Module talk:Wikidata/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Icon to indicate no Wikipedia article

When a value is fetched from Wikidata that has a corresponding entry on Wikidata, but no article (yet) on Wikipedia, this module supplies a link to the Wikidata entry and a marker that indicates "Article is not yet available in this wiki" when hovered over. Even though Wikidata is a sister project and links there can use the wiki-markup for an internal link, e.g. [[d:Q151973]], the argument has been made that when following a link, readers don't expect to be redirected to different project without warning.

At a discussion at Template talk:Infobox video game #Ugly "page missing" buttons, there was a suggestion to use the external links icon instead of the present [*] marker. I've made a version in Module:Wikidata/sandbox2 using the icon. This is the comparison for the occupation (P106) of Richard Burton (Q151973):

• Module : film actor, diarist, stage actor, actor, film director, film producer, producer[*], director
• Sandbox: film actor, diarist, stage actor, actor, film director, film producer, producer , director

In the sense that a link to Wikidata is unexpected here, and it may therefore be considered an "external" link, is the external links icon a suitable indicator? In my opinion, it's aesthetically more pleasing, but other opinions would be very welcome. --RexxS (talk) 20:58, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

While external link might not be the BEST icon, it looks a lot more natural to me than the [*]. -- ferret (talk) 21:39, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

The icon does look better than the asterisk, but I'm not sure it's the right icon to use since links to Wikidata aren't external... Maybe a small Wikidata symbol? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 13:55, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

That's what I was inclined to, as well. Alternatively, "WD" in plaintext, or perhaps "D"... either way, needs a span with a title attribute to indicate our intentions with the link. --Izno (talk) 14:10, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

You would prefer a <span>...</span> with a title attribute rather than the <abbr>...</abbr> with a title attribute that I'm using now? --RexxS (talk) 17:05, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

It's not an abbreviation? I'd have to go look at the html 5 spec on the point. Span seemed better off the cuff. --Izno (talk) 19:19, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Neither https://www.w3.org/wiki/HTML/Elements/abbr nor https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/text-level-semantics.html#the-abbr-element are very specific. My logic was that a marker like "WD" would be an abbreviation semantically and literally and we could clearly use <abbr>...</abbr>; whereas if "WD" were replaced by an icon, it couldn't change the semantics - the icon would still be the element being 'expanded' (even if no longer literally). I'm always loathe to use <span>...</span> unless its inner-html really has no semantic value. Must be just how my antediluvian mind works. --RexxS (talk) 22:05, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm generally agreed, but in my mind the title attribute on the tag should be a call to action e.g. "edit on Wikidata", which is not "WD"'s expansion, and thus abbr becomes the wrong tag to use, according to 2 of the three areas of use (the third not being relevant here since we aren't interested in the consistent abbreviation styling). Izno (talk) 01:41, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

I think we may be at cross-purposes. The point of these markers is not to get people to edit Wikidata. It is to warn readers who may otherwise click on the link thinking they were going to a Wikipedia article on e.g. satiric novel and finding themselves on another site (i.e. Wikidata) at satirical novel (Q6045975). I've actually had that complaint levelled when we were using just an asterisk as a marker. There was a small consensus early on that it was good to have the link to the Wikidata item whenever there was no corresponding Wikipedia article, but I'm beginning to wonder whether it's worth the effort. I was thinking of changing the tool-tip to "Article is available on Wikidata, but not on Wikipedia", which would be more accurate. What do you think? --RexxS (talk) 07:56, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's why I stated my expectation, because I was pretty sure we were too. :D I'm fine with your proposed title text, but that's certainly not abbr content. --Izno (talk) 11:24, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Little edit tags

A little off-topic

Animal Farm Author George Orwell  Pages 92  It's a little off-topic, but it's worth pointing out that the French Wikipedia put little edit tags next to values from Wikidata, see e.g. fr:South Pole Telescope. They do that for all values drawn from Wikidata, which looks a little cluttered to me, but might be worth thinking about here too. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:20, 15 August 2016 (UTC) @Mike Peel: That idea was shamelessly stolen some time ago: see Module:WikidataIB. --RexxS (talk) 07:56, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Status

Where do we sit on this? This is a relatively impactful change to Module:Wikidata and hits every infobox that has implemented it. I am currently in support of the external link icon, versus the current [*]. The technical discussions on the exact tag mechanism is above the basic decision on whether to switch or not. Let's do it. Where else should this be advertised? -- ferret (talk) 14:22, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

