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Research about user participation in Wikidata - call for participation (update)[edit]

Dear Wikidata users,
We are a group of researchers of the Web and Internet Science group of the University of Southampton.
We are currently conducting a research aiming to discover how newcomers become full participants into the Wikidata community. We are interested in understanding how the usage of tools, the relationships with the community, and the knowledge and application of policy norms change from users' first approach to Wikidata to their full integration as fully active participants.
This study will take place as an interview, either by videotelephony, e.g. Skype, phone, or e-mail, according to the preference of the interviewees. The time required to answer all the questions will likely be about an hour. Further information can be found on the Research Project Page: Research:Becoming Wikidatians: evolution of participation in a collaborative structured knowledge base..
Any data collected will be treated in the strictest confidentiality, no personal information will be processed for the purpose of the research. The study, which has submission number 20117, has received ethical approval following the University of Southampton guidelines.
We aim at gathering about 20 participants. Users interested in taking part or wishing to receive further information can contact us by writing to the e-mail address [email protected]

Thank you very much, your help will be much appreciated!

--Alessandro Piscopo

Item "points" to be used as a unit[edit]

Is there an item "points" that can be used as a unit? I found point (Q1550236) "ice hockey statistic summing a player's goals" and point (Q2353718) "basketball unit of scoring accumulated by making field goals and free throws", but no general such unit of measurement. If it does not exist, where can I propose one? --Bensin (talk) 15:02, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

If there isn't one (and I haven't found one either) then you can just create a new item without needing to formally propose it anywhere. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 15:33, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
@Bensin: Precis, men det kan vara en bra idé att på något sätt försöka hitta ett sätt att objektet får åtminstone en normal länk riktad till sig. Annars riskerar den att bli raderad som "irrelelvant" med jämna mellanrum. Vi använder nämligen ett verktyg som räknar inlänkar (Vad som länkar hit) för att avgöra om ett objekt är relevant eller inte. Och jag tror inte länkar till enheter ger utslag i denna länkräknare. Men ett sådant objekt är tveklöst relevant, det är bara våra verktyg som är lite klumpiga! -- Innocent bystander (talk) 15:38, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
Actually, I have just found point (Q24038885) - created by Lymantria a few days ago seemingly as part of WD:PP/EVENT#Sports records. It only has the baseball point item as an incoming link outside the property proposal though so could do with wider use. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 16:14, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
The label for that and score (Q7435308) it is a subclass of are both indicating that it is a sports concept only. However points and score are used in other contexts too, e.g. Eurovision Song Contest (Q276) and Point system (Q1476672) - should they be broadened or new items created? Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 16:18, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
In frwiki we have an article that was names "point (game and sports)" at some point. Ontologically a point is scored when a player create an instance of a class of event, defined by the rule of the game, whether it's a card game or a sport game does not matter much, I think. author  TomT0m / talk page 07:32, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the answers! I used point (Q24038885). It did not show up when I wrote "point" in the unit field so I had to write "Q24038885" to select it. Should point (Q1550236) and point (Q2353718) be "merged" to point (Q24038885)? --Bensin (talk) 21:15, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
No, they are subclasses of the same concept which have specific meanings in the different sports. I've added that to the former (it was already present on the latter) and to point (Q7207922) that I've just found. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 23:41, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Why does number of points/goals scored (P1351) needs at all an unit? It's in the label of the property that it is about points. --Pasleim (talk) 21:52, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Well, it is actually a little ambivalent in the label: "points/goals". -- Innocent bystander (talk) 05:47, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
As TomT0m pointed out above, ontologically it doesn't matter if a point is scored in a card game or sports game. The game rules are then defining if it's called point or goal. Claims like in Q5354210#P1346 are pleonasms and are opposing the idea of providing structured data. --Pasleim (talk) 09:32, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
Maybe so, but there is also the problem with our templates in Wikipedia. How do they know if we use points or goals? In Ice hockey, there is both points and goals in the same game. And the sum of points a teams players makes in one single hockey game normally exceeds the numbers of goals the team makes. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 10:36, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
because 1 goal = 1 point :) This is more complex in games where there is several ways to score and each way has its own point numbers. author  TomT0m / talk page 10:57, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
That was not what I said. The players get points not only for goals, but also for assists. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 05:50, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
In Australian rules football (Q50776) a "goal" is worth 6 points, but it is not the only way of scoring as a "behind" is worth 1 point and these are reported separately in scores, e.g. [1] goals 16, behinds 11, total 107 vs goals 14, behinds 13, total 97. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 14:47, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

I don't think a general point concept should ever be used as a unit. In nearly every case it should be possible to pick a more specific unit. It similar to how degrees isn't a valid unit for temperature. At best a unit that specifies the rule set that's used for the unit. In Go for example games sometimes have a different result when counted with Chinese or Japanese rules. ChristianKl (talk) 08:37, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Rivers vs Water course[edit]

This thread is partly a copy of User talk:Мастер теней. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 17:49, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Are you really sure all these waters qualify to be named "rivers"? GeoNames actually call Burritt Creek (Q22352960) a stream. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 16:02, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

watercourse (Q355304) includ "river", "wadi", "stream", etc. "River" better than "watercourse (any flowing body of water)". Мастер теней (master of shadows), 16:24, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
I have added water course since the categories in the Lsjbot-articles includes all kinds of flowing bodys of water. In many cases, these statements can be replaced by river, that is more specific, but it does not fit everywhere. We do not have one single river in Sweden (Q34) for example. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 16:34, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Separation object for river (Q4022) & small river (Q3529419) & stream (Q47521) is unscience. This types don't have precision characteristics (large, area, deep, etc.). Мастер теней (master of shadows), 17:13, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
This edit is wrong! Please roll back all such edits! /ℇsquilo 16:15, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
I have set a one minute block, to halt this. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 16:20, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Why wrong? Мастер теней (master of shadows), 16:24, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Well, a river is normally larger than a stream for example. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 16:27, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
This is convention (условность). What characteristic has the stream? Мастер теней (master of shadows), 16:35, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Much larger. There are only a handfull of river (Q4022) in Sweden, but thousands of watercourse (Q355304), small river (Q3529419), stream (Q47521), etc. /ℇsquilo 16:33, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
watercourse (Q355304) need be clear, becouse it's any flowing body of water. Мастер теней (master of shadows), 16:37, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Better unclear than plain wrong! The reason watercourse (Q355304) is used is because the size of the watercourse is unclear. /ℇsquilo 16:41, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
What characteristic has the river (Q4022) or small river (Q3529419) or stream (Q47521)? Мастер теней (master of shadows), 16:45, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
In broad strokes; A stream (Q47521) is small enough to jump or ford over. A small river (Q3529419) is bigger, but usually not large enough to be navigable. The distinction is not precise because the size differs by season and by location. /ℇsquilo 16:55, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
It's unscience. In russian language river (Q4022) same stream (Q47521) — natural watercourse. Мастер теней (master of shadows), 17:00, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
There is maybe no precise and scientific way to handle this, since language may differ. So, yes, there is a large risk of "unscience" here. In Swedish it even differs between different parts of Sweden. When we, most likely never, can agree about the quantifiers of these entities, a general item like Water course is to prefer? An example, Jordan River in Palestine (Q23792) is named River, but has the size of a small river (Q3529419).
I mean, every running water that isn't made by man, is probably a subclass of Water course. But a very low percentage is a (subclass of) River, at least now after the Lsjbot-project has added so many articles about small water courses. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 17:42, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Repeat: what characteristic has river? Large? Area? Мастер теней (master of shadows), 17:58, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

