Although you can create a new item that doesn't correspond to an article here: http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:NewItem I'm going to practice some with the Wikidata API later today by trying to import all of the Infobox film data. Then when we update the template after the inclusion syntax is enabled on the English Wikipedia we won't be blocked by lack of data in Wikidata for the template. Maybe a good way to guide people to Wikidata during the transition would be to run a script to collapse the template inclusion for appropriate articles to {{Infobox film}} with a comment beside it like <!-- Please update infobox data on the corresponding Wikidata item: http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q217189 --> From: hale.michael.jr(a)live.com To: wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2013 12:46:24 -0400 Subject: Re: [Wikidata-l] How does wikidata handle topic redirect/merge/split As far as I know, changing an article never automatically changes an item in Wikidata. I think many of the items in Wikidata are created by scanning the new pages feed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:NewPages I could be wrong though. Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2013 18:29:57 +0800 From: zhjyong(a)gmail.com To: wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikidata-l] How does wikidata handle topic redirect/merge/split Hi, Wikidata is a very useful effort. It seems associating an item with a wikipedia article. Then I'm thinking the following scenarios to understand it further: Say, an article is associated with an item Qx. 1) It becomes redirect to another article, will Qx be changed in this scenario? 2) It is deleted. Will Qx be also deleted? 3) That article is split as 2 new articles, how will we generate items for them? 4) Or multiple articles are merged as one, how will their items be changed? _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l

Hi Danny, I'm been on the distribution list since the development of wikidata started and I think what everyone has set out to do and accomplished so far is amazing and will have a profound impact just as Wikipedia has. I've been quietly on the sidelines absorbing some (I have to admit I cant follow all) the intellectual discussions among the participants. I do have a thought about this issue of "referential integrity" and "orphaned" data that I'd like to share. Mediawiki has "what links here" to an article, at least for information residing on the same site. It also maintains what a page looks like at a point in time. Since data referenced on a specific edition/revision of an article can now reside outside of that article, the intent of the information in the article will be lost if it is not tied to the revision of the associated data when that information changes. One way that this can probably be handled in some future implementation, if not already done, is to also carry within the reference the timestamp of the referenced data as the reference backwards from the data. It will be difficult and cumbersome for humans to do this but as the link is stored in mediawiki site, code can be added to make the reference. In that process, it can also inform the host of the data, to add it to the "what links here" so there is a backward reference. To prevent spam and other issues such as performance, only approved sites (such as wikipedia sites) can be added to "what links here". Feel free to include back the distribution list in your reply if you see merits in this suggestion. Best Regards, Alex On Apr 2, 2013, at 9:54 AM, "Denny Vrandečić" <denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de<mailto:denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de>> wrote: Hi Janyong, as Michael said, Wikidata does not automatically get updated in any case. We are planning to improve a bit the experience with moving a page in the Wikipedias, but it won't become automatic. Mostly because these issues are in general complicated. 2013/4/1 Jianyong Zhang <zhjyong@gmail.com<mailto:zhjyong@gmail.com>> Hi, Wikidata is a very useful effort. It seems associating an item with a wikipedia article. Then I'm thinking the following scenarios to understand it further: Say, an article is associated with an item Qx. 1) It becomes redirect to another article, will Qx be changed in this scenario? I expect that if a Wikipedia article gets moved, this will be updated on the Wikidata item manually. Otherwise the language links that were displayed on the original article would not show up. If an article gets turned into a redirect to an already existing article, this would be a merge (see Question 4). 2) It is deleted. Will Qx be also deleted? In some cases. If all articles in all languages of an item got deleted, than it might mean that the item itself should be deleted too, but this is not necessarily the case. 3) That article is split as 2 new articles, how will we generate items for them? It depends. Let us assume there was one article "Castor and Pollux". Now it gets split into two articles, "Castor" and "Pollux". In this case we would probably have three items in Wikidata: one for Castor, one for Pollux, and one for the pair of them. 4) Or multiple articles are merged as one, how will their items be changed? The same. There *might* be items for the individuals as well as for the compound. Not all Wikipedias might slice the world equally. How a merge really is handled, depends on what the corresponding articles and items are about. The good news is that these cases actually got a lot simpler than they used to be: they happened previously as well, but in that case you had to struggle with an ecosystem of bots who might revert your edits that were trying to clean up the interwiki links. Now it is all in Wikidata, and the situations should be easier to resolve. Just my two cents on these questions, Cheers, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l -- Project director Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985. _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l ===================================================================== Please note that this e-mail and any files transmitted from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center may be privileged, confidential, and protected from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any reading, dissemination, distribution, copying, or other use of this communication or any of its attachments is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by replying to this message and deleting this message, any attachments, and all copies and backups from your computer.