That's a tough question. I don't think we could notify every Wikiproject that uses an infobox. However, there are currently 189 infoboxes in the Category:Templates using data from Wikidata, so it may be possible to pick out a number of active WikiProjects that already use the module. In any case, we should put a notice at WP:VPT and maybe at WP:CENT, if it was thought that far-reaching. Optionally we could create an WP:RFC here, if there were a well-defined choice that we could poll on. --RexxS (talk) 18:46, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

I think this [*] is ridiculous. Why stop there? Why not mark everything is not there? For instance, mark "everything" which isn't blue. 213.205.251.75 (talk) 10:54, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

The mad [*] are strange and useless. If you can't remove them, the least to do is to have the marks as optional. Alice 张梦平 10:14, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Of course we could remove them. But then what would you do about all of the folks who would be complaining that they followed a link and it took them to Wikidata? The indicators are not useless, because they perform the function of alerting readers to the fact that a link is available to the subject on Wikidata, but not on Wikipedia. It's easy to whine about what you don't like, but I don't see any constructive suggestions on how we might best do that job. --RexxS (talk) 16:29, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

How about using - would that work? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:49, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

I've made a version in Module:Wikidata/sandbox3 using the Wikidata-logo, with span instead of abbreviation and an expanded tool-tip. This is the comparison for the occupation (P106) of Richard Burton (Q151973):

• Module  : film actor, diarist, stage actor, actor, film director, film producer, producer[*], director
• Sandbox2: film actor, diarist, stage actor, actor, film director, film producer, producer , director
• Sandbox3: film actor, diarist, stage actor, actor, film director, film producer, producer , director

What do folks think? --RexxS (talk) 19:19, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply. I dig sandbox3. I might suggest the alt text read "Information available on.." rather than "Article available on..." -- ferret (talk) 22:30, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

getValue not handling no value claims correctly

On Wikidata, there are 3 different types of values for claims (technically, they are called "snak types"): no value, unknown value, and custom value. Currently if the value type is set to "custom value" (i.e. snaktype == "value"), getValue returns the actual value that is set (which makes sense). However, if the value type is set to "no value" (i.e. snaktype == "novalue"), getValue returns the string "no value", which isn't really helpful. Ideally it should return an empty string instead so that calls to getValue can be used intuitively in #if statements and elsewhere. It should probably do the same for unknown values. For an example of a "no value" claim, see the country claim at South Pole. The purpose of a "no value" claim is to affirm that no value exists, e.g. "The South Pole belongs to no country." Kaldari (talk) 00:43, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

@Kaldari: I'm not sure if "correctly" is the right description. When claims[1].mainsnak.snaktype contains "value", the function does its job of constructing a list of linked values. When claims[1].mainsnak.snaktype contains anything else, the function returns entity:formatPropertyValues(propertyID).value, which is a call available in the Wikibase API to return the best value, formatted. So from that point of view, it's the "correct" value that the developers designed in.

Nevertheless, I've created a version in Module:Wikidata/sandbox that traps a snaktype of "novalue" and returns nil. If you paste {{#invoke:Wikidata/sandbox|getValue|P17|FETCH_WIKIDATA}} into South Pole and preview it, you'll see that it returns nothing (as opposed to {{#invoke:Wikidata|getValue|P17|FETCH_WIKIDATA}}, which returns "no value").

Sadly, I've been told that I have to get consensus before making any changes to this module, so I'm no longer actively developing it, because of the sheer bureaucracy involved in waiting weeks to see if anybody bothers to comment even on small changes like this.

As we only have consent to use Wikidata in infoboxes, wouldn't it be just as easy to test for "no value" (rather than nil) if you want to display something like "Country none" in cases like South Pole? --RexxS (talk) 17:08, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

A problem with Wikidata is that there is no practical way to test the effect of a change like that. Indeed, a change could conceivably cause an infobox on an obscure article to show something wrong (perhaps due to bad design of a template), and no one would ever know. Special:ExpandTemplates allows the title of the page to be specified, and that appears to work, but automating that to build a thousand test cases would be monumentally difficult. At any rate, my vote would be to return an empty string for novalue to give the compatibility mentioned by Kaldari. Technically an empty string is different from novalue (which I guess is like NULL), but from a template's point of view, they should have the same effect. Johnuniq (talk) 22:28, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

