Hi everyone :)
We've finally done all the groundwork for unit support. I'd love for you to give the first version a try on the test system here: http://wikidata.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Q23950
There are a few known issues still but since this is one of the things holding back Wikidata I made the call to release now and work on these remaining things after that. What I know is still missing: * We're showing the label of the item of the unit. We should be showing the symbol of the unit in the future. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T77983) * We can't convert between units yet - we only have the groundwork for it so far. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T77978) * The items representing often-used units should be ranked higher in the selector. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T110673) * When editing an existing value you see the URL of unit's item. This should be replaced by the label. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T110675) * When viewing a diff of a unit change you see the URL of the unit's item. This should be replaced by the label. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108808) * We need to think some more about the automatic edit summaries for unit-related changes. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108807)
If you find any bugs or if you are missing other absolutely critical things please let me know here or file a ticket on phabricator.wikimedia.org. If everything goes well we can get this on Wikidata next Wednesday.
Cheers Lydia
Hoi, Good news :) It is good to get things moving :) Thanks, GerardM
On 31 August 2015 at 17:53, Lydia Pintscher lydia.pintscher@wikimedia.de wrote:
Hi everyone :)
We've finally done all the groundwork for unit support. I'd love for you to give the first version a try on the test system here: http://wikidata.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Q23950
There are a few known issues still but since this is one of the things holding back Wikidata I made the call to release now and work on these remaining things after that. What I know is still missing:
- We're showing the label of the item of the unit. We should be
showing the symbol of the unit in the future. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T77983)
- We can't convert between units yet - we only have the groundwork for
it so far. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T77978)
- The items representing often-used units should be ranked higher in
the selector. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T110673)
- When editing an existing value you see the URL of unit's item. This
should be replaced by the label. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T110675)
- When viewing a diff of a unit change you see the URL of the unit's
item. This should be replaced by the label. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108808)
- We need to think some more about the automatic edit summaries for
unit-related changes. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108807)
If you find any bugs or if you are missing other absolutely critical things please let me know here or file a ticket on phabricator.wikimedia.org. If everything goes well we can get this on Wikidata next Wednesday.
Cheers Lydia
-- Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher Product Manager for Wikidata
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 10963 Berlin www.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Wikidata mailing list Wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
Great and very valuable!
Scott On Aug 31, 2015 11:26 AM, "Gerard Meijssen" gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Good news :) It is good to get things moving :) Thanks, GerardM
On 31 August 2015 at 17:53, Lydia Pintscher lydia.pintscher@wikimedia.de wrote:
Hi everyone :)
We've finally done all the groundwork for unit support. I'd love for you to give the first version a try on the test system here: http://wikidata.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Q23950
There are a few known issues still but since this is one of the things holding back Wikidata I made the call to release now and work on these remaining things after that. What I know is still missing:
- We're showing the label of the item of the unit. We should be
showing the symbol of the unit in the future. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T77983)
- We can't convert between units yet - we only have the groundwork for
it so far. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T77978)
- The items representing often-used units should be ranked higher in
the selector. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T110673)
- When editing an existing value you see the URL of unit's item. This
should be replaced by the label. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T110675)
- When viewing a diff of a unit change you see the URL of the unit's
item. This should be replaced by the label. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108808)
- We need to think some more about the automatic edit summaries for
unit-related changes. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108807)
If you find any bugs or if you are missing other absolutely critical things please let me know here or file a ticket on phabricator.wikimedia.org. If everything goes well we can get this on Wikidata next Wednesday.
Cheers Lydia
-- Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher Product Manager for Wikidata
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 10963 Berlin www.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Wikidata mailing list Wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
Wikidata mailing list Wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
Hi,
Great news, but I have some questions ;-) It seems that the unit can be any IRI that starts with http or https, even if not referring to an entity of the wiki.
Then what happens with the "unit":"1" that currently we have in JSON? It seems that one cannot enter this string in the field, and I guess it would (rightly) be invalid as a unit. Will Wikibase continue to use this (invalid) string as a placeholder for "no unit"?
