Wikidata talk:WikiProject Country subdivision

P132 edit

Hi! It says in this project page that we should include either category first-level, second-level and so on to the property P132. Does this mean that we should actually insert the very category in the statement as well as e.g. municipality, county or state? Little confused. --Kristian Vangen 02:13, 2 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

I am not sure I understand. From what I see, the task force page talks about P131.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:41, 2 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'll try to clarify. As of now many of the items containing an administrative unit (e.g. New York state) include a property called type of administrative division (P132). This property shows U.S. State as the type. At the same time, a U.S. State is also a first-level administrative country division (the second being the counties in each state). Should this also be included under the property of P132? --Kristian Vangen 06:33, 2 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Oh, I see. No, I do not think this has been properly discussed. It is better to take it to the Project Chat.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:00, 2 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

This example may be useful. --DixonD (talk) 08:15, 2 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

I think the description here is out of date. This was discussed extensively on project chat before properties P131 and P132 were introduced. I thought type of administrative division (P132) could be assigned a much wider range of values than those listed on the Project page. This was because there are lots of corner cases where types of unit that seem similar are different levels or else third level units are part of first level units and so on. Counties, for instance, are second level in the USA but first level in many other (smaller) countries.
Is there any objection to rewriting it as I have described above? Filceolaire (talk) 08:50, 4 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Actually, P:P132 is a bit problematic, because units are not always "administrative". For instance fr: Modèle:Infobox Commune de France lists "canton" as an administrative division, though technically, which technically, it is not. Replacing P132 with P:P31 would avoid this kind of problem. --Zolo (talk) 10:18, 4 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ireland has a similar with Province. It's a well known division with clearly defined, undisputed borders but it is only used for sports and isn't used for official purposes, that I know of, but changing to P31 is a change from current practice which needs some more responses here to do. Filceolaire (talk) 06:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Actually, I had made a bulk deletion proposal for all those "type of" properties, but it was closed without reaching any consensus. Though I really think that doing away with all those properties would be the most sensible solution, we can also make a more specific proposal for P132, but I do not know if that should be on requests on deletion or at some other place that is likely to have more interested readers. --Zolo (talk) 07:34, 5 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

"second-level administrative division" edit

I see that some items were assigned values like "first-level administrative division". for P132. I also see that this seems more or less recommended on this page. And I think it is very bad. Q6277959 links to Wikipedia categories. An item that links to categories should certainly not be used. That is that same thing as using the items linking to Category:United States of America instead of the one about the US. I do not think that we need an item about "second level administrative divisions". It really sounds like an all-round inconsistent concept. If, by any chance, it is really needed, it should be a real item not a category item, and it should be used in items about types of admnistrative division (the item about Danish communes not about Copenhagen). --Zolo (talk) 16:18, 20 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

The system used for Poland looks very useful. They have two types of second level administrative units, and three types of third level. (The system used inside Warsaw excluded.) Take a look and see if we can use it as a model for more countries. -- Lavallen (block) 16:29, 20 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, I do not find things about Poland, could you probide a link ?
Second-level administrative division of Poland" may make sense, what I really do not like is trying to make it an international concept, the way it is done in the English Wikipedia and seems to be suggested here as well. In other words "German Bundesland is a subclass of first-level administrative division" does not make any sense to me (and I am choosing an example where things do not get awful). --Zolo (talk) 16:47, 20 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Jelenia Gora Powiat is then divided into a number of three types of Gminas (Municipalities): They are "sort of admin div": Rural/Urban/Urban-rural Gmina. Urban Gminas are "instance of city". All three are subclasses of Gmina, and Gmina is subclass of third level admin unit. I think this kind description is very clear. An exemption is the City of Warsaw, who is divided into a number of boroughs, the only boroughs in the nation who are an official administrative units. (Also other large citys has boroughs, but they have no definition in Polish law.) -- Lavallen (block) 18:45, 20 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I should have thought of having a look at the Poland item itself ;)
Much of it seems good, but not the part about "levels".
  • Can we classify Voivodeships in general as a "first-level administrative unit ? Given that voivoideship is a cross-country, cross-period concept, that would be rather surprising. And indeed, on click tells me that from the 14th century until 1793, "Poznań Voivodeship was part of Greater Poland Voivodeship."
  • If there were non-gminas "third-level divisions", I would see the need for an item about "third-level divisions of Poland". But that is very different from a worldwide item mixing divisions that have nothing in common, either in size or in political attributions.
  • If there is a clear hierarchy (say all gminas are parts of a powiat), that needs to be clearly stated in the relevant items. We should not have to guess that from seeing that gminas are "third-level" while powiat are "second-level". And if there is no clear hierarchy, the whole thing about levels becomes irrelevant. --Zolo (talk) 20:11, 20 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Being the one who added all those statements for subdivisions of Poland, I want to clarify a few things. I had structured date for Poland, and I wanted to upload it to Wikidata, but at that time (and even now) it was not clear how data should be organized here. I asked in Wikidata:Project chat, but I didn't get much help there. So I've come up with that idea with levels.
About a voivodeship. From what I know, a voivodeship is a first-level unit of all those countries. If not, we need to remove the statement that "voivodeship" is "subclass of" "first-level administrative unit", and add this statement to "voivodeship of Poland" instead. You are mistaken about that "Poznań Voivodeship was part of Greater Poland Voivodeship." It was superseded by Greater Poland Voivodeship after an administrative reform in 1998.
Lavallen described the current system almost correctly (there is also city with powiat rights which is a city which acts as a powiat in the administrative system). And, yes, there is a clear hierarchy - whole Poland is divided into voivodeships, each voivodeship is divided into powiats, and each powiat is divided into gminas of three types. --DixonD (talk) 21:39, 20 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the clarification, apparently, I missed the project chat discussion.
The Poznan/Greater voidevoiship example I was referring to is a 18th century division. I do not if this the Wikipedia is correct, but my more general point is that it is doubtful that we can find consistent commonalities across similarly named divisions at different times and places.
So we need to state that voivodeships are divided into powiats, and so on. I think P:P131 / P:P150 is ok for this: given that voivodeships are subclasses, not instances of administrative divisions, there should be no risk of confusions. Otherwise, we probably need a new property.
Do we need to add that voivodeships of Poland are subclasses of first-level administrative divisions ? I do not quite see the point. Cardinal hierarchisation with a country makes clear sense, but cardinal classification at the international level is very brittle and of unclear conceptual relevance. Monaco and India do not have much in common, but in international law, they are both sovereign states. I do not think that there is anything that making a Polish voivodeship similar to, say, as US state.
What they have in common is how we use some parameters in the Coord-template, and how they are described by some standards. And as far as I know, not even the US-states are so much alike that they can be described in exactly the same way. The counties in parts of New England do not look as a true "administrative" division, as an example. And parts of Alaska have a statistical division as a complement to the administrative boroughs.
One problem in Poland is that there is no separate article about the administrative division of Warsaw, and therefor no item to describe it. The article on plwiki who describe it, is a merged article about all kinds of divisions of cities. And I also think we need an items for each "City (Jurisdiction)". The cities in Poland looks like they are well-defined, it is simple to see if a city is a city or not. While the Swedish cities from 1971 aren't that at all. A Swedish city is today a city if enough people think it is a city. -- Lavallen (block) 06:34, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
US states are all at a similar level, that does not mean that their internal structure are all the same. In fact, that is exactly my point, it does not make sense to speak of "second-level divisions" in general, without restricting it to a well-defined area. What are the standards that you are thinking about ? I do not know of any that bases itself on the cardinality of country subdivisions. --Zolo (talk) 06:48, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
See Property:P300 as an example of a standard. But a good Q is if it is used in a way that ISO expect us to use it.
Yes, we need well-defined structures who are easy to use and understand. One thing I often are missing in wp-articles is how the country-subdivision is used by the people. If I need elder-care in Sweden, I go to the (kommun)-municipality. If I need health-care, I go to the (landsting)-municipality. If I need a drivers licens I go to the county-administration. If I want a new law, I go to the state goverment. There is (normally) no competion between different levels, they are each others complement. -- Lavallen (block) 07:34, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
ISO 3166-2 is not about levels. French départements and French régions both have 3166-2 codes, though they are clearly different levels. If something has a code in a standard, then just add the code directly, I do not see how a general "level" item is needed here.
I totally agree that many things are missing in Wikipedia infoboxes, and that we should have them here. I suspect that part of the problem is that Wikipedia (at least English inboxes) handles admnistrative divisions like a set of Russian doll game: define level 1, level 2, level 3, and you are done. If we want to have something better here, we need more sensible definitions. Yes, that probably means defining administrative divisions in terms of real attributions instead of counting how many layers there are between them and sovereign states. --Zolo (talk) 08:00, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Actually, the divisions are tricky, it would be great if someone could write a help page.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:30, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
It become even more tricky when we start to talk about historical division and non-administrative division.
ISO 3166 is not about levels, true. But the way it looks gives the impression that it is about Russian matruchcas. One problem is maybe that some projects have users who add categories for everything, without thinking how the categories are usefull. The admin-levels are then (too) often used as a base for such categories, and the hierarchy becomes even more established on wp, than it was supposed to be. -- Lavallen (block) 10:58, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Structure proposal edit

Following suggestions above, we seem to need clearer guidelines so that we can harmonize the way we do things.

I have tried something with a French example, as it is what I know best.

