Wikidata talk:List of properties/Archive/2013/04

This page is an archive. Please do not modify it. Use the current page, even to continue an old discussion.

Is GND Wikidata's official classification system?

Property:P107 (main type (GND)) is listed as a "general" property, implying it should be used everywhere to classify things according to the GND. This gives the appearance of the GND as being Wikidata's official classification system. However, the GND is only one particular classification system, and not a very good one either, in my opinion. So was it decided that this particular classification system should be used as Wikidata's official one? I, for one, am opposed to this. We have the properties Property:P31 (instance of) and Property:P279 (subclass of) that can be used to specify what kind of thing a particular item is, and Property:P107 should be relegated from "general property" to the same status all other properties coming from particular classification systems have. Silver hr (talk) 18:14, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

No, that said:

We really need to start a (formal) WD:RFC on it and its usage. There are too many people, in too many places, trying to argue one way or another. That RFC needs to ask the following questions:

1. Should we use GND type?
2. What should be allowed values?
   • See Property talk:P107#Vote for the nature of this property.
3. Should it be on every page?
   • Should it only be on every page with a GND identified?
4. On every page with a GND identified, should it match the "official" GND type?
5. On pages with a GND type, should only the subproperties as organized here be strictly used? In other words, should a property listed under "work" only be used on works as identified by GND type?

We might finally get to a consensus on the matter and have some solid guidance on that property. --Izno (talk) 18:43, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

What is your proposition if you are not for the GND classification ? Only the first level of the GND classification is used now and I think that's good: For sublevels we can let task forces decide which classification can be applied. Snipre (talk) 19:06, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

As an official classification system? I don't think that's the right question to ask. I don't see us as needing an "official" classification scheme, and I was simply answering the question posed in your title.

Otherwise, I did not say I was for or against the GND classification scheme, only that we need to settle the question once-and-for-all. --Izno (talk) 19:47, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

A classification is something arbitrary so if we can avoid to spend days in discussions in order to find a common classification. Snipre (talk) 20:21, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Just a few notes. Snipre isn't the original poster, I am :). Also, I think that "being endorsed in an official guideline" can be understood as official endorsement, which is currently the case for p:P107 in Help:Statements#Properties ("The general Property:P107 (main type (GND) - name under discussion) should/could be used on any item."). So I agree, we do need to settle this once and for all. Silver hr (talk) 00:09, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

The problem there is with Help:Statements, which grandiosely claimed to be a proposed guideline/policy, without any such proposal being made (at least in the two discussion spaces mentioned). For that reason, and because I don't think the Help namespace is a sensible place to have policy, I've removed that claim. The whole page seems to need a lot of rework. --Avenue (talk) 16:14, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

The closest thing to an official statement on P107 -- Restricting the World -- seems fairly opposed to it. However, as outlined in the This property overlaps with 'instance of' (P31) section on the P107 talk page, I think the GND main type property could be fairly useful in this early stage of Wikidata, since it gives a high-level classification to many items that would be valid values for more conventional and interoperable Semantic Web relations like instance of (P31) and subclass of (P279). Copying the GND main type values in the vast majority of cases where they apply to the more extensible P31 and P279 properties seems like it would be relatively straightforward to automate. Emw (talk) 01:25, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry but you mixing different things: the message form the development team is to avoid some technical restrictions. But a classification system in wikidata is not something exlcuding other ways to classify so the comparison is not correct. The GND classification aims to an unique value to all items. With property P31 that is not possible because you can use this property several times so that will be difficult to identify the correct value when necessary. Snipre (talk) 18:00, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Silver hr (talk) 02:20, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

GND is one system for categorization widely used for example in library databases. Therefore we use it as well as any other categorization system which seems senseful. See Wikidata:List_of_properties. GND is only one among many others. However, it seems that those bots which add GND are currently busiest. This is how I understand it. FelixReimann (talk) 20:57, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

There is no official classification system. We only have Wikidata:Property proposal and whatever property is accepted is "official". Since Wikidata:Infoboxes task force is based on the GND main types and they are easy to use, P107 is at the moment the most popular property, but of course this can change. There have been endless discussions and a RFD, and now, hopefully, more time for work. --Kolja21 (talk) 21:56, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Time properties

