Wikidata talk:WikiProject UK and Ireland

State of play -- gleanings from first stats

From the initial set of Stats queries, it's clear that there is work to be done, both in property addition (eg through systematic extraction from categories and infoboxes) and in cleanup. Some things that caught my eye:

• Far too few places with locations connecting up to countries, especially for Ireland. Need to check for possible errors if Ireland = the country. Need to fix the search to get sensible returns if Ireland = the island. The low number of Irish places is presumably knocking on to the low number of Irish people, works etc.
• Some quite curious inclusions in "Events" -- eg museums, newspapers, internet top-level domain codes, houses, offices of state -- class hierarchy needs some investigation
• "Works" appears to be dominated by buildings (effect of WLM ?)
  • For both of these it might be useful to explore one level (+) of subclasses of each of these broad top-level classes, to get more of an idea of what sort of items are / are not currently identified with properties relating them to the UK or Ireland.
• More broadly, we should remember that many items have been created en-masse from Wikipedia without even an instance of (P31) property, never mind more expressive properties -- eg most British coins, such as threepence (Q7798042) -- so a priority should be to try to get a handle on what sorts of items have or have not had properties systematically added, and where the soonest systematic drives should be made to extract properties and property-values from infoboxes, categories, and navigation templates.
• This of course is in addition to identifying redlink lists and data sources we should be matching against. Jheald (talk) 23:08, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Name change?

OK, I think we made a mistake with the name: it should have been either "Britain and Ireland" (i.e. geographical) or "UK and Eire" (i.e. political). At the moment the name is a bit muddled. Leutha (talk) 22:51, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

No, I believe "Ireland" is correct in English usage. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:31, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Well then we should be Britain and Ireland for consistencyFabian Tompsett (WMUK) (talk) 09:27, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

What I read in Wikipedia is that "Ireland" is the official name in English of the Irish Republic; so I think you were right first time. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:10, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Time for the infamous Google stats:

• "UK and Ireland" [1] -- 21.2 million
• "Britain and Ireland" [2] -- 15 million (includes "Great Britain and Ireland")
• "UK and Eire" [3] -- 255,000

So it would seem en:WP:COMMONNAME is with the first, unless anybody feels actually offended by it. Jheald (talk) 11:36, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I note that your Project page does not invite new contributors, but "UK and Ireland" would get my vote if I had one. On a point of more significance, I have added British Isles (Q38272)contains the administrative territorial entity (P150)Isle of Man (Q9676). I assume that you would consider Isle of Man to be within this project's scope? What about the Channel Islands?--GrounderUK (talk) 19:14, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

CWGC

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has identifiers for war casualties, and cemeteries, at least. In the general way of World War I data, should we be looking to have these identifiers as Wikidata properties? Charles Matthews (talk) 09:34, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Suggestions (small scale)

I came across Q15731699 which is about a British journalist[4]. It is the sort of topic where it's a bit surprising enWP has nothing.

I have a larger-scale project for finding potential such articles. But shall we have a "to do" list for casual suggestions? Charles Matthews (talk) 09:24, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

To-do lists

I think we should have lists of simple tasks "on offer", for people to help out. Ideally, these would be

• grouped and sub-grouped by topic
• of manageable size, e.g. <500 items per set
• keeping track of "done" tasks, to get a feeling of accomplishment (e.g. 85% of this set done)

Some suggestions (please feel free to edit/amend these!); using "UK/I" as shorthand for "UK and Ireland":

• People
  • UK/I nationality
    • Grouped by occupation?
  • No nationality, but born in UK/Ireland, or born to UK/I parents
• Places
  • Within UK/I (by country (P17)), but no located in the administrative territorial entity (P131)
  • Within UK/I (by coordinate location (P625)), but no country (P17)/located in the administrative territorial entity (P131)
  • Within UK/I located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) tree, but no coordinate location (P625)
  • Grouped by coordinate location (P625) grid, to add images (think geograph.co.uk)
  • Monuments (Grade I/II* already on Wikidata)
• Companies
  • Products

--Magnus Manske (talk) 13:50, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

A first stab at some Autolist queries to build on Magnus's initial post. They could probably be improved:

• No nationality, but born in UK/Ireland, or born to UK/I parents
  • 5814 Autolist (using P17)... 5792 Autolist (using P625)... n/a Autolist (nested, using parentage)
    • -- note that the "political" UK tree currently includes eg British Raj (Q129286), with associated consequences.
    • -- the last query seems to be too much for Autolist/WDQ
• Items with UK/I (by country (P17)), but no located in the administrative territorial entity (P131)
  • 132642 Autolist (all)... 77337 Autolist (places only)
• Within UK/I (by coordinate location (P625)), but no country (P17)/located in the administrative territorial entity (P131)
  • 13920 Autolist (all; no P17)... 2772 Autolist (places only; no P17)
  • 130689 Autolist (all; no P131)... 76452 Autolist (places only; no P131)
• Within UK/I located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) tree, but no coordinate location (P625)
  • 18080 Autolist (all, with P17)... 5091 Autolist (places only, with P17)... 1524 Autolist (places, with P131)