Note the way subdivisions are handled. French départements are subdivided into arrondissements, and arrondissements contain several communes, so that we could argue that département are just subdivided into arrondissements. However, this is not a very meaningful way of doing things. Arrondissements are very unimportant divisions, their borders are very seldom shown on maps, and they change very easily. Communes by contrast are very well-known and have much more administrative power, so that I think it makes more sense to say that départements are subdivided in two way: in arrondissmenents and in communes (actually we could also add electoral circonscriptions, or even cantons, this is what is done in the infobox of fr:Seine-Saint-Denis. See User_talk:Zolo#Advise? for a related discussion. Does that sound like a good way of doing things ? --Zolo (talk) 12:53, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Sounds intresting! Since larger fr-communes can contain several arrondissements, I see few alternatives. -- Lavallen (block) 13:04, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
BTW, are "electoral circonscriptions" an administrative division? My wordbooks give me no clue! -- Lavallen (block) 13:05, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
I do not know for electoral divisions. It may depend on cases. In French, National Parliament circonsriptions are clearly not administrative divisions, but it seems that cantons are considered admnistrative divions by the INSEE [1] (cantons are now just electoral divisions, but I think they had a more important role in the 19th century).
Actually, the arrondissments of Paris, Lyon and Marseille are somewhat different and have a different item Q702842. I think other communes are always located in just one arrondissement (but it is not the case for cantons / communes). --Zolo (talk) 13:19, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ok, "electoral divisions" in Sweden are never an administrative division, even if they in several cases are geographicly identical with the administrative division.
How does this system work with histrical division? On svwp there are many articles about former municipalities and counties of Sweden and Finland, but aslo some other nations that has re-organised their division recently. There is also at least one article about a proposed municipality that this far hasn't been created. (A local referendum said "no", 2009.) -- Lavallen (block) 13:33, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Do you also want to ingegrate regions?--Ymblanter (talk) 13:58, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

I guess we would have to decide it country by country. One of the problems is that lists could become very long. A more fondamental problem is that qualifiers do not take qualifiers. This may be a problem with the system I propose. For instance, China should have |subdivisions: province-level divisions of China. It should include Taiwan, as China claims that it is a Province of China, but it would obviously need a qualifier to state that it is de facto independent. That would not really be possible;

Another solution would be to put the list in dedicated articles rather than in the main item. For instance the list of communes of Seine-Saint-Denis could be in Q386064 (or in a new item). That would streamline the main article, and provide more flexibility for qualifiers. I suppose it would then be easier to add other alternative division systems. I had a try with Q142. The list of such subdivisions can grow very long, but I am not sure it is necessarily a bad thing. It may be rather difficult to know that electoral circonscriptions of France cover the French territory if we do not add it to the P150 of France. --Zolo (talk) 14:54, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

There are two items for the province of Taiwan, one for Beijing-China and one for Taipei-China. See the item for Beijing-China. Qualifiers are of course still usefull. -- Lavallen (block) 16:58, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Administrative history (P155/156) edit

I have tried to use P155 and P156 in Kramfors Municipality, where I live at the moment. I am aware of that you maybe do not have any translation of the items I have used. I have used P132 to describe from what kind of admin-units the municipality has been merged. (All of this happend 1970/71). I do not know if using P132 in that way is a good idea. We had before 1971 a number of different types of municipalities. Landskommun (rural municipality), Stad (urban municipality) and Municipalsamhälle (minor urban municipality which still is a part of a rural municipality.)

If you follow the history back to Kramfors stad who used to be an urban municipality from 1951, you see that it proceded "Gudmundrå landskommun" and "Kramfors municipalsamhälle". (There is no article about the latter yet, so I linked the present urban area with the same name.)

Gudmundrå landskommun was founded 1863 and Kramfors municipalsamhälle 1889. (I cannot add those numbers yet.) Since the municipalsamhälle still was a part of "Gudmundrå landskommun", it looks a little strange to add that it was "followed by"...

Gudmundrå landskommun was founded 1863 when local administration was founded in all of Sweden (with some exception). It was made out of Gudmundrå socken (parish), which was split into a civil and a clergal administration, Gudmundrå församling.

Another problem is that 1971, when the modern municipality was founded, Boteå landskommun was split into parts of two municipalities. When that municipality was founded, it was created out of Styrnäs, Sånga, Överlänna. Only Styrnäs became a part of Kramfors, the other two became a part of Sollefteå kommun. The "split" is no problem to describe, but how to describe that Styrnäs first (1952) was merged into Boteå, and therafer into Kramfors (1971). Because of that, it is not enough to descibe what happend 1952 in the item of Styrnäs, you have to add a statement for what happend 1971, 20 years after the municipality ended to exist. That is not the way we normally do, like in P132, where we (normally only) add next level. -- Lavallen (block) 16:56, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

I maybe found a solution for the split of Boteå landskommun. I used the sandbox-property to describe how the municipality split. -- Lavallen (block) 04:57, 22 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Objects like rivers and streets separating units edit

Hello. Is there anything official / worth adding to Wikidata about objects like rivers or streets which form a part of, or have a common part with, a border between two areas (administrative units or such)? --AVRS (talk) 13:35, 22 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Counties of England edit

Wikipedia articles mix "ceremonial" counties and the smaller non-metropolitan counties that are part of it (see for instance en:Kent). I think that is not a good things to do in Wikidata. Ho are we to handle that ? I would say two separate items. If so, which one should be the main item linking to the Wikipedia article, and whihch one should go to a new item ? --Zolo (talk) 09:35, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Do we need a new item, there is Q643815 and Q180673. -- Lavallen (block) 10:01, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
I meant, an item for Kent (ceremonial county) as opposed to Kent (non-metropolitan county). And also, I think we should split Q643815 into two: "metropolitan" and "non-metropolitan". --Zolo (talk) 10:07, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yes, this is a huge problem. I call them semi-disambig-articles. In the name of "quality" (read "number of bytes/article"), wp-articles are merged, no matter what problem it causes. -- Lavallen (block) 10:16, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
There is Q769603 and Q769628, it looks like a split of Q643815. -- Lavallen (block) 10:28, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, should I make them both subclasses of Q643815 ? --Zolo (talk) 16:08, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
I have been bold and created Q11775003, as it having both definitions in the same item is really unmaintainable. Now I am not sure about subdivisions. I think that technically a ceremonical county has the same subdivisions as the non-metropolitan county except that it adds unitary authorities, so that we should copy the whole list from the non-metropolitan county. But it may be clearer to simply subdivide it in non-metropolitan Derbyshire + Derby. --Zolo (talk) 16:27, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Unfortunatly les articles suédois are not clear enough, so it's hard to help you here. -- Lavallen (block) 16:39, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Subclasses edit

Any idea about how we could organize things using P:P279 ? I think nothing should be considered a "subclass of county" or such things that are not precisely defined (for instance "province of Iran" does not refere to the same-level of division in English and in Italian). As I said above , I do not like "subclass of first-level administrative division" either. I would suggest that we start with "subclass of administrative subdivision" first, so that we get a simple list and then see what we can do. --Zolo (talk) 15:13, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

I guess "rural municipality of Poland" works as a subclass of "municipality of Poland".
But it is tricky. The items I have used for "rural municipalities of Sweden", has been with an item for all kinds of "rural municipalities", nomatter nationality. And the current "municipality of Sweden"-item is not a general item for all kinds of municipalities of Sweden, it for modern municipalities from 1971. Therfor a new "rural municipalities of Sweden" is not a subclass of "municipalities of Sweden" as that item looks today. -- Lavallen (block) 15:37, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
But why should we use P:P279 if for the purpose of our task force it just doubles P:P131?--Ymblanter (talk) 18:50, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
P279 means "is a sort of". For instance "oblast" is a subclass of "federal subject of Russia". I do not think it is ever synonymous with P131.
I think we have two sort of cases:
comparison between things at different places. Is county of England a sublcass of county. I would say no, as "county" is not really a well defined concept (English and French use the word for different countries with no apparent theoretical reason). "county of California" is a subclass of county of the US" feels right, but I am not sure either (I do not know if there is any federal definition of "county" in the US).
different types of sbudivisions located in the same territory: like rural municipality of Sweden -> municipality of Sweden. That seems very useful, but as Lavallen shows, it can be tricky. --Zolo (talk) 06:11, 24 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
The Swedish word for a English county is "grevskap", the Swedish word for a US county is "county", the Swedish word for a Swedish county is "län". We are sometimes using the word "län" for russian oblasts, at least for "Еврейская автономная область".
We also have to consider the historical aspect, Swedish "historical counties", can be named: "grevskap", the same word as for a English county. The counties of New England, I guess, have a common history with the counties of California, but they do not look in the same way today.
The counties of Louisiana have the name "parish", but they have more in common with other US counties, than with a Swedish parish, which is a census-division. -- Lavallen (block) 07:26, 24 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Let us see whether I get it correct. For a particular unit, say Södermanland County, P:P279 just does not apply, and we are using P:P131. What we are now discussing are the classes of units, in this case län, right?--Ymblanter (talk) 07:38, 24 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Maybe you mean P:P132, in this case it is correct (or alternatively P:P31, people seem to use both these properties, and really in this case, it is synonymous). For Södermanland County, P:P131 should probably be set to "Sweden". --Zolo (talk) 07:48, 24 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Is län in Sweden a subclass of län or not, is the question. The latter looks like an item for "län in Sweden and Finland", and since they have a common history (Finland and Sweden were one nation until 1809), it's possible that "län in Sweden" is a subclass of "län in Sweden and Finland". -- Lavallen (block) 07:52, 24 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

P131 edit

I have in Q3543408 made some experiments with P131. I've been told to add "only the next higher level of administration". This gives me some problems when the hierarchy of the levels doesn't match. That A and B both are in the same Municipality mean they are in the same County, but it does not mean they are in the same Province. All parts of a Municipality are normally in one Legal districts but there are some exceptions. -- Lavallen (block) 15:03, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

I am beginning to think that maybe it would be better to use part of in some cases (like US state -> state) and have a less restrictive meaning for P131, ie not restrict it to administrative units but use "common sense" to use the more relevant term. Given that the property is transitive, that should not really break anything. --Zolo (talk) 16:08, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
I disovered some problems with the "transitivines" of Swedish legal districts. There is no problem with modern districts, but "traditional older cities" where a legal district in their own. They are more of a "instance of Rådhusrätt" than a "part of a legal district". -- Lavallen (block) 13:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Tests with an urban area edit

Alby became an urban area 1970, growed fast and was assimilated by Stockholm urban area at the next census 1975. I have tried to use the source here in the way, I have interpretated it's purpose. Of course, we do not have everything yet, a possiblity to add numbers, uri and coord, but I have tried to solve that with the help of sandbox-properties in my experiment. Opinions?

