superclass if issues arise. The important thing for now is that material books stop being mixed up with texts. -Zolo (talk) 06:05, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘@Zolo, Gymel: I still don't understand what is the problem using literary work (Q7725634) for our work items. I agree that the relationship between "book" and that item should not be "subclass" and that "book" should only be used for physical objects, but what is the problem using "literary work" to signal our "work items"?--Micru (talk) 08:49, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: "literary work" implies that it is literature. I have nothing against using it for literary works, but that does not seem to work for scientific works or other non-literature works. --Zolo (talk) 09:14, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: Actually I don’t tink “literature” is a problem, although “literary work” might be. Literature is what we call published scientific (or other research) results, although we never call them “literary works”.—Al12si (talk) 16:40, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

@Zolo: Let's go back to roots, I'll quote the french Wikipedia :

Le mot littérature, issu du latin litteratura, apparaît au début du XIIe siècle avec un sens technique de « chose écrite » puis évolue à la fin du Moyen Âge vers le sens de « savoir tiré des livres », avant d'atteindre aux XVIIe ‑ XVIIIe siècles son sens principal actuel : ensemble des œuvres écrites ou orales comportant une dimension esthétique (ex. : Une autre histoire de la littérature française, Jean d’Ormesson) ou activité participant à leur élaboration (ex. : « Se consacrer à la littérature »).

.

So here are the solution to all our problem : we need an item with the original definition, literature = knowledge taken from books, and another one literature = written artwork, which is probably a subclass of literature in the former sense. What strike me here is that we need good definitions, most of them exists, but history of language might have lead to definition confusion :) How definitions are labelled is almost a secondary problem, except for the problem of finding them easily. TomT0m ^(talk) 07:57, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)@Zolo, Al12si, TomT0m: Actually after reading the definitions of "literary work" there is a difference, because a "literary work" is mainly created for "aesthetic purposes". I have created the generic text (Q17481121) from which "literary work" is derived. Problem solved?--Micru (talk) 08:13, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

The problem was and still is the definition of book (Q571) which explicitly states that its instances are not the phycial objects known as "book" (and the classification tree depicted on the talk page is incredibly twisted (and apparently unsound), meandering from object to product to intellectual work down to the effectively too narrow literary work...). @Micru:'s last proposition or @TomT0m:'s new item might be the same as relabelling book (Q571) to some technical term which probably will be extremly difficult to translate to different languages. -- Gymel (talk) 08:43, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

@Gymel: I don't know which definition you are reading, but in English I see that it is a "medium for a collection of words...". I changed its subclass class membership to media (Q340169) to reflect this. A "communication medium" refers to the double nature information-physical object. Q571 doesn't need relabeling, just to be used on the right place (instances of books, not works).--Micru (talk) 09:03, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

By the way that’s its superclass that you’ve changed, not its subclass. I know this is sort of nitpicky, but I was confused until I went to the page and saw book defined a “subclass of” communication medium. If A is a subclass of B, then B is its superclass.—Al12si (talk) 10:44, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

True! I changed the confussing "subclass" to "class membership, which I hope is more clear :)--Micru (talk) 11:59, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

@Gymel: Translation is not a problem. If a single word do not fit, use a composed one. Better have long labels that ill defined or confusing items. TomT0m ^(talk) 12:03, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: I was referring to the clarification of the definition on Talk:Q571: This item is meant to represent "book" as a creative work ("this person authored a book", the copyrighted entity), not the physical object made of paper sheets tied together.. -- Gymel (talk) 12:24, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

@Gymel: Corrected. Should we open a new thread on "Wikiproject books" and leave more time for discussions or can we perform the change now?--Micru (talk) 12:38, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Then translation is clearly a problem. The Chinese labels (both variants) do not work with the “clarified” definition. At all.—Al12si (talk) 12:55, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Pardon me, but I don't take your words for granted. TomT0m ^(talk) 13:01, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

What do you need? A statement from a native speaker doesn’t mean anything? Anyway what I said is moot now, since the “clarification” has been changed.—Al12si (talk) 02:54, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

@Pi_zero: I probably shouldn’t crosspost but this is a perfect illustration of why I said the notability and reference requirements are fundamentally incompatible with the collection of knowledge. This is minor but I know a prof who used to boast a certain entry on en.wip was wrong for something like 10 years and no one corrected it. And I can understand because I tried correcting a similar item and had to get into an edit war to it corrected. And it was a commonly known fact, only that it’s extremely hard to cite sources. Even very wrong mistakes can become extremely hard to correct when people don’t trust anything other than “reliable sources”.—Al12si (talk) 03:44, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

@al12si: I'm inclined to suspect those requirements are something of a distraction from the actual underlying problem. Both the specific forms of the requirements, and the way they're applied, are shaped by a fundamental lack of fact-based thinking. This isn't about being right or wrong, it's about what one is striving toward, as an ideal. If your information resource is built by people who are really trying to sort out biases and such in order to strive for objective truth (knowing perfection is unattainable, but striving), your information resource is likely to do well. If, on the other hand, your information resource is built by people who have replaced the ideal of truth with weaponized red tape, your information resource is in deep, deep trouble. (I could go on about this, but I'll curb my enthusiasm here, not to overly clutter this thread.)

On the general subject, are you familiar with Tom Morris's essay The Reliability Delusion? --Pi zero (talk) 04:50, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: Yes, Wikidata:WikiProject Books absolutely should become involved. And restating the problem from scratch seems to be a good idea anyway: What is the remaining issue: book (Q571) too narrowly scoped to "literary works"? book (Q571) too ambiguously defined to be practical (there should be a proper "book" superclass for e.g. paperback (Q193934) - the current association with book cover (Q1125338) is complete nonsense)? Abstract "books" being classes (with all physical manifestations of the intellectual content as instances) and instances (of the general concept of a "work") at the same time? ...??? All of these issues seem to have already been mentioned at Wikidata talk:WikiProject Books but I don't see any solutions there. -- Gymel (talk) 22:59, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

@Gymel: I would say that the first step should be start using "instance of:text (Q17481121)" to earmark work items instead of "instance of:book (Q571)". Then we can talk about how to structure both class trees properly. You write: All of these issues seem to have already been mentioned at Wikidata talk:WikiProject Books but I don't see any solutions there, and I think that is a perfect opportunity for you to bring up your proposals in the talk page :)--Micru (talk) 09:24, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Commons links

Why do we give precedence to pages on Commons, and not to categories? I think the latter would be far more useful. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:44, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

We do because of community consensus. Until mutli-sitelinks comes in; categories to categories and articles to articles. John F. Lewis (talk) 16:47, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

„multi-sitelinks” sounds great. @John F. Lewis: is there a bugzilla for this? --Succu (talk) 16:59, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

It's on Lydia lists definitely and there is a bug somewhere. John F. Lewis (talk) 17:06, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

"community consensus" is a mechanism, not a reason. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:40, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, we do it because of technical limitations but how we do was decided by community consensus. John F. Lewis (talk) 14:45, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

What are these technical limitations? Is there a bug open about them? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:34, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Bibliography

Searching Wikidata:List of properties I only found discography (P358). Can I use this property to connect C. S. Lewis (Q9204) with C. S. Lewis bibliography (Q5006838) or is there a more suitable property? --Хоркхаймер (talk) 09:00, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

A property for this has been proposed, but was declined. A decision I don't really understand, given especially that besides discography (P358) there also exists filmography (P1283).

Maybe you'll want to re-propose the bibliography property. Adding bibliographies with the discography property is not a suitable solution. --YMS (talk) 09:16, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I've started a proposal: Wikidata:Property proposal/Creative work#bibliography. Hope this form is filled out correctly. An other problem: The noun Wiktionary:en:bibliography has three meanings. bibliography (Q134995) merges them all. I've used bibliography (Q1631107) instead. I'not sure if this is correct. It still looks a bit bumpy. --Хоркхаймер (talk) 09:49, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Descriptions in need of attention

All of the cool people seem to have lists that they made themselves from dumps, so I made one with English descriptions with two or more spelling errors, or more accurately with two or more terms that were not recognized by my spell checker. There are some false positives, but not many. I'm afraid a description like "malta is awsome" at Q243842 History of Malta or "mņ[j k kho pho ou9 8y6 7t7 y7t7 7ttr hgbv" at Q7768948 would make a bad impression, and my hope is that improving the descriptions will help build the reputation of this database and increase trust in it so that it will be more widely adopted and more people will be inclined to participate. Every admin would only have to do seven descriptions to clear the whole list. --Haplology (talk) 07:11, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

• That's a pretty cool idea, Haplology. I would suggest first sorting the list alphabetically, so that multiple very similar instances get grouped together; then dividing the list up into chunks of, say, 25 entries each (1–25, 26–50, 51–75, etc.) and creating a simple table with which individual editors can volunteer for any specific chunk by adding their username to a row, featuring a status column where "in progress" or "completed" can be indicated for each chunk. I'm not sure where the sorted list and chunk-volunteering table should be placed (your userspace? this page? somewhere else?), but in any case, I'd be happy to volunteer to take a chunk or two. If you want some help with creating the tracking table, just say so. — Jaydiem (talk) [en.wp:(user)(talk)] 07:52, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll think about ways to break it up. I think it would be best to group descriptions by language (e.g. all descriptions that are actually German) but that's hard so I can't do it immediately. Using a full-on tracking table sounds good if a sort of taskforce emerges, which would be great if that happens. If there's an appetite for this sort of thing, there are another 8000 or so descriptions with just one misspelling, and there are other languages besides English. I think I'll break it up into units of ten for now, but anybody who wants to reformat the list is welcome to do so. --Haplology (talk) 08:43, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

This is really well done. I'm working through them from the bottom of the page for a bit :) Would it be possible to check for other issues in English descriptions, for example ones beginning with "a/an/the"? There will be false positives like "The Beatles album" etc. but they would be rare. 130.88.141.34 08:46, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm glad to hear that. It would be easy to check for other issues too. I made a list for a/an/the at User:Haplology/a an the. --Haplology (talk) 10:41, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the list! 10,574 descriptions to alter ;( We may need the help of Mr and Mrs Bot for this task. 130.88.141.34 11:47, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I have submitted a bot request for this task at Wikidata:BR#English_descriptions. Del_♉sion23 (talk) 10:13, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

The batch of descriptions that I posted earlier have all been done, minus a handful perhaps. We can now feel confident that (nearly all) English descriptions are in fact in English, and that the worst abuses of spelling have been rectified. Yet fear not: there are many more descriptions in need of love and attention. The most recent dump yields about 14,000. I've put up about a thousand of them at User:Haplology/descriptions and anyone who wants to rescue the poor English language from its onslaught of abuse is quite welcome to help.

Incidentally, the most common misspelling is "french" with a lowercase "f". Number two: "italian". Three: "german". I had no idea that English capitalization was so hard to understand. --Haplology (talk) 14:05, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

From a German point of view: In 95 % of the cases where we would capitalize a word, this would be incorrect in English. So we have to remember: Only names and the beginning of sentences are capitalized in both languages. And then we forget about the language/country adjectives, which are only done in the English language (some exceptions apply for German language)... --YMS (talk) 14:24, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

How can I add a certain language for a certain article?

I've been on Wikipedia mainspace for seven years, but I'm a noob when it comes to Wikidata. I was reading about Arfak Mountains Regency, a district in Indonesia, and I saw that there were no language links for the article in other languages. Searching on Indonesian Wikipedia, I did find a version of the article there. But when I tried to add the Indonesian version at the relevant page (I'm a noob so I don't know what that page is called), I found no option for Indonesian language. There are options of Batak and Javanese but that doesn't help me in this situation. What should I do? MezzoMezzo (talk) 04:22, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

In the section "Wikipedia pages linked to this item" you select "add". Then in the empty box called "site" you put in the language code "id" for Indonesian. Then in "page" you put "Kabupaten Pegunungan Arfak" and then click save. I have added the link now. 130.88.141.34 08:05, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot man, I didn't know I had to type in a language id; I was actually trying to type "Bahasa Indonesia." I'll keep this in mind and try to do so for other languages too. MezzoMezzo (talk) 05:11, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Lets leave fixed descriptions behind us

I have been searching for members of the European parliament in Wikidata. I needed to find them by name to identify them on an external list. I found myself hampered by the intrusive and limited fixes descriptions that we have. "British politician".. It does not mean that he or she is an MeP. It does not state that he is 19th century, it is bloody useless.

Compare this with automated descriptions; as more statements become available it becomes easier and more obvious to pick the MeP among search results..

My challenge. Provide convincing arguments why we should have fixed descriptions at all. We are better served by automated descriptions and it stops people from wasting their time adding text that is ultimately useless. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 21:04, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

A real challenge would be to provide useful automated descriptions for all kind of items. E.g.: I remember a discussion about some politician(?), which was also a football player and two other things. Because of that he had multiple instance of (P31), so which one to prioritize in a description? This would mean that in the future we need to use ranks even more to solve such cases. But yes, fixed descriptions are sometimes not really useful. --Bthfan (talk) 23:31, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Really? He is a p31:q5 and anything else ? He may have different occupations and they are typically centred around different times in his life. Wrong example. GerardM (talk) 05:29, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Reality is that data in Wikidata is not yet of expected quality and won't be for a long time. But you're right, this was actually a bad example. But now, let's take a look at occupation, four different occupations, which ones to display? --Bthfan (talk) 06:38, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Reality is that the quality of statements is typically much better than what fixed descriptions offer. When I am looking for American movie actors, I want Ronald Reagan included. Exclusion means assumption and why bother? GerardM (talk) 07:22, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

My opinion is that descriptions are really only something humans should deal with, whether reading or setting them. The reason is that all machine-readable data should be standardized with claims (along with qualifiers), and bots are not good at setting anything beyond what can be described by "instance of".--Jasper Deng (talk) 23:42, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Right.. I had to deal with garbage descriptions that were a bother and not a help. Not an opinion; observable fact. Bots are quite capable of setting all kinds of other statements based on the right definitions. So what is your point? GerardM (talk) 05:29, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Auto-generated descriptions are a great thing and should be used more extensively, yes. But they only work with certain categories (and given that enough statements are set), e.g. humans, creative works, taxons. They are hard to model for more abstract things, like democracy or the rise of Lenin. And they will never know how detailled they have to be to really be able to distinguish the item they describe from others. "British football player" will be enough to distinguish an item from the others that are named the same in most cases, but in some cases it has to be like "British football player, born in 1978, played for Liverpool and Manchester" or something like that. Should the automated description always include quite every information that's available, just because it could be that it's needed? --YMS (talk) 06:28, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

If you are looking for duplicates then all the bits of information help. You are not addressing the point that fixed descriptions are better. When certain categories are not "helped" are they hindered? The class or instance already provide substantial information.. Please forget about English; people may not understand "Britisch football player" and, he may be from Scotland. GerardM (talk) 07:22, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I have been doing my best to keep up with vandalism and unhelpful edits (e.g. enter discripton [sic] in [language]), and I have noticed that 90% of vandalism or useless edits are in the labels or descriptions. Perhaps other editors have been watching out for vandalism, but typically the vandalism in RecentChanges starts roughly when I had stopped looking for it, so maybe not so much... This means that the editor(s?) who care about vandalism are swamped with label/description vandalism, which takes time an attention away from data vandalism and makes it more likely that data vandalism will not be noticed. Maybe descriptions are really only something humans should deal with, but unfortunately they're not. The humans are in dire need of assistance of one form or another. For certain classes of items at least, such as of people, a formulaic description is good. Just today, I replaced a description of Tokyo High Court with "a high court in Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan". I think that such a description could have been added automatically. This replaced the former description, "an artist from vancouver who is less than half my age with her own degree, is robbing me and my friends at a Women's art gallery in Montreal where I have been going since 2008", which had been on there for one year, one month, and 22 days. --Haplology (talk) 13:05, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

English language descriptions don't usually contain a/an/the so I removed the "a". :) 130.88.141.34 15:59, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Agree that descriptions are not easy to maintain. They have to be done in 100s of languages of languages, some not widely spoken, and because they are not very machine-readable, it is not easy to find the incorrect ones. I have found quite many items that have been reorganized, leaving behind them wrong descriptions in some languages. --Zolo (talk) 09:47, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

I think the problem here is that we're not sure about the purpose of descriptions -- what are we ultimately using them for? In my mind, they're for disambiguation and a short explanation of what the item is about (e.g., a succinct version of the first sentence in a Wikipedia article's lead). It looks like you're trying to use them for categorization and as a summary for the entire item, but wouldn't we eventually just be able to use queries for that when it's added into the wiki-interface? As long as Ronald Reagan has "occupation = actor" in there, it would turn up in a query. However, if you were trying to differentiate between multiple people named Ronald Reagan, you would probably be looking for the "American politician" or "40th President of the United States", not "American actor" or something like that. The software probably couldn't automatically realize that him being a president is the most important, especially since we would all disagree about how much information is important (sometimes 19th century is relevant, sometimes it's not), so we need a fixed descriptions added by humans. I do agree that something very simple like "politician" translated into 30 different languages is not helpful though. Cbrown1023 talk 14:27, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

• Quoting the original post by GerardM:

I have been searching for members of the European parliament in Wikidata. I needed to find them by name to identify them on an external list.

Well, I think that's the problem right there: this use case is not what the "brief descriptions" are for. Instead, a query over claims should be used. If the data presently available in the form of claims isn't adequate to provide a complete and accurate answer to the question that motivates the query, that's not the fault of "brief description" text, and certainly no reason for the "brief description" field to be eradicated. — Jaydiem (talk) [en.wp:(user)(talk)] 17:28, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

• Ok I bite... What are the brief descriptions there for. What should be in there and, in what languages? How do they get updated and based on what ?? Oh and please explain WHY the brief descriptions are not to be used to select the right item among many ?

For clarity's sake, the automated descriptions are based on a query.. they get updated when new statements are available and, that IS a subset of all potential statements..

• Re: What are the brief descriptions there for? What should be in there? ~ That's a fair question. The answer that's apparent to me is that the "Brief description" field is intended to contain a very concise statement of the essential quality that makes the subject notable (in the Wikipedia sense). It provides a touch of meaningful context that helps a human reader, at a glance, to understand what basic type of thing the subject is, and to disambiguate it from other subjects having a similar name. — Jaydiem (talk) [en.wp:(user)(talk)] 23:16, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

• I'm an iconoclast, but I think description are here to identify an item, so not so short descriptions can be good and fine if they gives one or two details. Automatic descriptions may even always be shown. TomT0m ^(talk) 19:11, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Just to add my two cents, the brief descriptions are indeed solely meant for humans. They are there in order to - together with the label - identify the entity the item is about. They do not have to be definitions or identifying by themselves, but together with the label they should be. Their most common use is to disambiguate items with the same label. Both labels and descriptions should be very short to be usable flexibly in the UI. If there is only one John Smith who is a UK politician, then UK politician is sufficient. If there are several, we need something to disambiguate them. This something should rather be useful than identifying - it might be that the one John Smith is born in Sussex and the other in Essex, but this difference is likely to be less useful than "17th century UK politician" and "21st century UK politician". I think this is widely, but not fully automatable as of today. Until this is possible, I think bots run by the community will do a better job to create and write descriptions into Wikidata than anything implemented server-side for low effort could. --Denny (talk) 15:46, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

@Denny: Sometimes there is no Wikipedia articles and the properties are not enough to precisely know what the item is supposed to be about. In those cases, is it not useful to be a little more wordy in the descriptions ? I even imagined that descriptions could be useful in Wikipedias to identify a specific subject and define subject in some articles where there is a general article, no specific articles in the language, but the item exists in Wikipedia. I understand this is not part of the initial plan, but did not this make sense ? (Since then the idea of short articles in french Wikipedia for example did progress I think, but still people like to merge stuffs). This could be a partial solution to the interwiki lost because of better identified subject, in conjunction with the Wikidata wikilinks to redirects. TomT0m ^(talk) 16:29, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

IMHO descriptions are not the place for article stubs, if this is what you suggest. I remain with the opinion that descriptions should be merely there for disambiguation, and that they should be short, or else they won't be useful in widgets like the entity selector. I do think that there should be a place for such short articles as you suggest, maybe within Wikidata, maybe in some other place -- but I think this is a different topic and should be discussed on its own. Does that make sense? --Denny (talk) 16:37, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

About "the game"

Hello. I've been on en.wiki and it.wiki for some years, but I'm really new to Wikidata. I found out about it when the interwiki links were switched to this system, but after discovering "the game" I am tempted to contribute.