Thank you Michael (and apologies to Denny for being addressed as Danny). We all know change is a constant and we need to design information technology with that in mind. As you noted, population is a great example of something that is constantly changing. Including a date with population makes sense and in certain situations. However, there maybe cases when the data related to specific article changes, that "recent changes", "watchlist" and perhaps "history" will also be updated. This can only happen when there is two-way reference from the article to the data and back. Also preserving the context of a page, at that point in time can also be valuable. Anyway, perhaps coding for the date as in the population example will be sufficient in most cases. I do somehow feel that we should make g it easy for humans to create the articles and let the machine record the hard references and allow humans some means to recognize that the associated data in the articles they are subscribed to has changed. Thanks again. Best Regards, Alex On Apr 2, 2013, at 12:15 PM, "Michael Hale" <hale.michael.jr@live.com<mailto:hale.michael.jr@live.com>> wrote: Well you can still view the revision history of an item on Wikidata, as you'd expect. I view the information as being more tied to a specific reference than to a specific revision of the item. I don't think the notion of "orphaned" data is as big of a deal in a database as it is in an encyclopedia. We can monitor the creation of new items the same way that new articles are monitored on the encyclopedia. Especially with historical data, it might not be currently included in any sites that we know, but it should still be there for when people want to make historical charts for reports, school projects, etc. The two methods we have under development to improve the situation are ranks and qualifiers. Ranks let you differentiate between multiple claims about a property as to which one is preferred (likely the one with the most reputable reference) and qualifiers are that extra bit of information that let you differentiate multiple claims in a way that is appropriate for the property (perhaps a date for population values). Do you think these methods will be satisfactory for your concerns? ________________________________ From: TanchocA@mskcc.org<mailto:TanchocA@mskcc.org> To: wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2013 14:23:13 +0000 Subject: Re: [Wikidata-l] How does wikidata handle topic redirect/merge/split Hi Danny, I'm been on the distribution list since the development of wikidata started and I think what everyone has set out to do and accomplished so far is amazing and will have a profound impact just as Wikipedia has. I've been quietly on the sidelines absorbing some (I have to admit I cant follow all) the intellectual discussions among the participants. I do have a thought about this issue of "referential integrity" and "orphaned" data that I'd like to share. Mediawiki has "what links here" to an article, at least for information residing on the same site. It also maintains what a page looks like at a point in time. Since data referenced on a specific edition/revision of an article can now reside outside of that article, the intent of the information in the article will be lost if it is not tied to the revision of the associated data when that information changes. One way that this can probably be handled in some future implementation, if not already done, is to also carry within the reference the timestamp of the referenced data as the reference backwards from the data. It will be difficult and cumbersome for humans to do this but as the link is stored in mediawiki site, code can be added to make the reference. In that process, it can also inform the host of the data, to add it to the "what links here" so there is a backward reference. To prevent spam and other issues such as performance, only approved sites (such as wikipedia sites) can be added to "what links here". Feel free to include back the distribution list in your reply if you see merits in this suggestion. Best Regards, Alex On Apr 2, 2013, at 9:54 AM, "Denny Vrandečić" <denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de<mailto:denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de>> wrote: Hi Janyong, as Michael said, Wikidata does not automatically get updated in any case. We are planning to improve a bit the experience with moving a page in the Wikipedias, but it won't become automatic. Mostly because these issues are in general complicated. 2013/4/1 Jianyong Zhang <zhjyong@gmail.com<mailto:zhjyong@gmail.com>> Hi, Wikidata is a very useful effort. It seems associating an item with a wikipedia article. Then I'm thinking the following scenarios to understand it further: Say, an article is associated with an item Qx. 1) It becomes redirect to another article, will Qx be changed in this scenario? I expect that if a Wikipedia article gets moved, this will be updated on the Wikidata item manually. Otherwise the language links that were displayed on the original article would not show up. If an article gets turned into a redirect to an already existing article, this would be a merge (see Question 4). 