If every wiki needs to define its own unit items to see labels, how is data exchange supposed to work? Will the RDF export then contain a different IRI for "meter" when exporting data from Wikidata and from Commons (or whatever other future instance)?
Cheers,
Markus
On 31.08.2015 17:53, Lydia Pintscher wrote:
Hi everyone :)
We've finally done all the groundwork for unit support. I'd love for you to give the first version a try on the test system here: http://wikidata.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Q23950
There are a few known issues still but since this is one of the things holding back Wikidata I made the call to release now and work on these remaining things after that. What I know is still missing:
- We're showing the label of the item of the unit. We should be
showing the symbol of the unit in the future. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T77983)
- We can't convert between units yet - we only have the groundwork for
it so far. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T77978)
- The items representing often-used units should be ranked higher in
the selector. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T110673)
- When editing an existing value you see the URL of unit's item. This
should be replaced by the label. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T110675)
- When viewing a diff of a unit change you see the URL of the unit's
item. This should be replaced by the label. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108808)
- We need to think some more about the automatic edit summaries for
unit-related changes. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108807)
If you find any bugs or if you are missing other absolutely critical things please let me know here or file a ticket on phabricator.wikimedia.org. If everything goes well we can get this on Wikidata next Wednesday.
Cheers Lydia
Hi!
Then what happens with the "unit":"1" that currently we have in JSON? It seems that one cannot enter this string in the field, and I guess it would (rightly) be invalid as a unit. Will Wikibase continue to use this (invalid) string as a placeholder for "no unit"?
We could make a bot to convert those to Q199. RDF export already does it. Of course, not all of them are actually unit-less values, some of them may be something that actually needs a unit, so we could wait for a while to give people a chance to fix that and then convert the remaining ones to Q199.
If every wiki needs to define its own unit items to see labels, how is data exchange supposed to work? Will the RDF export then contain a different IRI for "meter" when exporting data from Wikidata and from Commons (or whatever other future instance)?
That's a very interesting point, I think this can be handled by establishing: 1. Types/classes of units, such as "measure of length" 2. Designated standard unit - e.g. "meter" is a "standard measure of length". 3. Conversion properties - e.g. "foot" is 0.305 "meters" 4. Having RDF exports contain values converted to standardized measures - i.e. every quantity that has unit that is "measure of length" will also have a value expressed in "meters".
Then reconciling data between instances would be just reconciling properties for the above (which can be made easier by finding some existing ontology featuring units and relating to it), and then matching entities for standard measures.
On 01.09.2015 05:11, Stas Malyshev wrote:
Hi!
Then what happens with the "unit":"1" that currently we have in JSON? It seems that one cannot enter this string in the field, and I guess it would (rightly) be invalid as a unit. Will Wikibase continue to use this (invalid) string as a placeholder for "no unit"?
We could make a bot to convert those to Q199. RDF export already does it. Of course, not all of them are actually unit-less values, some of them may be something that actually needs a unit, so we could wait for a while to give people a chance to fix that and then convert the remaining ones to Q199.
The question is if "https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q199" is really supposed to be the new "1" in the UI and/or JSON. At the moment, entering "https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q199" as a unit in the UI does not lead to a unit-less value.
Also, I don't see a reason why the JSON encoding should use an IRI there. It makes sense to use a fixed IRI in RDF, since it is easier to query, but for JSON the easiest solution would be to use some fixed string (e.g., "" or even the current "1"). Replacing "1" by a longer IRI string does not seem to help anyone. I would suggest keeping the "1" as a marker for "no unit". Of course, this "1" would never be shown in the UI (but this is already as it is implemented :-). This solution would also provide best backwards compatibility for JSON users and incur no transition cost for Wikidata.
Regarding the IRI used in RDF, we should consider minting a special IRI in the Wikibase ontology for this special case. We already know that there is only one "1" and its meaning will have to be hardcoded in Wikibase and elsewhere. If we create a special IRI for denoting this situation, it will be better distinguished from other (regular) units, and there will be no dependency on the current content of Wikidata's Q199.