Still, I've noticed that, sometimes, that can create more problems than it solves. Hence I would like someone with lots of Wikidata experience to give a basic explanation of what parts of the game have a solely positive impact, which can be problematic and how, and which should just be avoided for now. I seem to understand "Images" can be pretty disruptive, and "Merge" can contribute to the backlog.

I think the game is a wonderful idea, it streamlines the experience enough to make a big contribution in tackling the bigger backlogs and to make even those of us who are scared by codes be able to give a helping hand to the project. So, could someone give a rundown of what to do in order to play it without creating problems? (I apologise if this is not the right place for this, or if I somehow missed a page answering my questions) Zidanie5 (talk) 18:14, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

For a newcomer, I would recommend staying out of the Merge and Image games, since they deal with specific WD properties and notions. The Nationality game is inherently problematic, since the concept of nationality is much argued upon. The rest should be OK for you: just answer the question, and skip if you have a doubt. The disambiguation game should not be a problem if you come from WP. For the Person game, just know that the answser is "Not a person" for any fictional being (Luke Skywalker for instance). --LBE (talk) 19:13, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Good answer. When you get more experience, Zidanie5, please help with the merge game too - the backlog only means that the problem is being solved. These duplicates won't resolve themselves :-) Ajraddatz (talk) 19:15, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you both for your answers! I will try to follow your suggestions and steer clear of the more problematic ones. Zidanie5 (talk) 20:19, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Is there a tool / bot to detect REDIRECT's linked to items?

Hi! If you look at the history of Gorontalo (Q354081) and Gorontalo (Q5067) you may see that en:Gorontalo, the redirect en:Gorontalo (province) and en:Gorontalo (disambiguation) where linked wrongly.
As already asked at Wikidata:Project chat/Archive/2014/07: Is there a tool / bot which can detect REDIRECT's in the "Wikipedia pages linked" section. gangLeri לערי ריינהארט (talk) 19:23, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

+1, would love at tool for that. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 19:25, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

+1, this would become even more important to detect once we allow redirects to be linked in items: Wikidata:Status updates/2014 08 02. 130.88.141.34 09:42, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Please advice about murder of Marcia Trimble (Q6937984)

Hi. I found murder of Marcia Trimble (Q6937984) with two linked Wikipedia pages: en:Murder of Marcia Trimble and tr:Marcia Trimble. One about a girl, and one about the murder of her. I think this should be split to two items, but I also think that the Wikipedia articles should still link to each other. Please advise about what to do. Regards, Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 07:00, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

There are many items like that. The case you gave is a typical example, as in enwiki it's common not to have articles about murder victims, but about the murder cases, while most other Wikipedias handle it the other way. As you say, splitting would be the right thing to do from a Wikidata point of view, but this would kill the interwiki links even though all articles actually are about the very same topic.

However, Wikidata will be able to handle redirects soon (see Wikidata:Status updates/2014 08 02, where a go-live for August 19th is indicated). I hope and believe that this feature allows exactly what you want. --YMS (talk) 07:20, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. The item was already marked instance of human (Q5), and I added instance of murder (Q132821). I am sure the conflicting claims can be found someway when this can be dealt with. Regards, Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 08:11, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

I fixed it by creating Marcia Trimble (Q17487908). --- Jura 09:21, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Broaden the scope of P358

After the discussion above about bibliography links, I've opened up a discussion on Property talk:P358 about broadening the scope of discography (P358) to also include bibliographies, filmographies and similar lists instead of creating new properties for each. I've fleshed out my arguments there and have had two comments in support, but would like to hear from more people before going ahead. Väsk (talk) 11:23, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

New WikiProject for showcasing interesting community content

Hello all, and happy Wikimania to those in London,

I'd like to invite people to join and participate in new WikiProject I just set up called WikiProject Interesting Content (please forgive the boring name).

This WikiProject will help coordinate and prepare content for the new Main page that promotes and showcases some of the awesome work coming out of this community. The aim of this work is twofold:

1. to better communicate the value of Wikidata to newcomers, those not familiar with the project, those not familiar with structured data, etc
2. to recognize the amazing contributions to Wikidata by highlighting different tools, initiatives, collaborations, WikiProjects, and more.

I'm now in the process of adding examples of possible content. I've also already proposed some guidelines, criteria for selection of content, and recommendations for a schedule for regular updating to get discussions started. I'm really excited about this and would love to hear your ideas and suggestions for content that should be featured.

cheers. -Thepwnco (talk) 19:17, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Help on requesting/creating a bot

I don't fully understand the process arround requesting/creating a bot... do I just register a new account with "my username + Bot", then write it and then ask for its approval, or is it the other way round? Basically I want to write a bot that adds statements to existing items. Alepfu (talk) 09:59, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Alepfu, I'd suggest you first create the account for your bot with "bot" in its user name and then first explain what you are planning to do and import. This might save you lots of work if the bot cannot perform its task in the way you are proposing it. So just file the request and wait for some feedback. When you then will be asked to make some test edits you can start coding after the basic idea is accepted. -- Bene* ^t_a^l_k 12:24, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Amusement parks should include their attractions?

Hi, I've been starting to look at amusement park (Q194195), as an example the Swedish amuesement park: Liseberg (Q1413270). How can I accomplish to list the rides and attractions of Liseberg (Q1413270), such as Balder (Q449158)? //Mippzon (talk) 06:34, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

You can use Autolist. Type "claim[1134:1413270]" into the WDQ box and then click "run". This makes a list of all items with Property:P1134 set as Liseberg (Q1413270). There are only 2 so far: the one you already know about and Matugani (Q546991). 130.88.141.34 08:02, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! But would it not make more sense to list the attractions in the specific amusement park? Something like amusement park has a property called "attractions" that takes an "attraction"-object as a value? //Mippzon (talk) 08:11, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Properties could be created for "attraction" and it could be populated by items for the attractions. However, this would be rendered obsolete by Wikidata phase three once it kicks in. We used to have Property:P100 (member state). An example of its use was at United Nations (Q1065) listing every member of the organisation in the item. But this took up a lot of space and is redundant to the symmetrical property member of (P463)=United Nations (Q1065) anyway. So instead we are waiting for queries to become part of Wikidata, though they are to some extent available in external tools like Autolist. In the meantime for members of the UN you can use an Autolist WDQ of "claim[463:1065]" and it lists 200 items. 130.88.141.34 15:06, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

One must also note that the current Wikidata web interface becomes veeeeery slow when an item has a lot of claims (and I'm not talking about 200, 30 to 40 already make it very slow). So yes, Wikidata queries which automatically populate inverse properties would be a solution here to avoid redundant properties and work. --Bthfan (talk) 20:52, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

That sounds really cool, then I understand why it should be like that. Do you know where I can get more information about phase 3? So with the queries I can create query items that collects and displays the selected data? //Mippzon (talk) 06:08, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikidata#Phase_3, but I'm not really sure if Phase 3 does what I described. My impression was that Phase 3 mostly matters for the connected Wikipedia wikis. Of course inverse properties like described above could be integrated in Wikidata, but I think that's not connected in any way to Phase 3. --Bthfan (talk) 19:48, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Batch Update

Hi. So I have a list of 100 football players. All are male, and I want to add the statement which say they are male. Is there a way to do that for all of them at once easily (batch update)? Thanks Kotz (talk) 14:06, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, AutoList 2. --YMS (talk) 14:38, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

AutoList 2 can query the wikidata and give me the list. Can it also batch edit it? If yes can you show me how it's done? couldn't find help page. thanks Kotz (talk) 15:28, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

First, perform the query, e.g. by entering the known list of items, or by entering a category, or by entering a Wikidata query, or by entering a text to find in labels/descriptions/aliases (@Magnus Manske: Thank you very much for adding this feature!) and press "Run". Then there should appear a list of the results at the bottom(select the ones that you want to edit - by default they're all selected) plus a box "Controls" on the right side. If it says "WiDaR not authorized", click that link and follow the instructions there. Afterwards, maybe you'll have to run the query again, or reload the whole page). Enter "P21:Q6581097" in the statements list to add sex or gender (P21) : male (Q6581097) statements. Press "Process commands" and wait what happens. If nothing explodes, the tool should add the statements you defined to the items in the result in your name. --YMS (talk) 15:44, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Thankl you ! Kotz (talk) 21:49, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Userboxes

Only a well groomed community will make lots of edits.

I thought it was time for some community-grooming. I started this page: Wikidata:Userboxes. Userboxes have the nice effect of increasing visibility of WikiProjects and attracting new members. If you participate in a WikiProject please consider making a userbox and distribute it among your vassals' user pages. If you already have a userbox for your WikiProject please link to it on that page or even place it in the subdirectory of that page. --Tobias1984 (talk) 15:25, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Also, they should be translated and named in the form "User <template name>" such as {{User admin}}, so they fit nicely in babel.--Jasper Deng (talk) 16:57, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jasper Deng: Good idea. I will move the templates to the template-namespace. --Tobias1984 (talk) 20:20, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Gadget-DraggableSitelinks.js

It is an improved and working version of User:Inductiveload/scripts/draggableSitelinks.js by Inductiveload. If you agree, I'd make it a real gadget. --Ricordisamoa 04:14, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Importing birth and death dates

I notice there seems to be a problem importing birth and death dates from Wikipedia. For example, the Wikidata items for Francis Bacon and Marco Polo nominally agree about the birth dates (22 January 1561 and September 15, 1254, respectively). But Wikidata dates are required to be in the Gregorian calendar, while Wikipedia dates are in the Julian calendar if that calendar was in use at the time and place where the event of interest occurred. Obviously both Wikipedia dates must be Julian dates because the Gregorian calendar wasn't created until 1583. So the dates should not be the same.

How are these imports being done, and how can the process be fixed or stopped so these errors do not continue? Jc3s5h (talk) 19:39, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

The use of different calendars is a general problem that my analysis flagged up, see Wikidata:Project_chat#Dates_of_birth_and_death. I do not have an answer now, but I hope I will be able work towards at least flagging these for review. Periglio (talk) 16:52, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I will look at the suggested page. Before reading your reply, I found that one bot doing this is KLBot2. Since the talk page for that bot already has a complaint about calendar conversion that has been ignored, I have reported it at Wikidata:Administrators' noticeboard#KLBot2 creating incorrect birth dates. Thanks for your reply. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:13, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Q5189153&oldid=149391346 (Old version of Value)

I have two times added the danish page "værdi" to the Q5189153 (en:Value disambiguous page).

But two different people have removed the danish page da:værdi two times why? Is there some special policy that I have not read? da:værdi is now wikidata orphan? The english disambiguous word value means værdi in danish (disambiguous).

In the old Q5189153 I did also add the swedish "Värde" sv:Värde, which is now wikidata orphan? The english disambiguous word value means Värde (disambiguous) in swedish.

There were more added, but have I less arguments for their re-addition.

--Glenn (talk) 07:32, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi @Glenn: we add disambiguation sitelinks based on how they are written. So, disambiguation pages "Värde" and "Value" can't be in the same item. There are some guidelines in here: Wikidata:WikiProject Disambiguation pages/guidelines. --Stryn (talk) 08:25, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

@Glenn: Stryn pointed to the relevant guideline already. Maybe it helps better to understand this rules, when you think about possible different spellings like eg.

• Sun (Q33300) da:Sun (flertydig) and Sol (Q206908) da:Sol and Sonne (Q341677) and Soleil (Q9078686) etc. – all meaning "sun" in some language
• Moon (Q2432366) da:Moon and Måne (Q340474) da:Måne (flertydig) and Luna (Q225407) and Lune (Q403592) and Mond (Q449370) etc. – all meaning "moon" in some language

So we do not link different disambiguations for sol to sun, or for måne to moon.

In the case of "value" enwiki at the moment has only links to articles like dawiki "værdi", so i can understand your wish to link værdi to value, but it is likely that also for example music albums with the title "value" exist, and you would have a new disambiguation "Value (flertydig)" on dawiki in the future. For German and French i can point to Wert (Q1687754) and Valeur (Q2509005) which also mean value, but are already separated.

Even if we keep such links in different items on Wikidata, you are free to link them on dawiki with old-style interwiki links like [[en:Value]] or [[fr:Valeur]]. But keep in mind that these links overwrite existing Wikidata links. Holger1959 (talk) 23:00, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your answers. --Glenn (talk) 08:56, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

type "father" to enter the name of a child?

Trying to enter the father of a person, I typed "father" entered a name. Oddly this enters the name as a child, as the property "child" has an alias "father of". This is given preference over the property with the label "father". --- Jura 10:00, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the technical reasons for that, but I think there's nothing strange about it... as Wordsworth said:

My heart leaps up when I behold
    A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
    Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. --Haplology (talk) 15:08, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I just tried that and father (P22) was listed above child (P40) so I'm not sure why they were the other way round for you. Just search engine weirdness I guess. Filceolaire (talk) 15:26, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Current stats for different types of Commons interwiki links ?

Can anybody give me the current stats for each of the current types of interwiki relations?
(To add as data to the page at Wikidata:Wikimedia_Commons/Development)

1. Q-number <-> Wikipedia article <-> Commons category
2. Q-number <-> Wikipedia article <-> Commons gallery
3. Q-number <-> Wikipedia category <-> Commons category
4. Q-number <-> Wikipedia category <-> Commons gallery

Thanks, Jheald (talk) 23:12, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Change the scope of Property:P935

FYI --Ricordisamoa 16:12, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Come to present Wikidata in Finland!

Wikimedia Finland calls for a Wikidata developer/advocate to present Wikidata at Avoin Suomi 2014 fair http://avoinsuomi2014.fi/ September 15–16. The event is organized by the Prime Minister's Office in collaboration with several public sector actors and open knowledge organizations.

Wikimedia Finland has a booth, and will present projects in GLAM and education, and the Wikimedia sister projects with focus on Wikidata.

To take advantage of the presence of the skilled wikidatan, we plan to arrange a Wikidata hands-on workshop before or after the event.

The closer you are to Finland the better, but Finnish language is not a requirement.

Please contact susanna.anas@wikimedia.fi if you are interested.

--Susannaanas (talk) 14:08, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

@Susannaanas: - Might be a good time to start a WikiProject Finland to organize the Finland-specific efforts. Also a good place to store links to public data repositories. -Tobias1984 (talk) 08:03, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Not an impossible idea altogether. I think we will be more active with Wikidata than we have been before. Thanks for the suggestion! --Susannaanas (talk) 11:37, 12 August 2014 (UTC) ping User:Zache, User:Stryn

Parsec

Hey. Wikidata is full of information but I have the feeling that it is hard to retrieve these data for outsiders. For this reason I have written a tool with which you should easily get the information you want. It is still beta, so qualifiers and references are missing, but you can try it out on http://web451.ny.ibone.ch/parsec/. For fun I also added some functions which are beyond the scope of Wikidata (e.g. basic calculations, weather forecast). Feedback is welcome! --Pasleim (talk) 16:51, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Nice job! --Viscontino (talk) 18:32, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Cool! Plans to release the source code? --19:33, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

I'll publish the source code as soon as the code is stable and I have time to set up a revision control system. --Pasleim (talk) 10:44, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

cool, but needs grooming…

the "president of France" is not Manuel Valls (Q10287) but François Hollande (Q157), well, as it does not seem, lol - I checked, the info in wd is ok - a direct link to wd page (or wp page) would be nice ;) --Hsarrazin (talk) 06:17, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Of course it needs improvements. The issue with "president of France" is that Manuel Valls (Q10287) is the value of head of government (P6) and "president" is an alias of head of government (P6). I don't know yet how to solve such issues.--Pasleim (talk) 10:44, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I moved the tool to Tool Labs [4] and did some major improvements. It can now distinguish between similar questions like Where is Darwin? and Where was Darwin born?. Thanks Wiktionary it also understands now phrases like churches in Vatican City. --Pasleim (talk) 00:00, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Javascript devs : an entity selector for Wikidata discussion

@Tpt, Magnus Manske, Lydia Pintscher (WMDE), YMS: (@...) Hi, I begun (sketched actually) the dev of a javascript gadget on test Wikidata to insert an entity in wikitext but I can't find the time to develop it right now. It's upsetting me because I think it's important, so I through a bottle here, if someone think it's important we can make this effort collaborative :)

I thought I would replicate the search or entity selector in item pages in the wikitext edit gadget. Except validation would insert something like {{subst:Q}} in the Wikitext. One other solution is adding something to the search widget to insert in wikitext instead of going to the entity page (Lydia could this be a good query to add a ticket or a feature of the future UI ?)  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by TomT0m (talk • contribs).

Thematic mapping of geographic statics, US and World

My interest lies in statistical phenomenology that can be shade mapped by states in the US and countries around the world. Such phenomena as demographics, crime, opinion, health, etc. -- any phenomena that has statistics by area for which the statistic can be listed, statistically summarized, then I want to convert the statistical phenomena into shade maps of the geographic areas they represent and possibly apply bi-variate statistics on the geographic distribution such as center of gravity, etc.

I am new to Wikidata and want to get an understanding of the statistical data you are assembling and if data mapping is already produced or would be amenable to adding such map graphic products to your data series.

I am having trouble getting connected into Wikidata. I contribute financially to Wikipedia.

Please help me get connected and directed appropriately.

Charles Barb cebjrphd@yahoo.com

Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings

Starting a new project. Let's get all paintings on Wikidata! I could use some help. I already imported 4 museums in the Netherlands. Multichill (talk) 11:32, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Why not a simple Wikidata:WikiProject Paintings ? Can we avoid artistical titles or do we have to write a "Rules for naming a new project" policy ? Sorry to be so critical but I don't want to see the Wikidata:WikiProject about all XXX in the world and in the rest of the Universe becoming blue. Snipre (talk) 18:05, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I like inviting names, I don't consider "Wikidata:WikiProject about all XXX in the world and in the rest of the Universe" an inviting name.

This project will have an outreach component, having a good name helps a lot. That's one of the lessons I learned from another project I started (Wiki Loves Monuments). Multichill (talk) 21:10, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Evaporiative cooling (machine and ultra-cold matter physics)

I found three wikidata entries: magnetic evaporative cooling (Q6731539), evaporative cooler (Q1896787) and Q2514471. They seems to describe either the technical devices (like air-conditioner) or the ultra-cold matter aspect (btw: both rely on the same physical principle). So three wikidata entries and two subjects. Any suggestions what to do? Merging? Merging what to what? I already moved the german articles. --Nobelium (talk) 18:26, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@Nobelium: I think we should move this discussion to Wikidata:WikiProject Physics. You are more than welcome to join if you like to edit physic-topics. --Tobias1984 (talk) 22:34, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Dates of birth and death

As a quick introduction to myself, I have my own personal project where I built my own database of notable people birth and death dates, extracted from en-Wikipedia using the Persondata template. Ongoing, I have been developing software to validate this data, and personally updating Wikipedia with the hundreds of discrepancies I have flagged up.

Following recent discussions on the future of Persondata, I did some analysis on Wikidata. My conclusion was that I should start using Wikidata as my source of dates although Wikidata has the following problems.

• Wikipedia is the main source for Wikidata, but nothing seems to be in place to keep Wikidata synchronised
  • There are Wikipedia articles with birth/death dates that have not yet been added to Wikidata
  • There are Wikipedia articles with revised birth/death dates which are not being updated on Wikidata
  • Articles that are deleted on Wikipedia (i.e. not-notable) leave behind an entry on Wikidata

• Wikipedia articles have problems that are not flagged which results in Wikidata picking up a date that is not necessarily correct
  • Some Wikipedia articles have conflicting dates within the article
  • Some Wikipedia articles have different dates between different language wikipedias
  • Julian and Soviet calendars are not always been handled correctly

• Birth dates are rarely referenced on Wikipedia. This makes it impossible to correct any conflicting information. I raised this at WikiProject Biography but did not get much feedback.

My personal goal is to maintain an accurate database of birth and death dates. I have the necessary programming skills to create bots, lists of articles with problems, etc. At the moment, I am converting my existing validation to also interrogate wikidata, but that will just give me a larger list of edits and not tackle any root issues.