I didn't see any time-related properties and thought that such properties ought to be listed within a dedicated top-level grouping. I did not make a proposal as I presumed such a fundamental type of property might already have some other way of grouping I missed, even if some properties (e.g., date/time of birth or death) might overlap other categories (as with location having its own category despite "place of birth" being part of the person grouping). Thanks. Brettz9 (talk) 00:17, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

We're waiting for the TimeType to be rolled out. Only the devs know when that might be though. --Izno (talk) 01:40, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata:Property_proposal/Pending#Awaiting_TimeValue_datatype lists planned properties ... -- Make (talk) 22:47, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Managed by / regulated by / controlled by (or something like that)

There are strings of national/state/conservation parks that appear through the Wikipedias, and they have a regulating authority that often is outside of the local region. I was looking for something that was akin to "within the administrative unit" but could be aligned to a government authority, or an organisation/trust (where privately held). Suggestions?  — billinghurst sDrewth 03:47, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Kinds of names?

Sorry if this has already been discussed: Wikidata items can carry aliases, but I think when it comes to names of persons or organisations, there will be a need to add names like birth names, marriage names, names used by the entity him/her/itself, full forms of names, former names, pseudonyms, real names etc. in form of proper statements with respective sources, probably with additional temporal qualification (name of 2nd marriage used from t_0 to t_1). If feasible I would prefer not to introduce a zoo of individual properties for the different kinds of names but rather a quite universal "form-of-name" property with a qualification "type of name" from a controlled term list. -- Gymel (talk) 15:55, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I think we're waiting for the qualifiers feature to be finished, then we'll be able to state things like this. Danrok (talk) 16:08, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Time to translate extention?

In the body, there are many LangSwitch tags. It makes hard to read(and hard to watch) the page. How about to introduce Translate extention to this page? -- ChongDae (talk) 03:44, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Agree, good idea. --Zolo (talk) 07:55, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

yeah good but difficult idea. Is it possible to transclude localized label name somehow (im not yet learned wikibase syntax)? Perhaps sections of props should be in subpages and every of them should be marked, smth like Template:TNT. (For me, it seems to be easier in keeping up to date then). --Base (talk) 08:56, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

I think it would be possible to transclude localized label names and descriptions some day, but not yet. I suppose that for now we should be content with tranlating the langSwitch'd parts. That leaves out the most interesting part, but as the list of property changes rather often, it will be really difficult to keep the translation up to date. As the localized property description should be included in the property itself, I do not think it matters that much. --Zolo (talk) 10:04, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

"Document" and "scanned document"

We have "image", "audio" and "video", we are missing "document" (as pdf files, presentations, etc) and "scanned documents" (as djvu files and other kind of book scans).--Micru (talk) 17:48, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Properties would be useful like CategoryTree

To me the properties and the assigned tree is still too difficult to do easily and regularly accurately without having an arcane and consistent knowledge of conversations taking place. And for me, I am too patience poor to follow the conversations, however, I am comfortable just paddling through components that need work. I can see that there would be value in looking to built a property tree, something like what can automatically be displayed by mw:Extension:CategoryTree, example w:en:Special:CategoryTree/Australia. Looking to build such a tree and an easy means to apply properties from a tree I think would be of value, and lead to better understanding.  — billinghurst sDrewth 03:57, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but the properties define relations between entities and generally speaking, I think their are fundamentally non-hierachical. Some properties like P:P279 will create trees of items, but that's another thing.

Documentation should be better, but right now, we have to copy the label and description each time we want to document a property, and that is a tiresome thing to do. If inclusion syntax is deployed here, documenting property will become much simpler. --Zolo (talk) 17:19, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

There is such a thing as a subproperty (e.g. in RDFS) and it makes sense in some cases to use them. An example that comes to mind: "has father" would be a subproperty of "has ancestor", since the father of X is also an ancestor of X, for every X. Unfortunately, Wikidata presently doesn't support subproperties. Silver hr (talk) 17:04, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, actually, there are cases where it would be useful, but I do not think we have that many of them yet. A special case would be properties like P:P168, that look somewhat like subproperties of instance of, except that they may also be used for "subclass of". Well I guess it is because such properties are really bad. --Zolo (talk) 20:46, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Sovereign state or...