It's notable that there are a number of items, both in the queries above and in the stats section on the project, that simply shouldn't be in the hierarchy they are being found in. strontium (Q938) is not a place in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Nor are any of the domain code .ac (Q8391) or the newspaper The Guardian (Q11148) or the post of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (Q14211) really "events" that occurred there. So it would be useful to look into these hierarchies and identify at what stage the instance of (P31)/subclass of (P279) chain is going off-track. Jheald (talk) 10:26, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

One more indicator of where we're at, perhaps an even more important metric that any of the previous:

• Items within UK/I (by coordinate location (P625)), but no instance of (P31):
  • 30728 Autolist Jheald (talk) 20:43, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

DNB00

Should entries from the Dictionary of National Biography on Wikisource (e.g. Street, George Edmund (DNB00) (Q19111223)) be merged with their subjects (e.g. George Edmund Street (Q5538851))? Ham II (talk) 20:47, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

@Ham II: No, because for a single subject there might be many articles on Wikisource, from many different encyclopedias; but by design it is only possible for items on Wikisource and items on Wikidata to be linked one-to-one. So items like Street, George Edmund (DNB00) (Q19111223) should be identified as an instance of an article, from the DNB, the subject of which is George Edmund Street (Q5538851).

It's probably best to work up a scheme (ping @Charles Matthews:) that can be applied systematically to all DNB articles, probably by a bot -- eg should they be identified as instances of the generic article (Q191067), or something more specific (like "biographical article" ?), or something more specific still (eg "DNB first edition biographical article") -- whichever is decided, this should be standardised and then applied uniformly.

But in answer to your main question, no, it would not be appropriate just to do a merge. Jheald (talk) 09:45, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

@Jheald: Thanks! Ham II (talk) 14:27, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes. The label should be "Street, George Edmund", in this example, across all languages. The English description should be "Article from the Dictionary of National Biography, first edition" for DNB00, "Article from the Dictionary of National Biography, first supplement" for DNB01, "Article from the Dictionary of National Biography, first supplement" for DNB01, and "Article from the Dictionary of National Biography, second supplement" for DNB12; the edition or supplement needs to be mentioned because of disambiguation issues. As for properties, it is "instance of" a biography; and the property P921 or "main subject" should be set as the item here about the subject of the biography. It is "part of" Dictionary of National Biography".

NB that a small number, about 30, of the biographies have deliberately not had the matching Wikidata item created here. Those can be found in s:Category:Apocryphal biographies. Note also that some of the Wikisource pages, those in s:Category:DNB See, are not biographies but a type of soft redirect. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:44, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia UK place articles are muddled up!

I have been working for sometime on UK place articles, and am finding some fundamental flaws due to the fact that the structure of Wikipedia articles, and hence Wikidata, does not always match the real structure of UK administrative divisions. In short it is a bit messy right now.

For example, take Aberdeen (Q36405). There should be 2 items, the other being Aberdeen City which is the unitary authority district which has Aberdeen City Council (Q2425849) as its government.

The correct structure can be found at http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ (type Aberdeen in to the search box). There you find more than one item. So, an item for Aberdeen as a named place (city), and Aberdeen City (unitary authority).

This causes a problem when trying to add claims such as GSS codes, and creating new items such as further subdivisions.

Some other UK places do pretty much follow the right structure already. The right structure being what is found on the Office of National Statistics website (following GSS codes), and Ornance Survey (same as ONS). Danrok (talk) 11:41, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

@Danrok: So what do you think is the best thing people in the community can do to help?

Also, how much of this arises because UK administrative structures and associated boundaries have seen so many different changes in the last 40 years? (And who knows how long before they change all over again?)

There's also a huge backlog of items that have no administrative entity indicated. It would be good to know that there is some at-scale category mining or co-ordinate mining to start to take this on. I know Magnus has just released a new bot game. Is that promising? And/or should some things just be fully automated? Jheald (talk) 15:37, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

@Jheald: Firstly, we would need to decide on what course of action to take. To what extent do we split different entities in to separate items on wikidata? E.g. "village and civil parish" into two items, or just one?

The real point here is that if we don't match wikidata items to their GSS codes, we will always be in a bit of a mess. With GSS codes in place, we would then have a good chance of importing data automatically from official sources, e.g. population from ONS census data. Having all administrative sub-divisions set-up correctly is the foundation for everything else, and the key to keeping the data updated automatically.