I am relatively new to Wikidata, so I am not really sure where to start. I am after suggestions where and how I can take my project forward, or combine it with any existing projects. Periglio (talk) 16:42, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Good work. Thanks for sharing it.

Dates from Persondata are being imported into Wikidata.

Wikipedias can obviously do what they prefer, but eventually Wikidata should replace persondata or dates in infoboxes.

It seems that already 6% percent of persons have dates on Wikidata without any on Persondata. Categories based on Wikidata properties could help identified differences between Persondata and Wikidata. --- Jura 17:09, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

BTW Wikidata can store several dates of birth and rank them as preferred or depreciated. --- Jura 17:11, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree, dates are being imported, but from what I have seen, different bots are doing the work, working on their own criteria. I have not seen evidence of a bot that will systematically mop up all the outstanding entries. This is my current mission though, finding out what is needed and where I can help. Periglio (talk) 17:47, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

There is no project Wikidata: WikiProject Biography so it is difficult to give you an idea of what can be done. But my proposition is the next one: :::*continue to maintain your own database

• write a bot to compare the data of Wikidata and your database

• if there is no data about birth or death dates, add them to WD with the reference
• if there is a date but without reference or imported from WP, delete the date, add your date with reference
• if there is a date with reference, add you date and create a list if there is a different date in order to perform a more detail check later

• create the project Wikidata: WikiProject Biography and share your list of data conflict
• try to convince en:WP to use WD fo birth and death dates arguying that you monitore through your bot some data (periodically you can compare your database with WD to see what are the changes). Snipre (talk) 17:52, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

• Personally, I think the priorities could be: 1. import easy dates (Gregorian, >1920), 2. import complicated dates, 3. import dates with conflicting information, 4. flag preferred/depreciated dates. At least from one bot I know it focuses on (1).
  Based on your expertise, it might be worth starting with 2. or 4./3. Personally, I think it can be worth importing correct and incorrect dates and marking the later as depreciated (rather than delete). Building onsite reports or queries with problems could be helpful too. --- Jura 18:03, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

 Doubt/off-topic (?): Related to this... Having several well-sourced-statements (with no contradiction between them) for the same property:
1) Date of birth = 1832^source1
2) Date of birth = 13 January 1832^source2
...is not a bad thing? is it? ? I remember users merging the statements in this way:
3) Date of birth = 13 January 1832^{source2 source1}
...but I thought it was not ok.—Totemkin (talk) 09:14, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I think frequently users do that when none of the mentioned examples has a reference. Maybe we should spell out the optimal way somewhere.

Here is one with references and a "preferred" date: Lucy F. Simms (Q17386627). --- Jura 09:26, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

An example of what I said is this: Vicente Lampérez y Romea (Q9093309) ("birth date" and "death date", both, the conflict arose with the first one, merging "24 March 1861" and "1861") About selecting a preferred date here... it's difficult, maybe in "death date" field the "preferred date" should be "the year"? (1923) (?).Totemkin (talk) 09:51, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

As we have day level dates, my preference would be to rank the year as "depreciated". As preferred date, you might want to add "January 1923" with qualifiers "earliest date: 17 January 1923" and "latest date: 19 January 1923". --- Jura 10:09, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, I don't know the difference between selecting normal or deprecated. I thought deprecated was meant to mark wrong (but sourced) values. Since we don't know the correct and true (sic) value... couldn't be more appropiate marking all as "normal" and "the-value-we-like-more" as "preferred"? By the way, thanks, I added a value with "earliest date" and "latest date", I didn't know that qualifiers! Paradox, now the preferred "death date" value is the one with no references, hehe. Thanks for your help. I agree it could be interesting "spelling out the optimal way somewhere".Totemkin (talk) 10:45, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Just wondering if it would be worthwhile starting a biography project, I am surprised there is not one already (although I see there is an occupation project). Periglio (talk) 12:33, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Excuse me, but I feel the need to join in here. The preferred value for date of death (P570) on Vicente Lampérez y Romea (Q9093309) and the way proposed to solve multiple dates here seems quite odd. Multiple dates - each having a particular reference - are merged into one statement without a reference, basically kind of a "virtual" value. Now, the values that are represented as statements already, are kind of represented twice and when adding another value or deprecating a value, you would probably need to maintain the "preferred" one as well. Users would need to know about the preferred value actually being the merge result of the other ones in contrast to being a separate value of its own. In addition, a statement without a reference appears to be unreliable for users unless they are aware of that special purpose of the statement. Representing duplicate information by generating a statement not backed by a reference adds to complexity quite a lot.
Apart from that, the method is, in fact, sort of presumptuous scientific work - merging statements of different references that you cannot and probably should not evaluate regarding their reliability into one single statement. Is it just me feeling uncomfortable about that?
I would just drop that "preferred" value. It is perfectly valid to have multiple "normal" values if there is not the one single correct value. Handling/Filtering multiple values should be done when querying.
Furthermore, be careful to not abuse ranks. One initial perception was to use ranks for marking unsourced statements... I am not a big fan of the concept of ranks (at least as long as the wording is confusing which results in various interpretations); Anyway, it really needs to be taken care of to not overload the concept of ranks as that may lead to conflicts sooner or later. Random knowledge donator (talk) 10:54, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

@Random knowledge donator: For use of rank please see Help:Ranking. 141.6.11.19 13:46, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree this "method" has red flags and that virtual metavalue, well, is a bit "heterodox" to say the least. By the way, who is "abusing ranks"? I wish to know, really.Totemkin (talk) 21:09, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I am sorry, I seem to not have gotten my point of view expressed in the right sense (thanks for pointing me to Help:Ranking which I helped shaping to the way it is now ;) ). To boil it down (referring to date of death (P570) on Vicente Lampérez y Romea (Q9093309)):

• Ranks: I got the impression that it was propsed to assign the "deprecated" rank to the statement "1923", in contrast to the statments specifying day, month and year. That would not stick to the concept of ranks since "1923" is not wrong. To elaborate more: How can one be sure that one of the more detailed dates is, in fact, correct / more correct than just the year? Maybe the correct date would be 16 January 1923 or 1 February 1923 or whatever. Maybe that is not applicable to the example item, but there may be such occurences. I would recommend leaving the year on "normal" rank.
• Creating a merged statment: In my opinion, there are several severe concerns to not generate such statements, among others:
  • The result is a less trusted statement since that is not backed by a reference.
  • When adding another statement, the merged statement needs to be adjusted as well.
  • Users need to be aware of the special nature of such a merged statement. (If the "preferred" rank is supposed to mark the special nature, it would overload the native concept of ranks.)
  • Simply combining multiple values, regardless of the amount of reliability of their references, is against scientific standards.
  • The concept of Wikidata is, as I see it, to represent what exists, in contrast to generating or assembling custom content.

When querying the database, a query should be robust enough to handle multiple values. It is just not realistic to always receive just one particular value. That is not how the real world works. Of course, all of the above is my personal view on the topics. Random knowledge donator (talk) 20:16, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@Random knowledge donator, Random knowledge donator: I am not sure I understand the issue. If there is really no way to decide whether someone was born in 1925 or 1926, both values should be given the same rank, and both will be usable in queries. --Zolo (talk) 10:37, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikibase question: database branching ?

Hi. This is a question about Wikibase, rather than main-line Wikidata.

I am interested in a potential application where it would be nice for individual users to be able to check out and edit their own btanches of items on a Wikibase, rather like the way one a check out a branch in a version control system, maintain one's own patch tree, with the ability to push changes back to the centre. I'd envisage the branches would be held on the server, perhaps as deltas against the central consensus version, with probably most properties of most items "falling through" -- ie if no local delta for a property for an item was specified in a branch, the (dynamic, perhaps changeable) value of that property for that item on the central version would be drawn instead.

I appreciate that this is probably not existing Wikibase functionality; nor I imagine would it be an enhancement request that would figure even remotely on the horizon for the main WikiData project. (Keep working towards Access to data from arbitrary items, bugzilla:47930 guys!). But I'm wondering if this is something that another project wanted to get added to Wikibase, as a service to them, technically how hard would it be to graft on? Is it at all reasonable to think that this kind of feature enhancement to Wikibase could be at all technically achievable, if additional developer resources could be found?

More information on the particular possible application that's making me ask this can be found on meta at

m:Talk:Wikimedia_genealogy_project#A_suggestion_for_a_different_kind_of_site

The idea would be for a Genealogical Wikibase, that would act as a central store of information to support genealogical projects (ie people's family trees). Users of the associated wiki would be able to upload and maintain their own private tree and private resources, but also pull and push information from a central tree and central resources. Particular properties or whole items on the private trees could be set to be drawn from the central consensus version; and in turn, particular properties or whole items on the central consensus version could be set to be drawn from WikiData. This should encourage a flow of new information up from private resources to the central consensus, and (for items and properties where this is appropriate) from the central consensus to main WikiData. The central consensus would be a public resource, with full open licensing (presumably CC0); but users would be allowed full control of the licensing and visibility of their own individual projects. The Genealogical Wikibase would therefore probably not be compatible with being a core WMF project (and probably isn't remotely something that WMF should resource), but might be something that could be run by a closely associated arms-length not-for-profit.

The key new piece of tech needed (it seems to me) would therefore be a facility to allow different data branches (in the sense of different RCS branches) for the same items and properties within a single Wikibase. I presume this isn't possible now. Given the stack that Wikibase sits on, how technically credible is it to think of this as functionality that could possibly be added? Jheald (talk) 10:14, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jheald: Alternatively you could set up a wikifarm and let users run their own instances. Orain does that, maybe you could ask them if they would be interested in setting up Wikidata instances?

Once you set up your public or private instance, it should be easy to populate with Wikidata properties, or to push items to other wikis with some middleware. Apsdehal already has written a tool to push annotations from thePundit to Wikidata using OAuth, so I guess it could be reused for other projects like the one you have in mind.--Micru (talk) 15:59, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: Thanks, that's really useful. The idea might potentially be to try to scale to tens or even hundreds of thousands of users, each with their own personal data branch (but some hardly ever logging in, and hardly ever seeing their version accessed), so that's why I was first thinking of only storing the deltas (or perhaps storing the deltas plus caching items that had recently been hit), rather than instancing a full replication of the whole Wikibase for each user. But the approach you suggest would certainly be useful if initially there were only a few (very big) projects to synchronise, rather than potentially a multitude of mini ones.

Very interesting that the first tools to achieve Wikibase to Wikibase synchronisation already exist. I did though quite like the idea of fall-through from the more 'central' Wikibases being achieved dynamically (perhaps with some caching) rather through direct population of the items and then endless re-synchronisation. But I guess the degree of acceptable normalisation vs denormalisation is always a discussion that has to be had. Jheald (talk) 23:14, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Ha Micru :p I love free publicity. On the topic - we would be interested in working on allowing users to make use of Wikibase repos and instances. Although it is not our main goal right now it is something we are certainly ready to try in the future! (For reference, I am John on Orain in case anyone wanted to poke me there) John F. Lewis (talk) 10:17, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

It occurs to me that I may have been thinking about this the wrong way.

After all, WikiBase can already contain multiple values for each property of an item. So what would need to be added to the DB would be a DB table specifying how each branch would want to handle each case of these multiple values -- how credible does that branch think they are; and should that branch's interest in them be visible or invisible to other branches; with the value as a whole being invisible if no branch subscribing to it wishes to make it public.

It also occurs to me that there might be (at least) two important use cases on main WikiData itself for WikiBase to be given such functionality:

• Flagged revisions -- all flagged revisions could be kept on a separate branch, visible to subscribed users and invisible to unsubscribed users, until someone approved a merge to the main trunk
• Office actions / OTRS -- material could be made or remain invisible while it was investigated -- eg perhaps a systematic collection of free text fields that cumulatively were alleged to be a Copyvio

Again, do people who know the codebase for WikiBase think this sounds as if it could be a runner? Jheald (talk) 10:33, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

WikiDataQuery query

What is the best way to add a NOT into a WikiDataQuery query? It has noclaim , and NOT quantity/time is easy enough by adding a few statements together, but NOT string seems unnecessarily difficult. John Vandenberg (talk) 15:24, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

For example, I want all chapters in a book, but wish to exclude those called 'Introduction', 'Preface', etc. @Magnus Manske:. John Vandenberg (talk) 01:16, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

All types of properties should work with NOCLAIM. Just looking for a specific value should require specific functions like STRING. There is, currently, no function to exclude specific strings. To do that, add the string property to "&props=Pxx" in the URL, then use a script to filter. "&props" does not work for qualifiers, though; you'll have to use the Wikidata API to get those. --Magnus Manske (talk) 08:12, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Qualifier for unmatched strings

Hi everyone. I'm importing paintings and other things and I'm not always able to match everything. Take for example the list of paintings in the Rijksmuseum without a creator. For these paintings I wasn't able to do a lookup of the string. Take for example The Kitchen Maid (Q17320348), here I wasn't able to match "Jan de Ruyter". Here we loose information. What about creating a qualifier for the unparsed string so we can get to it later? We would add the an unknown claim and the import bot could already add the reference. When we have that a human or an improved bot can replace the unknown with the right content and remove the unparsed string qualifier. What do you think? Right way to go? Multichill (talk) 21:00, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I disagree. Please do not use such hacks but rather try to find the item which fits or create a new one if there is no item about that artist. -- Bene* ^t_a^l_k 21:48, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

+1. Adding such strings would only allow to put a lot of nearly-junk data that would have to be handled manually. --YMS (talk) 08:11, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Not sure what the issue is here; you can query for no/unknown value. No value is represented as item 4294967295, unknown value is represented as item 4294967294, as described in the API documentation. Example: items with unknown creators.  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magnus Manske (talk • contribs) at 10:18, 13 August 2014‎ (UTC).

Hi Bene* and Magnus.

I'm doing quite a few imports and the issue I come across is that I can either match a string to an item or I can not. There is no intermediate step. I want to model this intermediate step, so add a string here as some sort of property/qualifier so it can be matched later. How would you model this? Multichill (talk) 18:14, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

wrong linking between different language versions

Hi, just stumbled across an error I can't seem to correct: Q88962 (Christoph Cluse, German) links to another person in the english, italian and hebrew versions (Reuven Amitai). While both have worked together, they are two distinct persons. Could anyone please correct that, or tell me how to do it myself? thx!  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.197.86.25 (talk • contribs) at 06:39, 13. Aug. 2014‎ (UTC).

You are right, thanks for the pointer. I cleaned it up, because it's easier for me than for you, as I can use the according gadgets and tools as a registered user. But nonetheless here's how it is done: Search whether there are (other) items for either one of the persons. If not, create one for one of them. Then move this person's sitelinks to this item (either using the "Move" gadget or by editing and removing the sitelinks in the bottom section, and then add it on the other item the same way). Then change incorrect labels and descriptions on the source item, as well as incorrect statements. (The latter steps might not be necessary if no incorrect entries have been made there or if you made a clever choice in selecting the person that should stay. I didn't ;).) --YMS (talk) 08:09, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Movies

I have started WikiProject Movies help is welcome :) --ValterVB (talk) 12:56, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

@ValterVB: Great idea. All the best to our new WikiProject! - I would still plant links on the related WikiProjects on Wikipedia, so people know where to interact with Wikidata. --Tobias1984 (talk) 15:05, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Category:Women (Q15632285) and Category:Woman (Q1410688)

Not sure if this is the right place for it, but anyways. These two categories are about slightly different things – the former is a category for the concept of "Woman" (whatever that means in practice, I'm not sure), while the latter is a category for women (as in, articles about women are in it). I've moved the categories for women over to the latter one for the languages that I know, but there are still a lot of sitelinks that are probably wrong, so if people could take a look and fix it for the languages they know, that would be great. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 18:39, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

So strange labelling in many languages (all germanic, english...). I worked a little bit, in addition first was duplicate of Category:Women (Q9523633) (I've merged). --Infovarius (talk) 20:11, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Vandalism?

this and many other false edits on wikidata of Israeli politicians completely messed up template: Politician on cs.wikipedia, because cs.wiki started to import items from wikidata automatically. And I am deeply frightened in how many articles this editor might have made the same mistake (deliberate?) and btw I am deeply frightened by the whole concept of importing almost unmanageable wikidata items into templates. What to do? --Davcza (talk) 21:57, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Is there a pattern to the mistake? I'm asking Davcza and the editor in question. If there is a consistent pattern, it is fairly easy to undo it. I'd be happy to help with that. --Haplology (talk) 01:47, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

It seems that the editor in question is adding statements to Wikidata items based on the categories of the linked Wikipedia articles without checking the results. This approach has given very many wrong statements, and the editor is receiving many complaints at their user talk page. I ask the editor to stop adding statement this way, or to be sure to check each case when doing it, as I think inserting of many wrong statements is a danger to Wikidata's credibility, and can be considered vandalism when it continues despite the many complaints. I have notified the editor about this discussion. Regards, Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 06:55, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

+1. -- Vlsergey (talk) 07:28, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@Davcza, Dipsacus fullonum, Vlsergey: Why is religon even an infobox-parameter? I couldn't think of a worse subject to turn into data. There is too much nuance in matters of religion. It is not the same as a persons birthday. I would suggest removing this row from the infobox, or at least disconnecting it with Wikidata! The 22k statements are probably 99 % unsourced and the type statistics (Wikidata:Database_reports/Constraint_violations/P140#Types_statistics) speak volumes about the properties current state. --Tobias1984 (talk) 13:29, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

@Tobias1984: Nobody said "religon" was used in infobox. But it does not make this field less important, neither allow to fill this field from not-error-proof en.wikipedia categorization system. -- Vlsergey (talk) 13:56, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

@Vlsergey: Sorry, I misred that into User:Davcza's comment. I hope a few people from this discussion can head over to Property_talk:P140 and do a thorough review of this property and what kind of values it currently stores. Do you have time to comment on this thread too Property_talk:P140#Atheists? --Tobias1984 (talk) 14:36, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Many many jewish Israeli politicians have been listed as muslims and these false parametres now entered (without being registered by czech wiki´s watchlist) into templates in many articles. Pattern? Amateurism on behalf of editor of wikidata that should be immediately blocked? Spillover of western European antisemitism into wikipedia? No really, I am fed up with wikidata. It is about to disrupt reliability of czech wikipedia (and any other local wikipedia), unless something is done to roll back the premature link between wikidata and local wiki templates. --Davcza (talk) 07:01, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

What helps is knowing what category these people have in common.. Undoing this edit is then trivial. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 07:22, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

No, it is not trivial. Botowner (i.e. owner of GerardM account) doesn't seem to care about his mistakes and not going to fix them, and author of pages from Wikipedia who incorporate changes into infoboxes and local categories do not see those destructive changes in their local changelist. So category-to-property activity shall be stopped. -- Vlsergey (talk) 07:28, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree that this is very serious because mistakes are very damaging to the reputation of this project. I don't know what was done wrong (again) this time, and importantly apparently neither does the person who did it less than two weeks ago, which we know because he himself just asked what he did wrong, but on a hunch I did a search for people in en.wiki category Israeli Jews and found who were labelled religion:Islam (be sure to set WDQ to AND), and found 64 people. It took me only a minute to do that, and it would take only a minute to fix it. The editor in question should have done it by now. I think category-to-property editing can be done responsibly, but editors have to check their edits before, during, and after. --Haplology (talk) 09:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Haplology that category-to-property bring many positive statements, but should be used wisely on sensitive topics like religion, or politics. In such areas even a tiny 0.1% of errors can cause people to take out their pitchforks (no matter if the mistake was just unintentional and easily corrected).--Micru (talk) 15:50, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@GerardM: I thought that it was already a policy that edits in some sensitive properties should be immediately sourced to avoid making statements sound like facts. Bulk and unsourced editing in these properties has to stop immediately. There is a ton of other bulk editing you can do if that is what you want to do at the moment. For example sorting stars by constellation could be turned into a Widar game and is not as susceptible to nuance as a person's religious life. --Tobias1984 (talk) 13:18, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Tool to find missing articles

Is there a tool which would find articles with the most Wikidata language records that are missing on a certain Wikipedia? Such articles would be the most important ones that we should focus on creating, it would be a helpful tool for all language versions of Wikipedia, but especially for the smaller ones.--Kohelet (talk) 22:03, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

see http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-terminator/?list&lang=en&mode=tx --Pasleim (talk) 22:21, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

or https://tools.wmflabs.org/ptwikis/common-iw. --Jklamo (talk) 01:54, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for useful tips to both of you, but the 1st tool knows only a handful of languages, not including Czech, and the second tool shows only about 100 or so links. The 1st tool can show 1000 articles, is there any way how to add Czech?--Kohelet (talk) 12:47, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Commons links

Shouldn't be created a new Data type "Commons page" for Property:P373 and Property:P935? It can be potentially merged with the data type "Commons media file".