Maybe we have to make a second item for the borough of Alby, if there are other claims that has to be added for it. Today, there isn't, but I know other items with such problems. -- Lavallen (block) 11:28, 5 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

If I understand correctly, the item is about a former municipality that has become a "kommundel" of Botkyrka Municipality in 1975. If so I would rather have two instances than an independent "replace by" property
instance of
kommun (up to 1975)
kommundel (from 1975)
I do not know if "part of" (or P131 using the current system) of Botkyrka should either be a separate property or a qualifier of "kommundel". --Zolo (talk) 13:02, 5 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Looks good to me, but instead of "as of 1970" I would say smth like "status from 1970"--Ymblanter (talk) 13:03, 5 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
No, it's about an "urban area", as it is defined by Statistics Sweden. (Population with >= 200, and less than 200 meters between the buildings and < 30% holiday/weekend-population). It is a statistical property, not an administrative. At the census 1975 the distance to the closest part of Stockholm became smaller than 200 m, and therfor became a part Stockholm urban area.
An urban area is therfor defined one single day (almost) every 5 years. The source tells it was an urban area 1970-11-01, but tells nothing about the status 1970-11-02.
The article tells it is (today) a "kommundel" but I see no source for that. The status of "kommundel" depend on the municipality, it is not the same system in all of Sweden. -- Lavallen (block) 13:18, 5 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Therefor an urban area never has a neighbour. It's like an island; if an island has parts of land as neighbours, it's per definition, not an island. It's the same thing with urban areas. It only has rural areas as neighbours. -- Lavallen (block) 13:25, 5 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ok, actually it is clearer in English than in French, because the French article for "Stockolm urban area" is very wrong. Nonetheless, I think that "followed by Stockholm urban area" should be more clearly linked with "instance of urban area", perhaps by making it a qualifier of it (though I realize it is a bit awkward for the date). I suppose it would also make sense to have a dedicated item for Swedish urban areas, as the definition of urban area may vary across countries. --Zolo (talk) 16:10, 5 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
The definition is more or less the same from 1960 in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. This standard should be followed also by Finland and Iceland according to the Swedish article, but I do not know if that really still is true, or if it is in use at all. There are statistics older than 1960 (all the way back to 1900), but it is not as exactly as it is today, when it is made by computers. An item for Swedish urban area can be a good idea to solve the differences.
A qualifier to describe that it is "followed by Stockholm urban area" can be a good idea.
The item for Swedish minor urban areas (småort) is an even more serious problem. "en:Dispersed settlement" is not the same thing as a statistical Swedish minor urban area. (pop >=50, < 150 m between buildings, less contrained relating holiday/weekend-usage of buildings and not an urban area). I am not aware of any international standard for minor urban areas (småort) but there are more articles on nlwp about them, than on svwp. -- Lavallen (block) 16:41, 5 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
The reason that we have statistics about urban areas, is that we have very large municipalities. Compare 290 Swedish with thousands of French commune for example. They have no administrative influence, but they have large influence on the regulation of traffic, land-usage, water and waste-water-usage etc. There are less restrictions in rural areas, than in urban. -- Lavallen (block) 16:41, 5 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
I now made Q12813115 for this purpose, but Q2027366 maybe works instead? -- Lavallen (block) 16:56, 5 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Most likely not, since the use of this item in Danish isn't using urban area, but city to describe it. And I am not sure about some other languages. -- Lavallen (block) 17:28, 5 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

has use (P366) edit

As mentionned above, it would be interesting to describe the attributions of various types of areas. Yet an "attribution" property does not seem very convenient, because it does not include things like statistical units. Would it be ok to use has use (P366) ? --Zolo (talk) 06:37, 14 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Municipality codes in the European Union edit

Eurostat has set up a system of Local Administrative Units (LAU), whose level 2 (LAU 2) consists of the codes for the municipalities or equivalent units in the 27 European Union member states. I have checked (see Eurostat site here) that these codes are exactly the same codes as the ones defined by the national institutions of statistics of every European Union state. I am wondering if the different properties defining the municipality codes of the European Union states might be grouped together in a single property named "LAU2 code" (or something like that). I am referring to the current properties:

--Albertvillanovadelmoral (talk) 14:05, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Seems sensible to me. Filceolaire (talk) 01:50, 27 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
I have noticed that there is a similar but more general proposal. See Wikidata:Property_proposal/Place#LAU. --Albertvillanovadelmoral (talk) 09:22, 30 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Several notes to P150 edit

I tried to use contains the administrative territorial entity (P150) (inverse property is located in the administrative territorial entity (P131)) and hit several flaws or unclarities:

Time demarcation edit

The division and affiliation of administrative units is not constant but varies during times. Those properties (P150, P131) should have subproperties start time (P580) and end time (P582) to reflect changes and evolution. --ŠJů (talk) 16:35, 11 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

These properties already have these qualifiers and they should be used as you have said. They are already being used in this way in a few cases eg 'County Dublin (Q173500)'. Note that you should also use properties 'follows (P155)' and 'followed by (P156)' to link to the administrative unit which replaced/was replaced by the current unit. Filceolaire (talk) 14:28, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Assemblability of administrative units edit

In some units, there exist at some levels and places paralelly two (or more) different paralel division (e. g. cadastral units, self-governments units, state-government units, judicial or police units etc.) E. g. the Czech Republic have parallely two systems of regions: 7 regions of "geographic" division and 14 regions of "selfgovernment" division and some of the 14 selfgovernment regions are divided to two "geographic" regions. At the level of 81 districts (which are only geographic units without selfgovernment subjectivity or administrative authorities) both "systems" meet. Division of some cities have a similar problem: some cadastral city districts are teared up to two or more self-government municipal parts, e. g. parts of Vinohrady are strewed to 5 self-government municipal parts and mixed with other city districts. Also some "municipalites with widened authority" (Czech municipality with expanded powers (Q7819319)) have their administrative area which affects municipalites in two districts. The definition of contains the administrative territorial entity (P150) seems to suppose a simple assemblability of administrative units at all levels.

Shouldn't we add new properties "contains a part of administrative unit" and "part of this unit is in the administrative unit" as alternatives to P150 and P131? How we should interpret the definition "direct subdivisions of an administrative division"? --ŠJů (talk) 16:35, 11 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Yes. I think we should probably have these properties. You should propose them. Filceolaire (talk) 14:30, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Wikidata:Property proposal/Unsorted#contains part of administrative unit (en), Wikidata:Property proposal/Unsorted#partly is in the administrative unit (en). --ŠJů (talk) 23:36, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Articles dealing with more items together edit

The history of administrative division in Central Europe caused that identity of municipalities blends with identity of their main cities of villages. The main village or central city of the municipality have (usually) identic name as the whole municipality including attached villages (which are diversely attached or separated during course of times). That is one of reasons why the "core village" and the whole municipality have one article together usually.

Some articles about Prague municipal parts deal even 3 items together: e. g. Prague 6 (Q2667290) deals really even with 4 items together:

  • Praha 6 (1) was one of the 16 Prague districts ("obvod", "městský obvod" Praha 1 - Praha 16) in 1949–1960
  • Praha 6 (2) is one of the 10 Prague districts ("obvod", "městský obvod" Praha 1 - Praha 10) existing since June 1960 (derrived from the previous Praha 6) up to now (the area extended in July 1960, in 1968, 1970 and 1974) (includes municipal parts Praha 6, Praha 17, Praha-Přední Kopanina, Praha-Nebušice, Praha-Lysolaje, Praha-Suchdol)
  • Praha 6 (3) is one of the 57 Prague municipal parts ("městská část") existing since 1990 up to now (the area extended in 2005), its area was in 1990–2005 identic with the area of Praha 6 (2) in 1970–1974.
  • Praha 6 (4) is one of the 22 Prague administrative districts (socalled "správní obvod") of the "big municipal parts" (Praha 1 - Praha 22) since 2002 up to now (includes Praha 6 (3) and also "small" municipal parts Praha-Přední Kopanina, Praha-Nebušice, Praha-Lysolaje, Praha-Suchdol).

If we have one "data item" for this article, we should attribute: Praha 6 (3) is part of Praha 6 (4), Praha 6 (4) is part of Praha 6 (2). Should we split the article into 4 different articles (and similarly split tausends of articles of Czech municipalities)? Should we rather allow to join one Wikipedia article with 4 different Wikidata items? Should we split into three articles also the article Praha 1 although all three levels of the current division are identic in case of Praha 1? (It is "obvod", "městská část" and "správní obvod" with identic area and under identic name.) --ŠJů (talk) 16:35, 11 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

It is not our job to tell wikipedias how to organise their articles. It is up to them to decide what items to join together.
in my opinion we should have one wikidata item linked to the wikipedia articles on Praha. This item should be linked to wikidata items for each of the separate entities using the 'has part' properties (since these are part of the 'Praha' article).
In some cases - where a municipal division changes it's boundaries or it's name but other characteristics stay the same - it may be practical to have one wikidata item with multiple boundary map and official name values. Filceolaire (talk) 14:43, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
As seemed, you didn't understand my question.
You are right, Wikidata should not tell wikipedias how to organize their articles. But Wikidata really are the tool which organizes wikipedias. Thus, Wikidata have to respect and accept also an Wikipedia article which deal with two or more items together and have to search for the way how to handle such articles.
We have no problem with the article "Praha". The example was the article "Praha 6" which deals 4 different meanings together (and it is not our job to tell wikipedias how to organise their articles). The meanings (1) and (2) can be understood as a change of boundaries but the meanings (2), (3), (4) are three different but closely related meanings (= 3 real items) of identic name. Is it needed to repeat the questions? Should we split the article into 4 different articles (and similarly split tausends of articles of Czech municipalities)? Should we rather allow to join one Wikipedia article with 4 different Wikidata items? Should we have here only one Q code for all 4 items? Should we split into three articles also the article Praha 1 although all three levels of the current division are identic in case of "Praha 1"? --ŠJů (talk) 22:58, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
The crucial question is if the item can be described using properties. It sounds like (1) and (2) above can be described on the same wikidata page, using properties with date qualifiers to indicate where the properties changed in 1960.
(2) is inside (3) and if it was a small area in the middle of nowhere with a 3 sentence stub then you might treat the article as an article about the larger unit, describing various thing within that unit, including the same name town. This would mean that the wikidata properties for the page (borders, population, adjacent units) should all be related to the larger unit only. While this might be acceptable for a low traffic stub it would not be appropriate for Praha 6. In my opinion you need a separate wikidata page for (2) and for (3).
The crucial question is "If these were on the same page could we describe them using the wikidata properties?" and "If we split these onto different pages would that mean that we could describe them better using wikidata properties?" When you know the answers to these questions then you know if the various things on a page need to be separated out onto pages of their own. Filceolaire (talk) 21:40, 19 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hierarchy of administrative division edit

Can be useful a page like User:ValterVB/sandbox? For every country is reported first level of administrative division based on contains the administrative territorial entity (P150), for every division is reported id, english label (if available), P132 (P132) with english label (if available) and located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) with english label (if available). Is possible to add other properties and more levels. --ValterVB (talk) 14:13, 19 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Add Italy with second level --ValterVB (talk) 16:20, 19 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yes, it certainly would be useful, thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:23, 19 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