As far as boundary changes (and the like) go, of course that will happen, as has happened many times before. There are already quite a few historical items on Wikipedia, e.g. Category:Former counties of England (Q8467130), so it's nothing new. I would hope that if we get aligned with the GSS codes, as and when changes occur, we should only have to reflect the changes in wikidata. Hard to say exactly what will happen until it does. Danrok (talk) 16:02, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

@Danrok: I'm pulling my previous responses, now I've started to do a bit more digging and investigation.

See new tracking / guidance page at Wikidata:WikiProject UK and Ireland/adm/England, and issues page Wikidata:WikiProject UK and Ireland/adm/England/issues -- both still rather incomplete & under construction.

Short answer: Yes -- UK place articles are very muddled up.

Huge numbers of relevant instance of (P31) identifications are missing; hierarchical located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) connections are largely missing, and often wrong; few key identifiers like GSS code (2011) (P836) are in place; the whole caboodle is screaming out for systematic import from a comprehensive extraction. It's not just the finest-grained levels like civil parishes that are problematic, it's through and through, all the way from the top -- we are even missing two regions not identified as such. (We have the items of course, but not the identifications as regions).

The good news is that once we get going, it should be possible to sort out a lot of this pretty quickly. But before we can do that, we need to make some foundational decisions -- in particular, probably most importantly of all, we need to come to a view as to what levels should or should not go into the key located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) hierarchy. Jheald (talk) 01:02, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Just as a footnote, I am less concerned about the civil parishes also being villages. (For a detailed breakdown, see the "co-classes" query in the civil parishes line of the Items by subdivision type section of the tracking page). As I understand it, a fair number of parishes self-identify as villages or towns or whatever. So I'm minded to let it go for the moment.

If necessary it should be possible to split items without too much pain at some point in the future.

located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) obviously relates to the administrative area, as would say GSS code (2011) (P836), so given a list of items to split it would be easy enough to extract the properties relating to the administrative area and separate them onto a new item. But for the moment it seems harmless enough to let sleeping dogs lie -- there's no shortage of other stuff that really needs to be sorted out. Jheald (talk) 14:20, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikimania 2016

Only this week left for comments: Wikidata:Wikimania 2016 (Thank you for translating this message). --Tobias1984 (talk) 11:53, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Anyone home?

Is this project moribund? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:55, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Title naming conventions for UK districts and boroughs

Personally, I favour using the long name of a district as the main title for the item, simply because it avoids confusion and ambiguity.

For example, so that Ealing (Q83726) does not get confused with London Borough of Ealing (Q207218), which is sometimes referred to as just Ealing.

Does anyone object to the long name being used? Danrok (talk) 18:18, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Unique Property Reference Numbers

Unique Property Reference Number (P8399) is now available, and the data has been released:

   https://osdatahub.os.uk/downloads/open/OpenUPRN

Is anyone working on an import, or a matching tool? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:07, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement

Hello,

there is now the draft of the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement published. [5] I think that this agreement is a possibility to get a overview about institutions in the EU and the UK with their responsibilities and to try to get a Overview about the content related to that topics what is in Wikidata and try to add misiing institutions or their responsibilities. What do you think about that and do you have ideas how to do it or for what kind of organisations in Wikidata schemas already exist. --Hogü-456 (talk) 19:39, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

GeoNames in UK

Hi guys! In GeoNames ID (P1566) big problem with code: Wikidata:Database reports/Constraint violations/P1566#United Kingdom (Q145). Need help! Машъал (talk) 16:30, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

I would like to alter 333K descriptions of items about UK heritage sites

I'd appreciate your opinions on Wikidata talk:WikiProject Built heritage#I would like to alter 333K descriptions of items about UK heritage sites. Thank you! Gikü (talk) 20:40, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

registration area a historic county or not in Scotland

https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AQ7309443#historic_county_or_not_in_Scotland shows how we are getting duplicate historic counties in Scotland because of confusion over registration county (Q7309443). Could someone familiar with administrative areas sort it out please? Vicarage (talk) 15:46, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

1st level administrative areas in the Republic patchy

I was hoping this would give me a top-level list of Irish areas

SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?itemLabel WHERE {
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE]". }
  {
    SELECT DISTINCT ?item WHERE {
      ?item p:P31 ?statement0.
      ?statement0 (ps:P31/(wdt:P279*)) wd:Q10864048.
      ?item p:P17 ?statement1.
      ?statement1 (ps:P17) wd:Q27.
    }
    LIMIT 100
  }
}

Try it!