Is there any bot which takes care for maintenance of these links? It's needed to detect and treat links to no-existing pages, to hard redirects, to soft-redirected categories etc. (Unfortunately, the relation between articles and categories of identic item was not thought-out adequately before phase 1 of Wikidata.) --ŠJů (talk) 14:40, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

ŠJů, at some point in the future Property:P373 will cease to exist. At the moment it's only possible to access statements on the connected item. So take for example Commons:Category:Haarlem, we can access the statements on Category:Haarlem (Q7427769), but not on Haarlem (Q9920). Of course we want to have access to those statements. First we need tracking of Wikidata item usage, because if an item changes, we need to know what pages to purge. Once we track the usage, purging needs to be implemented. This is like templates on steroids, updating an item here can potentially impact 100s of pages on 10s of connected wiki's. I talked with Lydia about that the other day and one of the things we discussed was delayed purging depending on the usage of an item (used on < 10 pages, purge now. Used on < 100 pages, purge after an hour. Used on < 1000 pages, purge after 4 hours, etc) and another edit to the same item would reset the timer. This would be a good way to limit the impact of vandalism. If we have the tracking and the purging, arbitrary access can be enabled. So you can access Haarlem (Q9920) Commons:Category:Haarlem. On Commons we would just make a lua template that looks for category's main topic (P301) (or category combines topics (P971)), grabs the data from the connected item and displays that in a pretty way.

On other places we need to update templates to not use Property:P373 any more, but either the connect Commons category (if it's used on a category) or the connected article (category's main topic (P301) again). I don't know the time path for this development, but I'm pretty sure the Wikidata development team is at least going to start with it in the next couple of months. It's a pretty tough nut to crack, so I'm not sure how long it will take.

Hope this explains it a bit more. Maybe we should make a page somewhere explaining this so we can refer to it, this seems to be a recurring point of discussion. Multichill (talk) 16:34, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Ping user:Jheald Multichill (talk) 16:36, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the explain. --ValterVB (talk) 17:13, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Helpful. It's good to know that this is the big blocker for Arbitrary Access, and it is a big one.

A different approach would be Namespace Awareness -- enabling the software to be able to treat Category and Article/Gallery namespaces on a sister project as in effect two different sister projects, so that the same item on Wikidata would relate both to a Gallery and the corresponding main Category, and topic's main category (P910) and category's main topic (P301) could be replaced with the identity function. Commons category (P373) and Commons gallery (P935) could then also be retired.

This would seem the more natural data modelling, and several commenters in discussions I've had to day agree that it is something that would ultimately be nice.

Maintaining separate article and category items for a thing requires a lot of extra Wikidata plumbing properties to be maintained, and is at the root of all this complexity about how to link to Commons. What are the positives that the separation gives? What are the technical fixes that to enable Namespace Awareness would need?

It would be so nice just to be able to adopt, say, the Commons Creator namespace as a sister-wiki in its own right, that could then have its own first-class peering with Wikidata. Jheald (talk) 17:28, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Namespace Awareness is just a new fancy name for having multiple links to the same site. Don't put your money on it, because that ain't going to happen. In the long run we won't have creator templates, institution templates and categories at Commons any more, we'll just have statements on the images. There is still a long road ahead of us. Multichill (talk) 18:34, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Okay, so why won't there be multiple links to the different namespaces on the same site? Why is this such a taboo, when people don't seem to dispute that it would be a good idea?

As for the creator and institution templates, yes @Micru:'s got a workaround that should mean, if it works (I'm not at the moment 100% convinced that it will), that we ought to be able to start migrating those straight away, and maybe even retire the entire structure quite soon. (See later parts of the this thread at CtDT).

But category pages I think are going to be around rather longer, because they offer a very useful free-form scratchpad for noting useful information about a set of images. eg the information at the top of Commons:Category:Metropolitan Improvements (1828) Thomas Hosmer Shepherd. There will be other ways to find images, eg searches based on Wikidata tags, and some intersection categories will fall by the wayside. But there are advantages in a hierarchically browsable structure too, and I don't think it will go quietly. Jheald (talk) 20:17, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

We needn't be hurry to demolish the categorization system of all projects. We can want to implement its modularity, universality, intuitivity, clarity, local adaptability etc. to the statement system but maybe, the inverse method would be more promising: to implement additional statement indications into the existing categorization systems.

Wikidata seem to be not able to approach much easier and more basic aims: to make reciprocial statements really be reciprocial, to make items really be items (ie. linking all types of pages of the item) etc. The original idea "one item = one real subject" was a good starting idea and Jhealds proposal is headed just for filling this simple and useful principle. --ŠJů (talk) 01:14, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Both categorization system and statement system have some similar problems and need to be developed in similar way:

• categorization tag should be not a part of the source page of the categorized page/subcategory, but it should be an independent reciprocally interconnecting element. I.e. (if we will not force centralization of the structure), every project should have a "namespace" of connection elements (in a special data format).
• statement should be not a part of the item page, but it should be an independent reciprocally interconnecting element in a special "statement" namespace.
• both - format of the categorization interconnecting elements should and format of the statement elements - should be made similar/identic through their development. --ŠJů (talk) 01:38, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@ŠJů: Interesting ideas. I think that the topic of categories is related to the class expression that TomT0m was mentioning some while ago. In a way categories can be considered queries where you define the criteria (now it is done the other way around, members are added to a set), and that same criteria is what define the concept itself.

I agree that statements are entities on their own right that do not belong to the item itself, but which "live" between the concepts that they link. Now we are building connecting structures and replicating them on both connected elements (for instance, "spouse - start date" has to be repeated for both spouses). However, I do not know how "married" is the wikidata software to the idea that statements *belong* to the item. A bit more of free love wrt to statements would make our life easier. But it would also need to add some control mechanisms for weak relationships in one of their ends (like, show this statement only in this item but not on the other one).

Regarding the every project should have a "namespace" of connection elements, I would say that it wouldn't be necessary if we had some scoping qualifier like "applies to:German Wikipedia". On the Wikipedia itself you could give control to uses to decide to display either their own categorization structure, or the structure of some other Wikipedia. Much more choice!--Micru (talk) 09:40, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@Micru: Yes - when I said that every project should have their own namespace for connection elements, I did not anticipate where the namespace should be physically placed. As you said, such a namespaces can be built in Wikidata environment - initially as an exact mirror (transfer) of the separate local categorization structures, which can pervade each other subsequently, keeping autonomy and specifics of the local categorization structures but supporting them by the centralized structure. The statement system itself is not able to distinguish which levels and which combinations of statements are important and relevant. Every local categorization system is an unique crystallization work which reflects the structure, nature and mentality of the language, community, nation, its intellectual, scientific and social roots and traditions etc. Some types of categories are banal and clear and can be shared by all projects, some types of categories can be culturally specific - even if two languages share any concept/term (and they link to identic item), its breadth and consequences can differ significantly (trolleybuses, funiculars, cableways and lifts can be a good example - and allmost all concepts of liberal arts). Wee need also be conscious that we don't categorize pure platonic ideas, ideal "mass points", but real articles, images etc. Two articles about identic item can have utterly different emphases.

We need to analyze and classify types of categorization relations (see Commons:Commons:Categories#Types of reflected relations) and the statements as well to distinguish hyponymic, meronymic and attributive etc. statements, to distinguish hierarchic and non-hierarchic, symmetrical and asymmetrical statements etc. Thats a way to approach both systems together. The categorization is very simple but fully functional now. Wikidata statements create no real system yet and their interface is not usable yet, its a poor demoversion of the possible date structure but without any usable outputs and controlling - and without any idea how they should be really used. Its a simple toy to fill infoboxes still, but even for this purpose is unusable because this have no effective system to check and approve the data. Categorization system would be a better starting base. --ŠJů (talk) 17:21, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@ŠJů: Categorization system would be a better starting base. Categories are already what many contributors are using as a starting base to import statements, and on the way they have unearthed many errors in the classification and it has improved the way data is stored here, which is then checked for errors according to {{Constraint}}s. I don't know if you were at the wikimania talk, but Daniel K. (one of the developers) said that the functionality of categories can be replicated. I think that is good to keep the old functionality (or provide a better one), but I think it is quite pointless to discuss about the color of the bikeshed.

[Wikidata] is a poor demoversion...without any usable outputs and controlling :D It is a bit naive to expect full-fledged functionality from a system that is in active development right now. If you have followed the newsletter probably you have noticed that it does get better over time. Anyhow, what kind of system do you envision to check and approve the data? I don't think anything is written in stone and if you have good ideas about how it should be done, then you should be generous and share them! --Micru (talk) 18:47, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Steyr 120 (Q635243)

Hi, I linked the french page Steyr 120 that I created to others, it's working, but not for the english article where the link to that french article does not appear. I may have forgotten some step ? Thanks for any help. --Sermont (talk) 20:03, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Have you tried to purge the article on enwiki? (adding ?action=purge to the url) Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 20:06, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

oh, it was so simple. many thanks to you Sjoerd! --Sermont (talk) 20:26, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata:WikiProject Books not rendering

I'd like to read Wikidata:WikiProject Books, but the page isn't rendering properly.

Instead, after you scroll down for a bit, it becomes full of red "Script error" warnings, which I presume is similar to a "too many templates" error back on en-wiki.

Pages like Wikidata:List of properties/all have the same problem.

Can something be done about this? It makes it quite difficult to learn about the project. Jheald (talk) 13:26, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

See also Category:Pages with script errors -- Jheald (talk) 13:28, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Too many calls to Lua scripts. Asked for a reduction of the number of {{P|XXX}} in the wiki code. 141.6.11.16 19:20, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Good example for statement adding bot

I'm currently writing a bot which adds statements and sources to items (Pywikibot), can somebody please refer me to an existing bot which does these tasks. --Alepfu (talk) 14:04, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Check out harvest_template.py, it already does this for adding statements from infoboxes/templates. However, it currently only works for standard properties, not for dates or string properties. Hopefully that will be fixed soonish. (@Ladsgroup, Multichill ;-) ). Jon Harald Søby (talk) 02:04, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata:Creating a bot has many code snippets for Pywikibot too. —Pathoschild 02:24, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

New report for disambiguation

Discussion and first report --ValterVB (talk) 20:18, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Problems between WikiProjects

I am trying to get:

1. en:Wikipedia:Quebec Wikipedians' notice board to link with fr:Projet:Québec/Annonces
2. en:Wikipedia talk:Quebec Wikipedians' notice board to link with fr:Discussion Projet:Québec

The first two are linked at WikiProject Quebec alerts and notifications (Q15868740), but the fr-link on the English Wikipedia takes you to the Projet:Québec WikiMag (even though neither of the links has anything to do with a newsletter). The en-link on the French Wikipedia works fine, however.

The second set is linked at Q17480567, but the links don't show up on Wikipedia at all and the option to add/edit Wikidata appears to be locked on Wikipedia.

Can someone please help me? Fluidity between these projects in a place where 42.6% of the population is bilingual[5] is paramount (especially on its two most important pages). Thank you! SweetNightmares (talk) 14:38, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@SweetNightmares: Hi there, hope I am understanding the problem correctly...it looks like the fr-link on the English Wikipedia goes to the Projet:Québec WikiMag because the link to it is maintained in the actual wikitext of the English Wikipedia page (rather than via the sitelinks on the Wikidata item). There may be reasons behind this decision, but assuming it was ok to remove, it would be as simple as editing the English Wikipedia page and deleting "[[fr:Projet:Québec/Infolettre]]" from the wikitext. I'm afraid I'm not sure what the problem is with the second set. -Thepwnco (talk) 20:22, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@SweetNightmares: me again - it appears that talk pages are never to be added as item pages on Wikidata (see this RFC for more information on this). I would suggest just maintaing the interlanguage links directly in the wikitext as done with the first set. Could you also please request a deletion for the item you created for the second set of pages (the talk pages)? -Thepwnco (talk) 20:28, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

I see. I wasn't aware the interlanguage wikitext links still worked. I'll request those pages for deletion when I have some time later on today/tomorrow. Thanks for your help!! SweetNightmares (talk) 16:50, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

How-to

Hello to everyone! Is there a help page about the basics about adding article to Wikidata? It would be very helpful to have one so that I (and others) could give a link to page instead of telling it all the time the same thing to newbies. --Edgars2007 (talk) 12:28, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

We have an entire portal for this at Help:Contents linked from the main page. We also have tutorials at Wikidata:Tours. Del_♉sion23 (talk) 15:42, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Freemasons

Hello,

Is there an easy way to get all Freemasons (as categorized in wikipedias) and store the information on wikidata ?

I found member of (P463) but its general purpose is to link to a specific Lodge - is it right to use it with freemasonry (Q41726) ? or is there a hierarchy that allows to retrieve all people members of Lodges as "freemasons" ?

Thanks for any answer and/or solution ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 12:59, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Oversight Access Request

Hi, per the oversight policy, I have to make a neutral notification notifying the community of the open request. Please feel free to share your opinions on myself as an oversighter at the request here. Thanks, John F. Lewis (talk) 14:41, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

List of articles/Qs

Hi! I searched in the tools but couldn't find one. Is there some tool where I can give a (long) list of article titles (including red links) in some wikipedia and it will return the list with their corresponding Qs (where there is one)? --geraki ^talk 07:06, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Announce: WikiProject Structured Data for Commons

The aim of of the WikiProject Structured Data for Commons is:

• To develop templates that draw directly on Wikidata (and in future also on Commons Wikibase), that will act as drop-in replacements for templates currently in use on Commons.
• To develop new templates that can bring new functionality to Commons filepages (eg "topics" listings)
• To support the cataloguing of particularly idiosyncratic templates currently in use on Commons (eg institutional credit/backlink templates, and other source templates), and try to produce more generalised, standardised forms that can draw on Wikidata.
• To work with other WikiProjects on Wikidata to understand, document and develop the data models on Wikidata, and make sure that they are sufficient to accommodate the needs of GLAM organisations and others currently or in future uploading or maintaining metadata on Commons.
• To start to port existing such data that can be represented in structured form, and is appropriate to do so, from Commons to Wikidata
• To examine the divide between what should be stored on Wikidata and what should be stored on the proposed Commons Wikibase.
• To support, as a user-space community, the work of the staffers developing Commons Wikibase and other aspects of the Foundation initiative for Structured Data for Commons in any way we can.

Jheald (talk) 07:59, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

"In other projects" sidebar & Commons

The "In other projects" sidebar is due to go live in ten days.

In this thread at Commons, there is some concern that moving to a strict category-category and article-article interwiki links model will mean that "we are going to need to create hundreds of thousands of basically redundant galleries replicating categories just so that links will work? That seems insane".

Does anybody know whether the "In other projects" sidebar could also be encouraged to show a Commons category link, when Commons category (P373) is non-null; or a Commons gallery link, when Commons gallery (P935) is non-null. This would win a lot of friends on Commons.

Alternatively, can anybody suggest another solution that might help (probably best to the Commons thread, rather than here) ?

Thanks, Jheald (talk) 13:05, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

We just do in on the Russian Wikivoyage: the Commonscat link is taken from P373 and shown on the sidebar.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:30, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

It seems it links the category but not the gallery, eg [6]; while the English version seems to be hard-coded.

It maybe the category is the one to be preferred, if both are available. But does anybody know what the code currently in beta is going to do, when it goes live? Jheald (talk) 13:41, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, we indeed show only the category. But I am pretty sure it would be possible to show both (if needed).--Ymblanter (talk) 13:48, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I think in general on Commons that would make a lot of people very happy. Jheald (talk) 14:04, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Heads-up: Wikimedia Loves Monuments UK

As part of the WLM UK project, I am currently creating 6,539 items for "grade I" buildings. These

• are notable by default
• get an English label, instance of ("grade I building"), National Heritage List for England number (P1216), country:UK. Coordinates and administrative region to be amended.
• not currently on Wikidata, to the best of my knowledge

As to the last point, 2,775 items are already marked as such, but there will be duplicate items created. This is rather unavoidable, given it's me and my bot against the world, and WLM starts in two weeks.

Note, there will be a lot more "grade II*" buildings to follow soon, in the same manner.

Thanks for your understanding. --Magnus Manske (talk) 13:15, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

It's great to hear that this important task is being done. Thank you. The work I and others are doing, to tag objects in OpenStreetMap with Wikidata IDs, will benefit greatly. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:44, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

False message: List of values is complete.

Since the last months, in some cases, the section "Wikimedia Commons page linked to this item" displays a message "List of values is complete." and prevents from adding a link even when it contains 0 entries. I think, its a serious bug. --ŠJů (talk) 17:55, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

See bugzilla:69671. --ŠJů (talk) 18:05, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Replied at the bug. John F. Lewis (talk) 18:13, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

How to store dates as given in a source ?

Is it possible to store as a string the way a source quotes a date, as well as storing it in a date object?

I was recently uploading some images from the British Library to Commons, and it was not unusual to find a creation date for the underlying object quoted as eg "mid 18th to early 19th century".

One might store this in a Wikidata Date type as eg 1780 / 1735 - 1835 -- but it would be nice to also have accessible what the original source actually said, as a string.

Is this currently possible, and/or should it be made possible? Jheald (talk) 13:42, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jheald: I just proposed it because we need it anyhow for the names printed on books and other sources: Wikidata:Property_proposal/Creative_work#printed_as. It needs your support! :)--Micru (talk) 14:40, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jheald, Micru: printed as is in this particular case probably the wrong approach, as this artwork is not dated by contemporaries (in print or manuscript) but by later specialists (art historians, bibliographers) using e. g. stylistic or other evidence. There are conventions out there, on how to turn such dates into numbers. You might want to have a look at Help:Modeling/general/time#Modeling of uncertain dates. --HHill (talk) 22:42, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@HHill: on Micru's proposal I suggested "in original source" as alternative wording for this qualifier, which might cover both use cases.

If anyone's interested the set I uploaded to Commons can be found here. Most of the dates were quite straightforward, but for a few the nested syntax of the Commons:Template:other date syntax got quite baroque, eg to express something like "between mid 17th century and early 18th century" can be achieved with

{{other date|between|{{other date|mid|{{other date|century|17}}}}|{{other date|early|{{other date|century|18}}}}}}

I did also quote the original source longform, in a separate field.

I made up my own central dates, just to get the category to sort into a nice order.

It is good to know that there is a manual for how I perhaps should have done it, but I hadn't known about it at the time.

Some curiosities:

• "1769 and 1773" (for a page that contained two images pasted on it)
• "1818 to circa 1830" (only the terminus is uncertain)
• "1473-1483?" (ditto)
• "1595 (1617 ?)" (said to be this, but actually might be that)
• "Last quarter of the 15th century, before 1483"
• "latter part of 3rd century" (does imply something different than "late 3rd C" ?)

Expanding the advice at Help:Modeling/general/time#Modeling of uncertain dates to cover more cases would be good (a detailed sub-page perhaps?) Also, it would be good to develop code snippets to automatically parse the full possible {{other date}} syntax.

But thanks for these really good pointers. Best, Jheald (talk) 08:57, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jheald: Why not to use P387 (P387) in the references field? It seems more appropriate for what you want.--Micru (talk) 09:47, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

We also have earliest date (P1319), latest date (P1326), valid in period (P1264), and if you think a new one is necessary, you can propose it.--Micru (talk) 09:52, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Okay, P387 (P387) sounds interesting. I must find out more about it. Remember I am very new here, and I still have a lot I am trying to learn about the Wikidata way of doing things.

Yes, I did know about the properties you've just listed. I just was citing these as some of the less straightforward cases from a real dataset, and wondered if there were already some good ways the community had developed to handle such cases. Jheald (talk) 13:43, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Time periods with uncertainty is a very interesting problem, especially when those time periods are different in countries that are otherwise in close proximity to each other. For example the medieval age and the romantic period in the Scandinavian countries.

