I agree that “named entity” makes more sense. I’ll pass that edit suggestion along to the folks who maintain the page.

 

Here is a blog post from 2011 where we talk about remodeling VIAF into a coherent hub-and-spoke model revolving around the entity itself.

 

http://outgoing.typepad.com/outgoing/2011/04/changes-to-viafs-rdf.html

 

Jeff

 

From: Wikidata <wikidata-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of "leadsong@webname.com" <leadsong@webname.com>
Reply-To: "Discussion list for the Wikidata project." <wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Thursday, December 14, 2017 at 12:19 PM
To: "wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org" <wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikidata] Identifiers: Multiple VIAF numbers

 

Well, http://www.oclc.org/en/viaf.html says that VIAF 

  • Links national and regional-level authority records, creating a cluster record for each unique name

(my bolding). Some clarification is needed, if the "name" is supposed to be "named entity" instead.

 

LeadSongDog

 

Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2017 at 11:20 AM
From: "Young,Jeff (OR)" <jyoung@oclc.org>
To: "Discussion list for the Wikidata project." <wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikidata] Identifiers: Multiple VIAF numbers

VIAF identifies a variety of things, including people, pseudonyms, organizations, places, etc. There is no intentional distinction between those things and their “identity”.

 

Jeff

 

From: Wikidata <wikidata-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of "leadsong@webname.com" <leadsong@webname.com>
Reply-To: "Discussion list for the Wikidata project." <wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Thursday, December 14, 2017 at 11:14 AM
To: "wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org" <wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikidata] Identifiers: Multiple VIAF numbers

 

That's because P214 should be a property of an identity, not of a person. We conflate the two concepts at our peril. One person can have multiple identities, aliases, pseudonyms, characters, roles, jobs, etc. Sometimes the same identity is adopted by multiple people, either sequentially or simultaneously: "I am Spartacus!", "John Bull", "G.I. Joe", "POTUS", "The King is dead, long live the King!", "Editor in Chief of the New York Times", ...

LeadSongDog

Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2017 at 8:13 AM
From: "Thad Guidry" <thadguidry@gmail.com>
To: "Discussion list for the Wikidata project." <wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikidata] Identifiers: Multiple VIAF numbers

 

2. Single value violations

I don't understand this at all. Apologies, I feel very dumb but would appreciate maybe a general, non-tech speak explanation if someone might be so kind.

 

 

It's explained here:

 

It means that the "VIAF Identifier" P214 property can only have 1 value.  But you can treat this as a warning really because you will be loading multiple VIAF identifiers for the same person...and getting VIAF to merge or cleanup later...which hopefully bots will then pickup and handle the extra identifiers being deleted..

 

-Thad

 

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