I think this subject needs broader attention, so I copied this thread from User talk:Мастер теней. @Esquilo, Мастер теней:. Opinions! -- Innocent bystander (talk) 17:49, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Viejejåkhå
I agree, it is difficult to quantify this subjects. But calling everything "River" look very strange. As I said, in Swedish vocabulary, we do not have a single river in Sweden. Volga, Rhen, Lena, Nile etc are rivers, but Viejejåkhå above does not look like a river to me. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 18:12, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Maybe in a perfectly logical world, if different languages have different classifications of types of watercourses, wikidata would have items corresponding to each of the specific classification definitions independent of language. For example, if there's "river as defined in Russian (and some other languages?)" which applies to a greater number of actual watercourses than "river as defined in English", we would have some items listed as instances of "river as defined in Russian" but not "river as defined in English". However, that's probably a needless level of complexity. An alternative would be to create class-level items or property statements that specify more precisely the useful information - instance of "navigable watercourse" rather than "river", perhaps, or "width" "1 m" rather than instance of "stream"? ArthurPSmith (talk) 14:43, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
Did we really need a perfect world ? I think that we should just rely on the sources. If there is a source telling that the item is about a *whatever*, then we indicate the data accordingly. If there is no source, the general watercourse (Q355304) is the best option (because all river (Q4022) are watercourse (Q355304) but the contrary is not true). And for the specific characteristics, there is specific properties; we shouldn't use instance of (P31) for that (like width (P2049)). Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 15:39, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
GeoNames are the main source to many of these items, and it tells which are "streams" or "rivers". -- Innocent bystander (talk) 05:48, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
Yes, and there is a lot of others sources; eg. in France (Q142) we have Sandre (Q1520862).

Help needed to check assassination (Q81672)[edit]

Hi,

Apparently there is some discrepancy with assassination (Q81672) (Sammyday reported it on the french bistro but no-one really answered). Right now, in most language the label is « attentat » (or a close word ; in fr, de, da, cs, et, eu, hr, etc.) and the description is more or less about an attack (with or without killing, toward someone or something, in fr, de, it) but in English the label is « assassination » and the description « deliberate killing of a prominent person or political figure » (same thing for es). Can someone check it and confirm that it should be split in two different item ? There is murder (Q132821) that has maybe to be check too.

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 15:20, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

I vaguely recall this showing up at WD:IWC. You should maybe check the archives there, or maybe it's still open? @Sammyday, VIGNERON: --Izno (talk) 13:32, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you Izno, indeed Zolo opened a section in 2014... I see to that Gael13011 has changed the label and the the link but not the description in French (but only in French...). Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 13:41, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
The Swedish article well fits with the English description you wrote above. ("deliberate killing of a prominent person or political figure") -- Innocent bystander (talk) 14:01, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
@Innocent bystander: that's strange, you mean the word « attentat » is a false friend (Q202961) (as if the situation wasn't complicate enough...). Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 15:24, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
I mean that the content of the Swedish article in this page is about "deliberate killing (or a try to kill) a prominent person or political figure". The word used here is also used to describe the Charlie Hebdo shooting (Q18718876) The article is illustrated by the murder attempt at Ronald Reagan. The beginning of the article tells that the word is derived from a latin words that means "attempt to kill". This word is not used in a legal context in Swedish. To do an "attentat" is of course illegal, but the term is not used when you come to the court. You are then accused of "Mord" or "Dråp" or "Vållande till annans död", depending on the level of intention and planning. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 16:12, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

phone number (URL) (P1244) and phone number (P1329)[edit]

  • phone number (URL) (P1244) was created to specify phone numbers in the url format. This would be Wikimedia Foundation (Q180) => tel:+1-415-839-6885 . The format needs to be enabled for Wikidata. On creation of the property, users were advised that this would eventually happen and this is now possible.
  • phone number (P1329) should include the same as a string, but has no built in format validation, so people need to clean up entries after users first entered them. Number of uses are currently fairly limited, but if we try to include data from Wikivoyage, this may increase eventually.

If we agree to activate phone number (URL) (P1244) going forward, we can delete phone number (P1329). Even if I personally don't think this is key data for Wikidata, I think we need to provide a consistent way to include it.
--- Jura 06:26, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

  • I honestly don't care about activation, but we should have exactly 1 properties for this. Suggestion: Keep "phone number", delete "phone number(URL)", and add a formatter URL to "phone number", since the root data is the phone number and not the URI. --Izno (talk) 13:34, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
    • I don't care either way, but we certainly should have only one property. --Srittau (talk) 15:40, 17 May 2016 (UTC) (Okay, a slight preference for the non-URL version if it is kept in a normalized format. --Srittau (talk) 15:41, 17 May 2016 (UTC))
    • +1 to that idea. I also prefer adding a formatter URL for the same reason, which I'm pretty sure I said somewhere else before. - Nikki (talk) 13:25, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
  • The property P1329 we created on a temporary basis has normalization issues, so P1244 would be a simple way to have normalized data. The property for email addresses works in a similar way.
    --- Jura 07:23, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
  • @Izno, Srittau: Any suggestions how to clean-up Wikidata:Database_reports/Constraint_violations/P1329#.22Format.22_violations ?
    --- Jura 07:41, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Working on classification? Important paper for you.[edit]

Hey :)

If you are working on classification here on Wikidata I can highly recommend the paper "State of the Union: A Data Consumer's Perspective on Wikidata and Its Properties for the Classification and Resolution of Entities" that was recently published at ICWSM. You can find a pdf version here. It gives a very good overview of the difficulties faced by someone who wants to make use of our classes and their relations. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 09:43, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

