Wikidata:Property proposal/instances are former instances of

instances are former instances of

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Generic

   Not done

Description	Item whose instances instances of this item used to be
Represents	any item having property subclass of (P279)
Data type	Item
Domain	any item having property subclass of (P279)
Example 1	former town (Q106071744) → town (Q3957)
Example 2	former railway station (Q4663385) → railway station (Q55488)
Example 3	former hospital (Q64578911) → hospital (Q16917)
Example 4	former electoral district of South Australia (Q66360526) → electoral district of South Australia (Q5356185)
Example	former municipality of Estonia (Q26742250) → municipality of Estonia (Q612229), former administrative territorial entity (Q19953632) → administrative territorial entity (Q56061), former local government area of Australia (Q30129411) → local government area of Australia (Q1867183), former county of Norway (Q83640434) → county of Norway (Q192299), former church (Q19899465) → church building (Q16970), former religious building (Q96352496) → religious building (Q24398318), former building or structure (Q96084375) → architectural structure (Q811979), former geographical object (Q96088545) → abstract geographic object (Q1503302), former entity (Q15893266) → entity (Q35120)

Motivation

We have a lot of items with names "former X" and no machine-readable way of linking "former X" to "X" in a way that encodes the "former" aspect. Some may argue that we shouldn't have "former X" items instead we should just use the "end time" property as a qualifier on "instance of". Maybe they are right, but the fact is we already have all these "former X" items, so either we provide a way of linking "former X" with "X" (this proposed property), or we get rid of them all. And I doubt the later is going to happen, it is just too much work, which means we should do the former. Mr248 (talk) 07:38, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

•  Oppose "It is just too much work" needn't automatically mean "it should not be done". If an end time cannot be deduced from the rest of the item, we always have recourse to "some value". Mahir256 (talk) 17:47, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
•  Oppose We can do former municipality of Estonia (Q26742250)subclass of (P279)municipality of Estonia (Q612229)end time (P582)somevalue. --Tinker Bell ★ ♥ 21:34, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
•  Weak support I don't think it breaks anything. follows (P155) or replaces (P1365) could be other options. Not really convinced by P279 or merely calling them "historic". --- Jura 12:16, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
•  Comment I usually set "former X" as P279 of X (with end date, if known) with normal rank and P279 of some subclass of former entity (Q15893266) with preferred rank. I don't know if it's worth to replace these P279 with a new property. --Infovarius (talk) 13:52, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
•  Not done - no consensus for the proposal --DannyS712 (talk) 01:24, 2 January 2022 (UTC)