The English description in Property:P17(Country) is "sovereign state of this item", but what Republic of China (Taiwan) is? A PRC user express that ROC is not a "sovereign state". The item Taipei City mark ROC with P17. I am a user from ROC and I have no idea how to resolve this problem. I really think ROC is a "sovereign state" but maybe people from PRC not think so. tntchn ^{Comment · Contribs} 18:18, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

That sort of controversy is likely to happen often: sometimes people do not agree on something. Wikipedia was built with the idea that in such cases we we should not decide ourselves, but say what external sources say. If several sources say different things, we should say that too (Wikidata關注的並不是事實，而是聲明及其引用信息。這些內容可以存在矛盾。).

That said, I think those things are relevant for items like Republic of China, but not for Taipei City. Taipei City, as defined in the item, is a special municipality of the Republic of China. That is true even if we do not consider the ROC as a legitimate state. The reverse is also true: Q57251 is a subdivision of the PRC even if we do not consider that legitimate. --Zolo (talk) 19:38, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

.... I think the main problem is not about this. That PRC user thinks P17 should include not only "belongs to a sovereign state" but "control by a regime" or what? (even a microstate?) Maybe we should modify the description? tntchn ^{Comment · Contribs} 15:30, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I think this is actually the same question, because what matters is that the ROC officially considers itself a sovereign state.

I tried to make the general point because that could be needed for other things but in this case I actually think there should not be any problem. "Sovereign State", is more a question of fact than of legal status, and de facto the Republic of China is a sovereign State. --Zolo (talk) 16:00, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, I know. tntchn ^{Comment · Contribs} 17:02, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

So that means that "country = Republic of China" is ok, no ? --Zolo (talk) 17:20, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Not me= = I'm a national of the ROC :) tntchn ^{Comment · Contribs} 17:31, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

But since it is you who are asking, I am replying you :).

Actually, I think the question also reveals a more general problem with some of our properties. I may try to post about this later on. Or maybe I won't, because I know I will not convince may people... --Zolo (talk) 17:44, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I think we will need to have two instances of Property:P17 for Q1867. Each accompanied by a qualifier that says "disputed" and holds information about who disputes the respective claims. --Slomox (talk) 13:53, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

We have actually two issues in this case:

1. Is Taipei, as defined in Q1867, a subdivision of the Republic of China ? Both users seem to agree on that, and I think it is really the only sensible solution, because the item is really Taipei, as defined by the Republic of China. The administrative status, and perhaps even the boundaries and all that ensue are built on this assumption. If the PRC also has a definition of Taipei, then it should be a different, just as we have two separate items for "Province of Taiwan".
2. If we assume #1 to be true, should it use "Republic of China" as the value of the "country" property ? I would say yes, because the item adopts the Republic of China's point of view. The same could apply for all cases, even for subdibvions of the Principality of Sealand

That does not solve the problem for items that are not administrative areas. From zh:台湾省_(中华人民共和国), it seems that the PRC's official position is that the Province of Taiwan does not yet have its administrative subdivisions. Would that mean that every item located in Taiwan should have two P:P131/P17 systems. The one referring to the ROC subdivisions, and the one reflecting the official PRC's position, with just "Province of Taiwan" and "People's Republic of China" ? --Zolo (talk) 07:00, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

--Zolo (talk) 07:00, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

If we add PRC to all items located in Taiwan, we may also need to add ROC to all items located in Mainland China according to the ROC Constitution (see zh:中華民國疆域). I think it will be too cumbersome. I prefer to keep it simple, only add PRC to Island of Taiwan (and some other islands controlled by ROC) and only add ROC to Mainland China.--Stevenliuyi (talk) 08:31, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Time zone properties

Why are there two time zone properties (Property:P378 and Property:P421) and which one should be used? --Wylve (talk) 10:55, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

The first is String, and the second Item. I'd suggest to use the second, when available... --Ricordisamoa 11:15, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

See Wikidata:Properties for deletion#Property:P378 — Ltrl G^☎, 11:52, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Property:P366 ("use")

The exact meaning of that property is unclear (is it "used as", or also "used for"?). Please see: Property_talk:P366. --AVRS (talk) 12:11, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

ID OpenStreetMap

Please translate in English

Français :