But it gives a rag-tag result, some very small areas, some large areas missing entirely. My interest is historical, so county or province might work for me, if with extra work on my worldwide site, but surely this should be fixed. Vicarage (talk) 11:31, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Removal of wording

Hi I wonder if you can help please, when searching for Brighton, town in Great Britain is what it says but the story is Brighton WAS a town and the same with Hove but then the two neighbouring towns at the time joined to make a unitary authority, 3 years later was then given City status. When you come into Brighton signs state welcome to Brighton and Hove, all town centre signs for Brighton have been replaced with City for hove they state central Hove. My point is Brighton is no longer a town. Iv Greenfrog23 (talk) 16:49, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

See discussion at Wikidata:Project_chat#Brighton Vicarage (talk) 16:53, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Sources show that although the official name is Brighton and Hove, all sources also consider Brighton in the same equal manner when describing the City. Greenfrog23 (talk) 16:54, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

No they don't. Please don't forum-shop. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:58, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

civil registration districts and Logainm_ID

Mountbellew (Q3752988) is both a human_settlement and a civil_registration_district, but the Logainm_ID only refers to the human_settlement. Is there a Logainm_ID for the civil_registration_district, showing the borders and the townlands included? If there is, we should split the entry. Please ping me. RAN (talk) 14:02, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

1922 or 1927 for political start of current UK

In https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Talk:Q145#Dates_still_a_mess I propose that 1922 is the division between United Kingdom (Q145) and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (Q174193), and 1927 should be relegated to the footnote of the official name change. Vicarage (talk) 07:27, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Brighton

I need assistance from fellow members to correct the misinformation on this page to remove instance of town and market town and also Wikipedia as it is wrongly categorized as a seaside town.

Proving Brighton's a City

1. **Official Status Confirmation**: The Queen's letter explicitly confers city status upon the towns of Brighton and Hove, indicating official recognition of Brighton as a city. https://www.kingseducation.com/kings-life/10-fun-facts-about-brighton#:~:text=An%20important%20first%20fact%20is,two%20to%20be%20separate%20towns 2. **Administrative Authority and Council**: Brighton is governed by a single local authority and city council, characteristic of a city rather than a town. https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/ 3. **Recognition by Various Entities**: Brighton is universally recognized as a city by its authorities, media outlets, educational institutions, transportation hubs, and national newspapers. https://www.visitbrighton.com/ https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/24140347.brighton-city-centre-road-cordoned-off-sinkhole-emerges/https://www.sussex.ac.uk/study/student-life/brighton https://flybrighton.com/ https://www.thetimes.co.uk/travel/destinations/uk/england/brighton/

             n/    

4. **Logical Inconsistency**: It is illogical to label Brighton both as a city and a town simultaneously, as cities typically supersede towns in administrative hierarchy.

5. **Contradictions on Wikipedia**: Despite overwhelming evidence supporting Brighton's city status, the Wikipedia page for Brighton contradicts itself by referring to it as both a town and a city multiple times.

6. **Support from Local Officials**: Communication with the mayor of Brighton and the Brighton communications department confirmed the frustration with the ongoing misconception regarding Brighton's city status. I have sent your email to our Comms department who will be able to help. Thank you for getting it right. Wikipedia often gets it wrong so it's good if someone who cares edits the pages. Kindest regards Minna Minna Robertson Civic Office Manager | Brighton & Hove City Council, Brighton Town Hall, Civic Parlour, Bartholomew Square, BN1 1JA T 01273 291225 or 07824866987 /brighton-hove.gov.uk Our customer promise to you We will make it clear how you can contact or access our services We will understand and get things done | We will be clear and treat you with respect. Thank you for your email, I share not only your concerns but also your frustrations!   This has been an ongoing issue for many years, we used to regularly go in and edit the page but every time we did someone else would then edit it back to say resort or town. Although thankfully the Wikipedia page retains both of the external links I added to the council website and to our official tourism site: www.visitbrighton.com (http://www.visitbrighton.com/).   As our resources are stretched instead of undertaking the Sisyphean task of updating Wikipedia, we focus on optimising the content of our website to ensure that we appear as the top result for Brighton-related searches. Please see below a screenshot of the search results for ‘Brighton’ on Google which shows that our VisitBrighton website appears before the Wikipedia entry - the majority of people use Google for online searches rather than Bing (84% Google / 9% Bing).   Thank you, Charlotte  

<image002.png>

  Charlotte Barrow Senior Marketing Executive VisitBrighton www.visitbrighton.com (http://www.visitbrighton.com/)

Monday – Friday 8am-4pm  

<image001.jpg> (https://www.visitbrighton.com/brightonup) 7. **Definition of a Town vs. City**: Brighton's characteristics align more closely with those of a city, including its size, population, and administrative structure, as opposed to those of a town.

By considering these points, it becomes clear that Brighton is indeed a city, as officially recognized and acknowledged by various entities, and the persistent labeling of it as a town on Wikidata and Wikipedia contradicts the established facts and definitions. Greenfrog23 (talk) 19:10, 5 March 2024 (UTC)