Agreed. In Mix'n'match, 145 out of 177catalogs have at least one instance
of two or more external IDs matched to a single Wikidata item. External
datasets, even curated ones, are messy.

Maybe the criterion should be "intended to be unique", or somesuch.

On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 9:18 AM Markus Krötzsch <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Another reason why "uniqueness" is not such a good criterion: it cannot
> be applied to decide the type of a newly created property (no
> statements, no uniqueness score). In general, the fewer statements there
> are for a property, the more likely they are to be unique. The criterion
> rewards data incompleteness (example: if Luca deletes the six multiple
> ids he mentioned, then the property could be converted -- and he could
> later add the statements again). If you think about it, it does not seem
> like a very good idea to make the datatype of a property depend on its
> current usage in Wikidata.
>
> Markus
>
> On 05.03.2016 17:15, Markus Krötzsch wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I agree with Egon that the uniqueness requirement is rather weird. What
> > it means is that a thing is only considered an "identifier" if it points
> > to a database that uses a similar granularity for modelling the world as
> > Wikidata. If the external database is more fine-grained than Wikidata
> > (several ids for one item), then it is not a valid "identifier",
> > according to the uniqueness idea. I wonder what good this may do. In
> > particular, anybody who cares about uniqueness can easily determine it
> > from the data without any property type that says this.
> >
> > Markus
> >
> >
> > On 05.03.2016 15:35, Egon Willighagen wrote:
> >> On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 3:25 PM, Lydia Pintscher
> >> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>> On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 3:17 PM Egon Willighagen
> >>> <[email protected]>
> >>>> What is the exact process? Do you just plan to wait longer to see if
> >>>> anyone supports/contradicts my tagging? Should I get other Wikidata
> >>>> users and contributors to back up my suggestion?
> >>>
> >>> Add them to the list Katie linked if you think they should be
> >>> converted. We
> >>> wait a bit to see if anyone disagrees and I also do a quick sanity
> >>> check for
> >>> each property myself before conversion.
> >>
> >> I am adding comments for now. I am also looking at the comments for
> >> what it takes to be "identifier":
> >>
> >>
> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Addshore/Identifiers#Characteristics_of_external_identifiers
> >>
> >>
> >> What is the resolution in these? There are some strong, often
> >> contradiction, opinions...
> >>
> >> For example, the uniqueness requirement is interesting... if an
> >> identifier must be unique for a single Wikidata entry, this is
> >> effectively disqualifying most identifiers used in the life
> >> sciences... simply because Wikidata rarely has the exact same concept
> >> in Wikidata as it has in the remote database.
> >>
> >> I'm sure we can give examples from any life science field, but
> >> consider a gene: the concept of a gene in Wikidata is not like a gene
> >> sequence in a DNA sequence database. Hence, an identifier from that
> >> database could not be linked as "identifier" to that Wikidata entry.
> >>
> >> Same for most identifiers for small organic compounds (like drugs,
> >> metabolites, etc). I already commented on CAS (P231) and InChI (P234),
> >> both are used as identifier, but none are unique to concepts used as
> >> "types" in Wikidata. The CAS for formaldehyde and formaline is
> >> identical. The InChI may be unique, but only of you strongly type the
> >> definition of a chemical graph instead of a substance (as is now)...
> >> etc.
> >>
> >> So, in order to make a decision which chemical identifiers should be
> >> marked as "identifier" type depends on resolution of those required
> >> characteristics...
> >>
> >> Can you please inform me about the state of those characteristics
> >> (accepted or declined)?
> >>
> >> Egon
> >>
> >>> Cheers
> >>> Lydia
> >>> --
> >>> Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
> >>> Product Manager for Wikidata
> >>>
> >>> Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
> >>> Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
> >>> 10963 Berlin
> >>> www.wikimedia.de
> >>>
> >>> Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
> >>>
> >>> Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
> >>> unter
> >>> der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
> >>> Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
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