I for one agree with Gerard that this is a problem.
John
søn. 12. jul. 2015, 18.08 skrev Daniel Kinzler <daniel.kinzler@wikimedia.de
:
Am 12.07.2015 um 15:31 schrieb Gerard Meijssen:
Hoi, You do not get it.
Indeed. This is why I am asking questions.
There are many properties. Consequently the scale of things is substantially different.
There are far, far more templates than properties. And we use unique, localized names for templates. Why not for properties? And if we don't want this for properties, why do the same arguments not apply for template names?
It has been demonstrated that languages will have homonyms and consequently it is NOT a good idea to use labels or
whatever you
call them for properties. You can use them as long as internally you use
the
P-number.
Internally, we always use the P-number. Unless with "internally" you mean "in wikitext". This is the point under discussion: whether we want localized names for use in wikitext.
You can use a text as long as the combination of label and description is unique. This combination may be useful.
This is how we do it for items. This works quite well with a selector widget. It does not work inside wikitext - there, you either need a unique name, or rely on the plain ID.
For items, sitelinks act as a per-language unique name. For properties, we decided to require a unique label, since we can't use sitelinks there, and the number is low enough (a few thousand, compared to tens of millions of items) that ambuguities should be rare.
At the same time be aware that property labels will be wrong and will
need to be
changed at a later date.
This is why we want to make aliases unique. If we have unique aliases, labels can change without breaking anything.
When this presents a problem for the comparison with external sources, it is tough. It is best to indicate this from the
start.
Why would labels or aliases be used for comparison with external sources? Properties can be linked to external vocabularies via statements, just like we do it for items. Relying on labels for doing this would be asking for trouble.
The argument about what happens in MediaWiki is secondary. And sorry
that not
everyone cares or knows about that in your way. The point is very much
that at
the scale of thousands and thousands of properties it does not scale.
This point
has been made plenty of times by now.
Really? How and where? I only hear you asserting it, but I see no evidence. I see it scaling perfectly well on Wikidata. Property names already *are* unique, always have been. I know of no major problems with this. There are some issues with cultural differences and homonyms (e.g. the distinction between sex and gender, or the double meaning of "editor" in Portuguese), but these are relatively rare, and no worse than naming dicussions on Wikipedia.
-- Daniel Kinzler Senior Software Developer
Wikimedia Deutschland Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
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