We do have the "Quote" property (P1683) which has monolingual text datatype. You could certainly put free text in the value for this property and add this to a reference or even use it as a qualifier.
Joe On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 9:54 AM, Daniel Kinzler <daniel.kinz...@wikimedia.de> wrote: > Am 01.04.2015 um 09:20 schrieb Valentine Charles: > > -Cultural Heritage data have most of the time a description property > where you > > will find lot of relevant free text information. The structured property > but > > inside you will find mostly free- text. I couldn't find a similar > property in > > Wikidata but there is something similar in Dbpedia. Is it something you > are > > planning to introduce or have you made the decision to exclude any > free-text > > infromation from Wikidata for now. > > Free-form text is not machine-readable. Coding semi-structured information > is > very common in archives etc, but makes the data very hard to export, > transform, > and query. Free text fields should be used only for things that are > actually > text, such as a state motto. > > I think the need to encode things in free-form fields arose mostly from > overly > rigid data schemas. If there's no dedicated field for something, just > stuff the > info into the text field. Such fields turn into kitchen sinks that contain > a > hodge podge of different kinds of information. > > With Wikidata, there should be no need for this, since you can just create > and > use any properties you might be missing. That does mean though that wile > importing, you have to somehow extract the relevant information from the > free > text. That effort has to be done at some point, if the data is to become > machine > readable. > > > -While I was looking for painting in Wikidata I also noticed the absence > of > > information related to the size/dimension of the Artwork. The > information is > > most of the time present in Cultural Heritage data. Is it something > Wikidata is > > interested in or has it been omitted intentionally? > > We don't support units of measurement yet, and without these, it's not > really > possible to give the dimension. We hope to finally change this over the > next > couple of months. > > > -Then the last question is about values in different languages for a > given > > property. How do you indicate the language in Wikidata? Are you using a > xml:lang > > attribute or something similar? > > xml:lang would be used in the XML/RDF export (and lang in the HTML > rendering). > Internally, the language would be a string associated with the "language" > key in > a JSON structure. But neither fact is really relevant to the data model on > an > abstract level. > > Most properties (most data types) are language agnostic. Quantities, > strings, > time values, etc, do not have any notion of language. The only datatype for > properties that supports a language code is "monolingual text" (a pair of > language code + text). This data type is used sparingly, since usually, > the need > for internationalized naming and description is covered by the labels, > descriptions, and aliases associated with a data item. > > Labels, descriptions, and aliases are not "properties" about which > (sourced) > statements would be made in the context of the data item. Instead, they are > editorial attributes. They are fully internationalized, and intended to > enable > display, disambiguation, and search in as many languages as possible. > > For example, Q219831 has labels (and descriptions) in many languages: > * nl: De Nachtwacht (schilderij van Rembrandt van Rijn) > * de: Die Nachtwache (Gemälde von Rembrandt) > * en: The Night Watch (painting by Rembrandt van Rijn) > * ru: Ночной дозор (картина) > > So, when the painting is referenced elsewhere, a label (and description) > can be > shown in the user's language. Internationalized statements/properties are > rarely > needed. > > -- > Daniel Kinzler > Senior Software Developer > > Wikimedia Deutschland > Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. > > _______________________________________________ > Wikidata-l mailing list > Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l >
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