Help:Suggesters and selectors

Wikidata has a series of features to find entities (items, properties, lexemes, etc. ) when adding data or looking for data. The main features are:

• selector: user types and then selects from a list
• suggester: user is presented with a choice and then picks from that or overrides it.

Some are available on other projects.

Entity selector

• entity selector (Q86989622): feature of Wikibase

• 
  "entity selector" (of items on search)
• 
  "entity selector" (of items as values)
• 
  "entity selector" (of lexemes as values)
• 
  "entity selector" (of properties for statements)
• 
  "entity selector" (of items for grammatical features of lexeme forms)
• 
  "entity selector" (of items as values through Wikidata Bridge)
• 
  "entity selector" (of items for SPARQL code completion on Wikidata Query Service)
• 
  "entity selector" (of items on Wikivoyage); image shows item already selected
• 
  "entity selector" (of Wikidata items as values for depict-statement on Wikimedia Commons); image shows screen prior to selection
• 
  "entity selector" (of Wikidata items to search depicts statements on images on Wikimedia Commons)

• Uses APIs provided by WikibaseCirrusSearch, or WikibaseLexemeCirrusSearch for lexemes
• Elasticsearch (Q3050461) as backend
• Based on labels and aliases of entities
• Entity id can be typed instead (e.g. "Q5")
• Description is generally provided
• As lexemes have no descriptions, a standard description is generated from language, lexical category, etc.
• Depending on the context (generally the property's datatype), only values of a specific entity type are available (i.e. items, properties, lexemes)
• If the value you want to add is missing, create the entity first (if it is an item/lexeme; for properties, see Wikidata:Property_proposal). You can install the userscript User:Efly/Gadget-CreateNewItem.js to create missing values directly.
• Sometimes there is a delay until newly created items appear. Pasting the QID directly should work in these cases.
• Ranking (what appears first when typing): for improvements, known issues, see Wikidata:Suggester ranking input
• For Wikidata GUI design questions, ask at Wikidata:Contact_the_development_team

Property suggester

• property suggester (Q86989962): feature of Wikibase proposing properties on manual input

• 
  "property suggester" (of properties for statements)
• 
  "property suggester" (of properties for statements on items without statements); image shows "instance of" (P31) and "subclass of" (P279) in Basque
• 
  "property suggester" (of qualifiers for a statement); image shows a number of cases (P1603)-statement being qualified, then without any "allowed qualifier"-constraint.

Property suggester provides a preselection of properties when adding statements to Wikidata items.

• Implemented by PropertySuggester
• These are based on the frequency on other items with the same instance of (P31)-value and properties as those already present on the item.
• Sample: on an item with instance of (P31)=human (Q5) only, suggestions could be sex or gender (P21), occupation (P106), date of birth (P569).
• These may or may not be appropriate for the specific item. Other properties can be added.
• A similar function is available for qualifiers.
• Suggestions are periodically updated (monthly?)
• On items without any statements, the first two properties are configured to be P31 and P279 at Wikidata.
• It doesn't work on properties (not even the P31/P279 part) nor lexemes and its senses and forms
• It's sometimes called "property recommender" or "entity suggester" (its initial name).
• Currently no language fallback support (see phab:T112112)
• Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/2796/
• Ranking (what appears): ask at Wikidata:Contact_the_development_team

Entity suggestion from constraint definition

• entity suggestion from constraint definition (Q58007309): feature of Wikibase proposing values based on one-of and allowed-qualifiers constraints

• 
  "entity suggestion from constraint definition" (of items as values)
• 
  "entity suggestion from constraint definition" (of properties as qualifiers)

See Help:Property constraints portal/Entity suggestions from constraint definitions.

• Implemented by WikibaseQualityConstraints

Language list

language list (Q87113143): Wikibase feature for monolingual strings

• 
  "language list" for monolingual strings

• Implemented by Wikibase Repository
• see Help:Monolingual_text_languages
• some codes can be entered, but don't appear in the list, e.g. "und", "mul", "en-ca"
• Missing codes: see Help:Monolingual text languages#Requirements for a new language code

Commons file search field

• Commons file search field (Q87071027): feature of Wikibase

• 
  Commons file search field (for Commons media files as values)

When adding image properties, a search field appears.

• Implemented by Wikibase Repository
• For image (P18) and other properties with Commons media-datatype.
• A similar feature is available for tabular data, geographic shape.
• Missing image/file: image/file needs to be uploaded to Commons first.
• Included here for comparison/completeness (It's not a selector, as it doesn't look for Wikidata entities).