The general problem has to do with uncertainty, error, limits, precision, truncation and datums, all of which lacks good solutions. Uncertainty has to do with your trust in the measurement, error has to do with the measured value and how that can be wrong, limits are bounds to valid values, precision has to do with the representation of numbers internally, truncation has to do with external representation, and datums are how you do the measurement. A carbon dating says 1234 BC but because you know the type of artifact you know it can't be more than 1000 BC. Datum is actually "BC" in this case. The error model of the equipment is most likely Gaussian and 3σ is lets say 300 year. That would put the artifact close to your 1000 BC limit, perhaps something within the limits [1000 950] BC. If you only want the century you will then round off to 1000BC. Oh, yes, and those numbers are according to your interpretation. And 2xyes, the model can be a lot more complex than this simple example and in other domains the numbers themselves can be complex.

What we should have is simple values that can be used for limits, and where a range with limits can be used as a value, and where each simple value can be assigned an error model, and we should use bignums internally and only round off when we export data. Jeblad (talk) 16:50, 17 August 2014 (UTC) (Sorry for the rant)

And I forgot context for the measurement, that is for example medieval time period in Norway vs. in Sweden, but that is when you must represent a value symbolically. You can for example have two items with a common class, or you can create a bag of all medieval time periods. Just to confuse you even more; periods in archeology, art, and politics isn't always the same. Well you get it right! ;) Jeblad (talk) 16:56, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Pinging @Random knowledge donator: because I am sure that he will have a couple of things to say about this :)

The thing is that here we are building aproximations, and not only that, but aproximations of aproximations, it is normal to lose some information on the conversion. I agree that the information loss should be as little as possible, but how much time do you want to spend reducing the information loss? I mean, at some time the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and all the effort invested modelling that approximation doesn't pay off as much as just leaving it at a "good enough" level. If someone wants perfection, then the most probable is that they will look for the original source, or for diverse sources, or for sources that we don't even list here. It is good to model some degree of uncertainty, but to become obsessed with it makes one less productive and the modelled information less useful.--Micru (talk) 18:35, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

It is simply wrong. You can remove the cruft and set it up with qualifiers (aka reified statements). That is how it must be done anyhow. Jeblad (talk) 19:55, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Natural language generation from semantic data

Natural language generation is about how you produce text from some available data. There are several subfields, some are closer to usable algorithms (and code) than other. Wikidata will make it possible to generate quite good text, perhaps better than most bots on Wikipedia. It is extremely important is that dynamically generated text will not be a frozen snapshot, like text produced by a bot, but will evolve over time as the semantic data itself changes.

Is there anyone with an interest in NLG on Wikidata, and if so is there anyone with actual knowledge about some of the subfields like Content determination, Document structuring, Aggregation, Lexical choice, Referring expression generation or Realisation? Jeblad (talk) 17:13, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jeblad: The only work I'm aware of in this field is Magnus' autodescription tool and his work on Wikidata:Reasonator. (hope it helps, I don't know anything in those fields). TomT0m ^(talk) 08:48, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Resource type

Is there any plan for the moment to implement a resource type that takes an URI as its argument? Not the URL stuff, but a real URI and a resource that materialize properties from the referred resource. Jeblad (talk) 19:59, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

We will likely need a way to refer to URIs for Commons, yes. Details still need to be worked out. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:34, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Export of property values

Is there any plan for publishing property values through Special:EntityData? That is when will Special:EntityData/Q1 include a reference to Q323? Jeblad (talk) 20:05, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

That really depends on how you access Special:EntityData and thereby what content is delivered to you. The RDF export is not complete yet. It does not contain statements. So I assume that is what you are looking at. We will add statements to it. It is not an immediate priority however. The tracking bug for it is at bugzilla:48143. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:36, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Edit directly from infocard / infobox

@Candalùa:, you asked for this! A new feature, developed by vlsergey and putnik at Wikimania 2014 Hackaton: edit wikidata properties directly from infoboxes, like in visual editors.

• 
  Find the property in your infobox and press "Edit"
• 
  Edit the value (using standard(!) Wikidata JavaScript helpers) and save it immediately

Adding such functionality to your local language is quite complicated. Find me or putnik at Wikimania. -- Vlsergey (talk) 19:41, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

@vlsergey, putnik: - Looks really good. And it would finally do away with the duplicated (actually >270-plicated) updating of infoboxes. -Tobias1984 (talk) 20:05, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

that's really, really cool… since many, many infoboxes do not even display wikidata properties :D

but, would not that be the cause for trans-wiki edit-war if people do not agree on birth date of someone ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 06:23, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

The reception to this at the Wikidata meetup was quite enthusiastic as well! Wish more of you were there!--Jasper Deng (talk) 08:00, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

What are these "standard(!) Wikidata JavaScript" referred to in the figure description above? I just went over to the Russian Wikipedia and didn't see a way to do it. --Daniel Mietchen (talk) 10:54, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

@Daniel Mietchen: there are some JavaScript developed by Wikidata team ('wikibase.formatters.getStore', 'wikibase.experts', 'wikibase.parsers') so they are pretty much used as UI for editing. Check the gadget "Включить возможность редактирования Викиданных из карточек" in settings, it is not enabled by default. -- Vlsergey (talk) 14:25, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Some problems vlsergey and putnik:

1. there is no way to add an edit comment
2. there is no way to add a reference
3. there is no way to delete a wrong value
4. you can overwrite the value of a referenced statement, so the reference becomes invalid

--Succu (talk) 09:59, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

• @Succu: the forth is valid for any kind of editor, and i don't see reliable solution. Sometimes values have references, but need to be updated according to reference update -- i.e. it may be valid operation to update the value withot changing the reference. May be we need some kind of "freeze flag" on reference, meaning user should update it if value is changed. -- Vlsergey (talk) 08:06, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

  Regarding #4 I disagree Vlsergey. Your inline editing input box could be

  1. disabled
  2. add a new value (as done by your script)
  3. warn the user that he wants to overwrite a referenced value
  4. gives the user a possibility add a new value together with a changed reference

  --Succu (talk) 22:04, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia link

Was checking to see if a template documentation page on Wikipedia needed an update and came across one thing that may be of concern. In the w:Template:Sister project links/doc#Default display section resides:
However, voy (Wikivoyage) only displays by default if the entity type on Wikidata is "geographical feature".
That link is to Wikidata page Property:P107, which has been titled "(OBSOLETE) main type (GND) (P107)", and is further described:
** Do not use ** Due to be deleted. Please use instance of (P31)/subclass of (P279)
I'm not sure if we should stay with the P107 page (probably not) or if there is a better link, such as Property:P31, or Property:P279, or perhaps even Geographical object ("geographical feature" on Wikipedia). Also, P107 is used within the template itself as {{#property:P107}}, and we may need a replacement for that, as well. Can you provide guidance in regard to the best link and function that we can use for this purpose? – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 20:21, 14 August 2014 (UTC) 21:46, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Update: I have asked these questions on the property P107 talk page and am providing this update to avoid a forked discussion. Joys! – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 22:11, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Request

Hi. Can someone create a statistic generated by a bot: a list of 1000 most ”popular” items (with most interwiki links) with articles existent in most of wikipedias but not in one certain wikipedia. A better explanation by a real example: in my case i want to know which articles exists in most wikipedias, but does't exists in ro.wiki. If someone can develope such a bot and generate and update monthly these statistics for all wikipedias — this can become a powerfull tool for developing small wikis by creating primarily most wanted articles. XXN (talk) 12:31, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

There are some lists like the one you want (but not the one you want, i.e. not for rowiki) on Wikidata:Database reports/Missing links, but they're rather outdated anyway (one year old now). And with the Terminator there is a tool which does what you want with basically live data, but it's not available for Romanian, too. Maybe User:Magnus Manske can help you with that. --YMS (talk) 12:46, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

See above. --Jklamo (talk) 14:53, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Done, should become live within 24h. --Magnus Manske (talk) 16:04, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. XXN (talk) 19:47, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

ISO-format date: Precision parameter

An edit, changing precision value to 7 (century), makes the date 1815-08-15 look as 18. century instead of 19.century. How to fix it? Sealle (talk) 06:35, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

• This is bug in wikidata editor as I think. Another side: User talk:Ivan A. Krestinin#Constraint violations P570. — Ivan A. Krestinin (talk) 08:18, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
• Why not use "18 hundreds" instead of "18 century" (which is easy to read as 18th century)?
• If it is an error, shoud it go to the attention of the development team?--Ymblanter (talk) 05:25, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
• Moved the discussion to WD:Contact the development team. Sealle (talk) 04:13, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Proposed update works-editions

See here: Help_talk:Sources#Proposed_update_works-editions.--Micru (talk) 08:28, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Dates by century are malformed in English

See Q2473148—they are formatted as "20. century", while "20th century" would be correct in English. I know English has a bunch of different ordinals, but "20. century" is pretty meaningless to the average English-speaker. Innotata (talk) 18:13, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

same in French - could be "20e siècle", "20ème siècle", "XXe siècle" (as roman figures are generally prefered in French), but not "20. century", which is English, nor "20. siècle", which is not a French abbreviation. Thanks --Hsarrazin (talk) 13:34, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

pb with moving link

Hi, I removed srwiki link on Alania (Q200062), which is a disambiguation page, but could not link it on the proper item Ossetia (Q106955)

Message : The external client site did not provide page information - could someone help me, please ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 14:29, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

I've added it with no issues. 130.88.141.34 14:33, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I really don't understand why it did not work. The page on be existed, but my input was rejected as if non-existant :( --Hsarrazin (talk) 13:47, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

DraggableSitelinks is now a gadget

Try it out! --Ricordisamoa 15:28, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Ricordisamoa,

I never could use this tool... :( - I'm not very intuitive with that kind of tool :s

how do you do it ? do you click on "Add a source", then the property, then drag the site link ? or do you just drag the site link directly on the link to create the property ? or what ?

thanks for explanations :) --Hsarrazin (talk) 14:10, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

new features \o/

Hey folks :)

As announced last week we just deployed a number of new features. Those are:

• Wikinews is now able to manage its sitelinks via Wikidata. Wikidata:Wikinews for questions/coordination/...
• Wikidata is now also its own client. This means you can for example add a sitelink to Wikidata:Help to the item for all main help pages. You are able to make use of the data in items on other pages in Wikidata with Lua. (Arbitrary access has been enabled for Wikidata for this but when data in an item changes we will not be able to purge the page using the data yet.)
• Sitelinks for projects with just one sitelink in the group (like Commons, Wikidata and in the future Meta for example) are now grouped together in one sitelink group.
• Badges for good and featured articles can be stored on Wikidata right next to the sitelink. We have badges for featured and good articles. More can be added on request later. Thanks to Bene* and lazowik for this feature.
• Redirects between items can be created. When two items are merged one of them can be turned into a redirect. This way our identifiers can be considered much more stable by 3rd parties for example. It also makes it unnecessary to delete duplicate items. This will reduce the workload of our admins considerably.
• We have the new datatype monolingual text. This allows you to make statements with a string and an associated language.

Known issues/limitations:

• Redirects can so far only be created via the API
• Arbitrary access on Wikidata to the data on Wikidata itself is only possible via Lua. The parser function still needs to be adapted.
• Badges can not yet be shown on the Wikipedias etc. This will follow next week.
• Diffs for badges changes have a link to a wrong target (bugzilla:69758)

Cheers --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 06:11, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

In "Pages on other sites linked to this item", I can't find the code for adding a link to Wikidata, only a link to "testwikidatawiki". 130.88.141.34 09:28, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Katie is working on a fix for that. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 09:54, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Explaining item development, sources, etc

I have written a short essay with the hope of bringing clarity to sources and items in general: Wikidata:Lounge/Growing items. If some part needs more discussion or better explanation, please let me know.--Micru (talk) 13:20, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Issues with Dutch labels

Is there any way to fix things like this with a bot? A list would also be a option. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 23:07, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't have the time to write a bot but the list you can find here: User:Pasleim/sandbox. In total, there are 2091 Dutch terms with such characters and 861 terms in other languages. --Pasleim (talk) 23:38, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I had the same problem on French labels - which is te best query to get all of these, please ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 13:07, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

I'll do it later this week. I'm doing some cleanup anyway. Multichill (talk) 20:15, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Jewish Encyclopedia ID

Regarding the new property Jewish Encyclopedia ID (Russian) (P1438)

[ Note -- This used to say "Jewish Encyclopedia ID (P1438)" Jheald (talk) 02:22, 19 August 2014 (UTC)]

In English, and certainly on en-wiki, "Jewish Encylopedia" typically refers to the English language encyclopedia originally published in New York between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls -- see en:Jewish Encylopedia

This is also available online. Many en-wiki articles are derived from it (and translated articles in other languages). For an index, see en:WP:JE. Jheald (talk) 14:49, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

• feel free to correct english description :-) -- Vlsergey (talk) 16:33, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

There's no procedure for nominating the main property label itself for renaming, then? Jheald (talk) 21:36, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Go ahead and fix it. :-) -- Bene* ^t_a^l_k 17:33, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm a newbie. I don't know how to fix it. Jheald (talk) 21:25, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jheald, just go to Jewish Encyclopedia ID (Russian) (P1438) and replace the label with something more descriptive. Just like you would edit an item. :-) Jon Harald Søby (talk) 23:17, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Like this, then diff ? Thanks! Jheald (talk) 02:19, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jheald, yeah, that's perfect. Thanks! Jon Harald Søby (talk) 21:57, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

"List of" "Person"

The "person" property is no longer used; it is effectively replaced by "human". When there is no "instance of" "human" yet, "person" still has a function. However, lists of persons are no longer relevant because the "persons" they listed are increasingly rare.

I want to remove all of them. When people care for it, they can identify "is a list of" "human" and add qualifiers so that the query function in Reasonator can show off what we know in Wikidata. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 06:10, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Humans are persons, so it cannot be wrong to use is a list of (P360) person (Q215627) for lists of humans, albeit is a list of (P360)human (Q5) would be more accurate. So I don't think you should just delete statements of is a list of (P360) person (Q215627). Why don't you change the value to human (Q5) instead, when all persons on the list are humans? Regards, Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 10:30, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

In the old usage, a person is NOT a human. They may include lists and characters from books. So in my honest opinion deletions is obviously the best option.

Yes, a person is not necessarily a human, but a human is always a person. Therefore lists of humans are also lists of persons. There is thus no reason to delete statements saying is a list of (P360) person (Q215627). Change "person" to "human" if you know that there are only humans on the list, but don't delete the statement. Regards, Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 23:26, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

We can query for "is a list of" "human", we cannot query for "is a list of" "person". IMHO your position is theoretical not practical. We do use "is a list of" "human" to query in Reasonator; there are hundreds of examples for that. The person list only gives you the same garbage. GerardM (talk) 07:55, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

GerardM, frankly, I don't understand your argument at all. Reasonator is not a part of Wikidata. It is a nice tool, but we shouldn't delete valid data because of limititaions in a tool. That would make no sense to me. Regards, Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 10:55, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Do you seriously think that any more of this "valid" data would be created today, do you seriously think that anybody will appreciate it in any other way than as an artifact ? The fact that Reasonator is not part of Wikidata is ... questionable. It is however not a limitation of Reasonator that it shows garbage, it is an artifact of "valid" data. GerardM (talk) 19:53, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

There are two different issues here, one is the issue of validity, and the other one is the issue of utility. "Person" is an abstract concept and as such it is open to interpretation. It is clear that "human" belongs to the person set, but how many other entities will find a diversity of opinions. OTOH, the class "human" is grounded on its real instances, both define each other so there is less room for confusion. Should users be able to look for "person" and find humans and everything else that might be considered a person? Yes, but to achieve that the software has to get much better at inferring relationships, and that it is still far away in the future. For now it should be enough with the link human-person (which already exists).

Regarding utility, there is no doubt that "human" is more frequently used in statements, so it is more useful to query for that value. However I agree with Dipsacus fullonum that if some items have been identified as "person", they won't show up in any list. So perhaps it is a good idea to review the items that have "instance of:person" and correct them if necessary before switching the lists to "human".--Micru (talk) 20:33, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Who is going to do this.. SERIOUSLY ? We have better things to do. GerardM (talk) 05:21, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

@GerardM: I did it, seriously :) Now it is safe to change the lists to "human", because there are no "instance of:person" left, other than in the classes, where it belongs.--Micru (talk) 12:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

General proposal for names

Don't continue the discussion here but use the RfC Wikidata:Requests_for_comment/How_to_deal_with_given_names_and_surnames. 141.6.11.15 16:00, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Conversation moved per request of anon.--Micru (talk) 12:41, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Badges for Wikivoyage

I started the discussion at the Wikivoyage Lounge at Meta, meta:Wikivoyage/Lounge#Badges, because this is in the first instance business of Wikivoyage communities, but I think it is fair also to leave a link here for those who are interested.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:30, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

"#sitelink-special" Section Title

Question reported from Italian Bar. Last section title of the sitelinks is "Pages on other sites linked to this item". I think to edit italian translation with: "Pages on other projects linked to this item", or "Pages on other Wikimedia projects linked to this item". No 'generic' sites are supposed to be added, just Wikimedia site! Do you agree and think to edit also English and international version? Thank you! --FRacco (talk) 11:30, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

I know the new interface will solve the problem, but till that time... --FRacco (talk) 11:30, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

+1, ofc not the most important thing right now :) --Stryn (talk) 13:56, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Letter petitioning WMF to reverse recent decisions

The Wikimedia Foundation recently created a new feature, "superprotect" status. The purpose is to prevent pages from being edited by elected administrators -- but permitting WMF staff to edit them. It has been put to use in only one case: to protect the deployment of the Media Viewer software on German Wikipedia, in defiance of a clear decision of that community to disable the feature by default, unless users decide to enable it.

If you oppose these actions, please add your name to this letter. If you know non-Wikimedians who support our vision for the free sharing of knowledge, and would like to add their names to the list, please ask them to sign an identical version of the letter on change.org.

• Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer
• Letter on change.org

-- JurgenNL (talk) 17:35, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Banner for the Main page

Hey all! We're almost ready for the new Main page to go live, and I would love your help deciding which of the following two banners should be featured. For those who missed the initial announcements about having a banner, please see Wikidata:Portal_Redesign/Banner for further details. We are aiming to have our decision by next week, so please submit your votes or feedback by August 20th 16:00 UTC. Cheers. -Thepwnco (talk) 21:51, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Banner #1

Welcome to Wikidata,

the free knowledge base with 114,785,230 data items that anyone can edit

Introducing Wikidata •

Project Chat •

Community Portal •

Help

linked

multilingual

open

collaborative

structured

centralized

Banner #2

Welcome to Wikidata,
the free knowledge base with 114,785,230 data items that anyone can edit

Introducing Wikidata •

Project Chat •

Community Portal •

Help

linked

multilingual

open

collaborative

structured

centralized

Only these two? I liked the variant currently used in the draft you posted here recently better, especially as the vertical sections are colored in the WMF colors, while the different tones of blue used here now confuse me (the banner #1 design is still better than #2, though). --YMS (talk) 09:00, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

PS: In all cases, the banners might have to be crafted more precisely in the end. I can't click my own like to "draft" in my previous post, as one of the divs overlaps with it. And in the draft itself, the banner does not cover the whole black box on the top, while the word "multilingual" is not completely inside the banner (all with Firefox 31.0 on Windows 7, if that matters). --YMS (talk) 09:05, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

User:YMS is correct, the div's height needs to be corrected to render stuff below it clickable. I've fixed it on here and made some suggestions on the banner page; perhaps we should keep feedback centralized over there. SweetNightmares (talk) 15:37, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Regarding the draft: It looks to code-y and Matrix-y and 1999-esque to attract users imho. SweetNightmares (talk) 15:40, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

• Banner#1 is much clearer, for separation of content from background. My only concern is that the anchor/links are using whitish-underlined text, which is very non-standard. Unclicked links should be the default blue, if at all possible.
  (sidenote: @Thepwnco: Are we meant to leave our feedback here, or at Wikidata talk:Portal Redesign/Banner, or elsewhere? The Newsletter just pointed to Wikidata:Portal Redesign/Banner#Candidates, and that doesn't even mention feedback! Someone should leave some pointers. ;) Quiddity (talk) 18:15, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Prefer #1 Zellfaze (talk) 20:31, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Process ideas for software development

Hello,

I am notifying you that a brainstorming session has been started on Meta to help the Wikimedia Foundation increase and better affect community participation in software development across all wiki projects. Basically, how can you be more involved in helping to create features on Wikimedia projects? We are inviting all interested users to voice their ideas on how communities can be more involved and informed in the product development process at the Wikimedia Foundation.