  Done

I felt free to do some update as to Germany. --Brühl (talk) 12:00, 25 October 2013 (UTC)Reply

Q618123 geographical feature edit

Hello, i would ask some users to have a glance at Wikidata:Project chat#Another question about migrating away from P107 and to give some comments as to the future of geographical feature (Q618123). --Brühl (talk) 12:10, 25 October 2013 (UTC)Reply

Administrative subdivisions of Thailand edit

As the original author of the articles on the Thai provinces and big contributor to the articles on the districts (en:Amphoe), in the recent years I have collected lots of data on the subdivisions and saved them in XML format [2]. I'd think quite a lot of the data in those XML would make sense to be available via WikiData as well, though things like the lists of mayors are not yet possible to encode here. I am however somewhat confused by the existing properties for subdivisions, as well as wondering how to add properties which would be specific for Thailand, like e.g. the TIS1099 code which every of the central administrative entities has. I tried some manual editing, but quickly came to realize that it'd need a bot, already for the simple task of linking the ~900 districts with the 76 provinces. Since I have no experience with bot editing, and also still very busy with keeping the XML up to date, I wonder if there's someone who'd like to do the WikiData part, with me "just" helping to with explaining my XML structure or the specialities of the administrative structure. Ahoerstemeier (talk) 15:08, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Changes in Required Properties edit

Arctic.gnome, I just started to read your new section in the beginning of the task force. What happens to P132 (P132)? You always write instance of (P31) and replace therefore P132 (P132) which was there before. It is actually much easier to check such subclass relations you described if the type of administrative division is in its own property. --Zuphilip (talk) 07:24, 9 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

@Zuphilip: You're right, P132 should be there (although note that P132 property is listed on properties for deletion). What should go in that property, should it have the exact same value as 'instance of'? --Arctic.gnome (talk) 18:14, 10 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
Arctic.gnome, I added P132 again. I watch and comment in the deletion request for P132. Yes, I suggest to dublicate the information in P132 and P31. In the long term it might be possible to delete one of them. At the moment I think it is very useful to have the 'type of administrative unit' in a seperate property. And either P31 or P279 should be always present in an object.
Is Wikidata:Political_geography_task_force/List_of_subdivisions a copy of the list from Property_talk:P132? Why? --Zuphilip (talk) 19:21, 10 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
That was on a talk page and had comments in it. I wanted a version in the project space that could be updated as we go. --Arctic.gnome (talk) 19:23, 10 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
Well, there is just some danger, that someone will update one but not both pages. Would a redirect also be okay for your purposes? I guess what might be more interesting ist what is at the moment defined as an administrative unit, e.g. http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/autolist.html?q=tree[56061][][279]%20AND%20claim[17]. --Zuphilip (talk) 19:47, 10 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
Talk pages shouldn't be updated anyway (except for the templates at the top of the page). The easiest solution is to put a hatnote link from the talk page to the project page. --Arctic.gnome (talk) 19:59, 10 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hierarchy vs unit edit

There is some confusion which I suppose goes from English-speakers. I don't understand the word "division" but I think it has a problem (2 meanings). There are 2 notions: "administrative unit" and hierarchy of them - for each country. Some times (for some countries, in some Wikipedias) there is only 1 articles which includes hierarchy with biggest units. But for Wikidata needs I believe that we should have them separately. I propose to have them in Q56061 and Q4057633 accordingly. For better understanding I provide labels in some languages:

Q56061 ("administrative unit") Q4057633 (hierarchy)
current label administrative territorial entity (Q56061) hierarchy of administrative territorial entities (Q4057633)
ru-name ru:Административно-территориальная единица (АТЕ) ru:Административно-территориальное деление
be-name Адміністрацыйна-тэрытарыяльная адзінка be:Адміністрацыйна-тэрытарыяльны падзел
uk-name Адміністративно-територіальна одиниця uk:Адміністративно-територіальний устрій
de-name de:Verwaltungseinheit Verwaltungsgliederung
en-name en:Administrative division, subdivision? unit? divisions?

Q56061 should be the root (highest class) of all "USA states", "Swiss cantons", "French arondissments" and so on; Q4057633 should be the root of all administrative systems by country.

P.S. There is also a list of administrative units. See also discussion at Talk:Q56061. --Infovarius (talk) 04:38, 18 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, items constantly changing their meaning, so they should be switched now. Infovarius (talk) 13:59, 22 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
  • Currently, it is structured like this. Q56061 is the top class, and every administrative unit can be in one tree for its type and one class tree for its country's hierarchy.
  1. administrative territorial entity (Q56061)
    1. political territorial entity (Q1048835) (type of unit)
      1. federated state (Q107390)
        1. state of Australia (Q5852411)
          1. New South Wales (Q3224)
      2. local government (Q6501447)
        1. town in Hungary (Q13218690)
          1. Jászapáti (Q240026)
    2. table of administrative divisions by country (Q1423994) (country hierarchy)
      1. administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320)
        1. state of Australia (Q5852411)
          1. New South Wales (Q3224)
      2. administrative territorial entity of Hungary (Q2520520)
        1. town in Hungary (Q13218690)
          1. Jászapáti (Q240026)
Could you please show what your tree would look like? --Arctic.gnome (talk) 05:49, 18 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
Infovarius, I understand you that you want to split the two concepts: (single) admnistrative unit and (systems) of administrative divisions. For example the article de:Verwaltungsgliederung_Deutschlands speaks about the system of the administative division in Germany and would therefore be an instance (?) of the second concept. Every unit shown in the picture on that page would be a subclass of the first concept.
The wikipedia articles are either named after the first or second concept but I guess that the content is the same. For example de:Verwaltungsgliederung is just a redirect to de:Verwaltungseinheit. Are there example for two sperate articles in wikipedia about these two concepts?
Another example administrative territorial entity of the United States (Q852446) is linked to de:Verwaltungseinheit_in_den_Vereinigten_Staaten, i.e. the units, but the article speaks also about the "system" itself. Moreover, the Spanish site es:Organización_territorial_de_los_Estados_Unidos is also speaking about the single administrative units in the US.
Do you want to "double" all administrative unit/subdivision object in wikidata for seperating the two concept properly? Maybe, you can give a concrete example how this would look like. How would we then connect the two items together, with isPartOf? --Zuphilip (talk) 09:18, 18 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
I do not have any opinion on the subject but please note that for example Russia contains two types of divisions: administrative divisions and municipal divisions which in some cases are different. The English Wikipedia uses the administrative divisions as the primary division scheme, whereas the Russian Wikipedia uses the municipal division as the primary scheme.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:49, 18 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, I'm changing the order or 2 items according to latest stable labels. Infovarius (talk) 13:59, 22 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
I see the tree like this (relation to the parent is written after item):
  1. hierarchy of administrative territorial entities (Q4057633) (root of all the system)
    1. administrative territorial entity (Q56061) (type of unit). Hesitating about relation, may be part of (P361) Q4057633 (actually it is a "unit of", i.e. should be something like measured physical quantity (P111)).
      1. federated state (Q107390): subclass of (P279) Q56061
        1. state of Australia (Q5852411): subclass of (P279) Q107390
          1. New South Wales (Q3224). instance of (P31) Q5852411
      2. local government (Q6501447). subclass of (P279) Q56061
        1. town in Hungary (Q13218690). subclass of (P279) Q6501447
          1. Jászapáti (Q240026). instance of (P31) Q13218690
      by level of hierarchy:
      1. first-level administrative division (Q13220202): subclass of (P279) Q56061
        1. state of Australia (Q5852411): subclass of (P279) Q13220202
          1. New South Wales (Q3224). instance of (P31) Q5852411
      2. second-level administrative division (Q13220204): subclass of (P279) Q56061
        1. canton of Luxembourg (Q1146429): subclass of (P279) Q13220204
          1. Canton of Vianden (Q845600). instance of (P31) Q1146429
      3. third-level administrative division (Q13221722): subclass of (P279) Q56061
    systems by countries:
    1. administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320): subclass of (P279) Q4057633
      1. state of Australia (Q5852411): may be better part of (P361) Q4494320, but subclass of (P279) is satisfactory
        1. New South Wales (Q3224): instance of (P31) Q5852411
    2. administrative territorial entity of Hungary (Q2520520): subclass of (P279) Q4057633
      1. town in Hungary (Q13218690): may be better part of (P361) Q2520520, but subclass of (P279) is satisfactory
        1. Jászapáti (Q240026): instance of (P31) Q13218690

I don't understand the role of political territorial entity (Q1048835) properly, so I didn't include it in the tree. --Infovarius (talk) 14:06, 22 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

(i) Please note that "unit" means here entity and not physical unit. Therefore, we cannot use measured physical quantity (P111), see also the constraint at Property_talk:P111. (ii) Moreover, the labels in English and German (maybe other languages) are inconsistent (Note that "unit"@en = "Einheit"@de), e.g. administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) = "Verwaltungseinheit von Australien"@de = "administrative division of Australia"@en. Thus, for a German speacking person the statement state of Australia (Q5852411) subclass of (P279) administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) makes perfectly sense. (iii) My (radical?) suggestion would be to merge administrative territorial entity (Q56061) and hierarchy of administrative territorial entities (Q4057633) and maybe rename it to something like "administrative unit resp. subdivision"@en = "Verwaltungseinheit bzw. Verwaltungsgliederung"@de. The only conflict is the Russian page ru:Административно-территориальные_единицы which seems redundant. The reason for that suggestion is that the wikipedia pages behind the wikidata entities are IMO talking about the same stuff. --Zuphilip (talk) 19:12, 22 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
--Arctic.gnome (talk) 16:43, 23 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

I changed it from "table of administrative divisions by country" to "administrative division of a country" because no single one of the 100+ of the subclasses were a table. I changed the properties accordingly. The subclasses and especially the instances are not all "wikimedia list articles" or something like that. Androoox (talk) 22:24, 23 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. I've seen a bunch of cases where the en.wikipedia uses the name "list of" or "table of" but no other language does. In many or most of those cases those prefixes should be removed. --Arctic.gnome (talk) 23:05, 23 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
Nice you mention it. I just ran into "regency of Indonesia (Q3191695)" - en WP has no page for that, only a redirect to a list page which in turn placed at "list of regencies and cities of Indonesia (Q5653)". So en WP is not linked with the former, the basic item. Androoox (talk) 02:15, 24 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
Agreed. Many list articles need to be treated as classes on wikidata and used as the target of 'instance of' properties. Just take 'List of' of the front of the name (you can keep it in an alias). Filceolaire (talk) 17:58, 18 February 2014 (UTC)Reply

Tree edit

A territorial entity (Q7703766) is a subclass of "region (Q82794)"?

