Wikidata:Property proposal/Member of military unit

member of military unit edit

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Person

Done: military unit (P7779) (Talk and documentation)

Represents	military unit (Q176799)
Data type	Item
Example 1	Anders Örbom (Q20664276) > Jämtland Regiment (Q6319948)
Example 2	Erik Johan Örbom (Q34850319) > Jämtland Regiment (Q6319948)
Example 3	Louis Julius Freudenberg (Q20658456) > 78th Training Division (Q2818310)
Example 4	Matthias Ogden (Q444466) > 1st New Jersey Regiment (Q4596511)
Example 5	Israel Shreve (Q6087212) > 2nd New Jersey Regiment (Q4633827)
Example 6	Elias Dayton (Q1329026) > 3rd New Jersey Regiment (Q4636885)
Example 7	Oliver Spencer (Q7087840) > Spencer's Additional Continental Regiment (Q7575956)
Example 8	David Forman (Q5233749) > Forman's Additional Continental Regiment (Q5469994)
Example 9	Eugene Freudenberg Jr. (Q55085963) > 43rd Infantry Division (Q2816821)
Example 10	Ashbel Green (Q4804609) > New Jersey Line (Q16932993)
Example 11	Alvin York (Q449068) > 82nd Airborne Division (Q2358)
Example 12	David Bellavia (Q15453145) > 1st Infantry Division (Q163659)
Example 13	Darrell S. Cole (Q5224708) > 1st Battalion 23rd Marines (Q4596189)
Example 14	James D. La Belle (Q15995757) > 27th Marine Regiment (Q4632636)
Example 15	Hershel W. Williams (Q12072950) > 21st Marine Regiment (Q4631137)
Example 16	Vincent Gerard Norton (Q69672248) > 90th Infantry Division (Q2332538)

Motivation edit

We have "member of political organization" and "member of sports team" and "military branch" but we need a property to contain the smallest known military unit that a person was in. We have entries for most of the American Revolutionary War regiments and American Civil War regiments. For World War I and World War II we have all the Divisions and some smaller units, especially for the Marines. If you think "military unit" is not the proper term, make your suggestions here. Please feel free to edit this proposal. Every Medal of Honor winner should have their military unit specified. Medal of Honor US Navy ship personnel should be listed as "member of crew" of the vessel they served on. I thought of this for Memorial Day but only got to it now. --RAN (talk) 21:45, 13 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion edit

Support David (talk) 05:27, 14 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support following the two recent discussions on Project Chat. (Dec 2019, June 2019). Likely to be very valuable to have a clear property for this for military biographies. Jheald (talk) 21:52, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support, definitely needed - it would be good to also pull together a page listing best practice for military biographies, something we've needed for a while. Andrew Gray (talk) 23:12, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking more generally - we should try and keep this reasonably broad and allow some flexibility as to how it's used, as the model that works for the US (which has most of the examples above) may not work elsewhere. I would recommend being pretty loose with constraints on this one. Andrew Gray (talk) 23:14, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I would suggest to change the name of this property to one that would allow not only military units, but also units of paramilitary forces or non-military but other armed services (police for example). In some countries there are forces that are not part of the military, but has the structure, organisation etc. very similar to military. Also, there are international forces that are not military sensu stricto. Wostr (talk) 21:41, 20 December 2019 (UTC) PS military rank (P410) has this problem ('military rank' instead of a 'service rank' or 'rank') and cannot be used for e.g. police rank (Q19476593). Wostr (talk) 23:38, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support, an important property for the military.--Arbnos (talk) 00:26, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2, Jheald, Andrew Gray, Arbnos: Done. --Tinker Bell ★ ♥ 00:42, 5 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]