Bonjour à tous. Je viens de tomber sur cette propriété et je ne crois pas qu'elle ait fait l'objet d'un consensus. Non pas que je suis contraire à cette idée, mais il faut savoir que ces identifiants OSM sont instables, puisqu'il s'agit que de chiffres, ils peuvent être supprimés, déplacés, réaffectés... Je me réjouis de ces liens, bien sûr, mais la communauté OpenStreetMap francophone du moins a les mêmes réserves envers les ID Wikidata. C'est d'ailleurs pour cette raison que OSM n'utilise pas les ID Wikidata mais les titres des articles Wikipédia. En effet, certains objets OSM ont des tags pour indiquer qu'il existe un article sur Wikipédia et il y a un projet derrière : Openstreetmap:WIWOSM. Pour l'heure cela fonctionne avec meta:WikiMiniAtlas mais aussi avec le lien « Carte » que certaines Wikipédia ont activé (fr:Utilisateur:Otourly/OSM & WIKIPEDIA. Mais ce projet ne se base pas sur une récupération manuelle des IDs. Elle est basée sur une extraction de la base OSM. Aussi afin d'éviter les problèmes, il faudrait, si toutefois cette propriété est conservée, garder un système automatique.

Je pense pas que cette propriété soit une mauvaise chose, mais OSM et Wikidata évoluant rapidement, cette propriété doit être gérée de manière automatique. de:User:Kolossos, qui est derrière la partie technique de WIWOSM pourra peut-être donner un coup de main. Otourly (talk) 18:21, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Bonjour,je ne connais pas bien OSM, mais le créateur de la propriété a fait valoir ici que le type d'identifiant choisi était relativement stable. Les identifiants Wikidata sont encore parfois un peu instables qu'on est encore en train de nettoyer les liens interwikis, et parce qu'il n'est pas encore possible de créer de redirects. Cependant, le système est conçu pour être plus stable que Wikipédia. Etant donné l'importance du sujet, on peut s'attendre à ce que la communauté soit vigilante sur ce point.

Pour ce qui est d'une gestion automatique, les liens Wikidata -> OSM, Wikidata ne peut pas interroger directement un client extérieur, les liens doivent donc toujours être ajoutés quelque part. En ce sens, le propriété ne peut pas être vraiment automatique, même si elle sera vraisemblablement prise en charge par un bot.

Je crois que le mini Atlas utilise des données stockées dans OSM, non dans Wikipedia. Si c'est le cas, le problème que vous soulevez relève d'OSM et des gérants du mini Atlas. A titre personnel, il me semble qu'il serait bon de remplacer la clé OSM Wikipédia par une clé Wikidata, mais dans tous les cas, Wikidata s'adaptera à la solution choisie. --Zolo (talk) 05:59, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Values of properties

Please visit Wikidata:Project chat#Values of properties. --NaBUru38 (talk) 19:37, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Splitting up

It takes a while for me to load this page... Could we maybe reduce it to just the table, and split everything else off into subpages, linked from the table headers? That way this page would just be a quick-reference chart, with greater detail available at the subpages. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 22:45, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

We can actually do the same as with the property proposal page.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:10, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd rather see the first summary go to a separate page.

It's already a bit complicated to get an overview of various properties. If we split it up, this doesn't make it easier.

Maybe we could format it into a single table ..

On the other hand, if we start creating an item for each property, we could do it away entirely .. (? or we need to have a page with properties for properties ;) --  Docu  at 10:20, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Non-political office

I wanted to record that Nick Baines is Bishop of Bradford, but I can't find a suitable property. I thought I'd found one in Property:P39, Office(s) held; but that is exclusively political. Either it needs to be generalised, or there need to be one or more other properties. While I'm on the subject, I can't immediately see a property suitable for linking Bishop of Bradford to Diocese of Bradford either. --ColinFine (talk) 14:30, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Generalization: if we have to distinguish between politic, economic, military or religious positions, it would be a mess. Why not a simple "position" ? Snipre (talk) 18:46, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Actor

Maybe in some cases is necessary explain how to use property. For example if a person work like actor in cinema and tv, the correct value for property occupation must be only actor and not film actor + TV actor + actor like in Ashley Laurence (for example). --ValterVB (talk) 16:58, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Property P453

Report this question _{(to the bottom)}. --ValterVB (talk) 17:36, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Property_talk:P39

Someone care to assist.  — billinghurst sDrewth 14:56, 27 April 2013 (UTC)