A few days ago I made the following post to Project Chat, looking at how
people are linking from Wikidata items to Commons categories and
galleries compared to a year ago, that some people on the list may have
seen, which has now been archived:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2015/08#Trends_…
A couple of headlines:
* Category <-> commonscat identifications :
** There was a net increase of 61,784 Commons categories that can now be
identified with category-like items, to 323,825 Commons categories in all
** 96.4% of category <-> commonscat identifications (312,266 items) now
have sitelinks. This represents a rise in sitelinks (60,463 items)
amounting to 97.8% of the increase in identifications
** 80.0% of category <-> commonscat identifications (259,164 items) now
have P373 statements. This represents a rise in P373 statements (8,774
items) amounting to 14.2% of the increase in identifications
* Article <-> commonscat identifications :
** There was a net increase of 176,382 Commons categories that can now
be identified with article-like items, to 884,439 Commons categories in all
** 23.4% of article <-> commonscat identifications (207,494 items) now
have (deprecated) sitelinks. This represents a rise in sitelinks
(112,595 items) amounting to 63.8% of the increase in identifications.
** 91.3% of article <-> commonscat identifications (807,776 items) now
have P373 statements. This represents a rise in P373 statements
(110,727 items) amounting to 62.8% of the increase in identifications
* In addition, a recent RfC showed considerable confusion as to what
actually was the current operational Wikidata policy on sitelinks to
Commons:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Requests_for_comment/Category_common…
In view of the trends above; and the need for predictability and
consistency for queries and templates and scripts to depend on; and
particularly in view of the apparent confusion as to what the
operational policy currently actually is, can I suggest that the time
has come for a bot to monitor all new sitelinks to Commons categories,
* adding a corresponding P373 statement if there is not one already, and
* removing the sitelink if it is from an article-like item to a commonscat.
I believe we have clear policy on only sitelinking commons categories to
category-like items, and commons galleries to article-like items; but
there is currently confusion and unpredictability being caused because
these relationships are not being enforced -- breaking scripts and queries.
It's time to fix this.
All best,
James.