2) It is deleted. Will Qx be also deleted? In some cases. If all articles in all languages of an item got deleted, than it might mean that the item itself should be deleted too, but this is not necessarily the case. 3) That article is split as 2 new articles, how will we generate items for them? It depends. Let us assume there was one article "Castor and Pollux". Now it gets split into two articles, "Castor" and "Pollux". In this case we would probably have three items in Wikidata: one for Castor, one for Pollux, and one for the pair of them. 4) Or multiple articles are merged as one, how will their items be changed? The same. There *might* be items for the individuals as well as for the compound. Not all Wikipedias might slice the world equally. How a merge really is handled, depends on what the corresponding articles and items are about. The good news is that these cases actually got a lot simpler than they used to be: they happened previously as well, but in that case you had to struggle with an ecosystem of bots who might revert your edits that were trying to clean up the interwiki links. Now it is all in Wikidata, and the situations should be easier to resolve. Just my two cents on these questions, Cheers, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l -- Project director Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985. _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l ===================================================================== Please note that this e-mail and any files transmitted from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center may be privileged, confidential, and protected from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any reading, dissemination, distribution, copying, or other use of this communication or any of its attachments is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by replying to this message and deleting this message, any attachments, and all copies and backups from your computer. _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l

Understood. Thank you! Best Regards, Alex On Apr 2, 2013, at 2:08 PM, "Denny Vrandečić" <denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de<mailto:denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de>> wrote: Hi Alex, the current implementation of Wikidata supports the same level of history as MediaWiki itself, i.e. templates, images from Commons, and data from Wikidata have their own versioning scheme, and all information about their history is retained -- but when a page is rendered from a previous version, then the current templates, images, and data is being displayed. Whereas I know many people who share your opinion, I also think it is important to be consistent in this case. Cheers, Denny 2013/4/2 <TanchocA@mskcc.org<mailto:TanchocA@mskcc.org>> Thank you Michael (and apologies to Denny for being addressed as Danny). We all know change is a constant and we need to design information technology with that in mind. As you noted, population is a great example of something that is constantly changing. Including a date with population makes sense and in certain situations. However, there maybe cases when the data related to specific article changes, that "recent changes", "watchlist" and perhaps "history" will also be updated. This can only happen when there is two-way reference from the article to the data and back. Also preserving the context of a page, at that point in time can also be valuable. Anyway, perhaps coding for the date as in the population example will be sufficient in most cases. I do somehow feel that we should make g it easy for humans to create the articles and let the machine record the hard references and allow humans some means to recognize that the associated data in the articles they are subscribed to has changed. Thanks again. Best Regards, Alex On Apr 2, 2013, at 12:15 PM, "Michael Hale" <hale.michael.jr@live.com<mailto:hale.michael.jr@live.com>> wrote: Well you can still view the revision history of an item on Wikidata, as you'd expect. I view the information as being more tied to a specific reference than to a specific revision of the item. I don't think the notion of "orphaned" data is as big of a deal in a database as it is in an encyclopedia. We can monitor the creation of new items the same way that new articles are monitored on the encyclopedia. Especially with historical data, it might not be currently included in any sites that we know, but it should still be there for when people want to make historical charts for reports, school projects, etc. The two methods we have under development to improve the situation are ranks and qualifiers. Ranks let you differentiate between multiple claims about a property as to which one is preferred (likely the one with the most reputable reference) and qualifiers are that extra bit of information that let you differentiate multiple claims in a way that is appropriate for the property (perhaps a date for population values). Do you think these methods will be satisfactory for your concerns? ________________________________ From: TanchocA@mskcc.org<mailto:TanchocA@mskcc.org> To: wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2013 14:23:13 +0000 Subject: Re: [Wikidata-l] How does wikidata handle topic redirect/merge/split Hi Danny, I'm been on the distribution list since the development of wikidata started and I think what everyone has set out to do and accomplished so far is amazing and will have a profound impact just as Wikipedia has. I've been quietly on the sidelines absorbing some (I have to admit I cant follow all) the intellectual discussions among the participants. I do have a thought about this issue of "referential integrity" and "orphaned" data that I'd like to share. Mediawiki has "what links here" to an article, at least for information residing on the same site. It also maintains what a page looks like at a point in time. Since data referenced on a specific edition/revision of an article can now reside outside of that article, the intent of the information in the article will be lost if it is not tied to the revision of the associated data when that information changes. One way that this can probably be handled in some future implementation, if not already done, is to also carry within the reference the timestamp of the referenced data as the reference backwards from the data. It will be difficult and cumbersome for humans to do this but as the link is stored in mediawiki site, code can be added to make the reference. In that process, it can also inform the host of the data, to add it to the "what links here" so there is a backward reference. To prevent spam and other issues such as performance, only approved sites (such as wikipedia sites) can be added to "what links here". Feel free to include back the distribution list in your reply if you see merits in this suggestion. Best Regards, Alex On Apr 2, 2013, at 9:54 AM, "Denny Vrandečić" <denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de<mailto:denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de>> wrote: Hi Janyong, as Michael said, Wikidata does not automatically get updated in any case. We are planning to improve a bit the experience with moving a page in the Wikipedias, but it won't become automatic. Mostly because these issues are in general complicated. 2013/4/1 Jianyong Zhang <zhjyong@gmail.com<mailto:zhjyong@gmail.com>> Hi, Wikidata is a very useful effort. It seems associating an item with a wikipedia article. Then I'm thinking the following scenarios to understand it further: Say, an article is associated with an item Qx. 1) It becomes redirect to another article, will Qx be changed in this scenario? I expect that if a Wikipedia article gets moved, this will be updated on the Wikidata item manually. Otherwise the language links that were displayed on the original article would not show up. If an article gets turned into a redirect to an already existing article, this would be a merge (see Question 4). 2) It is deleted. Will Qx be also deleted? In some cases. If all articles in all languages of an item got deleted, than it might mean that the item itself should be deleted too, but this is not necessarily the case. 3) That article is split as 2 new articles, how will we generate items for them? It depends. Let us assume there was one article "Castor and Pollux". Now it gets split into two articles, "Castor" and "Pollux". In this case we would probably have three items in Wikidata: one for Castor, one for Pollux, and one for the pair of them. 4) Or multiple articles are merged as one, how will their items be changed? The same. There *might* be items for the individuals as well as for the compound. Not all Wikipedias might slice the world equally. How a merge really is handled, depends on what the corresponding articles and items are about. The good news is that these cases actually got a lot simpler than they used to be: they happened previously as well, but in that case you had to struggle with an ecosystem of bots who might revert your edits that were trying to clean up the interwiki links. Now it is all in Wikidata, and the situations should be easier to resolve. Just my two cents on these questions, Cheers, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l -- Project director Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0<tel:%2B49-30-219%20158%2026-0> | http://wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985<tel:27%2F681%2F51985>. _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l ===================================================================== Please note that this e-mail and any files transmitted from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center may be privileged, confidential, and protected from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any reading, dissemination, distribution, copying, or other use of this communication or any of its attachments is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by replying to this message and deleting this message, any attachments, and all copies and backups from your computer. _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l -- Project director Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985. _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l

2013/4/7 Jianyong Zhang &lt;zhjyong(a)gmail.com&gt; In general, you can't point to a redirect from Wikidata. When entering, Wikidata tries to resolve it to the redirected article, tries to save it - and if there is already an item linked to an article, the save will fail. If someone turns an article into a redirect, we don't notice that automatically. I hope that bots will clean that up over time, but I would consider that an issue with the data. Any data on that item cannot be used on the Wikipedia article, since it is a redirect. I hope that helps, Cheers, Denny -- Project director Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.