| Lydia_Pintscher added a comment. |
In T131013#4929436, @alexhollender wrote:Open questions
- Assuming we fix the issue with languages that are being incorrectly capitalized, does anyone have an issue with capitalizing Wikidata descriptions in Latin languages on the front-end of Wikipedia?
Yes because as things are right now edits made to the descriptions from Wikipedia are wrong because of this. People are under the mistaken assumption (because of how it is displayed before editing) that they should always capitalize a description.
- Is anyone familiar with Wikidata's general policy in terms of opinionated vs. unopinionated data? Or, said another way, how do we resolve the tension between:
@Jdlrobson T131013#3544541
editors expect how descriptions display to match case when they edit them and this can cause edit confusionand
@Jdlrobson T131013#3544541
Wikidata is a data store. Just as we wouldn't expect clients to have to render dates mm/dd/yy we shouldn't expect them to have to use case. We should be caring about the content not how it's used.I am either misunderstanding this, or there is a tension/contradiction. If an editor expects their Wikidata input to match the output/display on Wikipedia, then the "data store" would indeed be opinionated, specifically towards what Wikipedia wants. This seems like a larger conversation. It also seems like one that is probably ongoing somewhere.
There is a difference between storage and display here. Wikidata generally doesn't care how you display the data it provides you. You can do calendar model conversion and more. The issue starts when editing. The current transformation only works in one direction.
In conclusion
It seems like we then have two options (I'm assuming we fix the obvious issue discussed above with languages like Georgian):
- Continue formatting Wikidata descriptions on the front-end of Wikipedia for Latin languages. The benefit of this option is that we retain the level of consistency we have now. The drawback is that Wikipedia does not mirror what is on Wikidata (although it's unclear that this is even desirable).
If it was only display we wouldn't care. If we could make users not associate the way it is displayed with the way they put it in we wouldn't care.
- Start a conversation with Wikidata to see if they are willing to update their guidelines for item descriptions. If they are willing, we can drop the code that forces capitalization in Latin languages. The benefit of this option is that Wikipedia mirrors exactly what is in Wikidata (again, unclear that this is actually desirable). The drawback is for an indeterminate amount of time where we'd have inconsistency in how Wikidata descriptions look on Wikipedia, however theoretically this would eventually sort itself out.
The policy change is extremely unlikely.
In general: If you're just worried about some mistakes in the data then please please don't hide them. Show them. Expose them to people. Otherwise they'll not get fixed and everyone who doesn't implement your workaround is still exposing their users to the mistakes. We need to make the data quality better for everyone.
Cc: alexhollender, Volker_E, gerritbot, Mehman97, santhosh, MuhammadShuaib, Liuxinyu970226, matej_suchanek, BukhariSaeed, Marsupium, Elitre, Jdlrobson, Esc3300, RHo, Niedzielski, siebrand, Amire80, JKatzWMF, dr0ptp4kt, Lydia_Pintscher, Deskana, Dbrant, Nirzar, JMinor, Jhernandez, Aklapper, Sjoerddebruin, Nandana, A.S.Kochergin, Lahi, Gq86, GoranSMilovanovic, Jayprakash12345, QZanden, LawExplorer, Winter, _jensen, Jdrewniak, JGirault, Srdjan_m, LNDDYL, Psychoslave, Wikidata-bugs, aude, Gryllida, Shizhao, Arrbee, Mbch331, Jay8g
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