The Watsonian (British Isles, except Ireland) or Praeger (Ireland) Vice-county in which the place is located, for the purposes of biological recording.
I also support an incarnation that would have wider use than the UK only - maybe a general one about sub-county-level organization? I'm honestly not sure how it would be organized in other countries. Ajraddatz (talk) 20:03, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This is significant information for biological recording that cannot be recorded on Wikidata using existing properties. There is no deadline, and no required stated anywhere that properties have to be immediately widely used. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 23:35, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Vice-county, ceremonial county and administrative county of Derbyshire For reference, the image right is an an example showing how the vice-county of Derbyshire differs from the modern ceremonial and administrative counties of the same name. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 00:02, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I would Support a more wider approach than one that only can be used in the UK. Until this proposal becomes more generic I Oppose. If the target-article is a vice-county or not can be seen in the P31:Q7925010-statement in that item. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 07:35, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Close as out-of-process and instead recreate undelete Property:P1887. The latter was created by consensus, and was deleted without consensus, as Ajraddatz himself has acknowledged. "as per Wikidata:Administrators' noticeboard#P1887" is a bogus justification, as the AN discussion, which Ajraddatz himself closed, was ongoing and itself had no consensus for this action. [I also note that P1887 does not apply to organisations] Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits10:47, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
A discussion that lasted over a month on AN failed to produce any real results. I think it's time we focus on the actual merits of having this property, rather than whatever bureaucratic nonsense you want to go through with. I assume you support re-creating the property? Ajraddatz (talk) 20:32, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
We have already had three discussions focused on the actual merits of having this property. The first found consensus to create the property; the second (the first PfD, last December) failed to find any consensus to delete it, with not a single supporter; as did - by your own admission - the next. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits20:37, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Andy, can you explain why it matters whether the old property is recreated or a new one is created? What difference does it make? I've been reading your fight on this for a while and I just don't get why you are so worked up about it. As you and others have said - there is no deadline, so if the property is unavailable for some time (or some other way of handling it is eventually arrived at) what harm is done? I just don't see why this justifies getting a handful of admins (and more by the day, it seems) upset with you. ArthurPSmith (talk) 21:08, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I can't speak for Andy, but stability matters on a project like this. If properties with three consensuses for existence are deleted and recreated (after months of protest and a fourth consensus) as a separate property, what stability is there for reusers of our data? If the original property is recreated then any external tools etc can just be reactivated rather than needing to be rewritten. As for getting people pissed off, this is an unfortunate but I consider that the benefits to the project from ensuring that consensus is respected far outweighs the downsides of people getting pissed off at me. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 22:53, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If the property was widely used, then that would be a fair point. But it wasn't. Maybe let's focus on its actual merits instead? Ajraddatz (talk) 23:21, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Why does it mater how widely used the property was? Do you know whether someone was collating the data to use it or was preparing a larger project that made use of this? The property was created with consensus that it was beneficial to Wikidata to have a property to store this data, for reasons given in just about every discussion about it, and it was ready to be used at any time (rather preferable to telling an enthusiastic new contributor to wait between a week and a year for their property proposal to be decided upon). In unrelated discussions about property use, nobody has ever been able to explain to me (despite repeatedly asking) why lightly used properties are a problem? The only answers given related to vandalism, misuse and constraint violations, but the volume of and propensity for these are all entirely independent of how many uses a property has (indeed a more used property is more likely to attract vandalism and constraint violations are far easier to sort among a few uses than among many uses). Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 23:41, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As I pointed out to you above, and more recently elsewhere: "We have already had three discussions focused on the actual merits of having this property. The first found consensus to create the property; the second (the first PfD, last December) failed to find any consensus to delete it, with not a single supporter; as did - by your own admission - the next.". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits12:36, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Technically, it doesn't matter "whether the old property is recreated or a new one is created", because if the latter action is taken, it will have to be merged into P1887 anyway. What matters is that we don't have admins deleting properties with no consensus; that we don't have admins closing discussions while they are in progress (and despite objections from their recent participants); that we don't allow multiple, disruptive deletion nominations; that we don't invent procedure on-the-fly to cover up the failure of admins to act on reasonable requests to oversee the actions of other admins, and that we don't waste the time of volunteers with redundant, duplicate proposals for properties that have already found consensus for their creation, and no consensus for their deletion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits12:34, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Question @Innocent bystander, Ajraddatz: why do you think something broader is required? To my knowledge the concept of a vice-county is unique to Great Britain, Ireland, the Channel Islands and Isle of Man and this method of recording data for areas that are not used in other contexts (e.g. current or former administrative territorial entities, cultural regions, statistical areas, etc) is not used elsewhere. Certainly the Wikipedia article and other references I've read give no hint that there is an equivalent elsewhere.Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 00:02, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Thryduulf: The fact that Staffordshire (Q17581852) is a vice-county is already stated in that item. location (P276):Staffordshire (Q17581852) then can fulfil exactly the same purpose and you will get the same information. BUT, to state that a nature reserve, a rare flower or a bird can be found in one specific area with maybe very specific living circumstances actually looks like a good idea. We maybe do not have exactly the same kind of entity in the rest of the world, but to state that something can be found in the limestone-islands of the Baltic Sea or the erosion zones of Ångermanälven still looks very useful. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 05:27, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If we're thinking in a comparative sense, many countries have a sub-county administrative zone that is still above the municipal level. In Canada, these are called township zones, which they apparently are in China as well. I just wonder if this property could be modified to fit all sub-county-but-not-municipal administrative zones, something which could make it more usable and remove that concern as well (though I do agree that widespread use shouldn't be mandatory for a property to be made). Or if it is even needed at all, or even if it could be used as a qualifier within the location property; i.e. location --> whatever, with the qualifier of sub-county admin area --> thing. Though this probably duplicates data that can already be figured out by going from the bottom up, i.e. listing the lowest level and then extrapolating the other administrative districts that it is in. Ajraddatz (talk) 07:31, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Ajraddatz: I do not like pretending like this hierarchy exists in reality. They maybe do so in Canada or China, but here in Sweden there is a chaos of different types of overlapping administrative territorial entities and they follow no hierarchy at all. A Swedish district do not have to follow the same borders as a municipality, neither a parish or a civil parish do. That something here is located in a district, does often not gives you information in which municipality you live. One family in Boteå district lives in Kramfors municipality, while the rest (I think) lives in Sollefteå municipality. "Located in" "Boteå district" then does not give you enough information to tell where they get their municipal service or where they pay municipal tax. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 10:05, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, vice-counties are not part of any hierarchy of administrative areas. For most you can infer which country they are in, but at least one is party in the UK and party in the Republic of Ireland (they pre-date even Irish Free State (Q31747)) and it is not unlikely that some span the England-Wales border (England-Scotland border is less likely but still possible, e.g. around Berwick-upon-Tweed (Q504678)). It would be possible to add statements noting a location's vice-county but this would require (a) statements on every location in the British Isles and (b) a property to record the location's vice-county, so I don't recommend that approach. I suppose the vice-county could be added as a second location (P276) statement but that is going to be less clear, possibly harder to query (I'm not sure) and likely to see the entries removed by well-meaning users who don't know what a vice-county is. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 10:54, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that vice-counties are not used for administrative purposes, but they still represent an organizational unit above the municipal and below the county. So even if there is no explicit administration based on the vice-county that a city / town / etc is in, it should be possible to figure out by the software by listing the lowest possible administrative division. So you take something like Anglian Tower (Q4763423), list the lowest possible administrative division (York (Q42462)), and then by extension the software can figure out that it is part of whatever vice-county it is a part of - 10 minutes of Googling and I can't figure that out. Basically, it isn't an administrative division, but it could be figured out as one in the software. Would it also be possible to add as a second location (P276) statement, with a qualifier that it is a vice-county? Though I suppose there wouldn't be much different between that and creating this property. Ajraddatz (talk) 20:18, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, they don't represent any organisational unit at all, and it is not conceptually possible to say that they are "above the municipal and below the county" as they exist as entirely independent concepts that have exactly no relation to each other (it's as nonsensical as saying that area control center (Q854272) regions are "above the state and below the country" - they exit independently for different, unrelated purposes). Most are larger than municipal but this cannot be guaranteed, some are larger than counties, others are smaller than counties, some are about the same size but with different borders - at least one is in two different countries. Also, the borders of vice-counties do not change - a given point in the Vice County of e.g. Derbyshire will always be in that vice-county but which administrative and ceremonial county/counties it is in can change at any time - see the image above. location (P276) has been brought up several times, including in the first property proposal - see for example the comment of mine immediately preceeding yours for a couple of reasons why it would be inferior to a dedicated property. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 23:07, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
