Wikidata:Property proposal/definition

definition edit

Not done

Description	definition of a term, its meaning
Represents	definition (Q101072)
Data type	Monolingual text
Domain	any item
Example	DiGeorge syndrome: A T cell deficiency disease that is the result of a large deletion of chromosome 22 which includes the DGS gene needed for development of the thymus and related glands with subsequent lack of T-cell production.
Robot and gadget jobs	ProteinBoxBot might use this property to add textual definitions to diseases and other items it updates.

Motivation

A textual definition of any given item/term is standard practice in the world of ontologies, and in almost everything else. A quick statement about the meaning of a thing. The "official" definition of 'definition' from the Information Artifact Ontology: "The official OBI definition, explaining the meaning of a class or property. Shall be Aristotelian, formalized and normalized. Can be augmented with colloquial definitions." It should not be constrained by that, but it is a good guideline, at least. Regarding the 400 character limit, if it does go above that then we should truncate and the interested party can follow the reference. Emitraka (talk) 21:28, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support --Andrawaag (talk) 22:09, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Use the description--this is what that is there for to some extent. --Izno (talk) 11:41, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Izno. This is also a multilingual project. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:31, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment if this is implemented it should be as monolingual text rather than string (per Andy's comment about this being a multilingual project). Unless you (Andrawaag or anyone else) can explain how this is different to the description though I'm inclined to oppose per Izno. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 12:43, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Izno: @Thryduulf: The main problem with the description is that you cannot use qualifiers nor references to add provenance to that description. Also, we can only add 1 description per Wikidata item and multiple definitions for the same concepts do exist. A quick search on the term "disease" in google two definitions; (1) "A disease is a particular abnormal condition, a disorder of a structure or function, that affects part or all of an organism" (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease) or (2) "a problem that a person, group, organization, or society has and cannot stop" or "an illness that affects a person, animal, or plant : a condition that prevents the body or mind from working normally" (source: merriam-webster, etc. Also definitions can change over time. The definition of the meter being the nicest example. Historically, there are many definitions of the metre, (the wikipedia entry on the matter. I would love to be able to store those definitions using qualifiers and references to indicate when the historic ones were applicable. --Andrawaag (talk) 18:43, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Izno: @Thryduulf: Just to make it clear. I agree with Andrawaag and would like to add that it can be changed to monolingual text in the proposal. (Can I do that right away? Or is it frowned upon to change anything in a proposal?) --Emitraka (talk) 18:52, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Done Changed the type. --Srittau (talk) 20:37, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to add a bit: if you want strict relations established between items a/b, then that is probably more in the bucket of the WD:Wiktionary-Wikidata integration bucket. --Izno (talk) 15:22, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This is not structured data. --Yair rand (talk) 17:05, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Yair rand: To some extent a definition property is not that different from a accepted property like GND ID (P227) --Andrawaag (talk) 18:44, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support In cases where there's an official definition it's useful to reference it with sources. The standard describtion of the item is sometimes to short to list the official definition. It's also quite similar to Wikidata usage instructions (P2559). ChristianKl (talk) 11:06, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I am not convinced that Wikidata is the right place for longer, sourced definitions. A short definition is already included in every item, but that is under out control and does not need to be referenced or qualified. Longer, external definitions are out-of-scope and also a potentially licensing hazard. --Srittau (talk) 20:39, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not done No support. Lymantria (talk) 17:24, 19 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]