I didn't read the paper in details but the main problem is that wikidata is the result of different classification systems from different wikipedias. Here we have to merge the works of different communities or work teams in WD into one unique classification scheme. Not easy to handle. Snipre (talk) 15:22, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
I did not read the paper in detail either, but my impression was that the authors have problems converting to a format they can use (like RDF) and that they dislike the fact that the contents of Wikidata are not frozen. The latter is fairly weird, as any database worth anything will keep growing. - Brya (talk) 16:51, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
I've been reading it - still will be thinking about it some more, but it has some fairly good points. The paper proposes a few specific properties, which we ought to discuss in detail under property proposals. But the main part of their problem concerns our instance of (P31) and subclass of (P279) class hierarchy. For some areas (human beings) the class hierarchy usage in wikidata is simple; for others (organizations) it is extremely complex. In both cases they point out things that don't make a lot of sense. For some things (events in particular) they propose splitting off separate wikidata items to attach location etc. data to. I think it would be good to start a discussion on these ideas in Wikidata:WikiProject Ontology. ArthurPSmith (talk) 17:12, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

@Lydia Pintscher (WMDE): I did not have time and courage to read it entirely either but a major point is still in your hand :) Wikidata is still not full featured, and this is still a blocker, even if HUGE steps are done at this point : queries are one major way, of course to extract information and document preferred way, as they are both a sign that a model has been chosen by community, a specification of how information is intended be entered (a not well entered data won't fit show up in the query), and a way to monitor datas. And they are still weakly integrated at this point. I'd also like to higlight that Wikibase has almost integrated tool to model, which leaves community with wikipage for documentation. This is not an easy thing to discuss modelling issues and we are actually a very small number to do this (and still we achieve to have conflicts :/ ) I think we should not expect miracles if nothing changes on the tool part for communautary part. Another critic : I think projects like WikiProject Reasoning could easily be expected to solve the dichotomy "specific classes versus specific properties" which is a fallacy if we can define classes in term of properties and can do inferences with the definition. Still a question of wikidata tools ... but community definitely need the help of tools considering the millions of items the project handles and the complexity of the task. And tools can definitely smooth certain conflicts (I'm thinking item splitting because some people are very territorial about their model and try to isolate themselves to try to control their items) I think for example that human (Q5) versus Homo sapiens (Q15978631) whom a statement was moved recently from one to another is a weirdness related to modelling that is both social and technical but that illustrate pretty much how things can be difficult on a project like this one ... author  TomT0m / talk page 09:39, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Yeah that is certainly a big part of the issue and one of the reasons Markus and his team created SQID for example. And I think this is pretty good and helpful already. Do you have ideas/suggestions how we could integrate it better? Or any other things we can do that would make it easier? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:33, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Creating a list of missing Wikipedia articles with source URLs using a Wikidata query[edit]

Hi all

Yesterday UNESCO made all its Biosphere Descriptions available as CC-BY-SA meaning that they can be used as the missing 400+ English language Wikipedia articles for the sites :) I'm currently trying to create a Wikidata query to make this job easier for people, I have a query but I'm struggling to add a column for Property:P2520 which will link through to the description and also the image for the Wikidata item. Could someone help me out pretty please?

John Cummings (talk) 11:03, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Here you are. --Edgars2007 (talk) 15:23, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
@Edgars2007: thanks so much, here is where the list is being used John Cummings (talk) 16:28, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Conflict of interest[edit]

Hoi, When the work of a scientist is tainted because of a conflict of interest, how do you mark this in Wikidata? Thanks, GerardM (talk) 13:31, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

@GerardM: Exactly what is it you want to accomplish? Is it a significant event (P793) in the item about the scientist you are asking for. Or are you looking for a way to mark a source as problematic? -- Innocent bystander (talk) 15:01, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Professor Ray Hilborn and all of his work has been debunked by Greenpeace. They may be the source and it makes Mr Hilborn rather controversial. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 15:47, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
@GerardM: As Wikidata is not saying the truth, I don't think it is our task to judge anything about the work of that scientist. The only thing is perhaps to look for the use of articles and other documents written by this scientist as reference in WD and to mark them using a specific property in order to link them with the document produced by Greenpeace. Again thi is not the task of WD to provide any kind of way to say that a guy was acting in a bad or good way. The only thing which is interesting is to offer the possibility to reader to have the reference to a document which dispute the truthfulness of another one. Snipre (talk) 18:23, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Don't list the conflict of interest directly as conflicts of interests on the item of a person. If a person has a conflict of interest because they are employed by organisation X, the fact that they are employed by organisation X is information worth entering into Wikidata.ChristianKl (talk) 08:48, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Two languages[edit]

Is there a possibility to activate two languages? What I mean is that if an item doesn't have a label in language 1 Wikidata checks language 2 first before merely showing the Wikidata id. --Jobu0101 (talk) 13:47, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

This is possible by adding {{#babel:}} to your user page. And even without babel, multiple languages might be taken into account, see Special:MyLanguageFallbackChain. --Pasleim (talk) 14:01, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you. But it seems that there is no other way than adding babels. At least Special:MyLanguageFallbackChain simply tells me to do so. --Jobu0101 (talk) 22:37, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
The software also looks into the preferences in your browser and the geolocation of your ip. If I remove the Babel from my user_page I therefor get Finnish and some other strange languages into my FallbackChain. That is of no help for me, I do not read those languages. But there is some logic behind that, since a large minority speaks Finnish or Meänkieli where the geolocation thinks I live. For a period I was also given South Sami, but it is gone now. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 06:29, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
It doesn't work. When I open no label (Q873338) I see "Q873289" instead of "Senat Wowereit I" in the follows (P155) field even though I added German to my babel languages. --Jobu0101 (talk) 09:37, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
The cache of the pages is strong here, it takes time before a change affects what you see in the pages. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 09:51, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Can I somehow force the system to remove the cache and render the page again? And how long does it take when I don't do anything? --Jobu0101 (talk) 10:06, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
@Innocent bystander: I still have the same problem. Actually, I don't think that it is a cache problem. When I switch languages using the setting it works immediately. --Jobu0101 (talk) 18:03, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
When you switch language, you download a page that you never have been at before. You then do not have any cache-problems. So that was expected behaviour. I have seen the old version of a statement for several days in some cases. There is maybe a way to remove the cache, but I do not remember how to do that here at Wikidata. At enwp I see a help page that tells me to add "?action=purge" at the end of the url. Try that! -- Innocent bystander (talk) 04:20, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
@Innocent bystander: I tried it and it doesn't help. I don't think that this is a cache problem. Neither local cache on my computer nor global cache on Wikidata. I think so because I excluded the local cache case by opening the page on several systems which haven't been at the page before. Globally I guess that there are many Wikidata users which have my current language settings for months. So Wikidata would use the cache generated for them. no label (Q873338) hasn't been changed for a long time. So even when the cache is quite old it should show me the labels in German (because there don't exist English labels). --Jobu0101 (talk) 07:38, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
I tried myself to change to de-1 instead of de-0 in my #Babel (not true at all, but anything for science) and I can confirm that I do not see any label in the claim. And I do not see anything but the Qid in the header of my browser either. I normally see the English label there, when there is one. It is not until I change the whole GUI to de, that I see a label. Lydia? -- Innocent bystander (talk) 08:28, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Fallback like the one you want unfortunately doesn't work (yet). We can not do a fallback that depends on the user's language there because of caching. All fallback we do is the regular MediaWiki fallback there. So if you look at the page in German and there is no German label but an English one then it works because one of the MediaWiki fallbacks is German -> English. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:41, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for your answer. That is really too bad. I'd prefer the fallback English -> German. --Jobu0101 (talk) 11:38, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Tracking more information about Wikimedia movement affiliates[edit]