Anyway:

Androoox (talk) 22:35, 23 January 2014 (UTC)Reply


I like the split into humangeographic and physiogeographic, but I would keep User:Infovarius' three trees of country subdivisions (by type, by level, by country). How about this:

  1. geographical feature (Q618123)
    1. human-geographic territorial entity (Q15642541) (or territory (Q7703766)?)
      1. administrative territorial entity (Q56061)
        1. political territorial entity (Q1048835) (by type, part of (P361) -> Q4057633)
          1. e.g. state (Q7275), local government (Q6501447)
        2. non-political administrative territorial entity (Q15642566) (by type, part of (P361) -> Q4057633)
          1. e.g. census division (Q5616099)
        3. administrative territorial entity of a specific level (Q1799794) (by level, part of (P361) -> Q4057633)
          1. e.g. first-level administrative division (Q13220202)
        4. table of administrative divisions by country (Q1423994) (by country, part of (P361) -> Q4057633)
          1. e.g. administrative territorial entity of Hungary (Q2520520)
      2. non-administrative humangeographic territorial entity
        1. e.g. cultural region (Q3502482), free country (Q3174312)
    2. physiogeographic territorial entity
      1. e.g. lake (Q23397)

--Arctic.gnome (talk) 23:02, 23 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

A level is not a territorial entity. Androoox (talk) 05:20, 24 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
I guess not. So what would the term be for the "by level" group? Maybe "territorial entity within a hierarchy of subdivision levels"? --Arctic.gnome (talk) 02:03, 25 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
I don't understand the level stuff very well. E.g. statistical regions in Macedonia are larger than municipalities. For statistical purposes they are a level higher. But more administrative power seems to exist at the municipal level. One could use an item "administrative territorial entity of a specific level" to hold the current level items. Androoox (talk) 03:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
I think that in a lot of countries the levels wouldn't apply. In some countries there is a perfect pyramid of power with smaller and smaller units that fit within each level above it and have different powers. But in many countries it's more complicated. --Arctic.gnome (talk) 19:44, 25 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

States and territories of Australia edit

Hello. What is your reasoning for making state of Australia (Q5852411) and territory of Australia (Q14192199) bypass state or territory of Australia (Q178712)? --Arctic.gnome (talk) 21:45, 23 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

I don't see any bypass. Androoox (talk) 21:51, 23 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
It used to be state of Australia (Q5852411) -P279-> state or territory of Australia (Q178712) -P279-> administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320). Now it is state of Australia (Q5852411) -P279-> administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320). You removed the middle class. --Arctic.gnome (talk) 21:58, 23 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
I made them subclass of the country level, like U.S. state (Q35657). A state is subclass like a county, municipality, district, province or whatever. There is no "province and city of Argentina", or "state and capital of Nigeria". I think it should be consistent for all countries. Androoox (talk) 23:01, 23 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
I think that intermediate classes can have a page if they are a notable class, even if that grouping is unofficial. As long as there is something notable about the group, like how we group lions, tigers, and pumas under "felines" rather than putting them directly under mammal. Obviously, there is a limit to this, we don't need infinitely-many intermediate divisions. But I think that the grouping of states and territories is a notable combination as the two types of top-level subdivisions. Note that in en.wikipedia for Canada we have w:en:Provinces and territories of Canada an a seperate article from w:en:Administrative divisions of Canada. --Arctic.gnome (talk) 23:26, 23 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
That some Wikipedias want to couple different types of entities in one pages does not mean that the logic in Wikidata could not more straight-forward. So there is Australia (s+t), Canada (p+t) and India (s+t). In Germany there are - at the same level - urban municipality and rural municipality coupled under the shared noun "municipality". On the other hand, there can be shared nouns on different levels, and it can be that the nouns are only shared in one language and not in another. "state or territory of Australia" is effectively "first-level administrative division of Australia" - not? Androoox (talk) 02:28, 24 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

I changed Australia back. There is now:

Androoox (talk) 17:25, 24 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. I think items like "municipalities of X" are also useful parent-classes of things like "township of X" and "city of X". The best test is probably usage; if the grouping is often used in real life, it might be worth having an item about it. This is definitely true for "provinces and territories of Canada", which is a term that shows up in newspapers and legal documents all the time. It might also be true in some cases where the entities are at different levels of government across different languages, but we would have to make sure that the grouping isn't just a misunderstanding or a misleading translation. --Arctic.gnome (talk) 01:49, 25 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

I don't care so much about groupings. But I did create LAU 1 of Germany (Q15630827) because before all the LAU 1 entities of Germany have been attached directly to LAU 1, which then was harder to understand. For the UK something like this might be helpful too. Androoox (talk) 02:49, 25 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

Wikidata generic tree - administrative territorial entity edit

http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/tree.html?q=Q56061&rp=279

Target:

  • each item uses singular
  • in groupings replace "and" with "or"
  • one item "administritive territorial entity of <country name>" for each country

It would be nice to have a tool that shows the number of instances for each item. Androoox (talk) 02:56, 25 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

A 3 layer model to class subdivisions and their type with instance of (P31) and subclass of (P279) edit

Hi, here I copy a discussion we had with infovarius on my talk page. I see some of the item I created to illustrate it habe been deleted though :/ (@Arctic.gnome: (it may be better if we discuss here).


So, which root (super-class) for all administrative divisions are you suppose? In current state we'll get tons of constraint violations for example here. Infovarius (talk) 21:18, 1 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

@Infovarius: Please Don't mix items I labelled with type of such as designation for an administrative territorial entity (Q15830861)      whose instances are supposed to be items such as district (Q149621)     , and reflects phrases (copy paste from a en: article "A district is a type of administrative division", and Swabia (Q10557)     , who is an instance of items such as district (Q149621)     . We got a 3 level typing : (1) the concrete divisions, (2) the type they belongs to (the level of sets of administrative divisions of the same type) ans the levels of the administration division types, which are sets of "administrative divisions types".

In particular we can't put claims such as

⟨ District ⟩ subclass of (P279)   ⟨ type of administrative divisions ⟩

because subtyping relationships links only items on the same classification levels. instance of (P31) links items of the level N-1 to level N.


Administrative division classifications: Horizontal: instance of, Vertical : Subclass of
1 2 3
- administrative territorial entity (Q56061)      designation for an administrative territorial entity (Q15830861)     
- administrative territorial entity of France (Q192498)      table of administrative divisions by country (Q1423994)     
Paris (Q90)      ; Nantes (Q12191)      commune of France (Q484170)      administrative territorial entity of France (Q15860698)     

Which can be read :

  • Paris and Nantes are french communes, and french administrative divisions, as well as administrative divisions
  • french commune is a type of administrative division of france, as well as a sets of administration divisions of a unique country (france), as well as a set of administrative division (the set of all french commune)
  • <french subdivisions> is a special kind of administrative division which exists only in france, so it's an instance of <(all) administrative divisions of a country>, as well as a type of administrative division (the type of the set of all french divisions)
  • ⟨ administrative division ⟩ instance of (P31)   ⟨ type of administrative division ⟩
    as it's the type of all administrative divisions, actually the biggest type as any administrative division is an instance of it.

Now why add the fourth column ? because we may need to mark official types with something.

Administrative division classifications: Horizontal: instance of, Vertical: Subclass of
1 2 3
- administrative territorial entity (Q56061)      designation for an administrative territorial entity (Q15830861)     
- administrative territorial entity of France (Q192498)      table of administrative divisions by country (Q1423994)     
- commune of France (Q484170)      administrative territorial entity of France (Q15860698)     
Paris (Q90)      ; Nantes (Q12191)      french cities of more than 40000 inhabitants

We can add a new class of french cities, it's a subclass of french cities of course because any french city with a lot of inhabitants is also a french city. But it's not an official class of administrative subdivision, I just invented it, althought it may be used for a study or whatever. But if we queried the subclass tree of french subdivisions it would return this class as well. With this we can query the instances of administrative territorial entity of France (Q15860698)      to get only the official ones. Does that make any sense and be moved to the project doc ? TomT0m (talk) 22:35, 1 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

I like it except that I see vertical relations as subclass of and horizontal as instance of. --Infovarius (talk) 18:19, 3 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

Sorry for messing up your example. I merged pages with the title type of administrative division of Foobar into administrative territorial entity of Foobar because it seemed redundant to have both; if an item is a subclass of the later, it must be an instance of the first, and I don't see what information is added by having the separate classes. I had envisioned types of subdivisions as belonging to one tree by type and one tree by location (and maybe more trees). For example (lower in the tree are parent classes):

Tasmania (Q34366) is an instance of:

Or, to use your sample city:

Nantes (Q12191) is an instance of:

--Arctic.gnome (talk) 23:00, 5 March 2014 (UTC)Reply


@Arctic.gnome: I guess the question is do you understand better know ? the second table shows that beeing a leaf of the tree does not tell much about the nature of the class. By classing administrative divisions by type we got a simple way to annotate the tree with the exact definition and nature of each of its level. It's also an opportunity to select the classes we want to show in the tree by the nature of the class, which the subclass tree solution does not allow easily. It's more flexible. TomT0m (talk) 23:31, 5 March 2014 (UTC)Reply
Interesting. So is this basically just creating items to be instances of parent classes? So would state of Australia (Q5852411)'s table look like this:
By country By type By level
1 instance of => 2 1 instance of => 2 1 instance of => 2
human-geographic territorial entity (Q15642541) type of territorial entity sorted by humangeographic vs physiographic human-geographic territorial entity (Q15642541) type of territorial entity sorted by natural vs artificial human-geographic territorial entity (Q15642541) type of territorial entity sorted by natural vs artificial
administrative territorial entity (Q56061) type of humangeographic territorial entity sorted by whether it is subnational, national, or supernational political territorial entity (Q1048835) type of humangeographic territorial entity sorted by whether it is political or non-political administrative territorial entity (Q56061) type of humangeographic territorial entity sorted by whether it is subnational, national, or supernational
administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) country subdivision sorted by country state (Q7275) type of political division sorted by whether it has statehood administrative territorial entity of a specific level (Q1799794) type of administrative territorial entity sorted by a type of hierarchy
state or territory of Australia (Q178712) type of subdivision of Australia sorted by kind federated state (Q107390) type of state sorted by sovereignty first-level administrative division (Q13220202) type of country subdivision of a specific level sorted by level

