On 30 September 2015 at 20:58, Tom Morris <tfmorris(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think I've seen something somewhere saying that
the prevailing sentiment
is that obsolete identifiers which are just redirects to a new identifier
should be removed.
I hope not. See my post at
http://addshore.com/2015/04/redirects-on-wikidata/ Redirects should remain!
Also see
http://addshore.com/2015/09/un-deleting-500000-wikidata-items/
There's also the case of sites like MusicBrainz which keep the
non-canonical IDs without redirecting to the canonical ID, but will tell
you which ID is preferred, e.g. Fritz Kreisler
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q78517#revision=254297158>
https://musicbrainz.org/artist/590fcad4-2ba4-43bc-a22f-a4bb9b496fe8
https://musicbrainz.org/artist/627ac6c2-ee5c-4120-8af3-ab00345447f5
https://musicbrainz.org/artist/bf6d6ce1-ce88-40e6-9424-11d11d2e54ea
where all the tabs for the second two pages actually point to the first,
canonical entry.
Is there an established policy for either the redirect or non-redirect
case?
See
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Deletion_policy#Deletion_of_items_.2…
which says "Items should not be deleted when - The item redirects to
another item"
Also see
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Merge#Create_redirect which
says redirects should be created when items are merged
I'd argue that even the obsolete identifiers are useful for inbound
resolution and reconciliation. Aggressively pruning them just makes more
work for people, because they must resolve the identifier that they have in
hand to its canonical form (probably by hitting the issuing authority)
before using it for Wikidata lookups.
What do others think?
Tom
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Addshore