Wikidata:Property proposal/gained territory from
gained territory from
editOriginally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Place
gave up territory to
editOriginally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Place
Motivation
editIn recording boundary changes of a territorial entity, it would be useful to be able to indicate which entity it gained the additional territory from, or gave it up to. A qualifier on significant event (P793) = boundary change (Q28953942) statements seems the best way to do this.
There should normally exist parallel statements on the item gaining territority, and the item giving it up. Jheald (talk) 18:42, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
Discussion
edit- Proposed. Jheald (talk) 18:42, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
Support Melderick (talk) 16:35, 14 October 2019 (UTC)- Support both David (talk) 16:43, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
- There's already a lot of information on the items about countries. I think this information would be better stored within the item for the significant event. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 18:59, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
- @ChristianKl: Useful comment. I had thought about what you suggest, but I don't think it will usually be the way to go, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, most smaller entities (eg the parish or the county in the examples above) won't have an item for the significant event, so then the information can only be stored as a statement on the main item. Secondly, even if we do have an item for a treaty (or a war), it seems to me that that is actually a separate thing from the boundary change, so I am not sure that this property would make sense on such an item. It seems to me that the treaty may be the proximate cause of the boundary change (and a war may be the underlying cause), but they are not actually the boundary change itself, so I'm not quite sure I can see how it would work. Concrete items like Alaska Purchase (Q309029) or Louisiana Purchase (Q193155) are really rather rare; and even then, arguably they refer to the whole process, negotiation, treaty-making, etc, rather than the just the boundary change, so even in these cases perhaps they are best seen as the cause of the boundary changing, rather than the change itself.
- Perhaps an alternative, where a country X has a long and particularly complex territorial history, would be instead to have an auxiliary item "Territorial evolution of X", that would be a facet of (P1269) of X, and on which one could put the significant event (P793) statements for each of the boundary changes. We already have quite a few of these items, corresponding to some of the articles in eg en:Category:Territorial_evolution_by_country. It would seem quite a useful and natural way to keep the relevant information all discoverable and editable in one place. Jheald (talk) 21:52, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
- @ChristianKl: But if you have changes that you think would make these proposed properties more useful on a wider range of items and statements, please do suggest them. Jheald (talk) 10:38, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
Comment for electoral districts, this could work nicely. --- Jura 08:48, 6 November 2019 (UTC)- Support, important and logical properties.--Arbnos (talk) 10:29, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
- I'm not sure this is necessary. The territory in question would itself have statements mentioning the previous holder, and the end date and end cause, along with the territory holder following. What would these properties add? --Yair rand (talk) 17:01, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Yair rand: For one thing the exact territory transferred may not have its own item -- eg for small adjustments between two neighbouring parishes, which are nevertheless valuable to note as indications that any later line of the boundary may not be the operative at early times. For another thing, it would be difficult to assess the history for completeness if the data was so dispersed. This is why, I think, "significant event" on the items for the territory holders (or on items for their territorial histories, in cases where these are available) is a valuable way to go. Jheald (talk) 11:05, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Done @Jheald, Melderick, Arbnos: please make good use of it. --- Jura 14:52, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