--Arctic.gnome (talk) 03:17, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

We're getting closer. A few things
  • So is this basically just creating items to be instances of parent classes -> does not make sense to me. instances of a class are by definition instances of their parent classes. This is why <administrative subdivisions sorted by country> does not make much sense in a two level classification : at this level we class real administrative subdivision, and a real subdivision cannot be sorted by country, what we can class by country is a set of administrative division.
  • ⟨ state or territory of Australia (Q178712)      ⟩ instance of (P31)   ⟨ type of subdivision of Australia sorted by kind ⟩
    I say no, some of the subclasses of this class are <type of subdivisions of Austalia used by its administration>. This class is the class of all administrative divisions of Australia. So it's an instance of a class whose instances have this property : the class of the classes which regroups all administrative divisions of a certain country. This latter class has this instance as well as the class of which all french administrative divisions belongs. I'll stop here for now :) TomT0m (talk) 10:01, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

Do we really need this additional subclass? --Pasleim (talk) 21:36, 26 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

I think it's useful to have one page with the subdivisions sorted by country and another page with them sorted by type, as opposed to putting all classes directly in one giant parent class. Although I'll admit that the wording is kind of awkward. --Arctic.gnome (talk) 22:07, 26 March 2014 (UTC)Reply
If we keep this item, we have two possibilites:
1. Use it as a value of instance of (P31), e.g.
2. Remove the word type in the label and use it as a value of subclass of (P279), e.g.
But the situation yet is a mess. --Pasleim (talk) 21:12, 4 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
Yes we DO need a type of subdivision. Because counties don't necessarily have a fully hierarchical subdivision structure.
Also because some countries are reforming it depply and there are confusions between the legacy and newer ones (often with the same names, and type, but different dates of effects)
E.g. in France, the structure of "cantons" in march 2015 is NO LONGER as subdivisions of "arrondissements", but only of "departements" (and not departements are not fully subdivided in cantons, in 2015, "metropoles" are taking over the role of the existing "conseil général" (local council), starting by the Metrople de Lyon, even though the department of "Loire" is NOT split administratively at the state level (prefectures and subprefectures).
Cantons are no longer a judiciary administrative unit and no longer an admoinistrative unit, they will be used only for electorial purpose (for the local departemental council): in the departement of Loire, there will then be two separate local councils: the departemental council of Loire (excluding the Metrople de Lyon) and the metropolitan council of Lyon. Communes in the Metropole de Lyon will no longer be part of any canton (additionally the commune of Lyon remains subdivided into municipal arrndissements, like Paris and Marseille.
For this refom, we need to separate the types of cantons : (1) "Canton before March 2015" as subdivision of an "arrondissement", (2) newer "Canton" or "Metropole" as subdivision of a department.
We need similar typology of administrative subdivisions everywhere in Spain (separate typology for the state level divisions, and for the autonomous community) and Belgium (and certainly in many other countries and all countries with ongoing reforms).
Verdy p (talk) 18:54, 10 November 2014 (UTC)Reply

P131 vs. P150 edit

P131 and P150 describe the same relationship (from different viewpoint). This is an unnecessary redundancy. Wouldn't it be better to use only one type (P131) and convert all existing P150 to P131 (with the help of a bot)? --2.202.171.32 05:59, 27 May 2014 (UTC) (Sascha Hendel)Reply

There was once a discussion about deleting P150: Wikidata:Requests_for_deletions/Archive/2013/Properties/3 --Pasleim (talk) 14:27, 27 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

Wikidata project pages edit

There are:

Since the root item is administrative territorial entity (Q56061) ("Administrative territorial entity") there is now:

Tamawashi (talk) 14:58, 3 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

Do we really need 3 WikiProjects to talk about the same, basically? It doesn't help if information and discussions get spread over dozens of pages and no one can keep track of them. --Pasleim (talk) 01:57, 15 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

Launch of WikiProject Wikidata for research edit

Hi, this is to let you know that we've launched WikiProject Wikidata for research in order to stimulate a closer interaction between Wikidata and research, both on a technical and a community level. As a first activity, we are drafting a research proposal on the matter (cf. blog post). It would be great if you would see room for interaction! Thanks, --Daniel Mietchen (talk) 01:48, 9 December 2014 (UTC)Reply

North America vs northern North America edit

People here might want to comment on this: Talk:Q49#North America vs northern North America. --Arctic.gnome (talk) 15:42, 9 March 2015 (UTC)Reply

state or territory of Australia (Q178712) and administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) came up on the interwiki conflicts page. I don't think they should be merged, but it does appear that many of the sitelinks for administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) are really only talking about state or territory of Australia (Q178712). Should they be moved, or should they stay where they are because they could potentially talk about the others, even if they don't right now? - Nikki (talk) 15:39, 17 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

I posted to the Interwiki Conflicts page, but possibly should have posted here instead.
Does Wikidata have categories? Australia is a federation of the states and has responsibility for some internal and external territories, but each of the states (and the NT) has its own legislation to create smaller areas which are generically referred to as "local government areas". There are also "regions" which are not legally defined and tend to vary depending on use - even by different departments of the same government. It sounds like perhaps administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) needs to be a parent category which contains state or territory of Australia (Q178712) but also many others (perhaps two levels deep in a hierarchy). These would include local government area of Australia (Q1867183), Local government areas of New South Wales (Q648607), local government area of Victoria (Q1849126), Local government areas of Western Australia (Q1850785), Local government areas of South Australia (Q252861), Local government areas of Tasmania (Q1867166), Local government areas of the Northern Territory (Q1459673) and Local government area of Queensland.
administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) does not currently have an English Wikipedia article for comparison. I've gone through the other language articles to try to guess if they contain information on LGAs of the states as well as the states themselves. The following appear to only cover states and territories and so should be moved or merged: be, bg, ca, es, eu, gl, hy, ko, pl, ru, uk. Relying on Google Translate for the nl page, I'd say that the two topics should be merged but the nl article should be removed from the set, and propose to merge the article with https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Government_Area_in_Australië in local government area of Australia (Q1867183). --ScottDavis (talk) 13:38, 18 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
Nikki, ScottDavis Wikidata doesn't have Categories. It has Statements so all the "Local Government areas of ..." are 'subclass of (P279):local government area of Australia (Q1867183)' which is 'subclass of (P279):administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320)'
state or territory of Australia (Q178712) is also 'subclass of (P279):administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320)' so these are different things and they need different wikidata items.
This means the Wikidata items don't match up exactly with the wikipedia articles in all languages. Where an article in some language named 'Divisions of Australia' or 'Political administration of Australia' only discusses the state and territory level and doesn't discuss the local government areas then you have two choices: you can treat treat this as an article about states and territories or you can treat it as an article about all the administrative territorial entities of Australia which is unfortunately incomplete as the details of the local government haven't been added yet. Which you pick is, I'm afraid, a bit of a personal preference. In these cases I admit that my decisions tend to be swayed by how the choices affect the sitelinks that end up on the articles and where I think these will be most useful. Sorry that doesn't help more. Filceolaire (talk) 20:09, 18 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
Thank you Filceolaire. I had not spotted the subclass language. It sounds like the class structure is already like I suggested categories could be. Sorry if I sounded like I'm telling the experts how to do things. Is it polite to go to other language wikis and adjust the interlanguage/wikidata links to move to a more specific subclass? Most of the articles presently assigned to administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) should be state or territory of Australia (Q178712). That would just leave the Dutch one at that level, and possibly needs someone who speaks Dutch and is familiar with Australia to propose a merge or expand the articles. It is not really meaningful to talk of State and local government together as subdivisions of Australia, as the "power" actually derives from the states for both Federal (up) and local (down) government. --ScottDavis (talk) 22:43, 18 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
"you can treat treat this as an article about states and territories or you can treat it as an article about all the administrative territorial entities of Australia which is unfortunately incomplete as the details of the local government haven't been added yet" I'd chose second choice and not move (or merge) these items. By titles all articles in administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) are meant to be articles about all hierarchy of division which is the topic of this item. --Infovarius (talk) 13:36, 19 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
Actually Scott you have to do those moves here on wikidata. Delete the site links from administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) then add them to state or territory of Australia (Q178712). Filceolaire (talk) 23:43, 18 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
@Filceolaire, ScottDavis: There's something wrong in this hierarchy. I see that administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) is a subclass of administrative territorial entity of a single country (Q15916867)     . By definition of subclass of, as obviously , of course, by definition of subclass of (P279) (each instance of class CL is also an instance of the class SUPER if CL is a subclass of SUPER}}, that would mean Victoria is a type of division. This is wrong. To avoid this, we have to keep separate the hierarchies of types : australian state, administrative territorial entity of australia, australian territory should be on the same subclass tree, for example, but the conceptual level of administrative division should be on another tree, the one of type of administrative divisions.
Levels of classification and examples
concrete divisions concrete divisions classification type of division classification
 Victoria, Queensland, Brisbane (Q34932)     , ... State, Territory, city, ... designation for an administrative territorial entity (Q15617994), type of administrative division in australia, ...

We can achive this by nether using subclass beetween two elements on different levels, but instead using instance of (P31) to link an element in a column to an element to its immediate left column. Agreed ?