@RexxS: Yes, we could test directly in the infobox code, but I can't really think of any situation in which I wouldn't want to test for "no value", as we would obviously never want to output "no value" to the infobox. I understand your argument about the current behavior being "correct" as far as the API is concerned, but I think if any layer of the stack is going to convert "no value" to nil, this would be the best place to do it. Thanks for your work on the sandbox code. I tested it at South Pole (via preview) and it seems to work well. Regarding consensus for the change, I hereby support it! Maybe Mike Peel would have an opinion on this as well. Kaldari (talk) 22:31, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

I have a few problems here. a) I'm not sure that a "no value" entry on Wikidata is actually useful - it makes more sense to me if the property simply isn't defined, than if it's set to "no value". b) The problem with "no value" being shown in South Pole Telescope's infobox is caused by {{#if:{{#Property:P17}}... - *not* this module. So Wikibase would also need to be fixed here to correctly handle "no value" if we are going to use that. c) I didn't think that consensus was needed to change this template for uncontroversial changes, particularly during the current rapid development process, just that we should use a sandbox to check for code errors before deploying a new version.

That said: I've just tested the sandbox version at Template:Infobox telescope, and the issue (b) described above results in the location being given as "Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station," (i.e. including an extra comma at the end). So if the sandbox version is deployed, then we'll need to switch the property check to also use this template (which is a slightly more expensive call). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:05, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

No value is for when we know there isn't a value. Wikidata, of course, has the need for no value and unknown value because it operates under the open world assumption.

One of the problems with Wikipedia's infoboxes is that we don't distinguish between "doesn't have a value", "don't know if it has a value", and "isn't important" (and of course, "it's too complex to factoidize"). "No value" (and it's friend "unknown value") make the first two questions explicit. And so, from that perspective, I would prefer to see Wikipedia saying "this doesn't exist" where it makes sense. --Izno (talk) 11:26, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: Wikidata needs a "no value" value type since there are cases where we want to assert that an item doesn't have a particular property. For example, I may want to query for all the islands that don't belong to a country (rather than islands that simply don't have a country set yet), or once we have human cloning I may want to query for all people that don't have a father. You're right that the #Property parser function has the same problem. I've filed phabricator:T148357 for that. Kaldari (talk) 07:12, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

How to get Q IDs from Property:P150 of a Wikipedia page

In the province of Nueva Vizcaya (Q13866), I wanted to get the Q IDs of all items under statement Property:P150 (contains administrative territorial entity), but I don't know how.

For Nueva Vizcaya province,
{{#invoke:Wikidata|getValue|P150|FETCH_WIKIDATA}}

gives (wikilinked) results:

Alfonso Castañeda, Ambaguio, Aritao, Bagabag, Bambang, Bayombong, Diadi, Dupax del Norte, Dupax del Sur, Kasibu, Kayapa, Quezon, Santa Fe, Solano, Villaverde

but what I wanted to get are the IDs of these items like:

Q51474 Q51475 Q51477 ...etc...

{{#invoke:Wikidata|getUnitID|P150|FETCH_WIKIDATA}}

on the other hand gives a blank result.

Please advise on what to do and what code to use. Thanks. Sanglahi86 (talk) 14:06, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

I've adapted getValue in a sandbox: Module:Sandbox/Rexxs/PropIDs. You can try pasting and previewing the following in Nueva Vizcaya (or whatever article you are interested in):

{{#invoke:Sandbox/Rexxs/PropIDs |getPropertyIDs |P150 |FETCH_WIKIDATA}}

You should get something like: Q51474, Q51475, Q51477, Q51478, Q51479, Q51480, Q51481, Q51483, Q51484, Q51485, Q51486, Q51487, Q51493, Q51494, Q51496.

If that's what you need and it tests properly, feel free to move the code into module space, or make a request here for it to be incorporated into this module. HTH --RexxS (talk) 17:26, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank you very much. This is exactly what is needed. I tested it on some province articles and it works perfectly. Yes, please incorporated the code into the module as it is a tedious task to keep on highlighting the properties in Wikidata and manually copying them. Sanglahi86 (talk) 06:35, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Hello. The code doesn't seem to be incorporated into this module yet, even though it works properly. If you could please move it as I am not familiar with modules and its codes. Thank you. Sanglahi86 (talk) 05:44, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

I have been hoping that someone else would comment. As usual, it's really hard to make progress when consensus is demanded in order to make changes, but nobody comments in a month to create that consensus. In the absence of opposition, I've gone ahead and added it to this module as a stand-alone function. Call it like this:

• {{#invoke:Wikidata |getPropertyIDs |P150 |FETCH_WIKIDATA}}

Hope that works for you now. --RexxS (talk) 21:37, 1 November 2016 (UTC)