I and the rest of my team welcome you to participate. We hope to see you on Meta.

Kind regards, -- Rdicerb (WMF) talk 22:15, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!

The new Main page is coming!

Hi all,

This is an announcement to say that the new Wikidata Main page is almost ready to launch! Please have a look at Wikidata:Portal_Redesign/draft to see what it will look like and to leave any last-minute concerns before it goes live early next week. You can leave feedback by replying to this message or by editing a new section I've created specifically for the purpose: Wikidata_talk:Portal_Redesign/draft#Final_feedback_can_be_left_here

Layout and design changes
Please also see Wikidata:Portal_Redesign/Summary_of_Feedback for a summary of general feedback related to the Main page redesign. Some of the feedback has since been addressed and therefore the current draft will not reflect some of the comments.

Banner
We're going to launch with the black banner (as is featured currently on the draft page). A summary of the feedback related to the proposed banners which provides some context for this decision can be found at Wikidata:Portal_Redesign/Banner#Summary_of_all_feedback. Please keep in mind that the banner is not intended to be permanent. It can be changed at a later time and substituted with a new banner (or banners), as was stated from the beginning of the redesign process.

Featured content
You may notice that there is a new "Discover" section which is intended to showcase innovative applications and contributions from the Wikidata community. The Wikidata tempo-spatial display tool is slated to be the first featured content. Please note that this too is only temporary and that the section's content will be updated regularly as per discussions found on Wikidata:WikiProject_Interesting_Content. If you are interested in helping out with the task of collecting and coordinating featured content for the Main page, you are very much encouraged to join the WikiProject—or just to drop by to suggest content :)

Languages & translation
The new Main page will be translated using the Translate Extension (the <translate> tags will be added once the page is live). As you may notice on the draft page, the language links now take up a lot less space than they did previously, yet *hopefully* are still prominent enough that they communicate that Wikidata is a multilingual project. If you have concerns about this approach or better suggestions for how to handle the language lists, please leave a comment.

Cheers. -Thepwnco (talk) 22:29, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this :) The main page looks like an improvement on the original. Del_♉sion23 (talk) 18:22, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Translations of monolingual-text properties

Monolingual-text property motto text (P1451) raised some questions about schemes to provide translations in languages other than the language associated to the property value. It seems necessary to provide translations from the original language in cases like:

1. the "monolingual" language differs from the language that most users will seek: Canada's motto is Latin ( A Mari Usque Ad Mare) while its translations in the country's official languages are much more commonly used: D'un océan à l'autre (French) and From Sea to Sea (English);
2. the "monolingual" language is non alphabetical (ᓄᓇᕗᑦ ᓴᙱᓂᕗᑦ for Nunavut).

I initially defined multiple instances of the property, using preferred ranking to highlight the "original language" version. Fralambert proposed to rather use a single property value, and use qualifiers for its translations, something like a "translation" property (another monolingual-text property?) for each translation deemed applicable. Does anyone know if such a qualifier already exists? Or propose other schemes?

Actually having to supply translations for monolingual-text properties somewhat defeats the purpose of the type. Can anyone shed some light of the rationale behind the creation of that type? I know earlier discussions touched this subject. LaddΩ chat ;) 23:20, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

@Laddo: related discussion in this RfC. We should extend its scope. Shortly, I guess labels of an item can be translations, where the original script of a Chinese name has to be a monolingual value. Maybe pin yin tranliterations also. But let's continue on the RfC. TomT0m ^(talk) 09:17, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

For those interested, it seems that the "multilingual" datatype was explicitly designed to provide translations for properties. A qualifier of multilingual type would fulfill this purpose on monolingual text properties. LaddΩ chat ;) 23:40, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

ISO-639 properties

Hi there. I want to add metadata from the ISO 639-1–3 standards. My first impression is we'd need these language properties:

Property	Data Type	Description	Notes
ISO 639-1 code	String	identifier for a language defined in ISO 639-1.	✓ exists.
ISO 639-2 code	String	identifier for a language defined in ISO 639-2.	✓ exists.
ISO 639-3 code	String	identifier for a language defined in ISO 639-3.	✓ exists.
Wikimedia language code	String	language code as used by Wikimedia projects.	✓ exists.
number of speakers	Quantity	number of people who speak a language.	✓ exists; from Ethnologue.
part of	Item	subject is a part of that object.	✓ exists; used for the language family.
ISO 639-2/B code	String	bibliographic identifier for a language defined in ISO 639-2.	✘ doesn't exist yet.
ISO 639 scope	String/Item?	the language scope as defined by the ISO 639 standards.	✘ doesn't exist yet; see Scope of denotation for language identifiers. Valid values: individual, dialect, macrolanguage, collection, reserved, special.
ISO 639 type	String/Item?	the language type as defined by the ISO 639 standards.	✘ doesn't exist yet; see Types of individual languages. Valid values: living, extinct, ancient, history, constructed.

It looks like we'd need to create three new properties. So a few newbie questions:

• Do we need a separate property for the ISO 639-2 bibliographic code, or should we just add both codes to the ISO 639-2 code property?
• The ISO 639 scope and ISO 639 type properties are conceptually enumerated types. Should they be [a] string values, [b] Item values like ISO 639 macrolanguage, or [c] should each language use is instance of with a type and scope Item?

Thanks! —Pathoschild 22:17, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Re b) I'd use item values, not strings. Re a) I do not know what the bibliograhic code is. Could you explain? --Denny (talk) 22:32, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Re bibliographic codes — when they introduced ISO 639-2, many applications had already been using an older list of language codes. Rather than break backwards compatibility, they decided that the 22 languages with a different older code would simply have two equivalent codes. This meant that before exchanging language data, applications had to first agree on which list they'd use (legacy ISO 639-2/B or standard ISO 639-2/T). This was pretty awkward and I don't know if any modern applications still use ISO 639-2/B codes, but they're still officially part of the standard. (See What are the differences between the terminology and bibliographic codes in the ISO 639-2 standard?) —Pathoschild 23:02, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

How about ISO 639-4 (retired) 639-5 (group codes) both compatible (i.e. not overlapping) with the ISO-639-2 and 3 codes?

How about ISO 639-6 four letter codes?

--109.44.1.9 21:00, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

You're welcome to add those too, but I focused on ISO 639-1–3 because they cover individual languages. ISO 639-5 is for language families and ISO 639-6 is for language variants, so I think importing those is really two separate projects. ISO 639-1–3 are more widely adopted (including by Wikimedia), so adding them to Wikidata also has the most impact. —Pathoschild 00:36, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Another breaking change in update

• "Error: Unknown dependency: wikibase.parsers"

Guys, since some other people began to use your API, please, provide sufficient information during updates about such changes. -- Vlsergey (talk) 11:23, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

@Vlsergey: Excuse me what are you talking about ? This seriously lacks context :) Which API, which language (PHP lua ?), which code ? Public or private API ? and I guess you want to post on WD:DEVS. TomT0m ^(talk) 11:30, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about that. It is JavaScript module (i.e. module for ResourceLoader) that WAS available on client wikis as part of Wikidata Client extension. Currently all JavaScript gadgets that requires "wikibase.parsers" are failed to load (and also prevent other modules from loading... but i will fix that). -- Vlsergey (talk) 14:03, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi, breaking changes are always reports to wikidata-tech with advanced warning with regards to deployment. They are usually announced before even being merged really. It is recommened people subscribe to that list if they are running bots, maintaining modules, want to just keep to keep date with the technical changes etc. John F. Lewis (talk) 15:00, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

@John F. Lewis: i checked the archives since june 2014 and found nothing about deployments of new version of wikibase client on ruwiki neither about changes in JavaScript modules. No change history, not even the alarm that client extension is going to be updated. -- Vlsergey (talk) 01:43, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

NEW : Gadget labelLister, list headers of an item in all language

I've just launch a new beta version of labelLister that allow you to change several language at one go. You just need to click on a value, then edit it, then save your change.

To activate the beta mode, click on "Labels list" tab then click on "go to beta version".

Cordialy, --Jitrixis (talk) 14:59, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

• @Jitrixis: it would be nice if your gadget could be called from other projects (not only from wikidata) and also from JavaScript directly (to integrate in other gadgets), passing enity id as argument. -- Vlsergey (talk) 01:45, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

How to apply property winner to the winner?

Currently the property winner (P1346) is applied on the event/competition to show who won that event.

What can be applied to the competitor/prticipant to show what event was won?

The winner (P1346) has been applied with both meanings including by myself. Luckily since it is a new property it has not spread too far yet. See this list [7]

I also propose to rename the property to something like "winner of this event". This should make it more obvious to understand in what direction the property works.

RolandBeck (talk) 21:58, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

An unrelated question

How is Wikidata’s interproject links currently handling a "HI! america is both north america and south america, but this project has 1 article about it all, and another one has two. what to do??" sort of situations? I have, somewhat long time ago, seen some similar situation due to language issues. I imagine it could also come up in Wiktionary where each word has a few meanings (and hence a few interproject links — one for each meaning, for instance). --Gryllida 14:19, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

It doesn't. Wikidata would have three items for that - America, North America, and South America. If the individual Wikipedias would want to link to anything else then the exact match, they can still do so locally. --Denny (talk) 16:53, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Property:P772

The Property:P772 format is set to \d{5} but there are three types of valid formats: \d{2}, \d{5} and \d{11}. this "format" violations are correct. --Kizar (talk) 09:43, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Copied to Property talk:P772#Property:P772 format. I'll respond over there. Multichill (talk) 09:57, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Picking up speed with structured data support for Commons + office hour

Hey folks :)

We're starting to pick up speed with structured data support for Commons now and I'm very excited about this. We can help improve Commons so much through structured data. It'd be great to have you all on board for this. Fabrice has sent a long email with details and links to planning documents: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/multimedia/2014-August/000774.html. I hope to see many of you interested in multimedia at the office hour on September 3rd.

PS: Let me know if there is demand for another office hour for general Wikidata things unrelated to multimedia.

Cheers --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:23, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Redirect

Maybe is necessary to decide how to use redirect. Discussion here --ValterVB (talk) 15:32, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

My question is whether admins can start refusing deletion requests in favor of redirects.--Jasper Deng (talk) 19:10, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I think, Jasper Deng and ValterVB we should discuss this matter here and not over there. --Succu (talk) 19:20, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

How about this: a duplicate item (which has been merged) may be deleted when it is new enough (let's say less than a week), because it is unlikely to be used/linked/otherwise relied on by external users. In my opinion, we should ensure internally that no item references a duplicate by fixing claims etc, but we cannot ensure external users do that. I think it is up to those external users whether they want to update references they have stored or to resolve redirects dynamically by querying Wikidata. whym (talk) 03:07, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't see the usefulness of deleting even if the item is new. Everyono will have to handle redirects in their Wikidata code as of now, so it's useless to delete. TomT0m ^(talk) 07:51, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

What if someone creates mistakenly a duplicate item. Then we will just turn it to a redirect? --Stryn (talk) 13:59, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, one situation, one solution :) Unless there is a clear outcome not to. I guess the only risk is invalid revert of the merge, we should watch the item un-redirection carefully. TomT0m ^(talk) 19:10, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

How should we deal with an item that represents a wikipedia page, but this page has been redirected. Should the item be deleted or redirected as well? How would I initiate a redirect? Example History of North Bengal(Q5865700) in got redirected to History of Bengal(Q2638978) RolandBeck (talk) 09:13, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

It's not a duplicate, it's a «Bonny and Clyde» like problem. I say we can't really redirect. Now that the API hadles aritcle redirect wikipedia article, I say it is fine to keep it, as it is a subject in itsef. TomT0m ^(talk) 11:49, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but there should be a way to show under languages in the wikipedias, that articles in further languages about a very similar item are existing. Links should point directly to the articles in the further wikipedias. Or a one and only link should point to a list of links. --Diwas (talk) 23:26, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Ontology

New Wikidata:WikiProject Ontology started for discussing matters about structure, properties, etc.--Micru (talk) 22:25, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Report on differences between birth dates and Wikidata

Hello, I just started my bot to report on differences in birth dates that has been harvested from three Wikipedias [1] you can find it in here, The number in parentheses means number of wikis which agree on this birth date. Obviously as the number is bigger the more it seems to be correct. You can use this report on fixing wrong birth dates in your wiki.

[1]: English, German and Italian Wikipedia. I designed it to handle more reports but I couldn't find any big wiki that uses Person data template or similar template widely. If I'm wrong please inform me to implement them too. Best Amir (talk) 14:49, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I've had a quick look only at User:Ladsgroup/Birth_date_report2/99: there are a few cases where all three wikipedias agree, but wikidata is off. I suggest to collect those separately, as they should be easier to fix. --Marcol-it (talk) 18:55, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Maybe you did not get the news; this is the first iteration. Let us FIRST work with it a bit and let experience guide us. GerardM (talk) 19:55, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Maybe you did not get the news, we're discussing a user conduct policy. I guess he did work a little be and reports his experience to build the second iteration. TomT0m ^(talk) 20:22, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

@Amir : three wrongs won't make a right… maybe these wikipedias have copied each other… ;)

I've encountered several French authors, for which Persondata gave a wrong date - date checked in France, with French sources (BNF & Sudoc, but also Leonore)… it would be interesting also to check the sources of the wp different values…

maybe, instead of guessing using the nb of pedias that give a certain value, we should try and find in other sources (like library Authority files, preferably the authoritative library in the person's country, which is likely to have access to the best sources — local newspapers, necrologies… what do you think ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 22:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

You're right, I didn't mean it's okay to blindly change dates in wikidata that are different than the three others, they surely need to be checked against reliable sources. about the outside source, If they are linked to Wikidata somehow it's possible to run the check and even correcting them automatically (if the outside database is a reliable source) the best thing I can recall is freebase but because it's not reliable doesn't matter we check it or not.Amir (talk) 22:36, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

@Hsarrazin: heuristic (Q201413)    has proven to be a really good way to know what to start with (compared to go randomly through a huge list). Of course it can point to potential mistakes, if we have a good heuristic, it does not change anything to the verification of a single date. We do not have THAT much manpower :) TomT0m ^(talk) 07:59, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

ok, I had understood it the other way round… several values on wikidata, some of them from some wikis, some from other wikis — I encountered the case several times… :)

is there a way to indicate items that have been corrected ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 21:41, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

I guss if a date have been verified and sourced, if there is no sources for the other one they can be deleted. Rank the sourced one preferred also anyway. Maybe Ladsgroup can suggest a mechanism to exclude items from the list. TomT0m ^(talk) 13:16, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I can work on sources in Wikidata. You'll have the enhanced report soon. Amir (talk) 16:16, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

About the talk about the three wikipedia and when wikidata is off, I think the word "separately" is causing this. It's not separate, it's a part of it now we have the report and only thing we need to do is filtering most prioritized one to check sooner than others (specially when this report is really big). Maybe someone thinks when German is off and the other three agree is the most important one. Getting sub-reports depends on people and their preferences. I will make a list of what I'm asked :) Amir (talk) 22:36, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

User:Ladsgroup/Birth date report2.1 is report on 3 wikipedias against wikidata Amir (talk) 15:53, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

just tried to see the first list and Thomas Robert Malthus (Q13526) : the wrong birth value is indicated with "imported from enwiki" - but the value on enwiki is right (and I fetched it with Wikidata usefuls) - what's the origin of the pb ? the bot was wrong ? or enwiki was wrong on 2014-04-13 ? so, what do we do in these cases (when the cited source gives another value than the sourced one) : just erase the wrong value ? mark it as deprecated ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 22:06, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Please note that the English article en:Thomas Robert Malthus have different values for birth and death in the infobox and in the persondata template, so the bot was not wrong, it just not indicated from which template it harvested the data. Maybe the birth date report could be extended to also report conflicting values within the same Wikipedia. I am certain the Wikipedians would like such reports for their Wikipedias. Regards, Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 22:25, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes !! and, eventually, when wikipedias will use wikidata-fed templates on their boxes, that kind of contradictory values in the same article should disappear ;) --Hsarrazin (talk) 07:13, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Report 2.1 is now colored, red means no source for the statement in Wikidata, yellow means source is P143 (probably Wikipedia), and otherwise it's green. I also published version Report 2.2 which is version 2.1 but imprecise dates are filtered out. And Report 2.3 which is version 2 with filtered out imprecise dates. i.e.

Version	Colored?	Wikidata against 3 WPs	With imprecise dates?
Report 2	No	No	Yes
Report 2.1	Yes	Yes	Yes
Report 2.2	Yes	Yes	No
Report 2.3	Yes	No	No

I'm looking forward to your comments. Amir (talk) 06:18, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, that really helps to sort the issues… :) - though I would have preferred another colour than green, as green is code for "OK", which it is not, in this precise case ;) --Hsarrazin (talk) 20:21, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

In User:Ladsgroup/Birth date report2.3/1 it states the Italian Wikipedia gives the date of Isaac Newton's birth as "1642-12-25". I disagree on two points. First, the Italian Wikipedia, in the main body of the article, gives the date as "25 dicembre 1642". Written in this form, it could be interpreted as either the Julian or Gregorian calendar. But when written in the form "1642-12-25" it is likely to be interpreted as being in the ISO 8601 format, especially considering Wikidata's widespread use of that standard. Dates which conform to ISO 8601 always use the Gregorian calendar, or the proleptic Gregorian calendar, so that reformatting created a change in meaning.

Second, the Italian Wikipedia provides a footnote for the date. I don't understand Italian, but relying on similar words between English and Italian, the footnote seems to say that 25 dicembre 1642 is the Julian calendar date and 4 gennaio 1643 (that is, 4 January 1643) is the Gregorian birth date. So your summary seems to have misquoted the Italian Wikipedia. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:11, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Good points, Since the harvesting is being made by bot so things like that happen but it can be avoided. e.g. If Italian Wikipedia starts using Gregorian dates on their bio template to be more standard or somehow mark these Julian dates in a standard wayAmir (talk) 08:46, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

For events that take place in countries that used the Julian calendar at the time of the event, it is standard to list the Julian calendar. Marking the dates as Julian in a standard way would take decades, due to the large number of dates that have already been entered. Perhaps your bot should ignore people who were born before 1924, since the most recent switch from Julian to Gregorian was in Greece in 1923. (There are more recent adoptions of the Gregorian calendar, but the previous calendar was not Julian and those dates that are neither Gregorian nor Julian are not used in Wikipedia templates.) I plan to find a page about bots and propose this restriction. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:48, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Fixing things

Hoi, Every now and again I find things that are clearly wrong.. Often they have sources.. For instance I found people who were marked as an MP and this was the disambiguation page. There are two options and both have enough room to be shouted at. I can remove all those references to disambiguation pages. I can do nothing.