Greetings. I am looking into the idea of tracking relevant data about Wikimedia movement affiliates on Wikidata. In addition to providing helpful data about affiliates on Wikidata, this could also be used to maintain content on other wikis, such as Meta-Wiki and possibly WMF-Wiki in the future. Nearly all affiliates already have items as they also have pages on Meta-Wiki. However, I think we can utilize and format these items a bit more. I am hoping to get some feedback on this idea and the addition of a couple properties to help implement it.

I have mapped out what information I think would be needed, and how they relate to existing properties and other elements:

Example
Wikimedia Germany (Q8288)
Official name
Item title / Label
Type (chapter, thematic organization, user group)
instance of (P31) (Example: Wikimedia chapter (Q15924535))
Status (current, former, proposed)
instance of (P31) (current can be linked to main items for type; proposed and former would need to be created, but may also have usage as Meta-Wiki pages)
Official website (if not on Meta-Wiki)
official website (P856)
Logo
logo image (P154)
Meta-Wiki page
Meta-Wiki page link
Approval date
inception (P571)
Description of focus/affiliate
Description field
Focus area flag (used in short listings to help depict affiliate - generally a flag representing affiliate's region/country or focus. Examples on Press page on WMF-Wiki)
flag image (P41)
Short description (1-4 words) of focus (Germany, LGBT+, MediaWiki, Digitization, GenderGap, etc.)
Proposed new text field property: Wikimedia movement affiliate focus
Thought about using Main subject, but it requires an item, which not all focuses are going to have
Wikimedia movement affiliate code (Abbreviation used on listings and for things like mailing lists, etc. Examples - DE, US-NYC, LGBT+, CH, HK)
Proposed new text identifier property: Wikimedia movement affiliate code
Similar to Wikimedia database name (P1800), but different format and purpose (so sometimes different entries, or no entry at all)

Again, any feedback would be greatly appreciate. Thank you! --GVarnum-WMF (talk) 06:37, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

I think I'd prefer not to use a "focus", and certainly not as a text field. Try it out with "main subject" and see which orgs and where we bump into issues, as I'm skeptical that we won't already have items for most focuses, and where we are lacking we can probably just create a new item. Regarding the code, see no issue, so you should probably propose that at WD:PP. --Izno (talk) 13:16, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for your feedback. I think we could make that work. Some tricky ones would be things like "LGBT+" (which is LGBT in Wikidata), "Women, Spanish language" (which is more limited "Women in Spain" on Wikidata), and "United States, North Carolina Triangle" which does not appear to have a Wikidata entry. Any ideas on how to address those variables? Would new items using those as sort of "aliases" or new groupings be okay? --GVarnum-WMF (talk) 17:40, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

I've added aliases to LGBT; the English article at least treats the extended phrase "LGBT/Q/I" in the article called LGBT.

I think in this case, "women" and separately "spanish language" could be claimed and the point would be made that the organization of interest is caring about both rather than one or the other (set as preferred rank both?).

According to a redirect on en.WP, Research Triangle (Q767860) is the NC Triangle and I have updated the aliases accordingly. --Izno (talk) 18:12, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

'Wikimedia movement affiliate code' should use catalog code (P528). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:00, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for your feedback. I am less familiar with catalog code (P528) so will defer to others. :) --GVarnum-WMF (talk) 17:40, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
My bad; I meant inventory number (P217). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:05, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
I can see neither property working for this. I would recommend to open a Property proposal and work it out there. --Srittau (talk) 18:16, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
In addition to what Izno said: The status should be inferred through inception (P571) and end time (P582). I think that code should be a new property. catalog code (P528) does not fit at all, in my opinion. --Srittau (talk) 16:08, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for your feedback. That is helpful to know. --GVarnum-WMF (talk) 17:40, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
@Srittau: How would you treat a "proposed" vice "active" using. Inception can be used with "active" but what about pre-active. "inception: no value"? Do we actually want to track items which are only proposed and not active or disbanded? @GVarnum-WMF: For the claims you want to make using P31, are there any other values? --Izno (talk) 18:15, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Yes,
< proposed project > inception (P571) [SQID] no value Help
would work. Although we could not distinguish between proposed and rejected projects. --Srittau (talk) 18:19, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
  • flag image (P41) would be the flag of the item, not of the "focus area". Maybe you can use operating area (P2541) and the a property of the value would give the flag.
    --- Jura 18:17, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
  • "Approval date" may not match inception (P571). Maybe you need to create an item for significant event (P793) and date that.
    --- Jura 18:17, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
    • Q8288#P571 seems to be the date of the founding assembly.
      --- Jura 18:27, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
  • If you want us to annotate your list, it might be better to place it on a separate page.
    --- Jura 18:17, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

National museum[edit]

Hello, we have national museum (Q17431399) which I found via a specific museum. This Wikidata item is linked only to one article in a language version. Besides, I find the definition rather limited, in spite of the many ways a museum can be "national" (about a nation, the most important museum of a country, government-owned).

