Use-notes in item descriptions - Wikidata

Gerard Meijssen

5 Nov 5 Nov

9:54 a.m.

Hoi, Given that we KNOW that descriptions are second best in the first place, why not acknowledge this and keep the current practice? Thanks, GerardM On 5 November 2015 at 10:51, James Heald <j.heald(a)ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

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I have been wondering about the practice of putting use-notes in item descriptions. For example, on Q6581097 (male) https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6581097 the (English) description reads: "human who is male (use with Property:P21 sex or gender). For groups of males use with subclass of (P279)." I have added some myself recently, working on items in the administrative structure of the UK -- for example on Q23112 (Cambridgeshire) https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23112 I have changed the description to now read "ceremonial county of England (use Q21272276 for administrative non-metropolitan county)" These "use-notes" are similar to the disambiguating hat-notes often found at the top of articles on en-wiki and others; and just as those hat-notes can be useful on wikis, so such use-notes can be very useful on Wikidata, for example in the context of a search, or a drop-down menu. But... Given that the label field is also there to be presentable to end-users in contexts outside Wikidata, (eg to augment searches on main wikis, or to feed into the semantic web, to end up being used in who-knows-what different ways), yet away from Wikidata a string like "Q21272276" will typically have no meaning. Indeed there may not even be any distinct thing corresponding to it. (Q21272276 has no separate en-wiki article, for example). So I'm wondering whether these rather Wikidata-specific use notes do really belong in the general description field ? Is there a case for moving them to a new separate use-note field created for them? The software could be adjusted to include such a field in search results and drop-downs and the item summary, but they would be a separate data-entry field on the item page, and a separate triple for the SPARQL service, leaving the description field clean of Wikidata-specific meaning, better for third-party and downstream applications. Am I right to feel that the present situation of just chucking everything into the description field doesn't seem quite right, and we ought to take a step forward from it? -- James. _______________________________________________ Wikidata mailing list Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata

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Jane Darnell

10:16 a.m.

Yes I have noticed this need for use notes, but it is specific to properties, isn't it? I see it in things such as choosing what to put in the "genre" property of an artwork. It would be nice to have some sort of pop-up that you can fill with more than what you put in. For example I get easily confused when I address the relative (as in kinship) properties; "father of the subject" is clear, but what about cousin/nephew etc.? You need more explanation room than can be stuffed in the label field to fit in the drop down. I have thought about this, but don't see any easy solution besides what you have done. On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 10:51 AM, James Heald <j.heald(a)ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

...

I have been wondering about the practice of putting use-notes in item descriptions. For example, on Q6581097 (male) https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6581097 the (English) description reads: "human who is male (use with Property:P21 sex or gender). For groups of males use with subclass of (P279)." I have added some myself recently, working on items in the administrative structure of the UK -- for example on Q23112 (Cambridgeshire) https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23112 I have changed the description to now read "ceremonial county of England (use Q21272276 for administrative non-metropolitan county)" These "use-notes" are similar to the disambiguating hat-notes often found at the top of articles on en-wiki and others; and just as those hat-notes can be useful on wikis, so such use-notes can be very useful on Wikidata, for example in the context of a search, or a drop-down menu. But... Given that the label field is also there to be presentable to end-users in contexts outside Wikidata, (eg to augment searches on main wikis, or to feed into the semantic web, to end up being used in who-knows-what different ways), yet away from Wikidata a string like "Q21272276" will typically have no meaning. Indeed there may not even be any distinct thing corresponding to it. (Q21272276 has no separate en-wiki article, for example). So I'm wondering whether these rather Wikidata-specific use notes do really belong in the general description field ? Is there a case for moving them to a new separate use-note field created for them? The software could be adjusted to include such a field in search results and drop-downs and the item summary, but they would be a separate data-entry field on the item page, and a separate triple for the SPARQL service, leaving the description field clean of Wikidata-specific meaning, better for third-party and downstream applications. Am I right to feel that the present situation of just chucking everything into the description field doesn't seem quite right, and we ought to take a step forward from it? -- James. _______________________________________________ Wikidata mailing list Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata

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James Heald

5:19 p.m.