As it is I regularly add people as being an MP of one or other parliament.. My preference is to remove all links to the disambiguation pages and add people as MP one parliament at a time. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 08:18, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

There is also a third option which is better: Fix whatever you see is wrong. For instance if something wrongly points to an item for a disambiguation page, it is better to fix the target than to remove the statement. Regards, Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 13:11, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata query query building templates

Hi all, just an announcemnt, I started working on templates to build Wikidata queries : see {{WDQ}}

It's not complete yet, but here is a sample possible query (inspired from a discussion on

• {{WDQ|{{WDQ/All|{{WDQ/instances|Q8274529}}|{{WDQ/instances|Q16970}}}}||church with a national patrimonial status}}

churches with a national patrimonial status

It refers to all the items who are both instances of class A Swiss cultural property of national significance (Q8274529) and church (Q16970). (@Zolo, Fralambert: you could be interested) TomT0m ^(talk) 19:00, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't know totally how it will resolve our diferrent about heritage designation (P1435), but it is a excellent initiative! Note that I was trying of program with your template CLAIM[31:(Tree[2065736][][279])] and claim[17:16] AND CLAIM[31:(Tree[16970][][279])] (Al churches of Canada with a heritage status), and it not really work. --Fralambert (talk) 21:41, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

@Fralambert: Which code exactly ? Did you use the subtemplates or just tried the raw string ? I will have to do some string escaping to help the mediawiki parser. TomT0m ^(talk) 08:48, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

it said every software developer shall create it's own compiler and it's own XML-over-SQL abstraction. Sorry, but original looks better. -- Vlsergey (talk) 05:37, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

@Vlsergey: Any useful comment ? The main advantage I see is to be able to express higher level constructions like easily add a clause about all the instances of a class. The ability to indent is also a good thing for readability. TomT0m ^(talk) 08:48, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

@TomT0m: well, "just don't do it". Consider it as advice, since there is no way to prohibit you from doing anything like that. And may be I shouldn't. I believe there is a lot information in Internet why you shall not invent your own bicycle, your own compiler and your own XML-over-SQL (templates-over-WDQ). Couple of those things includes: much worse readability; less error-proof; requirement to know both WDQ and templates to build them; requirement to reconstruct in head templates-arguments tree and compare it (in user mind) with plain OR N-dimensional query structure. Use XPath for tree-selection, SQL-alike for tables selection, templates for, you know, for text formatting. Higher level constructions shall be added to WDQ itself, and indent can be done at WDQ as well. -- Vlsergey (talk) 20:14, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Not very convicing, a request assuming some meaning to relations of the database will nether be implemented in the SQL standard. You're saying every problem in computing is solvable by a better assembler language. TomT0m ^(talk) 09:18, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

"XPath for tree-selection, SQL-alike for tables selection, templates for, you know, for text formatting"... there is nothing about asembler. But I can include it as well: "use Java for enterprise, C for core services, C/assembler for drivers"... Every task has good instruments and bad instruments. There is no universal instrument and MediaWiki templates are not universal as well. Templates, due to their hierarchical structure are not good for representing database query. Regarding "meaning to relations of the database" -- knowing that some property can be considered as tree-based, single function on WDQ side (expanding single item to tree using some property, like TREE(Q123,P31) ) will be much more compact and powerfull. Also it can include additional parameters like "levels to search". As you can see, you don't need to know about Wikidata business logic to express quite complex queries. -- Vlsergey (talk) 10:02, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Templates, due to their hierarchical structure are not good for representing database query Let's have fun, don't a query made of subqueris do not have a hierarchical structure ? Enough Trolling for me. TomT0m ^(talk) 12:00, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Redundancy in statements due to qualifiers

We're starting to have a lot of redundancy in statements due to an excessive (?) use of qualifiers. An example: Mr. Gimlet is the president of Tramtaria. It is noted on Gimlet's personal item with the property position held (P39) and the value "President of Tramtaria" (or "list of presidents of Tramtaria", see discussion above, or just "president" with a qualifier of (P642) and a value Tramtaria). Anyway, the statement has qualifiers start time (P580), end time (P582) (novalue), replaces (P1365), replaced by (P1366) (novalue) and maybe some others. The same information will be noted in the Tramtaria's item by a head of state (P35) statement, with the same qualifiers. And once more in the "President of Tramtaria" item, as a officeholder (P1308) statement, again with the same qualifiers. All three statements should be ranked as preferred. Later a new president is elected in Tramtaria; all three items should be updated. A human user probably will change the statement one of the items (rank, end time (P582), replaced by (P1366)), assuming the new data will appear everywhere. They won't, and probably not even a constraint check would show that there's some inconsistency in the database. --Shlomo (talk) 15:23, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Redundancy is very problematic as of now. Editors should not be required to change the same information/relation at multiple places in the database. The main problem, in my opinion, is the use of inverse properties, which promote data redundancy. This prevents statements from being updated efficiently and prevents references from being added to statements efficiently. I also propose that head of state (P35) and head of government (P6) use the position instead of the individuals holding those positions. The list of all people who have held or are currently holding the position can be fetched from the position held (P39) statements from each individual. As part of this model, properties like officeholder (P1308) and office held by head of government (P1313) should be deleted, as they introduce data redundancy. —Wylve (talk) 16:02, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Multiple difficulties here:

• One difficulty is to broadcast the "recommended" data scheme;
• Typically I've tried to put some usage info in the "description" field of property talk pages (see Property talk:P6 for example), but again the same info needs to be put in multiple property talk pages... We shall eventually be able to attach properties to properties themselves; a "usage" property might be created for all properties.
• In the mean time, one possibility is to ensure that our showcase items present the recommended set of properties, but these items are not too well-known either. Possibly refer to those on the new Main Page? We should just make sure that the few "politician" showcase items, Nelson Mandela (Q8023), Barack Obama (Q76) and Mahatma Gandhi (Q1001), are well formatted, though.
• Once WD can provide easy data queries, we can get rid of inverse properties.

LaddΩ chat ;) 22:40, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Pages loading time

Germany (Q183). Loading time (no debug mode, no gadgets, Windows 7, iCore i5 / 64 Gb, Firefox stable): 40 (forty) seconds. Also Firefox asked twice if I would like to stop JQuery JS execution. I believe this is inappropriate. Well, 1Mb per page (257991 in GZip) doesn't look nice neither. -- Vlsergey (talk) 21:35, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

• It would be very nice if someone will also try to add "23 May 1949" as start time (P580) qualifier value to flag image (P41) of Germany (Q183). I can't do it not from Wikidata interface neither from gadgets via API. Suppose because of entity size. -- Vlsergey (talk) 04:05, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Tried to open Germany (Q183) using Firefox, I didn't succeed even after denying 5 times that scripts were to be stopped. Lymantria (talk) 05:43, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

• It is really amazing how poorly browsers perform with Wikidata or very long pages on Wikipedia. Just out of interest is this more a problem of Wikipedia or the browsers? I also tried opening a 10 mb Wikidata dump file recently and Gedit too has problems with that. Is that the point where one should go shopping for a server CPU with 12 cores? -Tobias1984 (talk) 12:16, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Non-interactivity

• If somebody changes interwikis at Wikidata, would that change be visible to someone on any the affected local projects, either if an affected page were on their watchlist, or even if they were watching RecentChanges? Frankly, it's harrowing to think that such an important thing would not be locally visible.
• If somebody looks at a page and sees something missing from its interwiki list, it should be trivially easy for them to add it. Without making a career out of figuring out a new project (Wikidata) and without being forced to use the POS VE interface.

If these are in fact both problems — and I'd be pleasantly surprised if they weren't — are there even any plans to fix them? (Frankly, if they are problems, they should have been fixed before rolling out Wikidata. Bitter comment half-supressed here about the WMF's lack of wisdom.) --Pi zero (talk) 14:28, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Both actually exist in the interface. The first point; on RecentChanges; there is a 'Show Wikidata' options among the 'Show Bots, 'Hide Anonymous Users' and 'Hide Minor Edit' options. The second point; is possible as on all pages as there is an 'edit links' button. Whether this still shows the pop up or just redirects to Wikidata now, I do not know but it exists. John F. Lewis (talk) 14:34, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm, as promised, pleasantly surprised. (Naturally atm showing the Wikidata stuff floods RC since everything's new, but that should settle down over time.) --Pi zero (talk) 14:52, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

@John F. Lewis: The option exists, but it still doesn't work when you check "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent"... — Ayack (talk) 17:33, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Disambiguations ≠ Names

I feel that there is a big problem that should be solved early:

Many entities about disambiguation pages contain the statement: instance of (P31):given name (Q202444). This is wrong. The entity is about one or more wikipedia disambiguation pages and not the name.

For example Julia (Q225030) is a disambiguation and Julia (Q2737173) is a name. Entities about persons should point given name (P735) to the later and not the former.

It would save a lot of later trouble if we remove all instance of (P31):given name (Q202444) from all entities that also have instance of (P31):Wikimedia disambiguation page (Q4167410).

If needed, entities about the names can be created. But we should not point other entities to disambiguations. In fact, disambiguations should not have any other statement, and other entities should not point to them. -geraki ^talk 08:38, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

These problem are resulting from Wikidata Game. But there is also one more related problem, sometimes there is a difference between wikis, when some wiki connected to one item has real article about given name (or surname) and another has just disambiguation or even some border case (disambiguation with one sentence about given name or surname. --Jklamo (talk) 08:52, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe it is from Wikidata Game but from:

1. wikis that were categorizing disambiguations into categories about names. This was the case (for a short period) in el.wikipedia.
2. users who want to put given name (P735) in some person. They point to the disambig and they put instance of (P31):given name (Q202444) on it, instead of creating another entity about the name.
3. and of course wrong interwiki.

-geraki ^talk 08:57, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

There was problem in enwikipedia, where almost all articles about names have some {{disambig}} template (e.g. Amalie (Q4739413)) JAn Dudík (talk) 11:25, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Maybe the following could help us sort them out:

• pages marked "disambiguation" in Wikipedia should only be linked to "disambiguation" items
• disambiguation items shouldn't be used in statements
• disambiguation items shouldn't include "instance of: given name"
• items for first names should be created (for use in P735). They can include interwikis to articles about first names (but not disambiguation pages).

There is work to do .. --- Jura 03:34, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Also see https://bitbucket.org/magnusmanske/wikidata-game/issue/47/disambiguation-pages-are-not-anthroponymy on this (Wikidata tagging issue) and Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2014/05#What_statement_.28instance_of.29_to_use_for_anthroponymy_articles.3F. Basically the Wikidata game decided to treat name articles different from the English Wikipedia manual of style. --Bthfan (talk) 07:17, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

we have Wikimedia set index article (Q15623926) for enwiki's set index articles. but i don't know if it is used by Magnus' game. Holger1959 (talk) 07:33, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

I think this issue is a little more complicated than we're letting on. What happens if one Wikipedia separates the article about the name from the disambiguation page while another wiki puts them all in one? Where should the interwiki links be stored to make things clearer to users and readers? How do we connect the two items? Also, sometimes wikis have a disambiguation pages devoted to people with a certain given name, in addition to the general disambiguation page... Cbrown1023 talk 02:34, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, in some way the goals of Wikipedia and Wikidata conflict here. Wikidata needs an item to be exactly about one topic, some Wikipedia authors/articles use interlanguage links in a "see also in [another language]" way. I think we may need some way in Wikipedia/Wikidata to point to other items/article links in a "see also" way. Interlanguage links of those items would then be displayed under the normal language links on a Wikipedia page. --Bthfan (talk) 18:54, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

• If one language mixes article elements into disambiguation pages, we should keep treating that as a disambiguation page. Otherwise articles in other languages keep getting mixed with disambiguation pages. Maybe we could find a way to link first name items from disambiguation items. That way languages that want to combine them, could do so. --- Jura 03:16, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

There are some language wikipedias which have separate articles about the name 'Julia' and the list of people with the name 'Julia'. There are cases where some wikipedias have articles which combine the two and label the result a 'disambiguation' page, often combined with wikipedia articles in other languages where they are not so labelled. In practical terms most of these 'given name' and 'family name' articles are 'class' items, grouping together a class of items which have a common characteristic (they all have the statement 'given name=>Julia' or 'named after=>Julia somebody'). They are not like disambiguation pages where the only common characteristic is a linguistic similarity.

• Rename the item to the family name
• delete the 'instance of=>disambiguation page' statement
• add a 'subclass of=>given name' statement

Filceolaire (talk) 06

49, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

A question about local badges marked with templates

So from tomorrow (28th on Wikipedia) it will be possible to get badges next to sitelinks via Wikidata, but how about the templates which are used to show local badges, e.g. on en-wiki they have {{Good article}}. Is it possible to get rid of those also and do it via Wikidata? Thanks! --Stryn (talk) 18:31, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

• it is possible if you have an extension like "footer-header", that can check wikidata and show the template. But the problem here that a lot of such templates includes semi-manual categorization, so it likely not be moved to this scheme in next years. -- Vlsergey (talk) 06:26, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Also, who should add the badges in the future to Wikidata? Is there any bot to do so? I think that local projects are responsible for adding them. I just think about that how many of users know that badges are coming from Wikidata. --Stryn (talk) 04:57, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

• Since badges is a free advertisement of the articles in foreign wikis, i believe all wikis will do it one or other way, for example using the same bot who moved good & featured articles templates all around. My bot can do it for ruwiki articles (import), for example. -- Vlsergey (talk) 06:26, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Template:Timeline

As it is not always easy to read data dispered in various properties, I have created {{Timeline}} that .. creates a timeline about an item. I have tried to provide relatively good internationalization support and translations would be welcome. Unfortunately, at the moment, it is a bit unwieldy, but it can be done at Module:Timeline + Module:Daterange.

Example: Barack Obama (Q76):

4 August 1961: birth in Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children, to Barack Obama Sr. (economist) and Stanley Ann Dunham (anthropologist)
1966-1967: studies at Noelani Elementary School
1967-1970: lives at Tebet
1970-1971: lives at Menteng
1970-1971: studies at State Elementary School Menteng 01, Menteng
1971-1979: lives at Honolulu
1971-1979: studies at Punahou School, Honolulu
1979-1981: lives at Los Angeles
1979-1981: studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles
-1980: nickname: Barry
1981-1985: lives at New York City
1981-1983: studies at Columbia University, Manhattan
-4 August 1982: country of citizenship: Kenya
1983-1984: works for Business International Corporation
1985-20 January 2009: lives at Chicago
1985-1988: occupation: community organizer
1985-1985: works for New York Public Interest Research Group
1988-1991: studies at Harvard University, Cambridge
1988-1991: studies at Harvard Law School, Cambridge
1991-1991: works for Sidley Austin
1991-: occupation: lawyer
3 October 1992-: spouse: Michelle Obama
1995-: occupation: political writer
1997-2002: studies at University of Chicago Law School
8 January 1997-4 November 2004: member of the State Senate of Illinois
2005: NAACP Image Award – Chairman's Award
2005: Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording
2005: nominated for: Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording
2005: participant in: commencement at the Knox College
3 January 2005-3 January 2007: United States senator
8 February 2006: Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording
2007: NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Nonfiction
2007: nominated for: NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Nonfiction
3 January 2007-16 November 2008: United States senator
2008: Phoenix Award
2008: Financial Times Person of the Year
-2008: religion or worldview: Congregational churches
2008: Time Person of the Year
4 November 2008-20 January 2009: President-elect of the United States
2009: Nobel Peace Prize
2009: participant in: commencement at the University of Notre Dame
2009: King Abdulaziz Medal
20 January 2009-20 January 2017: lives at White House
20 January 2009-20 January 2017: President of the United States
2012: Time Person of the Year
27 August 2012-: Reddit username: PresidentObama
6 December 2012: image: President Barack Obama.jpg
21 March 2013: Presidential Medal of Distinction
2014: mass: 180 pound
28 April 2014: Order of Sikatuna
2016: German Media Award
March 2016: height: 187 centimetre
March 2016: mass: 80 kilogram
March 2016: height: 1.85 metre
2017: Profile in Courage Award
20 January 2017-: Facebook username: POTUS44
20 January 2017-: lives at Kalorama
24 September 2019: X username: POTUS44
26 September 2020: Goodreads author ID: 6356
8 December 2020: YouTube channel ID: UCdn86UYrf54lXfVli9CB6Aw
5 February 2021: social media followers: 129,049,397
22 March 2021: X username: BarackObama
3 July 2021: social media followers: 576,000
2022: Audie Award for Narration by the Author or Authors
21 February 2022: social media followers: 130,859,182
March 2022: medical condition: COVID-19
3 September 2022: Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Narrator
31 October 2022: on focus list of Wikimedia project: Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
4 February 2023: social media followers: 133,309,684
22 March 2023: social media followers: 582,000
6 April 2024: social media followers: 590,000
27 September 2024: Instagram username: barackobama
--Zolo (talk) 19:55, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Nice! Did you know that mw:Extension:EasyTimeline is installed here? You could feed it to that. Multichill (talk) 20:36, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Looks good, but: I see dates in french, some statements in czech and some in english and values in czech. English is acceptable as fallback, but french dates are not very popular :-)JAn Dudík (talk) 06:41, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

@Multichill: I did not know the extension, I'll try to see about it.

@JAn Dudík:, forgot to remove a test. Fixed now, and most translations from Commons:Template:Other date added. I do not know if they are the best possible though (for the French ones, I tweaked it a little bit so that it is more correct). --Zolo (talk) 07:51, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

@Multichill: I had a quick try at Module talk:Timeline/Sandbox but I don't get why the text is garbled. On the whole, I am afraid the extension is not very convenient to use from a Lua module. --Zolo (talk) 21:19, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

@Erik Zachte:: Any ideas? Multichill (talk) 21:25, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Infobox classes

I want to do some tests about data-based infoboxes, and imported Module:Infobox from fr.wikipedia. However, as shown in Template:Infobox Human/Test instead of a nice, narrow, infobox, I get an ugly bar that takes up all the page's width. I think this is because Wikidata does not recognize the class used for the infobox div (infobox v3), but I do not know how to solve it. Does anyone know how it works ? Maybe we could import en.wikipedia infobox classes ? --Zolo (talk) 14:39, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

The CSS for infobox_v3 is missing, it should be copied from fr:MediaWiki:Common.css to MediaWiki:Common.css. Mushroom (talk) 15:08, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Ok thanks, maybe we should use the English css instead, they are likely to be better maintained, and seem simpler as they do not contain legacy codes like 'infobox v2' in Fr). Can I just import /* Infobox template style */ from or is there a risk that I break something ? --Zolo (talk) 15:43, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it would break anything, but maybe bring it up on the talk page first. Mushroom (talk) 00:06, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Ok done. Actually it seems that we do not really need those CSS. With Lua, it may make as much sense to define the classes and styles directly in the infobox module.--Zolo (talk) 12:00, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

The "Other projects sidebar" beta feature doesn't work on Wikipedia

@Lydia Pintscher (WMDE), Tpt: I've enabled the feature in my Preferences on Wikipedia (fr & en), but it doesn't work. All the users who tried it have the same issue (cf. this thread)... — Ayack (talk) 08:37, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Yeah we're still working on issues with yesterday's deployment. This is one of them. I will post an announcement once I'm confident everything is working as it should. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:39, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

OK, thanks. — Ayack (talk) 08:42, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Using badges for article quality and importance

In "Wikipedia Importence" and "Quality rating" section of Wikidata:Property proposal/Archive/21, It's suggested to store quality and importance data via budges. I have created A-Class articles (Q17580678), B-Class articles (Q17580679), C-Class articles (Q17580680), top-importance article (Q17580682) (and will create the rest when consensus reached). Please comment before these being supported by software.--GZWDer (talk) 05:10, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Shouldn't we already have items for e.g. en:WP:GA? Can't we use those?--Jasper Deng (talk) 06:48, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

The only discussion about why don't we use those items I've seen here: Talk:Q17437796. --Stryn (talk) 07:43, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Doesn't the importance of an article depend on which WikiProject is rating it? Sometimes even the class of the article (below GA) varies depending on WikiProject standards. A top importance stub class for one may be a low importance start class for another. 130.88.141.34 07:59, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

There are many article qualities that could get a badge, for instance looking at w:Talk:Roman_numerals:

• rating
• vital article level
• wikiproject
• other

TBH, it would be easier if instead of a fixed list, the input interface was a free input field with a fixed set of allowed values (as now happens when entering a sitelink), that way we could have several items for all those qualities without cluttering the selection list.--Micru (talk) 08:01, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Badges are for info about the individual article. Info about the multilingual item should go in statements. For me 'vital article level' and 'wikiproject' relate to the item and all the articles about that item, not just one article. Filceolaire (talk) 05:37, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

items from non-latin alphabet wikis (Russian, among many)

There is an enormous work of merging to do with pages from russian, japanese, chinese, etc. pedias, when they did not indicate the original name of people for european and american people...

