Hoi,
Given that we KNOW that descriptions are second best in the first place,
why not acknowledge this and keep the current practice?
Thanks,
GerardM
On 5 November 2015 at 10:51, James Heald <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have been wondering about the practice of putting use-notes in item
> descriptions.
>
> For example, on Q6581097 (male)
> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6581097
> the (English) description reads:
> "human who is male (use with Property:P21 sex or gender). For groups
> of males use with subclass of (P279)."
>
> I have added some myself recently, working on items in the administrative
> structure of the UK -- for example on Q23112 (Cambridgeshire)
> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23112
> I have changed the description to now read
> "ceremonial county of England (use Q21272276 for administrative
> non-metropolitan county)"
>
> These "use-notes" are similar to the disambiguating hat-notes often found
> at the top of articles on en-wiki and others; and just as those hat-notes
> can be useful on wikis, so such use-notes can be very useful on Wikidata,
> for example in the context of a search, or a drop-down menu.
>
> But...
>
> Given that the label field is also there to be presentable to end-users in
> contexts outside Wikidata, (eg to augment searches on main wikis, or to
> feed into the semantic web, to end up being used in who-knows-what
> different ways), yet away from Wikidata a string like "Q21272276" will
> typically have no meaning. Indeed there may not even be any distinct thing
> corresponding to it. (Q21272276 has no separate en-wiki article, for
> example).
>
> So I'm wondering whether these rather Wikidata-specific use notes do
> really belong in the general description field ?
>
> Is there a case for moving them to a new separate use-note field created
> for them?
>
> The software could be adjusted to include such a field in search results
> and drop-downs and the item summary, but they would be a separate
> data-entry field on the item page, and a separate triple for the SPARQL
> service, leaving the description field clean of Wikidata-specific meaning,
> better for third-party and downstream applications.
>
> Am I right to feel that the present situation of just chucking everything
> into the description field doesn't seem quite right, and we ought to take a
> step forward from it?
>
> -- James.
>
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