(PS: see Help:Classification and Adopt Help:Classification as an official help page if you agree this is reasonable :) TomT0m (talk) 09:16, 19 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

@TomT0m:, sorry, why is wrong? For me (far from Australia) state is a type of administrative divisions. Infovarius (talk) 13:36, 19 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
@Infovarius:  This is not this statement which is wong, but an implied one :
⟨ Victoria (Q36687)      ⟩ instance of (P31)   ⟨ type of administrative division ⟩
(I hate writing Qids). State is a type. Victoria is a state, for sure. But Victoria can't be a type, as you and me : it's an instance, not a class. Classes regroups instances, and there has to be something to regroup. Basically a concrete object is not a group of itself, it's just itself. Whereas city is the group all cities. Victoria is in the set of all states. What we call type is the definition of some group, sometimes together with the set of the members of that group. Now to be marked as instance of some type (or some group), an item as to be a definition and a set by itself. Administrative division type will have city as an instance, but not Victoria as Victoria is not a type. Is it somewhat clear ? The wrong claim is
⟨ Admnistrative territorial entity ⟩ subclass of (P279)   ⟨ Admnistrative territorial entity type ⟩
, as this mixes beetween classes and classes of classes. They can't have the same instances, and Victoria, as a concrete object, can be a member of a class, not of a class of classes. Subclass of means subset in mathematical terms. If {Paris, London, Tokyo} is a set of administrative division, and {French city, English city} is a set of administrative divisions, it becomes clear that a set of administrative division can't be a set of administrative division type. TomT0m (talk) 14:02, 19 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
@Filceolaire, TomT0m: Yes, I see the distinction. I just need to switch to wearing an Object-Oriented Programming hat while working at Wikidata, instead of thinking like I do on en Wikipedia where categories tend to be used for both these relationships (and maybe others too). It is beginning to feel like I'm about to become a Wikidatan too. I think I need to spend some time reading and learning about Wikidata structure and editing conventions before I jump in boots first and risk mucking something up. To start with, it looks like most of the different Wikipedia languages articles that are currently associated with administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) should be associated with the same Wikidata item as most of the Wikipedia articles currently associated with state or territory of Australia (Q178712). I'm too busy this weekend to spend the time to think about instances, classes and meta-classes. The wikipedia articles appear to be all talking about the abstract concept of "States and Territories of Australia". The topic is not actually "State" in the sense that "South Australia" is an instance of "State", but more that "State of Australia" is an instance of state or territory of Australia (Q178712). "South Australia" is an instance of "State of Australia". (which should be a subclass of "State or Territory of Australia"). I read "instance" as "is a" and "subclass" as "is a kind of". The problem here is that the associated Wikipedia articles are about the division of Australia into states, not about the states themselves. The wikidata entity (whichever it turns out to be) for these articles doesn't really belong in the hierarchy of superclasses of the class of which "Victoria" and "South Australia" are instances. --ScottDavis (talk) 14:36, 19 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
@ScottDavis: I think they does : the article defines what states are in Australia, and give the instances. It seems like a Template:Q'Q5421961 of the class of all states in Australia. TomT0m (talk) 14:43, 19 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
fixed TomT0m.
administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) is now subclass of (P279):administrative territorial entity (Q56061) and instance of (P31):administrative territorial entity of a single country (Q15916867) (i.e. Q15916867 is a special type of class that Q4494320 is an instance of. Filceolaire (talk) 21:07, 19 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
ScottDavis remember that in parallel with the instance of/subclass of hierarchy there is an "located in the administrative territorial entity (P131)" hierarchy (or a "part of" hierarchy for other types of entity) so Victoria "is in...." Australia but Victoria "is a" state which "is an" administrative....entity of Australia. This is the hierarchy of wikidata items we need to classify the lower level items. Mostly they more or less match up with wikipedia articles. Filceolaire (talk) 21:22, 19 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
@Filceolaire: I can't remember what I don't know yet. I'm very new to Wikidata, and got here as an English speaker from Australia who responded to a Spanish speaker with some English (I think) who noticed that there were a bunch of languages linked from the Spanish article that seemed to be about the same thing as the interlanguage links form the English article, but they didn't overlap and he didn't know how to fix it. The ontology and classification of data looks very interesting to me, but I'm new here, and didn't come in through the front door reading the intro help pages.
@Infovarius: It looks like at least half of the different language wikipedia articles in administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) should be assumed to only be about states and moved to state or territory of Australia (Q178712), as those languages also have an article in local government area of Australia (Q1867183). I might try to find time to explore moving them tonight or tomorrow. --ScottDavis (talk) 22:03, 19 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
@ScottDavis:, Existance of article in local government area of Australia (Q1867183) doesn't mean that articles administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) can not contain information about this level too. Please don't move sitelinks until consensus is reached. --Infovarius (talk) 07:29, 20 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
OK. I better work out how to build consensus to change interlanguage links on articles in wikipedia languages I don't speak :-/ --ScottDavis (talk) 11:07, 20 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
I have found an en-wiki article at en:Australian governments that currently has no interwiki links. That seems to be the English article that best matches the description of administrative territorial entity of Australia (Q4494320) as covering all three levels of government. As a mono-linguist, I feel uncomfortable deciding that it matches since the images don't match the other articles in that list. It's a pretty lightweight article, but I can work to improve it if it's considered necessary for providing an appropriate global view...? --ScottDavis (talk) 12:49, 21 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
Hm, this article doesn't seem to me as something relevant to the question. As I understand it says about "правительства (органы государственного управления) в Австралии" (in Russian) and not about "административно-территориальное деление" which is in Q4494320 and is quite different. --Infovarius (talk) 20:09, 27 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
Yes, the en article I found is about the governments (Google Translate gives me "the government (public administration) in Australia" vs "administrative division") of the nation, states, territories and local government areas. An article such as seems to be appropriate for the concept of covering "Administrative divisions of Australia" would be like trying to write an article for "administrative divisions of Russia" that covers the constituent Republics, Oblasts, Krais, and also the districts within them, without talking about the governments. It seems that to get an English language equivalent for those other 17 languages' articles, I need to convert en:Administrative divisions of Australia from a redirect (last edited in 2010) to en:States and territories of Australia into a short article with two sections each directing the reader to the relevant extant article. Or can I make a wikidata reference to the redirect with the right name? --ScottDavis (talk) 14:04, 11 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
There is possibility to add redirect to the item. But an article is always better :) And the article should also tell about municipalities and shires and what else in Australia. --Infovarius (talk) 00:18, 14 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

Reviewing changes by Tamawashi and their sockpuppets edit

The repeatedly blocked user Tamawashi and their many sockpuppets are particularly fond of editing country subdivisions. Given that they keep repeatedly evading blocks in order to continue their editing, I think their edits need checking.

Some of the users I'm aware of are:

One thing I've noticed them doing a lot is adding the type of subdivision to the label, e.g. [3]. That doesn't seem right to me, it doesn't seem to be part of the name and we already store the type both in the description and as a statement. It doesn't even match the English Wikipedia article's usage. I think the changes like that should be reverted, what do you think?

Any comments on the other changes they're making?

- Nikki (talk) 15:51, 29 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

I think in this case the label must match the Wikipedia name (English Wikipedia for English labels). May be this can even be done by a bot, if we could identify the class of articles correctly.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:38, 29 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
Why?. In principle the wikidata labels do not include disambiguation information while wikipedia article names always include disambiguation info - mostly in brackets but sometimes more subtly such as adding 'county' to the name of the article about a county to distinguish it from the same name town. The wikidata name must always match the statements in the item. In some cases this means it does not quite match all of the names of the linked wikidata items. Typical case is where Foo murders Bar. Some wikipedias call the article 'Foo', some 'Bar' and others 'murder of Foo'. The statements in the wikidata item are about one of these - about 'Foo' or about 'Bar' or about the murder and the label of the wikidata item should match the statements in every language - even if that means they do not match the wikipedia article name in their language. Joe Filceolaire (talk) 15:23, 2 August 2015 (UTC)Reply
@Filceolaire: Ymblanter is referring to the edits being discussed, not articles in general. As I mentioned originally, Tamawashi likes to add information to the label which is not part of the name used by Wikipedia, and the question is whether those edits should be reverted (effectively resulting in us using the same name as Wikipedia) or whether we want to include extra disambiguating information in the label even when Wikipedia doesn't include it. - Nikki (talk) 19:50, 2 August 2015 (UTC)Reply
Yes, indeed. Thanks for clarification. In many cases, they effectively convertem an item about a town to an inten abot an eponomous administrative unit, and this is not acceptable.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:42, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Wikidata IDs for country subdivisions are now used in OSM + Wikipedia edit

Ru Wikipedia just enabled geo link in the upper right corner to use <maplink>, together with the corresponding Wikidata item. This means that when there is a corresponding Wikidata item, and there is an object the OpenStreetMap db that has that Wikidata ID, it will be automatically shown. Which greatly raises the importance of this project - all OSM objects should be properly marked. See example.

That said, I created a list of all OSM admin_level objects that do not properly resolve with Wikidata IDs - I have been going through those manually, fixing them one by one (help is welcome). Some of them are due to OSM having more specific local data than Wikidata. For example, there could be a city and a municipality - two objects that have either similar or identical borders, but are actually two different admin divisions, while Wikidata would have just one entry. While I have been creating some items manually, there might be a need for a more structured approach to create one giant subdivision tree. Also, for UK, OSM tends to have both historical and civil parishes -- these are identical except civil parish often has a separate city center. I have created a few WD items for that, but we may need a good way to link related items. --Yurik (talk) 03:33, 22 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

municipality vs. settlement edit

There is a large number of items about municipalities (e.g.Arcoverde (Q637902)), which are incorrectly linked to the articles about the respective settlements with the same name in Swedish and Cebuano Wikipedia (List for svwiki). Is there any way, to automate the delinking of these articles, so these items can be merged with their duplicates? --MB-one (talk) 19:23, 12 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

WD:PC#Countries and their subdivisions and territory edit

I started a discussion in the project chat regarding how to deal with the various ways a subdivision or region can be connected to a country or countries. Participation would be most welcome. --Yair rand (talk) 20:50, 16 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

This has been archived to Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2018/10#Countries_and_their_subdivisions_and_territory. Some relevant additional points I didn't get to make while the thread was active:
  • w:Condominium (international law) gives some interesting information on territories that have had shared administration between multiple countries.
  • We might want to have dedicated items for international recognition of a status of a group of places, which could then be referenced in any relevant disputed entity's item, rather than repeating the list each time.
There was also a somewhat relevant archived discussion at Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2018/11#Consensus_is_needed_for_Q48928408. --Yair rand (talk) 02:17, 22 November 2018 (UTC)Reply

What's the best way to represent irregular, overlapping hierarchies edit

As some of the participants here may know, there's a big debate over at Property talk:P131 and Wikidata:Property proposal/hierarchy switch [see also Project chat] over how best to represent overlaps such as the fact that the U.S. city of Atlanta (Q23556) is both in Fulton County (Q486633) and DeKalb County (Q486398). (Another example is Redcar and Cleveland (Q1434448), which is both in North Yorkshire (Q23086) and North East England (Q47983), although the right fix there might involve North Yorkshire (Q21241814).) I'm guessing there's been lots of discussion here over how to represent such situtions. What works well? What doesn't work? Is there a preferred solution? Is the proposed hierarchy switch a good idea? —Scs (talk) 16:28, 1 March 2020 (UTC), edited 16:19, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

Countries border cleansing edit

Hello, anyone willing to help me clean data on stuffs like "borders of country X" and add has part(s) (P527) with "border between country X and country Z" ? Would be appreciated ! Bouzinac (talk) 20:27, 31 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

select  ?item ?itemLabel ?statutLabel ?qualifier ?qualifierLabel 
(GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT(?paysLabel); separator="; ") as ?countries)
(GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT(?comprendLabel); separator="; ") as ?countries_comprised)
{
SELECT ?item ?itemLabel ?qualifier ?qualifierLabel ?statutLabel ?pays ?paysLabel ?comprend ?comprendLabel WHERE {
?item p:P31 ?statut_statement.
?statut wdt:P279 wd:Q1292279.
?statut_statement ps:P31 ?statut.
?item p:P31 _:b1.
_:b1 pq:P642 ?qualifier.
OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P17 ?pays. }
SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "fr,en". }#change language here
OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P527 ?comprend. }
}
} group by ?item ?itemLabel ?statutLabel ?qualifier ?qualifierLabel
Try it!