German Wikipedia has no article "Nationalmuseum", but a list of national museums in the countries of the world. This lead me to Wikidata item list of national museums (Q1847499). Would a merger be appropriate? Z. (talk) 10:40, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Well they could be merged as there don't seem to be conflicting wiki-links; they are at least linked together via the property is a list of (P360) so they could also be kept as is. If merged the name should be "national museum" and it should not have the instance of "Wikimedia list article" statement. See this RFC. ArthurPSmith (talk) 14:37, 19 May 2016 (UTC) (note - I edited this comment a little later ArthurPSmith (talk) 14:41, 19 May 2016 (UTC))

What are the notability criteria when it comes to scientific papers and their authors?[edit]

Is every paper used as a source within Wikidata and it's authors automatically notable, or are there cases where the policy is that it wouldn't be notable? ChristianKl (talk) 16:15, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

  • We do include sources and the author can/should be included. So they are notable in terms of Wikidata:Notability. If we don't know much about the author, there is short author name (P2093).
    --- Jura 16:21, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
    • What Jura said. In general, the notability criteria in Wikidata are quite a bit lower than on other projects due to the need for "structural" items. --Srittau (talk) 16:47, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Opening hours[edit]

The discussion on opening hours in relation to Wikivoyage needs more eyeballs; it has far wider implications, and we need to agree a way forward. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:52, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

New interface in "what links here"[edit]

As someone doing deletions on a regular basis I check "what links here" a lot. I do not object having new interface, and it looks nice, but I would very much like to have all to information be on one screen in most of the cases. Right now I need to scroll down even if there are zero or one backlink. This can be done either by arranging the options horizontally, or moving them below the results of the search.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:57, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Ran into that too. I have a hard time giving positive feedback to this. Maybe this is an improvement for blind people? Multichill (talk) 22:36, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
I've never used a screenreader but that seems unlikely to me. I can't see how blind people would need styled forms, the standard form dropdown replaced by a reproduction in divs and tons of whitespace. To me it looks more like an interface aimed at mobile devices that sucks on a desktop. It seems to have been reverted though, I'm seeing the old one again now, thankfully. - Nikki (talk) 07:03, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Hope we wont get the same interface to edit claims ..
--- Jura 05:30, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Hey :) This wasn't done by us and was a Wikimedia-wide change. It has been reverted. The discussion is happening in phabricator:T135773. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:26, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Thanks to all of you, it has indeed been reverted.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:42, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

How to document data about impact of oxytocin on trust[edit]

I'm new and want to know how to add the results of a specific study. Male U.S. citizens were asked to identify themselves as republican, democrat, or independent, then they were given either 4ml oxytocin or a placebo, then asked to rate their trust in the government. The democrats who received oxytocin rated their trust in the government significantly higher than those who received the placebo, but this pattern was not seen in subjects who identified as republican or independent.

In Wikidata I see an oxytocin item with lots of properties, but I don't see how to add the results of this study. If I try to boil the discovery down to statements, the subject is a kind of male U.S. citizen and the properties are 1. likely to identify as democrat, and 2. trust in government is moderated by oxytocin. At this time we do not know whether the effect could be replicated in non-citizens or females, and we have not pinned down exactly what the type of person happens to be (e.g. is it people with a certain gene? could it include Koko the gorilla?). There is real knowledge here, but can Wikidata handle it? Is the existing Wikidata entry about oxytocin problematic because it describes impacts, but does not specify the species/subspecies in which the impacts manifest?

Finally, for my reference, can I add the sample size, power and magnitude of the statistic as metadata?

Welcome again to Wikidata!⸻First and foremost, in the interest of not seeming suspicious to others, you should create an account and sign all of your posts with four tildes (~~~~).⸻Second, if this study is published and has a valid DOI (P356) or similar external identifier, then you have a better chance of an item on this study not being deleted on the spot.⸻Third, you don't need to add your results to Oxytocin (Q169960); you may wish to correspond with User:James Hare (NIOSH) who is as I'm writing this message adding items about papers describing scientific studies.⸻Fourth, as your IP indicates affiliation with the government of Wisconsin, you should declare this prior to adding anything of note. Mahir256 (talk) 03:08, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
I would recommend adding a Wikidata item about the paper. If you have the DOI, or a PubMed ID, or a PubMed Central ID, you can use the Source Metadata tool and it does all the work for you. I highly recommend it, but you need an account for it. As for adding the findings to the item on oxytocin, I don't particularly recommend it, since it's just the findings of one study. James Hare (NIOSH) (talk) 03:29, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Redirecting[edit]

Hi. I understand that duplicates need to be merged/redirected. How do I do this? Thanks Gbawden (talk) 07:59, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Special:MyLanguage/Help:Merge.
--- Jura 08:02, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Misbehaving bot?[edit]

Special:Contributions/54.67.94.64 --Ricordisamoa 08:48, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

@Ricordisamoa: I thought it might help to leave a note on the user page and on the admin noticeboard. ✓ Done
--- Jura 09:57, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Any property for linking a reservoir with the river feeds it?[edit]

Hi all, do you know whether there is any property linking a reservoir with the river(s) which feed the reservoir? If no, does it make sense to create it? --Discasto (talk) 09:30, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Addition: In the English Wikipedia, {{Infobox dam}} owns a parameter called dam_crosses. However, crosses (P177) does not seem to mean the same here. --Discasto (talk) 09:33, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
lake inflows (P200) ?
--- Jura 09:56, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
tributary (P974). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:03, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Using Wikidata queries to organise a open license text import into English Wikipedia[edit]

Hi all

I'm very happy to say that UNESCO has made the official descriptions of all Biosphere Reserve sites available under a Wikipedia compatible license. Currently around 440 (out of 670) of the Biosphere Reserves do not have an English language Wikipedia article.

These descriptions can be used as the missing Wikipedia articles with very little adaption. I have created a Wikidata query and a set of instructions to help people create the missing articles. I hope that this is useful for other people interested in using Wikidata to organise writing projects etc.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiProject_UNESCO/Create_Biosphere_Reserve_Wikipedia_articles_from_UNESCO_descriptions

If you like you can retweet my tweet about it as well https://twitter.com/mrjohnc/status/733623393233346560

Thanks very much to Navino Evans who did all the data importing into Wikidata (a herculean effort) and Andy Mabbett for helping me with the instructions.

Cheers

John Cummings (talk) 12:31, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

UEFA Euro 2016[edit]

Is there a plan to represent the full 2016 UEFA European Championship in Wikidata? Meaning that every single game result is stored here? Are there showcase items to see how to do that? --Jobu0101 (talk) 12:52, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Maybe Brazil v Germany (Q17329128) give a quite good showcase item. --Jobu0101 (talk) 12:53, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
I think it's a good idea to make an element for every match. Maybe we can create a subpage of the Wikidata:WikiProject Association football, like Wikidata:WikiProject Association football/Euro 2016. Tubezlob (🙋) 13:57, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

I think there are a few things to be improved in Brazil v Germany (Q17329128):

  • We see when the goals where scored and by whom. But it should also be mentioned which team got the point (own goals are possible).
  • The list of players of each team should be mentioned.
  • I think the use of country (P17) is wrong here. The teams are already mentioned with participant (P710).
  • It should be mentioned that it was a semifinal match.

