Talk:Wikidata/Technical proposal/Archives/2011/November

References database

Since WikiData will be creating an interwiki database, and also database to supply information to infoboxes... I was wondering whether it is also possible to use it to create a reference/citation database? That is, whenever someone adds a citation to a specific book (or journal...) in any Wiki, rather than having to add all the bibliographic details in each separate article, it calls upon the WikiData citation reference. That way there will be ONE canonical/centralised place for a reference that can be updated/corrected once and it will display correctly everywhere that that book is referenced. It helps to avoid linkrot, can be translated and greatly reduces the work in adding additional citations to articles.

An example of this kind of system is in use here: http://wiki.cancer.org.au/australia/Citation:O%27Gorman_T,_MacDonald_N,_Mould_T,_Cutner_A,_Hurley_R,_Olaitan_A_2009 This is the Cancer Council of Australia's Wiki with a new "citation" namespace. See also at the bottom there is a "cited by" section, this is the same effect as the "file usage on other wikis" that we see on Commons files. That way when a new article wishes to use this reference it just adds the reference from the "existing citations" dropdown list. Then it is displayed in the article correctly according to whatever styleguide (and language) that wiki has (here is that example citation displayed http://wiki.cancer.org.au/australia/Clinical_question:What_is_the_evidence_based_surgical_approach_for_hysterectomy_in_low_and_high_risk_apparent_early_stage_endometrial_cancer#References ).

Eventually we would create an amazing ISBN/ISSN database that would be the world's first universal, multi-lingual, up-to-date and freely-accessed bibliographic dataset. This would be a massively cool gift to the world. We could even pre-populate it with the data from the several national libraries that have already released their dataset under CC-0. It would encourage others to do the same by using the share-alike principle.

Is that possible? Wittylama 00:18, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

There already exists a similar database on the wiki fr ("Référence" - example) Zorglub 01:07, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

That's very interesting! I was not aware of that system. I particularly like how you can change the display style to show different formats for the same reference (e.g. BibTeX, wikisyntax, list). If I understand how that system works, it is particularly used as a way to clearly identify all the different editions of a book that has been republished multiple times, correct? What I'm particularly hoping New WikiData can be used for is the ability to place code that would look, for example, like {{reference|2-213-02191-0|1988|page 12}} and that would insert, automatically, the footnote that displays correctly according to the local wiki's language and manual of style. In the case of the French Wikipedia that would be (I think): "Nicolas Grimal, Histoire de l'Égypte ancienne, Fayard, Paris, 25 novembre 1988, broché (ISBN 2-213-02191-0) page 12." Instead, if you were on the English wikipedia and you wanted to refer to the later English edition of the same book you would write {{reference|0-631-19396-0|1994|page 12}}, it would give you "Nicolas Grimall, A History of Ancient Egypt, Blackwell, August 1994 (ISBN 0-631-19396-0) page 12." Do you see what I mean? Obviously I'm just inventing the code to demonstrate the idea, but the concept is to have a multilingual database of publication's metadata that is able to be kept up to date, so if someone adds more information later, that propagates to all the articles that have used that book as a reference. Wittylama 11:15, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Why people want to have always a specific database for different kind of data ? It is possible to think about a global concept for data storage like that:

data.MainName = Histoire de l'Égypte ancienne

data.MainClass = Book

data.MainID = 145

data.Parameter1.Name = Title

data.Parameter1.Class = Book

data.Parameter1.Value1 = Histoire de l'Égypte ancienne

data.Parameter2.Name = Author

data.Parameter2.Class = Book

data.Parameter2.Value1 = Nicolas

data.Parameter2.Value2 = Grimal

...

This can be used for scientific or persons data too:

data.MainName = Methan

data.MainClass = Chemical compound

data.MainID = 149

data.Parameter1.Name = Molecular mass

data.Parameter1.Class = Physical Property

data.Parameter1.Value1 = 16

data.Parameter1.Value2 = g/mol

data.Parameter1.Value3 = {{data|146}} link to another data unit

data.Parameter2.Name = Heat capacity

data.Parameter2.Class = Physical Property

data.Parameter2.Value1 = ...

or

data.MainName = Albert Einstein

data.MainClass = Scientist

data.MainID = 204

data.Parameter1.Name = Name

data.Parameter1.Class = Person data

data.Parameter1.Value1 = Albert

data.Parameter1.Value2 = Einstein

data.Parameter2.Name = Birthday

data.Parameter2.Class = Person data

data.Parameter2.Value1 = 14

data.Parameter2.Value2 = Mars

data.Parameter2.Value3 = 1879 ...

To call the data you have to insert something like {{addData|Albert Einstein|Birthday}} to get 14 mars 1879 in the appropriate wiki format or {{addData|Methan|Molecular mass}} to have 16 g/mol <ref>....</ref>. Snipre 14:31, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

That is interesting. We will take a closer look at fr.wp and what they are doing, as soon as we start. Commons has also a very elaborate metadata capturing scheme. --denny 10:27, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Sister projects

The page mentions only Wikipedia. I assume it's obvious that this needs to work also with sister projects (at least interwikis)... Nemo 08:18, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Helder 13:20, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. --denny 10:26, 25 November 2011 (UTC)