Markus
Hi!
Also, I don't see a reason why the JSON encoding should use an IRI
It probably doesn't have to, just Q-id would be enough. "1" is OK too, but a bit confusing - if the rest would be Q-ids, then it makes sense to make all of the Q-ids. Other option would be to make it just null or something special like that.
string does not seem to help anyone. I would suggest keeping the "1" as a marker for "no unit". Of course, this "1" would never be shown in the
It is possible, but "1" the looks like "magic value", which is usually bad design since one needs to check for it all the time. It would be nicer if there could be a way to avoid it.
Wikibase and elsewhere. If we create a special IRI for denoting this situation, it will be better distinguished from other (regular) units, and there will be no dependency on the current content of Wikidata's Q199.
We already have such dependencies - e.g. in calendars and globes - so it won't be anything new. But let's see what the Wikidata team thinks about it :)
On 01.09.2015 09:56, Stas Malyshev wrote:
Hi!
Also, I don't see a reason why the JSON encoding should use an IRI
It probably doesn't have to, just Q-id would be enough. "1" is OK too, but a bit confusing - if the rest would be Q-ids, then it makes sense to make all of the Q-ids. Other option would be to make it just null or something special like that.
My reasoning is that people who are using JSON now already are coping with "1" in some way. So any negative effects that it might have are already there ;-).
I am not concerned with uniformity, since it is not clear anyway which strings are considered valid "unit IRIs" by Wikibase now. On the JSON level, this is a"string"; there is no "IRI" datatype there. It's different in RDF, where we must use a valid IRI as a value because RDF knows this "datatype".
string does not seem to help anyone. I would suggest keeping the "1" as a marker for "no unit". Of course, this "1" would never be shown in the
It is possible, but "1" the looks like "magic value", which is usually bad design since one needs to check for it all the time. It would be nicer if there could be a way to avoid it.
Indeed, but any value will be "magic" in this sense. Using the IRI of Q199 will just be a superficial cure to this -- code would still have to check for equality with this IRI explicitly in many places, making it a "special value" again. The cleanest solution would be to omit the "unit" key if there is no unit, but this would break some existing implementations that do not check if "unit" is present or not, and which may therefore get errors when trying to access it blindly. Maybe using "null" would be a compromise.
Wikibase and elsewhere. If we create a special IRI for denoting this situation, it will be better distinguished from other (regular) units, and there will be no dependency on the current content of Wikidata's Q199.
We already have such dependencies - e.g. in calendars and globes - so it won't be anything new. But let's see what the Wikidata team thinks about it :)
I agree for calendars. For globes, I don't think that Wikibase treats them as "special values". They are just "some IRI" with no code depending on what exactly they are. It will be different for our "1", which will be treated different on the software level. For calendars, it still had some advantage to use items (we needed the labels), but I don't see any advantage for the case of "1". I think your concern about "special values" is exactly what I had in mind, but it was not as clear yet :-).
Markus
On 01.09.2015 05:11, Stas Malyshev wrote: ...
That's a very interesting point, I think this can be handled by establishing:
- Types/classes of units, such as "measure of length"
- Designated standard unit - e.g. "meter" is a "standard measure of
length". 3. Conversion properties - e.g. "foot" is 0.305 "meters" 4. Having RDF exports contain values converted to standardized measures
- i.e. every quantity that has unit that is "measure of length" will
also have a value expressed in "meters".
Then reconciling data between instances would be just reconciling properties for the above (which can be made easier by finding some existing ontology featuring units and relating to it), and then matching entities for standard measures.
Mapping a unit entity to a (unique) external IRI could be done by a suitable property that is then used during RDF export, as we already do with other special properties. It still leaves each wiki with the (huge) effort of defining all units, their labels, and conversions manually.