--Jobu0101 (talk) 15:45, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

I mentioned those improvements in order to create a showcase item for the upcoming championship. @Tubezlob: Wikidata:WikiProject Association football/Euro 2016 would be cool. --Jobu0101 (talk) 19:09, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Created the subpage. I think we can continue there? --Edgars2007 (talk) 20:09, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Sure, thank you! --Jobu0101 (talk) 06:46, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

How to display sitelinks to a visitor[edit]

Is there any neat link I can use to get a human-readable webpage which lists the (wikipedia) sitelinks available for a given wikidata item? The API pages (e.g. https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&format=xml&props=sitelinks&ids=Q42) are baffling to a new user, and don't give obvious clickable links. I guess I could use the page for the data item itself, with a section link (e.g. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42#sitelinks-wikipedia), but this is still a little user-unfriendly. Is there anything else? HYanWong (talk) 12:54, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

actually, slightly annoyingly, something like https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q123134#sitelinks-wikipedia doesn't work on my browser, because other pieces of the page get loaded later, and push it about, so the page ends up being in a separate place after all components have loaded. Does anyone else find this? HYanWong (talk) 16:19, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
can confirm that this happens to me too, I start at the sitelink section, but then jump somewhere to the ID section. Using Chrome on Mac. --Denny (talk) 18:25, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
What exactly are you planning to do? You can build a human-readable page from api in like 20 lines of code. Example: https://output.jsbin.com/wuwupo#/Q42, code. --Lockal (talk) 20:57, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
@Lockal: Thanks for the code. I'm have a large set of wikidata IDs (corresponding to organisms, as it happens), and would like to forward users on to the corresponding site link of that creature, where it exists for their language. But where an equivalent language sitelink doesn't exist, I'd like to direct them to the wikidata page, so they can look at the data present on WD, and check out the sitelinks for themselves, in case they speak another language. The simplest way to do that would be to direct them to the appropriate section of the standard WD page. But your code is an alternative, although then they won't see that there is a load of other data there too. HYanWong (talk) 00:15, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Request to merge Q17120544, Q24174868[edit]

Q17120544, Q24174868 are about the same human. 91.9.107.250 13:01, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

✓ Done merged. -- Hakan·IST 13:33, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

"Approximate radius" for geographical features[edit]

It would be really useful to be able to give geographical features an indicative radius. This would not be a precise value, but instead a rough-order-of-magnitude diameter of a very crude bounding circle (or even, say, 90% coverage circle) around their indicated centre point. For example, a reasonable figure for the "radius" of London (Q84) might be 30km, but it wouldn't really matter if a figure of 20km or 50km was equally representative -- the point is that it's not 3m, 30m, 300m, 3km, or 300km, or 3000km. (City of London (Q23311), by comparison, would have an approximate radius of about 2.5 km: I've added this experimentally to the item by hand, just to give an example.) This would be very useful for doing things like automatically scaling maps, and also as an extra data source to be used during cross-correlation of other geodata databases to quickly find possible matches and eliminate obvious mismatches.

We have several possible sources for this sort of data, which should allow large numbers of these radii to be assigned quite rapidly.

For example:

  • The CC0 Flickr shapefile database contains a large number of bounding boxes which could easily be used to generate approximate radii -- I am currently working on assignments of WOEIDs to Wikidata items which will enable these values to be estimated very simply from their database
  • Both Wikipedia and Wikidata have point data and nesting hierarchy data for places and administrative areas, which could easily be used to assign approximate radii to administrative areas such as parishes, counties, regions, and even countries.

I think we can do this with existing properties, if we use the current radius (P2120) or diameter (P2386) (see below) property, qualified with sourcing circumstances (P1480) of circa (Q5727902) to indicate that it is very approximate, with no indicator of precision. with a suitably large tolerance, (see below)

I'd like to do this -- what do other people think? -- The Anome (talk) 22:03, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

I mean, sure, we could add radii or even diameter (P2386) to every geographical object in existence already, if one adds the appropriate tolerance (e.g. London (Q84)'s radius (P2120) is '30±20 kilometre (Q828224)'. Whether this is really necessary is as open a question as whether country (P17) is necessary on every geographical object as well. Mahir256 (talk) 03:46, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
I think you're right about the use of a very large tolerance value instead of the "circa" qualifier. You might also be right about "diameter", as "radius" implies a well-defined centre, which is not always the case. I'd be happy with the use of either radius or diameter to define the approximating circle. I've amended my proposal accordingly. -- The Anome (talk) 11:18, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
Could not "area" be used in the same way? -- Innocent bystander (talk) 06:27, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
Not quite. Consider, for example, near-linear features like Lac-Mégantic (Q142020), which may have much larger bounding radii than their area would suggest if they were round-ish. This is not to disparage "area", though -- we should have both! -- The Anome (talk) 10:44, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

By the way, take a look at the current proposal for Wikidata:Property_proposal/Sister_projects#map zoom level: which describes what is, in my opinion, exactly the wrong way to do this, in several different ways. -- The Anome (talk) 10:47, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Revised proposal: assignment of "diameter" to geographical features[edit]

