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: [email protected] To: [email protected] 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" <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]> 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 [email protected] 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. 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