Wikidata:Property proposal/Water area

water area edit

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Place

   Done: water area (P8887) (Talk and documentation)
DescriptionArea/surface of a geographical entity that is covered by water.
Data typeQuantity
Domainplaces
Allowed valuesnumbers
Allowed unitssquare kilometers
Example 1Dauphin Island (Q932623) → 105.344035 square kilometers
Example 2Germany (Q183) → 8634 square kilometers
Example 3California (Q99) → 20501 square kilometers
Planned useFor the US states, cities and Census-designated places, these data is available as CSV files for 1990 to 2010. The data for 2020 will be available next year. It is easy to import them to wikidata, as the US Census Bureau will again publish CSV and Excel files.
See alsoarea (P2046), water as percent of area (P2927)

Motivation edit

Currently, for geographic entities such as countries, states and cities, there is no good possibility to have a statement about the water surface. The proposed property is comparable to water as percent of area (P2927), but should be an absolute value (usually in sqaure kilometers) and not relative. It will be a part of area (P2046) and should always be smaller or equal to it. Yellowcard (talk) 14:35, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion edit

  Comment instead of separate "water area" statement we could also introduce a qualifier "thereof water area" to area (P2046) claims. This would ensure that both numbers refer to the same point in time. But for the similar case of female population (P1539) and male population (P1540) separate items were chosen too. --Pyfisch (talk) 08:44, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I believe, based on the structure mainly used in Wikidata, that the property should be used as main statement. Furthermore, while we are discussing the water area, I believe that we need a "land area" property as well, don't we? Absolutely same usecase as the proposed water area property. Yellowcard (talk) 21:02, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
We don't need a "land area" property as area (P2046) - water area is always the land area. Creating a land area property would be redundant. --Pyfisch (talk) 07:17, 26 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure whether that is a valid argument. Based on the redundancy idea, we have a lot of properties that could be called redundant. Just taking your example above: Nobody would call population (P1082) redundant because you could just sum up female population (P1539) and male population (P1540) (and maybe other genders) to get that number. There are many better examples, but I just took this one as you were referring to those properties above. Yellowcard (talk) 16:57, 26 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It is a philosophical issue at its core. I don't see the utility of a land area property in addition to the water area. --Pyfisch (talk) 00:47, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
There are cases where we know the full population (P1082) of a jurisdiction but not female population (P1539) nor male population (P1540). population (P1082) is useful for those cases. I don't think there are many cases where where we know the land area but neither the water area nor the total area.
  Support --Pyfisch (talk) 07:17, 26 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Yellowcard, ArthurPSmith, Pyfisch:   Done water area (P8887) Pamputt (talk) 10:03, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]