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Wikidata/Notes/Creating items

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

Some ideas on creating items:

Schemas

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  • schemas are lists of properties
  • schemas have labels and descriptions
  • schemas define which properties are "usually" provided for a given type of thing

Stand-Alone creation

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  • Have a special page, say Special:CreateItem, for creating items
    • step one: enter label and description, optionally select a schema
    • step two: add properties freely and/or fill in values for the properties provided by the schema
    • the URL in step two will be the ID-based canonical url of the newly created item
  • The subpage-part of the title may be used to pre-select a specific schema:
    • Special:NewItem/person may be used to link to a page for creating people

Title-based creation

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  • When linking to a non-existing page using an ID-form URL (this is always an error, but may happen)
    • show a message "no such item"
  • When linking to a non-existing page using an site/title-based URL
    • show a message "no such item" and a form
    • the form has a label field (pre-filled from the title, after removing suffixes)
    • the form also allows the user to enter a description and select a schema (like above)
    • Submitting the form to create the item will again lead to a page that allows properties to be added/specified
    • the URL for that page will remain the site/title-based URL!

Inline Creation

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  • Properties that reference items can not be "red links"
  • Instead, item stubs can be created inline

Example:

  • The user is creating the item for Berlin
  • The "mayor" property should point to Klaus Wowereit, but Wowi isn't in the system yet.
  • So, the "find item" widget should have a "create new item" option.
    • the user has already provided the label and can/should also provide a description (e.g. "German politician")
    • the property "mayor" specifies that the "people" schema should be used when creating items based on that property
    • the user can also override that default and select a different schema
    • the user can choose "create and continue" and "create and fill in details"
    • "create and continue" will create the item and return the user to editing Berlin
    • "create and fill in details" will create the item and take the user to the item's (edit) page, to fill in or add more properties


Notes

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  • title-based URLs get rewritten so a special page, e.g. Special:ItemByTitle/site/Title
  • should we also support language/label based urls?
    • that would essentially be a search, the result would be an automatic redirect or an automatic disambig page
  • when an item is created using a specific schema, all properties listed in the schema are added to the item, but marked as "not specified".
    • no reference to the schema is kept in the item
    • (properties from) more schemas can be added to the item later