Here's my revised proposal. We should be able to add the diameter (P2386) property to geographical objects, together with a substantial error bound. This should be interpreted as defining the diameter of an approximate bounding circle that would contain that object. If other editors agree with this, I should be able to provide this data for large numbers of geographical objects, and can apply for bot permission to add it. -- The Anome (talk) 12:06, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Even if all we get is an order of magnitude level of precision then I can see the value in this. My only question is whether we want to use diameter (P2386) or a specific property ("bounding box on map") as geographical objects that happen to be circular or cylindrical, or contain circular or cylindrical elements, could end up with two diamater statements with very different values. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 12:46, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
There are pros and cons in both approaches, and no single number is really sufficient to summarize a shape. Really, the only proper way to record the shape of a thing is to have a detailed shapefile. I'd prefer something simple that sort-of-works right now, to something like latitude/longitude bounding boxes that look superficially more sophisticated but are actually less mathematically elegant (potential for misleading over-precision -- consider horizontal vs. diagonal features, which have the same bounding box but a difference of 40% in size, changes of scale on the ground, singularities at the poles and wrap-round at 180 longitude), and aren't much better in practice on typical wiggly-shaped geographic features. (The five parameters of a bounding ellipsoid would actually be better, but is way too complex a solution for not nearly enough improvement over circles or boxes) We can have both, if desired.-- The Anome (talk) 13:12, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
the shape of Stockholm
Shapes can look really awful. Where can we find a standard for how such a diameter should be measured? Will such a statement be given anything but guesses in the majority of cases? Most of the shape-files available out there are in most cases rough approximations. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 14:13, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
I absolutely agree. But rough approximations are better than nothing, and I can add them easily from a number of sources. -- The Anome (talk)
By the way, regarding algorithms, I can think of several. The simplest and crudest is to estimate some sort of maximum distance from the notional centre point we already have on Wikidata. If we start with a bounding box, for example, we can calculate distance to the furthest corner and nearest edge, double these, and take these as the limits of the interval for the diameter. Alternatively, we can do this with the centre of the bounding box, or the centroid of a shape. Finally, if we have a true shapefile, we can solve the smallest-circle problem, which gives a unique answer -- and would work fine for, for example, Stockholm. -- The Anome (talk) 21:18, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
If the purpose is to be able to fit a feature onto a map, coordinate of northernmost point (P1332), coordinate of southernmost point (P1333), coordinate of easternmost point (P1334) and coordinate of westernmost point (P1335) seem more appropriate and meaningful to me (e.g. the map library I'm most familiar with, Leaflet, has various functions for fitting the map to include certain coordinates but nothing I'm aware of that works with distances). Diameter seems too vague, how exactly should someone interpret the diameter of a long thin shape? Is it the longest length in any direction? the shortest length? the length from north to south? the length from east to west? the average of all four options? - Nikki (talk) 14:18, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
Yes, probably Northernmost + Southernmost Latitude and Easternmost + Westernmost Longitude is more appropriate also for me. --ValterVB (talk) 15:48, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
That would as well. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 17:13, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
"coordinate of northernmost point" etc. are not lat/long values defining a bounding box, they're extremal points. Extremal points are not always available, and they can't be derived from lat/long bounding boxes, which often are. But I can add these too, where known. My central concern is that at the moment, we have no concept of the size of geographical features, and any data, even very imprecise data (providing that lack of precision is clearly represented in the data) is better than none. I'm happy to generate anything the community desires, if it can be implemented easily. But extremal points are not viable for the sort of low-quality data we have freely available to us in the public domain. -- The Anome (talk) 21:10, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
OK, here's a straw man proposal. How about two properties: diameter of enclosing circle (a distance), and centre of enclosing circle (a point), that is not necessarily the same as the point given from other data, for example data which gives capital cities as representative points for countries... -- The Anome (talk) 21:30, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
A dedicated property which defines what the diameter means would be better than using the existing property, but I still don't understand why it has to be a circle and how that is better than storing the bounding box. Neither shape is perfect but boxes are more flexible than circles and the map things I'm familiar with (OSM and Leaflet) also use bounding boxes not circles with diameters. The fact that some of the data you have is already bounding boxes seems like even more of a reason to store bounding boxes rather than storing data derived from it, because then we have a citable source for the statements. - Nikki (talk) 09:08, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure some of what is above has been considered before (outside the context of the current sister project proposal). I'd have to dig up the property proposal though. --Izno (talk) 10:11, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
We certainly need something to serve the purpose of encoding the rough size of irregularly shaped geographic objects, or people are just going to encode "zoom level" which is the worst of all worlds. Diameter and lat/long bounding box seem like the best two options, at the moment: diameter is my favorite because it's just a single number, but if people like bounding boxes, I'd happy to use that, too. Without creating a new data type, we could encode the bounding box by two geographic points, one at the northeast corner and the other at the southwest corner. -- The Anome (talk) 11:18, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
Based on this discussion, I'm increasingly of the opinion that a bounding box is the best option. This allows the mapping program to optimise the display for a given shape in the current window size and shape - a portrait window and landscape window need very different zoom levels to optimally display Chile (Q298) for example, which is not possible to convey using only a diameter. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 19:15, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
Properties for the northeast and southwest corners of the bounding box sounds good to me. - Nikki (talk) 11:09, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

The precision on a geocoordinate itself was meant to capture this a little. A church would have a higher precision than a city, a city a higher one than a country, etc. Why does that not work? (This is an honest question) --Denny (talk) 15:42, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Because the size of a thing is not the same either as the precision, or the accuracy, of its coordinates. In the spirit of my example above we might have an object 30m across whose position we only know to the nearest 1km, or somewhere like London, which is 60km across, but has a conventional notional centre point (at Charing Cross) with a position we know to within +/- 1m. Conflating the two kinds of interval might be convenient, but we're not doing ourselves any favours by doing so.-- The Anome (talk) 18:08, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Several reasons: 1, if we want to reference a source, we can only say what the source says. It might be more or less precise than we think it should be for the size of the object, but that doesn't change the fact that that source says those are the coordinates. 2, coordinate precision is not a very intuitive thing. I expect that people entering coordinates based on maps will typically just copy whatever the coordinates say at the point they choose and use whatever precision is chosen by default when they add the statement, which is likely to be overprecise. 3, IIRC, some other tools which can add coordinates always select the same precision. 4, it doesn't give enough information to help people usefully fit the object onto a map (see the Chile example above). The first point means that we can't any have useful correlation between precision and size, the second and third mean that even if we did, it would be very hard to get useful data from it and the fourth means that even if the first three weren't an issue, it's not informative enough actually solve one of the problems we want to solve. - Nikki (talk) 19:35, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Problems with IE[edit]

Hi. Does anyone know why I get permanently the message ”An error occurred while saving. Your changes could not be completed. Details: Forbidden” when I want to save something? I use IE11/Win 8.1 and for a while I can not save anything. Thanks. Haptokar (talk) 06:54, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

You've got an older browser that's no longer fully supported. Some functions might indeed not work. Upgrade to a newer version of IE or use another browser. Mbch331 (talk) 08:10, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
Maybe this is related to this problem? --Succu (talk) 08:51, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
@Haptokar: if you are using a computer where you can't install new programs then you can run Firefox portable without installing it --John Cummings (talk) 20:49, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you all. There is no problem with Chrome and Firefox, but only with IE, the browser I use for editing Wikipedia pages and it become frustrating to change browsers. Haptokar (talk) 02:46, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

It probably is the problem linked by Succu. The developers are looking into the problem. Mbch331 (talk) 06:48, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Properties for Promoted and Relegated teams[edit]

Hello. Do we have properties for Promoted and Relegated teams? See the template w:en:2014–15 Football League. If not is there other way to have this data in wikidata pages of championships? Xaris333 (talk) 19:21, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

The only thing I can find is level above (P2499) and level below (P2500) which are for linking items about adjacent leagues, not what you are after. The discussion when they were proposed them did suggest a need for "promoted to" and "relegated to" properties for items about teams but nothing came of that. In your case I think you'd want a third set of properties "competitor or team promoted" and "competitor or team relegated" (which could use "promoted to"/"relegated to" as qualifiers if necessary). If nobody has any better suggestions, I'm happy to propose them for you if you aren't comfortable doing so yourself. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 22:18, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Thryduulf I have just proposed it. Please check it. Wikidata:Property proposal/Event. Xaris333 (talk) 22:46, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Property creators[edit]

