Hoi,
Another point, it is the English label that has this problem. How is it in
other languages?
Thanks,
GerardM
On 5 November 2015 at 10:54, Gerard Meijssen <[email protected]>
wrote:
> 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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>>
>
>
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