It would be great if it would be possible for a Wikibase site to (also) use the Wikidata unit entities as if they were local entities. One could probably just fetch their labels and conversions through the API, which I suppose the UI is already doing now for units that are "local". This feature would be a bit like MediaWiki's InstantCommons for Wikidata units. Ideally, this would lead to a situation where most units in most Wikibase sites are taken from Wikidata, with only a few special things defined locally as needed.
Markus
On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 10:45 PM, Markus Krötzsch markus@semantic-mediawiki.org wrote:
Hi,
Great news, but I have some questions ;-) It seems that the unit can be any IRI that starts with http or https, even if not referring to an entity of the wiki.
I want this to be restricted to Wikidata items for Wikidata itself. Still on the todo list.
Then what happens with the "unit":"1" that currently we have in JSON? It seems that one cannot enter this string in the field, and I guess it would (rightly) be invalid as a unit. Will Wikibase continue to use this (invalid) string as a placeholder for "no unit"?
Good question. What would be preferred by you and others?
If every wiki needs to define its own unit items to see labels, how is data exchange supposed to work? Will the RDF export then contain a different IRI for "meter" when exporting data from Wikidata and from Commons (or whatever other future instance)?
The idea is to allow 3rd party wikis to use Wikidata items for units in the future.
Cheers Lydia
Hi!
We've finally done all the groundwork for unit support. I'd love for you to give the first version a try on the test system here: http://wikidata.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Q23950
This is awesome, congratulations to Wikidata team on this milestone!
There are a few known issues still but since this is one of the things holding back Wikidata I made the call to release now and work on these remaining things after that. What I know is still missing:
Looking at it, I also notice one has to edit to get from the unit label to its entity. I wonder if it's possible to make it easier in the UI to get to the entity of the unit and see its URL.
Also, is there any work/planning around marking standard units with specific properties and establishing classes (i.e. measures of length, weight, etc.) which can be considered convertible? If we want to be able to run queries against quantities with units (and I think we do, don't we?) then we would need to figure out the common basis at least for common units. I wonder if it's tracked somewhere?
On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 4:56 AM, Stas Malyshev smalyshev@wikimedia.org wrote:
Looking at it, I also notice one has to edit to get from the unit label to its entity. I wonder if it's possible to make it easier in the UI to get to the entity of the unit and see its URL.
I'd prefer not to have the link at this point but if if there is general consensus that this is useful to have after using it for real on Wikidata for a bit I think we should definitely consider it.
Also, is there any work/planning around marking standard units with specific properties and establishing classes (i.e. measures of length, weight, etc.) which can be considered convertible? If we want to be able to run queries against quantities with units (and I think we do, don't we?) then we would need to figure out the common basis at least for common units. I wonder if it's tracked somewhere?
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T77978 is what we have so far for that.
Cheers Lydia
On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 5:53 PM, Lydia Pintscher lydia.pintscher@wikimedia.de wrote:
Hi everyone :)
We've finally done all the groundwork for unit support. I'd love for you to give the first version a try on the test system here: http://wikidata.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Q23950
There are a few known issues still but since this is one of the things holding back Wikidata I made the call to release now and work on these remaining things after that. What I know is still missing:
- We're showing the label of the item of the unit. We should be
showing the symbol of the unit in the future. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T77983)
- We can't convert between units yet - we only have the groundwork for
it so far. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T77978)
- The items representing often-used units should be ranked higher in
the selector. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T110673)
- When editing an existing value you see the URL of unit's item. This
should be replaced by the label. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T110675)
- When viewing a diff of a unit change you see the URL of the unit's
item. This should be replaced by the label. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108808)
- We need to think some more about the automatic edit summaries for
unit-related changes. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108807)
If you find any bugs or if you are missing other absolutely critical things please let me know here or file a ticket on phabricator.wikimedia.org. If everything goes well we can get this on Wikidata next Wednesday.
I forgot one important point in the known issues list: The input of the unit in the overlay is temporary. I want this to be two proper input fields in the future. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T109459 is tracking that.
Cheers Lydia