Should property creators discuss new properties before creating them? And if yes are there any sanctions if they don't? Example: No discussion found for Wikidata property for authority control, with reciprocal use of Wikidata (Q24075706). @Nono314: Your question here. --79.243.82.25 23:07, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

This is not a property, but an item. No discussion is necessary before creating items. If your question has another background, please specify. --Srittau (talk) 02:21, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't think Magnus Manske's tool was meant to be used this way. It's just confusing in a multilingual environment to duplicate an item with labels and descriptions in dozens of languages and then edit the label in one language to say something different. No wonder Nono314 didn't understand the change.
    --- Jura 06:28, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
    • Thank you Jura for shedding some light on what actually happened. Looks like every new technology will be misused...--Nono314 (talk) 11:20, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Wögel[edit]

Hi, I can't find any information about this artist (Q24174825). However we can find quite a number of his/her works on the Net ([2]). Regards, Yann (talk) 23:11, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Bug[edit]

After a failure to save the Q127840 damaged, and no error displayed on my screen. I understood what happened there, when I saw the edits of user Edoderoo. Please, someone to check the code. --Francois-Pier (talk) 03:01, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

This happens to some items every day, almost all links get removed. A different user every time. Often I have the feeling that a user tried to merge two items. Edoderoo (talk) 06:35, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
See Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang (Q1373915) and Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang (Q24205685) and the link to vi-wiki. One is a redirect to the other, and the merge action deleted all links to all other languages. Edoderoo (talk) 16:19, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

New mayor in Burjassot[edit]

I'm trying to change in Q55688 the alcalde. I've checked with the townhall website that it is Rafa García García. But I cannot put the name in the field. I cannot upload it. My options are:

  • Create a Q for Mr García García. (Note: García García is one of the most common surname combinations in the Spanish speaking world).
  • Other option I don't know.

Any ideas?

B25es (talk) 09:36, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

  • You can create the item, but try to add some more statements to it. Some of Q14135772 might apply to him as well. You could also create an item for "Alcalde of Burjassot" and add that to both with position held (P39). If you feel like it, you could do the entire list of alcaldes, etc.
    --- Jura 09:41, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

New type of entity ? entity whose existence is not proven[edit]

Papremi (Q3894902) seems to be an antique capital of Egypt that has not been actually discovered but is mentioned into some old greek texts. I created an item for this kind of entities, Papremi (Q3894902) whose definition is precisely that. Please comment if it's a weak definition or if this is a duplicate. author  TomT0m / talk page 10:10, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

When I read the article about "entity", it does not look like something have to be proven for it to be an entity i.e. "assumed entity" == "entity". Only one man has said that Eric VIII of Sweden ever has existed, and I am not sure he was very well informed. It is possible that his record only was propaganda. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 07:19, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
@Innocent bystander: Then I named it wrong. I meant an entity that is mentioned on text that have or might not have existed according to recent historical datas or historian point of views. author  TomT0m / talk page 16:23, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

English[edit]

I'm starting to see some Wikidata actions filtering into Wiki Commons which have very disturbing, and seriously unethical implications. For example, at Category:Sitta frontalis I see "English: Velvet-fronted nuthatch (linked to the en:wp article) .... Canadian English: Velvet-fronted Nuthatch ... British English: Velvet-fronted Nuthatch" (neither linked to any wikipedia article). Why is British English not considered synonymous with English (i.e., English as spoken in England)? And if all versions of English are to be considered different, why is there no entry for American [American English, en-us], nor for Indian English (which is the language used where this bird actually occurs)? What I find disturbing and unethical is the worry that the USA has as an act of cultural imperialism taken it on itself to hijack standard English [en] as being synonymous with American [en-us], when it should, if anything be synonymous with standard English English (i.e., English as spoken in England, where the language originated, "en-en"), or if not with that, then with no version of English taking supremacy over any other version of English (as is policy, though frequently not practice, at English wikipedia). - MPF (talk) 10:11, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Hoi, English means "it does not matter what flavour it is". Effectively it is en-us. It is a given do not be a Don Quichote, it just does not work that way. Having alternate flavours will make it only more embarassing. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 10:57, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
Hi. I think what is happening here is that "English" means "whatever the enwiki article is called", and the rest are taken from Wikidata labels, so no particular variant of English is being artificially preferred in this process. There really is no "standard English", and hasn't been for a long time, as the majority of English speakers, both first-language and second-language, live outside the UK. -- The Anome (talk) 10:59, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
In which case, with [en] being for "generalised English", there also needs to be a separate entry for American English, as well as British English, Canadian English, etc., to prove even-handedness. - MPF (talk) 11:11, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
The more sensible option would be to deprecate en-GB and en-CA; the number of circumstances where this is actually useful is trivially small, and the potential for confusion is too high to make having them useful. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:15, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
That may be enough for English, but this cannot work for all the languages variants in the world. For example, we currently have a "Chinese" label, which is half traditional and half simplified Chinese, and often very different from Hong-Kong, Mainland or Taiwan labels. What I would like to see is a good fallback mechanism if only one of the different possibilities is filled, then it is enough to create a default EN-US locale, and maybe one day completely remove the default "English" or "Chinese" label. Koxinga (talk) 14:13, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
I guess the main problem is that we do not have enough users here to fill all these labels with local variants of a language. The differences between sv-se and sv-fi demands that we have to separate them sometimes. But I am not aware of one single user here who know enough about sv-fi (Swedish as it is spoken in Finland) to fill all our items with labels in that version. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 07:07, 23 May 2016 (UTC) (Who studied Northumbrian English in school)
The problem here (at Wikidata) is the interface, which makes it much easier to not maintain multiple variants. The sensible thing to do, in my opinion, would be to improve the interface so that maintaining n variants of a language is no longer n times as much work. For example, for variants which are mostly the same, it could collapse them by default and any changes would apply to all of the variants. When it is a term which varies regionally, there could be a way to expand it and edit individual variants (which would then stay expanded). That would allow regional variants while vastly reducing the amount of effort needed to keep the rest of the labels and descriptions in sync. - Nikki (talk) 09:37, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
That's mostly commenting on editing labels/descriptions here. For Commons, it would probably make sense to only show regional names if they're actually different. - Nikki (talk) 09:42, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Trying to edit Commons link at Q587675[edit]

Hello, I'm attempting to update the Commons link mentioned above to go to Category:Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport, but when I try to do so, I get the error message "An error occurred while saving. Your changes could not be completed." Any help with this would be appreciated. Thanks. Graham87 (talk) 10:56, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Never mind; it's an IE11 thing. It worked fine on Firefox. Graham87 (talk) 11:02, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #210[edit]

Wikidata-logo-en.svg
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 14:50, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata:Project_chat&oldid=339842434"