Let's remove "big city" and "city with millions of inhabitants" claims edit

Some users add big city (Q1549591) or million city (Q1637706) on items about cities. Those only indicate that the items are above some population threshold, so clearly that are redundant with population (P1082). To me, they are worse than useless. First because they drown other, more useful P31 values, andsecond because they are used sloppily. Using them more rigorously would make things more complicated, and would still add nothing whatsoever over population (P1082) statements. Take for example Yingtan (Q363076), a Chinese administrative-level division. It has three P31s:

  • "Prefecture-level city": it's a well-defined administrative status. Clearly useful.
  • "city with millions of inhabitants": meh... It does not really have "millions" it has 1.3 millions. Beside, since the adminsitrative division extends to a large urban area, the urban core probably has a lot less that one million. And if the population shrinks below 1 million, do we have to put and "end date" to the claim, interpolating the date from two census data ? And sometimes, data are adjusted to account for the unregistered population, should we add a second qualified "city with millions inhabitants" claim for that ? It just does no make sense to use an item type property to make statements about the population.
  • "big city", meaning "city with more than 100,000 inhabitants". It has all the same problems as "city with millions of inhabitants", plus a terrible label. Apparently, the 100k cutoff originates from the fact that a German statistical agency uses it, but we can't expect readers to guess that "big city" is supposed to mean "city with more than 100k people".

Can I just remove all those P31: big city (Q1549591) and P31: million city (Q1637706) ? -Zolo (talk) 07:47, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Instead of using "somewhat redundant" P31 values, yes, the most precise P31 is useful. One could sparql-query the cities having currentpopulation (P1082) = 1 Mio inhabitants. On the other hand, removing them is somewhat time-wasting because you could query ?item (wdt:P31/wdt:P279*) having at least one of these P31. Do what you think is right to do. Bouzinac (talk) 15:22, 14 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

A template for talk pages for administrative areas edit

Very often we want to know who is born, who is dead in a given administrative area. If we want to know this, we need to write some Sparql queries. The goal of {{TP administrative area}} is to define a set of queries which are useful for any administrative area. The template can be used on talk pages. You can see a live example here Meudon (Q234735). This is an experiment. Comments and feedback are welcome. Do you think it's useful? PAC2 (talk) 08:28, 24 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

Difference between 'town of the United States' and 'civil township' edit

There are two classes, town in the United States (Q15127012) and civil township (Q1394476) - is there guidance on when one should be preferred to the other? I get why 'civil township' is broken out from 'township' and that 'town' can be more some other type of human settlement than just a government, but if these two classes were specifically subclassed to mean administrative divisions, could we combine them? Erik s paulson (talk) 22:45, 17 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

False official website (Dakar (Q3718)) edit

Hello,

The official website mentionned on Dakar (Q3718) isn’t http://villededakar.org (seems to be a commercial and/or tutorial website) but http://villededakar.sn

Please adapt the statement (I can’t do it myself given the Qitem is protected). Thanks.

2A02:2788:228:93D:115A:29F5:8647:CD33 05:20, 14 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

  Done Ymblanter (talk) 20:11, 15 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

Seeking input: located in statistical territorial entity proposal edit

Seeking input. Please see Wikidata:Property_proposal/Place#contains_statistical_territorial_entity Middle river exports (talk) 16:54, 24 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Philippines administrative subdivisions vs populated places edit

when managing Special:ShortPages, then I can see about 70+ items which is emptied by user:Exec8. If we will delete these empty items, then unique Geonames IDs are lost, unique cebwiki sitelinks also (but sitelink is easily re-creatable). Merging seems to be problematic because it is hard to find target item (sometimes not existing at all), and probably "municipality vs populated place"-question

Emptied items. Some info from item's history page


  1. Manukan (Q31814360): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Norte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Manukan
  2. San Miguel (Q31814392): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Sur Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of San Migue
  3. Quezon (Q31528286): province of the Philippines Removed link to [cebwiki]: Calilayan
  4. Dinas (Q31814307): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Sur Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Dinas
  5. Midsalip (Q31814363): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Sur Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Midsalip
  6. San Pablo (Q31814393): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Sur Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of San Pablo
  7. Quezon (Q31528960): province of the Philippines Removed link to [cebwiki]: Calumpang (lungsod sa Pilipinas, Calabarzon, Province of Quezon)
  8. Dumingag (Q31814312): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Sur Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Dumingag
  9. Mutia (Q31814366): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Norte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Mutia
  10. Santa Maria (Q31814396): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Romblon Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Santa Maria (munisipyo sa Pilipinas, Mimaropa)
  11. Caoayan (Q31532852): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Ilocos Sur Removed link to [cebwiki]: Caoayan (kapital sa munisipyo)
  12. El Nido (Q31814313): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Palawan Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of El Nido
  13. Nunungan (Q31814369): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Lanao del Norte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Nunungan
  14. Sapa-Sapa (Q31814397): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Tawi-Tawi Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Sapa-Sapa
  15. Pampanga (Q31543442): province of the Philippines Removed link to [cebwiki]: Talang (lungsod sa Pilipinas)
  16. Indanan (Q31814318): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Sulu Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Indanan
  17. Padre Burgos (Q31814372): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Southern Leyte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Padre Burgos
  18. Sapad (Q31814398): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Lanao del Norte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Sapad
  19. Isabela (Q31545021): city of the Philippines in the province of Basilan Removed link to [cebwiki]: City of Isabela (munisipyo)
  20. Jimenez (Q31814320): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Misamis Occidental Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Jimenez
  21. Panaon (Q31814373): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Misamis Occidental Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Panaon
  22. Sapang Dalaga (Q31814399): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Misamis Occidental Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Sapang Dalaga
  23. Batangas (Q31563569): province of the Philippines Removed link to [cebwiki]: Tumalim (lungsod sa Pilipinas)
  24. Kalingalan Caluang (Q31814323): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Sulu Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Kalingalan Caluang
  25. Pangutaran (Q31814375): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Sulu Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Pangutaran
  26. Siasi (Q31814401): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Sulu Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Sias
  27. Tarlac (Q31572675): province of the Philippines Removed link to [cebwiki]: Dumarais
  28. Kapatagan (Q31814326): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Lanao del Sur Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Kapatagan
  29. Parang (Q31814378): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Sulu Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Parang
  30. Picong (Q31814404): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Lanao del Sur Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Sultan Gumander
  31. Tarlac (Q31812038): province of the Philippines Removed link to [cebwiki]: Mabilang
  32. Kumalarang (Q31814330): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Sur Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Kumalarang
  33. Plaridel (Q31814380): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Misamis Occidental Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Plaridel
  34. Sultan Naga Dimaporo (Q31814406): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Lanao del Norte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Sultan Naga Dimaporo
  35. Nueva Ecija (Q31812066): province of the Philippines Removed link to [cebwiki]: Macarse
  36. La Libertad (Q31814332): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Norte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of La Libertad
  37. Polanco (Q31814381): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Norte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Polanco
  38. Banguingui (Q31814413): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Sulu Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Tongkil
  39. Bulacan (Q31812230): province of the Philippines Removed link to [cebwiki]: Manatal
  40. Lantawan (Q31814341): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Basilan Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Lantawan
  41. Roxas (Q31814383): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Norte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of President Manuel Acuña Roxas
  42. Tubod (Q31814414): municipality of the Philippines and capital of the province of Lanao del Norte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Tubod
  43. Quezon (Q31812247): province of the Philippines Removed link to [cebwiki]: Mangero
  44. Lapuyan (Q31814342): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Sur Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Lapuyan
  45. Ramon Magsaysay (Q31814385): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Sur Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Ramon Magsaysay
  46. Tudela (Q31814415): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Tudela
  47. Batangas (Q31477969): province of the Philippines Removed link to [cebwiki]: Balagtasin
  48. Maria Aurora (Q31814210): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Aurora Removed link to [cebwiki]: Maria Aurora (munisipyo)
  49. Lopez Jaena (Q31814346): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Misamis Occidental Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Lopez Jaena
  50. Rizal (Q31814386): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Norte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Riza
  51. Batangas (Q31480176): province of the Philippines Removed link to [cebwiki]: Balibago (lungsod sa Pilipinas, Calabarzon, Province of Batangas, lat 13,61, long 121,30
  52. Concepcion (Q31814303): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Misamis Occidental Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Concepcion
  53. Mabini (Q31814350): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Pangasinan Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Mabin
  54. Salvador (Q31814388): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Lanao del Norte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Salvador
  55. Tarlac (Q31481020): province of the Philippines Removed link to [cebwiki]: Balite (lungsod sa Pilipinas, Tunga-tungang Luzon, Province of Tarlac
  56. Daraga (Q31814304): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Albay Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Daraga
  57. Magsaysay (Q31814351): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Lanao del Norte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Magsaysay
  58. Maigo (Q31814352): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Lanao del Norte Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Maigo
  59. San Agustin (Q31814389): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Romblon Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of San Agustin
  60. San Julian (Q31505764): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Eastern Samar Removed link to [cebwiki]: San Julian, Eastern Samar
  61. Delfin Albano (Q31814305): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Isabela Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Delfin Albano
  62. Maluso (Q31814357): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Basilan Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Maluso
  63. San Manuel (Q31814391): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Isabela Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of San Manuel
  64. Bataan (Q31514323): province of the Philippines Removed link to [cebwiki]: Saysain (lungsod sa Pilipinas)
  65. Dimataling (Q31814306): municipality of the Philippines in the province of Zamboanga del Sur Removed link to [cebwiki]: Municipality of Dimataling

Estopedist1 (talk) 12:18, 19 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

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