Improve Wikidata handling of duplicate references in model and UI (Community Wishlist/W192)

Description

A RfC on Wikidata in 2024 (d:Wikidata:Requests for comment/Duplicate References Data Model and UI) found that the present modeling of references in Wikidata (and, more generally, in Wikibase) has some redundances, both in the JSON storage and in the UI. In order to improve the user experience, both for editors and for data reusers, it would be necessary to rethink about how references are managed both in the JSON storage and in the UI. This would also be beneficial considering the growing size of Wikidata: reducing useless redundances would save archival space and make much easier for data reusers to deal with Wikidata's data.

Assigned focus area

Unassigned

Type of wish

System change

Tags

Wikidata, Citations

Affected users

Wikidata editors and data reusers

Phabricator tasks

T224333, T360224

Other details

Created: 19:51, 2 August 2024
Last updated: 23:27, 10 October 2025
Author: Epìdosis (talk)

Voting

This wish currently has 3 supporters. Voting for this wish is open until it is completed.

Supporters of this wish

Support Matěj Suchánek (talk) 08:59, 22 October 2025

Support Thinking about possible solutions, it may make sense to rely on "stated in". So, instead of a reference like "<stated in enwiki>" we could have a <stated in THAT_SOURCE_ITEM>, so, having an item describing that exact reference, so the same reference can be easily re-used by just adding more "stated in" and pointing to the very exact item. Thinking in long terms, to don't pollute the main namespace, it may also make sense to have a dedicated namespace like "Reference:", I mean, like "Lexeme:".

Incidental benefit of using "stated in": almost zero software development on Wikibase.

P.S. I wonder what m:WikiCite says about this. Valerio Bozzolan (talk) 11:38, 8 November 2025

Support Ayack (talk) 11:49, 5 December 2025