In Russian, I happen to find some, through the Game, and merge them immediately, but is there a way to fetch those through categories on their original wiki ? it would be much easier, and systematic. Even better, would be the help of a Russian contributor, as my russian practice is quite rusty :)

If some Russian contributor, who understand English or French would help me, please contact on my discussion page --Hsarrazin (talk) 07:05, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

• i believe first of all we need a monolingual property called "name in person native language". It is very wildly used both in infoboxes and in article text (in form "Вася Петров ((англ.) Vasya Petrov) ). It can be used for "game" and for direct manual compare as well. We can have some bot to select persons with the same names as well. -- Vlsergey (talk) 07:16, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
• (also we can have simple "transliteration script, that will try to translate russian names into english-alike spelling, feel free to ask). --Vlsergey (talk) 07:19, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

@Vlsergey: We already have P513 (P513). — Ayack (talk) 12:06, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

@Ayack: P513 (P513) would not help for many artists whose real name is not famous. -Ash Crow (talk)

Don't limit such a property it to persons - for example towns, provinces and countries also have a native name. Ahoerstemeier (talk) 14:59, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

yes, in fact, it would be useful for places as much as for people, a property similar to discography (P358) for works :)

in the meantime, the name in aliases could at least allow to find dupes… a simple translitteration - the gadget already exists Vlsergey, and I activated it… and I can "pronounce" russian, as I've studied it for 10 years - would not be enough, as a name can be written in many ways in English - the exact spelling needs to be found to get dupes… moreover, I was thinking of French people, to begin with ;) --Hsarrazin (talk) 20:02, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

• @Hsarrazin:, where do you find candidates? I can help with finding actual dupes. --Infovarius (talk) 21:03, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Infovarius - generally I stumble on condidates in The Game (person or gender game) - the text says (in russian) that the person is from XXX country - and I then try to merge them with the item of the original country, when I can find the item ;

but, I would like to find a way, through categories, to do this systematically, as there are a lot of items about people from France, England, Germany, Italy, USA, etc. (in russian or other languages), that have no other link, just because the "original name" is not indicated clearly... - I'd like to "find" them in a first stage, and then try and indicate the "original name" of the person concerned… with the help of somebody more fluent in russian than I am :D

could you point me to a category "French people" on ruwiki ?

and the other way would be nice too, as we have a lot of russian authors on wikisource fr (officiers, diplomats), with the name written in strange spelling (19th cenury) - it would be nice to match them with their russian pages counterparts :) --Hsarrazin (talk) 21:16, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

@Infovarius: here is an example for linking fr page to Russian person : s:fr:Auteur:Constantin_Gorbounov - I'm pretty sure it is spelled "Горбунов" in russian - not many possibilities -, but have no idea about the given name, the signature was K., could be something else than Konstantin..., like Kyril, for instance ? I cannot find him in VIAF, nor here... Author of s:Une_Ophélie_tchérémisse, published in translation in Revue des Deux Mondes, in 1891. Could you help me place him, among Russian authors ?

what property to use to set location of a wikimedia-list item

What property should be used to indicate the location of a list item (e.g. 'list of castles in x', 'list of monuments in x'). In my opinion located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) can not be used because of the 'location' constraint (a list article is not a location). Alos is a list of (P360) is not really applicable, the topics are 'castle' and 'monument' within an area for the examples above. Any alternatives to set the location of a list? Michiel1972 (talk) 13:04, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Rename the wikidata item to "Castles in x" ('List of castles in x' can be an alias) and make it a subclass of "Castles in country y" (where x is in y). Each of the castles in the list can be 'instance of Castle in x'. Most list articles are best treated (and renamed) as 'subclass of' items. They often start with a paragraph about the topic anyway with the list following after. Filceolaire (talk) 00:09, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

That is a solution but means list items should not be treated as lists anymore (and thus is a list of (P360) should not be applied on these items). I do find that quite a drastic change. Any wikidata page where this is discussed previously? Michiel1972 (talk) 09:33, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Resonator quite well understands it if you use is a list of (P360) pointing to the instance type, and then use a qualifier to narrow the scope. See e.g. list of schools in Thailand (Q17060366). Ahoerstemeier (talk) 15:20, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I opened a similar issue few days ago (#Wikipedia articles about a position/office conected with a list of its holders)...--Shlomo (talk) 13:45, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

KeyError: 'entity'

Hello, I'm operating a bot on ukwiki that used to 'translate' geographical objects' names using interwikis. A while ago I had to rewrite that part of the code to use wikidata instead and it worked perfectly well till recently (Aug 26, to be more precise). Now a standard wikipedia.py library seem to have problems working with wikidata:

d=item.get()
  File "/Users/thevolodymyr/pywikipedia_compat/wikipedia.py", line 5076, in get
    self._getentity(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/Users/thevolodymyr/pywikipedia_compat/wikipedia.py", line 5008, in _getentity
    if self._contents['entity'][0] == 'item':
KeyError: 'entity'

I had a quick search for pywikipedia updates and it looks like there are no recent patches addressing the issue. My guess is that some changes were introduced that affected properties of wikidata contents. If so, does anyone know whether it's gonna be fixed here locally or I have to look for pywikipedia updates? Thanks in advance for any help. Regards, Thevolodymyr (talk) 21:24, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes this change is intended. pywikipedia will need to be adapted. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata-l/2014-August/004330.html --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 05:56, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

This error is being tracked down in bugzilla:70069 Amir (talk) 11:05, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. Thevolodymyr (talk) 11:41, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Special:GoToLinkedPage

I just discovered Special:GoToLinkedPage. I was so happy that I shared information about it at a translation community based on English Wikipedia at en:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Translation Task Force#Managing links to various languages. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:08, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

n: interwiki link import bot

Is there/will there be a bot for importing inter-language links between n: news items to Wikidata, where these already exist? I see there's been some discussion about how n: articles are hardly ever going to overlap with w: articles, but I don't really see why that's a problem; i.e. why Wikidata can't service n:'s inter-language links anyway, even if these do sit in Q-items largely disjoint from w:'s. I've done a few by hand (e.g. Actor and comic Robin Williams found dead at 63 (Q17582451)), but it would be nice for a bot to automate the process.

As a heads-up in case a bot hasn't been planned yet, such a bot would need editprotected rights at (I'm guessing all) Wikinews projects, since Wikinews articles get protected after a certain period of time. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 12:03, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

En.wn certainly protects their archives. I think there are some that don't.

Note, en.wn is very wary of bots. The precedent-setting case was commons delinker, which routinely flagrantly violated en.wn archive policy/ I'm not sure we've got any bots with the admin flag, and it might be very difficult to convince the community to sysop a bot.

When Wikidata was discussed on en.wn, there was as I recall local opposition to using it on articles. --Pi zero (talk) 12:30, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Btw, I'd expect logical difficulties in using Wikidata for news article interwikis. Interwiki'd news articles are often not translations of each other, and when they're not translations of each other they're apt to be not quite the same story. One then has to make value judgements about whether they're close enough to warrant an interwiki. The premise of Wikidata as I understand it (and I don't feel comfortable that I altogether understand it) requires unique entities here that are mapped one-to-one onto entities on other projects, and I don't think that's a useful model for interwikis between news articles; in fact, I'd expect it to be more of a hinderance than a help. --Pi zero (talk) 12:38, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

@Pi zero: I have added a "subject heading" to Q17582451, that would be enough to later on automate its appearance in the corresponding Wikipedia article. By adding "instance of" you could also associate that to a query to show news about obituaries. There are many options for easing your work, it is just a matter of exploring which ones would be the most practical/feasible.--Micru (talk) 12:54, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Some questions:

• Is this about interwiki migration from wiki markup to Wikidata? This is a process which is unambigious - it creates no links which didn't exist before. I understood that while migrating interwiki, no bots add links which did not exist before from people.
• Should we migrate? To me it looks like that, even if the process remains manual like it should be, using Wikidata would be a benefit in terms of "I added ru interwiki to this en.wn article, and the ru.wn article already has it automatically and I do not have to add it by hand. Yay." sense.
• Or is it about not migration, but about something enforcing indirect relationships ("en.wn → en.wp → ru.wp → ru.wn, therefore en.wn → ru.wn") after migration? Does such enforcement automatically happen after switch of interwiki to Wikidata? (It better not happen.)

I agree that linking news between languages should be a manual process and nothing should pick up indirect relationships like that. --Gryllida 15:01, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm not enwikinews editor, so I don't have anything to say, but for interwiki migration, I think a dedicated item for news and property for target item would be enough. (ps. kown does not protect article because it is archived.) — by Revi_complaint? at 14:44, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

It's bad idea linking news through Q-items. Because the news does not have an equivalent in other projects. Further it can not be done with bots. We have a consensus on this issue in all language versions of Wikinews. --sasha (krassotkin) 15:30, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I disagree. It could be on a dedicated Qid only for Wikinews item. — by Revi_complaint? at 08:27, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

• I answered you on my talk page. --sasha (krassotkin) 09:31, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

sasha (krassotkin)No, this discussion is about interlanguage links which only work within different language Wikinews; whether news has an equivalent in other project is irrelevant. --Gryllida 08:48, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Also see original proposal: Wikidata:Wikinews/Development#Interwiki links, and discussion. --sasha (krassotkin) 15:45, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

See this offer in another edition: Wikidata talk:Wikinews#instance of (P31). What do you think about? --sasha (krassotkin) 08:47, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Can Not Edit!

Hello.

I currently can't edit items for some reason on my account. I was just granted rollback earlier this week and don't know what can be causing such an issue. I can type translations and such however, I can not save them. For some reason, I can not access the Wikidata game either. Any help? Umafiy (talk) 01:16, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@Umafiy: Hasn't been working for me today, either. I think it has something to do with a new update or something... Lydia? --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 02:22, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@AmaryllisGardener: My "edit" button works now. It was something weird with my global.js page. I fixed it now. But the Wikidata game still doesn't work. Anybody else having the same issues? Umafiy (talk) 02:57, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@Umafiy: I'm still having the problem with editing... the game isn't working either. --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 03:11, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@AmaryllisGardener: I blanked my global.js page on meta and can edit fine now. I see you have twinkle globally installed. I installed the global twinkle a few days ago and when I tried to edit here, I couldn't. After I blanked my global.js page on meta, everything started to work fine. I don't know if this is a coincidence or an actual problem. --Umafiy (talk) 03:43, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Yeah I remember hearing Twinkle not playing nice with Wikidata. As for the game: toollabs seems to be having issues currently. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 06:01, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

The Game was down since yesterday... Magnus just restarted it :)--Hsarrazin (talk) 09:16, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@Lydia Pintscher (WMDE): After emptying my global.js on meta, I can add sitelinks now but I still can't add labels. --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 12:56, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

UPDATE: Now the labels are working. --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 15:22, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

UPDATE The game seems to work as well! Yay! Umafiy (talk) 22:10, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

m:User_talk:PiRSquared17#Global_Twinkle I guess I'm partially to blame. I've known about this problem for months, and thought I had solved it. I think I just fixed it now. Sorry. πr² (t • c) 04:24, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Contributions by date and time

Hoi, is it possible to view "my" contributions by date and time.. As far as I know I cannot. It would be really valuable checking related changes. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 07:11, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi. The easiest way to do this is to hack the offset= parameter in the URL. The long number is a date and time with seconds, but you can strip the seconds, minutes and hours if you want. Example. Hope that helps. --Thiemo Mättig (WMDE) 10:30, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

new main page and new features/changes

Hey folks :)

We have a new main page: http://wikidata.org \o/ A huge thank you to Helen and everyone who helped her for creating it and pushing it forward. It was time to get a new one after two years!

And from the development side we have deployed last night:

• switched the internal serialization as announced: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata-l/2014-August/004330.html
• deployed the "in other projects sidebar" beta feature: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Other_projects_sidebar
• badges will be shown in the sidebar of the sister projects based on what is stored in Wikidata as soon as a few more config changes are made in the next day or two.
• a new special page that takes you to a Wikipedia article based on a site id and item id: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:GoToLinkedPage (This was actually already deployed last week but I totally forgot it... Sorry!)

We unfortunately had to delay suggestions for qualifiers and sources. That'll come next week then.

Cheers --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 15:34, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Better footer for the main page. :) --Nouill (talk) 15:54, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

@Lydia Pintscher (WMDE): my bot tells me that API queries sometimes returns old serialization format. This error is "floating" and have ~1% chance to occur. Does internal serialization adopted on all servers? -- Vlsergey (talk) 15:46, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Urgh. Not impossible. Which API call are you using? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:01, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Are you using pywikidata or something else? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:38, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

@Lydia Pintscher (WMDE): I'm using my own bot framework, the operation that sometimes returns old format is query/revisions/content, when multiple revisions are specified. Very rare, but happens. Sadly, there is no HTTP header to log (like server name), so I can't provide additional information. -- Vlsergey (talk) 12:08, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Oh, this is using the core API to retrieve old revisions; it goes right past the wikibase API, and doesn't use the export interface either. It's possible (though slightly surprising) that this interface would serve raw blob from the database, without re-serializing them. I'll investigate. -- Daniel Kinzler (WMDE) (talk) 12:32, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

We found the problem... one of the api servers still had old config. We removed it from the api server pool and taking care of the problem. You should no longer get the old format now. Aude (talk) 14:19, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

@Aude, Daniel Kinzler (WMDE), Lydia Pintscher (WMDE): thank you! For the future: it would be also nice to add some API hostname or code as HTTP header -- so next time it would be easier to find this API server. -- Vlsergey (talk) 17:16, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

The server which is serving the content or API is already specified. For web requests; it can be found by viewing the pages source at the bottom under 'wgHostname'. For the API; there will be a '<api servedby="server"> tag. John F. Lewis (talk) 17:23, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

@John F. Lewis: "servedby" added only in case of error, usually it is not present ([8], [9]). -- Vlsergey (talk) 20:13, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

You can request jsonfm format which includes server information. That's how I eventually tracked down which server was the problem. The format wouldn't be very useful for a bot, though. Aude (talk) 09:03, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Query for people born in a certain year only showing a small number of matching items

For example, when I run a query in AutoList for everyone with a birth date = 1950 (no month or day defined), I only get 7 results (query is here). But if I run a query for everyone born on 1st Jan 1950 (query here), I get around 2500 extra results for people with a birth date = 1950 (e.g. Q80332). I've had a look through quite a few of the examples and can't find any differences between the items that do or do not show up in the first query (precision settings and calendar are the same, and 'before' and 'after' all seem to be set to 0). Any ideas what's special about the 7 items that do show up in the query for birth date = 1950? NavinoEvans (talk) 14:48, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

KrBot seems to have edited most of the 7 results shortly after someone added the year. The diff doesn't show any actual change by the edit. --- Jura 17:29, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Before KrBOt edit's date was +00000001950-00-00T00:00:00Z, now is +00000001950-01-01T00:00:00Z --ValterVB (talk) 18:59, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Well spotted - I had thought that +00000001950-01-01T00:00:00Z is actually the correct format, with Precision = 9 to indicate years accuracy (meaning KrBot was correcting the date) - is that right? or does it not matter whether month and day are set to 0 or 1 when the precision is years? Either way, it still doesn't actually explain why (for example) Q80332 doesn't come up as a result to the query but Q3506015 does, when their current dates are identical. NavinoEvans (talk) 00:26, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Ok, so this makes sense now. I think the database the query tool is using was just a little bit out of date (rarely the case!). My query for just "1950" was setting the month and day values to "0", which matches the older versions of the 7 items that were showing up (before they were fixed by KrBot). NavinoEvans (talk) 10:35, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I believe what you want is this. "1950" gets translated to "1950-00-00", which is "1950, year only". Set the second "1950" to a high month, in my example "1950-13"; that is the same as "1950-12-31", just shorter :-) --Magnus Manske (talk) 22:23, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Q17683474

For some reason, I can't edit the item. I tried to add P31:Q5. --- Jura 11:43, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Neither do I. weird, neither through Widar, nor through UI. I think the item has to be deleted and recreated. Lymantria (talk) 12:22, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for checking. Sounds like a reasonable solution.--- Jura 13:37, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

I have deleted and restored and now work. @Magnus Manske: is possible that Widar have some problem to create Item? --ValterVB (talk) 14:01, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. It was part of a series. The others worked fine. --- Jura 14:11, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Badges

There is no explanation of badges in the glossary or in any help-file! --Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 13:12, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles about a position/office conected with a list of its holders

I realized there's quite a mass in items about ministers and ministries. Yet the problem is not a plain mistake on Wikidata. Several times there are articles on Wikipedias about a position/office, which contains a brief information about the office and a complete list of it's holders. Some Wikipedias describe such articles as articles about the office (with added list of holders), some as a list (with added brief information about the office). When we connect into one item articles (even with corresponding content) from different Wikipedias with various approaches, we have a problem, how to describe the item: instance/subclass(?) of a list, of an organization or of a person? ("Instance of a disambiguation page", which also is often used, is definitely wrong, I suppose...) If we disconnect them and make them separate items (which would be correct from the ontological point of view), we'll brake the interwiki link between articles with the same content in many cases. A reasonable solution would be creating items about both the office (=ministry), the position (=minister) and the list of holders, but link the wikipedia articles preferably to one of them - except there are separate articles for single items on the wikipedia in question. Does anybody have some better solution (I hope somebody has one...)--Shlomo (talk) 13:47, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

@Shlomo: I guess your "reasonable solution" is a good start. Does this item match your specification : governor of Norrbotten County (Q6621850) ? LaddΩ chat ;) 22:25, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, not exectly. It has two different statements of instance of (P31), which shouldn't occure in one item. Actually, it's more like an example of what I described as a problem...--Shlomo (talk) 14:43, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

A 'list of mayors of Foo' is an article that lists and describes a certain class of people. The corresponding wikidata item should be named 'mayor of foo' (keep 'list of mayors of Foo' as an alias) and have the statement 'subclass of=>mayors'. Each mayor of foo should have the statement 'office held=>mayor of foo'. There should also be an item on the municipality of 'foo' but I don't see we need a separate item for the 'town council of the municipality of foo' though these are needed for ministries and where there is a bicameral legislature ('Senate of Michigan' and 'state house of Michigan' as well as state of 'Michigan'). Filceolaire (talk) 00:26, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

First, we can't have a statement 'subclass of=>mayors', just 'subclass of=>mayor' (I suppose that's what you intended.) Second, what do you suggest to do, if some wikipedia has one article about the position and another one, which is just a (commented) list of its holders (e.g. en:President of the United States vs. en:List of Presidents of the United States?) According to notability rules both of them qualify to an item on Wikidata... Third, I think it's tenable to have a list-article on wikipedia connected with a Wikidata item describing the position; but I think it's not tenable to have a Wikidata item classified (instance of (P31)) as both position and list of holders.--Shlomo (talk) 14:20, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

In the past it was decided to rename the items currently named "List of" and have them be about the subject at hand. Many many items were treated in this way. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 14:01, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Oversight access request

Per the requirements of the oversight policy, I would like to inform anyone here that there is an open request for oversight access for me at Wikidata:Requests for permissions/Oversight/SPQRobin, starting now, lasting until 14 September. Any comments, opinions and questions are welcome. Thank you, SPQRobin (talk) 01:48, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Another report: On differences of Wikidata and freebase

Hello, Today I made another report when birth date differ between Wikidata and freebase that you can find them here. Coloring system is like old reports and Any comments are welcome. Amir (talk) 08:57, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

In the (admittedly very few) cases with differences I checked (now and in the past) freebase was either wrong or chose one of several possible dates. And many times the source given was Wikipedia (usually en). So, why bother? --HHill (talk) 10:07, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Now we check with Freebase, another resource is next.. Ultimately, we do it because we can. We derive value by doing exactly this; it raises the confidence in the quality of our data as well. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 13:55, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Huge diff size

Hi, Can someone explain to me how this edit leads to a diff size of +9118 (see history)? I wondered why adding simple things is so slow since a couple of days, but huge diff sizes like this one might explain that.... Lymantria (talk) 10:42, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

See Wikidata:Contact_the_development_team#Why_so_big_size_of_diff.3F. --Stryn (talk) 10:46, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Ah, thnks. Lymantria (talk) 11:15, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Merging problem

[two items] does not work for Q7748104 and Q4772371, it gives a red error message: "Conflicting descriptions for language pl". Please explain the reason, and help me. --Tudor987 (talk) 12:49, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

I did it in an other way, but the question remains open. --Tudor987 (talk) 13:43, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Titles with #

Sk!dbot created here an entry from a redirect. The result were a strange page for an award prize with GPS coordinates. I've fixed this one today.

We should create a tool to get the list of the pages with '#' to hunt such errors. --Dereckson (talk) 15:52, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Done, see below. --Dereckson (talk) 21:50, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Cleaning call: items with anchors in the label

Hi,

I've generated a report with the Englis labels in the topic#subtopic form to fix errors introduced by bots.

Some of these 443 items only needs a label fix, other a split between two distinct topics.

Report URL: Items with anchors in the label

--Dereckson (talk) 21:53, 31 August 2014 (UTC)