My own understanding of this was based on Google searches, so thanks for explaining this better to me. Looking at a map, it seemed like the boundaries for the vice-counties intersected with those of counties, but if they are completely different then perhaps this property does make sense. Though, they still represent organizational units by definition - it's just an issue of them not being comparable with the administrative districts. My only other concern is the use for this - it was proposed as a necessary part of bio recording, but went largely unused. Is this actually an important area? Are these vice-counties widely used for that purpose? And is enough data involving them available to promote future use? Ajraddatz (talk) 18:21, 3 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The boundaries of vice-counties are generally similar to ceremonial counties with the same name but they are not identical and some are very different (e.g. Oxfordshire (Q17581832)), there are vice-counties without direct equivalent (e.g. Mid-west Yorkshire (Q17582085)) and others that sound more similar than they are (e.g. West Kent (Q17581823) does cover the western part of present day Kent (Q21694674) but also most of south-east London, at least as far west as Greenwich (Q179385)). Further, the boundaries of ceremonial and administrative counties can and do change, but vice-counties are static by design. As for data availability - there is 160+ years of biological recording and other data that uses the vice-county system, including contemporary recording with tools available to convert grid references and GPS points to vice-county location. As there are many independent organisations using vice-counties the format and license of that data will vary though, but much will be in the public domain by now. There is plenty of potential use, but I cannot promise how quickly that will occur - but as I've still never seen any valid reason why low use of properties is actually a problem (I've seen a couple of attempts, but none that actually stood up to scrutiny - they are no more or less likely to be subject to random vandalism and probably less likely to suffer targeted vandalism; constraint violations are less likely to happen with low-use properties and easier to resolve when they do). Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 19:54, 3 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Thryduulf, that makes sense. I've changed my vote to support. I appreciate your time spent walking me through it; perhaps some more information could be included on the talk page or something to make this more clear next time. Ajraddatz (talk) 22:13, 3 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This is not an external id property for which we do have some very localized properties; it is intended as a property indicating the location of an item within another item. That seems a very generic thing to me. If location (P276) is deemed unsuitable or ambiguous as Thryduulf suggests above, how about creating a new property such as "located within" or "located within the nonadministrative territorial entity" to distinguish it from the administrative version? Another option perhaps is the simple part of (P361)ArthurPSmith (talk) 14:16, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Why is there so much scrabbling around trying to find a broader property - are there any usecases that we are missing? part of (P361) isn't a good fit as e.g. Sandwell Valley RSPB reserve (Q7417062) is no more part of a vice-county than it is part of an administrative county (perhaps even less so). "Located in non-administrative territorial entity" is less problematic on the surface, but what would be the domain and allowed values other than vice-counties? Everything else I can come up that could possibly fit is either not a territorial entity (e.g. Flight information region (Q1433404)) or part of some other administrative structure (e.g. police area (Q7209560)). Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 17:10, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
because wikidata, structurally, is benefited by having fewer more general item-valued properties if they are sufficient to capture the information in question. The generic nature of instance of (P31), subclass of (P279) and part of (P361) in particular allow some powerful querying to be done that wouldn't be nearly as easy if there were a collection of disparate properties representing the same kinds of relationships across different domains. String-valued (or external-id valued) and numeric-valued properties are a different matter, as the meaning of the values is very much tied into the specific property. But the power of wikidata is that items (Q-identifiers) are in themselves already highly specific - they don't need further interpretation, in general. We know Staffordshire (Q17581852) is a vice county because it is specified that way, and differs from Staffordshire (Q21694786) and all the other Staffordshire's. We don't need to have the property telling us that the value is a vice county, the item already tells us that. So what is it that this proposed property would be telling us? If it's covered by an already existing property, we really should use that. If we do need a new property, we certainly don't need it to be specific to vice counties. And I would have thought "territorial entity" includes anything that specifies a geographic region in some way, so Flight information region (Q1433404) for example ought to count (though the region specified is above the ground). ArthurPSmith (talk) 14:16, 3 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support The explanations given make sense to me. I don't think any other property suggested is really suited to model this very specific and arcane (but seemingly important) aspect unambiguously. For the same reason I don't think we need a broader property. --Srittau (talk) 21:34, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose unless we see a list of 15 sample uses before creation. This as it had been created, but wasn't actually used for quite some time (despite us being told that some other property had been used instead in its previous creation discussion). --- Jura09:20, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Not a requirement for a proposed property, but to indulge you:
Support. This is significant information for biological recording that cannot be recorded on Wikidata using existing properties. There is no deadline, and no required stated anywhere that properties have to be immediately widely used. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 23:35, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
Oppose. If the target-article is a vice-county or not can be seen in the P31:Q7925010-statement in that item. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 07:35, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
Question @Innocent bystander, Ajraddatz: why do you think something broader is required? To my knowledge the concept of a vice-county is unique to Great Britain, Ireland, the Channel Islands and Isle of Man and this method of recording data for areas that are not used in other contexts (e.g. current or former administrative territorial entities, cultural regions, statistical areas, etc) is not used elsewhere. Certainly the Wikipedia article and other references I've read give no hint that there is an equivalent elsewhere.Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 00:02, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
Done The conclusion of this discussion is that there is majority support and substantial forseeable use of this property. I have considered both recreation of the property as a new one and undeletion of vice-county (P1887). For stability reasons I have thought the latter to be the most appropriate. Make good use of it. Lymantria (talk) 11:31, 20 June 2016 (UTC)