Wikidata:WikiProject every politician/Political data model
Data Model for PoliticiansEdit
This is an attempt to document best practices for modelling data about politicians and the offices they have held. Ideally data should modelled in as consistent a manner as possible across different countries, so that queries that work in one place will also work with minimal changes elsewhere. This is still a work in progress, and discussion on different/better approaches is always very welcome.
Holding Political OfficeEdit
The core property for holding political office is position held (P39) (member of (P463) should not be used for this).
Several different approaches to position held (P39) statements are currently used, depending on the quality of data sources, and the richness of information required:
Approach 1Edit
Uses a single standard membership property, e.g. member of the European Parliament (Q27169), and no qualifiers. This is very common when bulk-importing data on politicians, e.g. from Wikipedia Categories, and is very useful base information.
| position held (P39) |
| ||||||||||
| add value | |||||||||||
[* NB: A list of the existing "Member of Country's Legislature" items can been seen on the List of National Legislatures page.]
Approach 2Edit
The position held (P39) statement is qualified with start time (P580) and end time (P582). This is a substantial improvement on Approach 1, as it lets us know when someone held office, not simply that they did hold office.
| position held (P39) |
| ||||||||||||||
| add value | |||||||||||||||
Approach 3Edit
Similar to Approach 2, but where a specific item relating to the holding that office exists, and can hold extra information.
| position held (P39) |
| ||||||||||||||||
| add value | |||||||||||||||||
Approach 4Edit
- Note: This approach may not be applicable in all scenarios, depending on the structure of a specific legislature and/or of existing data. It is generally advisable to start a discussion before converting data from one approach to another.
Separate position held (P39) statements for each mandate:
| position held (P39) |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| add value | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Although slightly more complicated to enter, this form allows for much richer data that is usually easier to query. It is particularly suitable in the common scenario where a source only provides a list of members serving during a given legislative term, and does not provide individual dates of service, allowing parliamentary term (P2937) information to be added first, and more precise start time (P580) and end time (P582) to be sourced separately later. It's generally seen as incompatible with the format of Level 1/2.
Approach 5Edit
A similar approach to number 4, utilised for the UK House of Commons and some other national legislatures, is to create discrete position items for each legislative term, each term-item being a subclass of a more general Member of Parliament (Q16707842) item. It assumes that the legislature defines the position on such a basis.
| position held (P39) |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| add value | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Additional QualifiersEdit
Other highly recommended qualifiers on position held (P39) statements include:
- parliamentary group (P4100)
- electoral district (P768)
- end cause (P1534) is useful where applicable and known.
- Common values include: <dissolution of parliament (Q741182)>, <leaving party (Q30580660)>, <exclusion from a political party (Q1787171)>, <death in office (Q5247364)> (see all end cause qualifiers currently in use)
Notes:
- elected in (P2715) should be set to novalue if the person was not elected (e.g. if they were co-opted or otherwise appointed)
- electoral district (P768) should be set to novalue where no electoral district (Q192611) applies
- parliamentary term (P2937) should be set to novalue if the legislature isn't legislative term (Q15238777)-based
- parliamentary group (P4100) should be set to independent politician (Q327591) if not a member of any group
- end time (P582) should be omitted if the person is still in office, not set to novalue
Membership ItemsEdit
Items for parliamentary "member of" (e.g. member of the Parliament of Finland (Q17592486)) should use properties:
| Mandatory |
|
As illustrated in the Level 3a example, above, in some countries, the preference is to use term-specific membership items, such as Member of the 16th Lok Sabha (Q42509248), Member of the 15th Lok Sabha (Q42509330), etc. This makes data easier to manipulate with some common tooling (such as QuickStatements and Listeria (Q24045615) that otherwise struggle with someone having held the same position more than once). Where this approach is used the subclass of (P279) for each such item must also be set to the non-term-specific item for that legislature (e.g. member of the Lok Sabha (Q16556694)), and each position held (P39) statement must also include a parliamentary term (P2937) qualifier, so that standardised queries can be constructed without needing to know which type of item is in place.
PeopleEdit
The politicians themselves should usually have the following data:
| Mandatory | |
| Where known |
|
| Where appropriate |
|
Legislative BranchEdit
Information on modelling the legislatures themselves, as well as the legislative terms, and constituencies, can be found at Wikidata:WikiProject_Parliaments
ElectionsEdit
Information on modelling elections can be found at Wikidata:WikiProject elections.
Executive BranchEdit
Head of GovernmentEdit
CabinetEdit
A parent class for the Cabinet itself (e.g. Cabinet of Wales (Q32859630)), with:
| Mandatory |
|
Then, for each individual cabinet (e.g. Fourth Morgan ministry (Q27957662)):
| Mandatory |
|
| Preferable |
|
Cabinet membershipsEdit
Each member should have a position held (P39) for the position:
⟩ position held (P39) ⟨ Minister for Heritage (Q25713775) ⟩start time (P580)
⟨ 2007-07-19 ⟩end time (P582)
⟨ 2008-07-18 ⟩Cabinet-Level PositionsEdit
e.g. Minister for Health and Social Services (Q6865862)
| Mandatory |
|
| Preferable |
|
Non-Cabinet Ministerial positionsEdit
Junior positions can be modelled following the pattern for Cabinet positions; however the part of (P361) qualifier of the position statement should point to the government - e.g. Welsh Government (Q3112646) - rather than to the cabinet.