The place where these hints are vital is in the tool-tips that come up when somebody is inputting the value of a property. It's a quick message to say "don't use that item, use this other item". A section on the talk page simply doesn't cover it. I suppose one could create a community property, as you suggest, but as you say the challenge would be then making sure the system software presented it when it was needed. I suspect that things intended to be presented by the system software are better created as system properties. -- James, On 05/11/2015 16:21, Benjamin Good wrote:

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A section in the talk page associated with the article in question would seem to solve this (definitely real) problem? - assuming that a would-be editor was aware of the talk page. Alternatively, you could propose a generic property with a text field that could be added to items on an as-needed basis without any change to the current software. Again though, the challenge would be getting the information in front of the user/editor at the right point in time. On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 2:16 AM, Jane Darnell <jane023(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Yes I have noticed this need for use notes, but it is specific to properties, isn't it? I see it in things such as choosing what to put in the "genre" property of an artwork. It would be nice to have some sort of pop-up that you can fill with more than what you put in. For example I get easily confused when I address the relative (as in kinship) properties; "father of the subject" is clear, but what about cousin/nephew etc.? You need more explanation room than can be stuffed in the label field to fit in the drop down. I have thought about this, but don't see any easy solution besides what you have done. On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 10:51 AM, James Heald <j.heald(a)ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

I have been wondering about the practice of putting use-notes in item descriptions. For example, on Q6581097 (male) https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6581097 the (English) description reads: "human who is male (use with Property:P21 sex or gender). For groups of males use with subclass of (P279)." I have added some myself recently, working on items in the administrative structure of the UK -- for example on Q23112 (Cambridgeshire) https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23112 I have changed the description to now read "ceremonial county of England (use Q21272276 for administrative non-metropolitan county)" These "use-notes" are similar to the disambiguating hat-notes often found at the top of articles on en-wiki and others; and just as those hat-notes can be useful on wikis, so such use-notes can be very useful on Wikidata, for example in the context of a search, or a drop-down menu. But... Given that the label field is also there to be presentable to end-users in contexts outside Wikidata, (eg to augment searches on main wikis, or to feed into the semantic web, to end up being used in who-knows-what different ways), yet away from Wikidata a string like "Q21272276" will typically have no meaning. Indeed there may not even be any distinct thing corresponding to it. (Q21272276 has no separate en-wiki article, for example). So I'm wondering whether these rather Wikidata-specific use notes do really belong in the general description field ? Is there a case for moving them to a new separate use-note field created for them? The software could be adjusted to include such a field in search results and drop-downs and the item summary, but they would be a separate data-entry field on the item page, and a separate triple for the SPARQL service, leaving the description field clean of Wikidata-specific meaning, better for third-party and downstream applications. Am I right to feel that the present situation of just chucking everything into the description field doesn't seem quite right, and we ought to take a step forward from it? -- James. _______________________________________________ Wikidata mailing list Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata

_______________________________________________ Wikidata mailing list Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata

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Dan Garry

5:01 p.m.

Hey! Thanks for sending this. This issue has been noticed and discussed previously in T97566 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T97566>. I'd encourage reading that task for a bit more background on the previous discussion. Wikidata descriptions are used outside Wikidata in a few different places to provide users with short, brief additional context, such as search interface in the Wikipedia apps and the mobile interface for Wikimedia projects, and such usage instructions are typically not helpful outside Wikidata. Q503 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q503> is my perennial example. :-) I believe some analysis was done in the past that determined that the number of items that this problem affects is relatively small, with only around 100 items being affected. That said, I think it's still a problem worth addressing. Thanks, Dan On 5 November 2015 at 01:51, James Heald <j.heald(a)ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

...

I have been wondering about the practice of putting use-notes in item descriptions. For example, on Q6581097 (male) https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6581097 the (English) description reads: "human who is male (use with Property:P21 sex or gender). For groups of males use with subclass of (P279)." I have added some myself recently, working on items in the administrative structure of the UK -- for example on Q23112 (Cambridgeshire) https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23112 I have changed the description to now read "ceremonial county of England (use Q21272276 for administrative non-metropolitan county)" These "use-notes" are similar to the disambiguating hat-notes often found at the top of articles on en-wiki and others; and just as those hat-notes can be useful on wikis, so such use-notes can be very useful on Wikidata, for example in the context of a search, or a drop-down menu. But... Given that the label field is also there to be presentable to end-users in contexts outside Wikidata, (eg to augment searches on main wikis, or to feed into the semantic web, to end up being used in who-knows-what different ways), yet away from Wikidata a string like "Q21272276" will typically have no meaning. Indeed there may not even be any distinct thing corresponding to it. (Q21272276 has no separate en-wiki article, for example). So I'm wondering whether these rather Wikidata-specific use notes do really belong in the general description field ? Is there a case for moving them to a new separate use-note field created for them? The software could be adjusted to include such a field in search results and drop-downs and the item summary, but they would be a separate data-entry field on the item page, and a separate triple for the SPARQL service, leaving the description field clean of Wikidata-specific meaning, better for third-party and downstream applications. Am I right to feel that the present situation of just chucking everything into the description field doesn't seem quite right, and we ought to take a step forward from it? -- James. _______________________________________________ Wikidata mailing list Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata

-- Dan Garry Lead Product Manager, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation

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