Wikidata:Property proposal/Cultural identity

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cultural identity[edit]

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Person

   Not done
DescriptionMISSING
Data typeItem
DomainQ5
Example 1Mahatma Gandhi (Q1001) → Indian (Q862086)
Example 2Albrecht Dürer (Q5580) → Germans (Q42884)
Example 3Adolf Hitler (Q352) → Germans (Q42884)
Example 4Václav Havel (Q36233) → Czechs (Q170217)
Example 5Robert John Pryse (Q20890211) → Welsh people (Q188353)
Example 6Barack Obama (Q76) → Americans (Q846570)
Planned useCategorization of authors, painters etc.

Motivation[edit]

Many people are written as French author, Polish composer or Italian painter. There were attempts to create property for this as nationality, but without success.

When somebody lives in Poland ans speaks (write) Polish, we can say he have country of citizenship (P27)= Poland (Q36) but ethnic group (P172)=Poles (Q1026) is doubtful, and without source should be deleted. And what it he lived 150 years ago? there was no Poland in this time, so how to state he was Polish author? Henryk Sienkiewicz (Q41502) used Polish (Q809) as language, so maybe he was polish according language. But eg Karel Klostermann (Q84648) was born in Austria (and lived in Bohemia), his parents were germans (by language), he wrote both in Czech and German but he is usually called as Czech author (with german nationality)

We need some property for state this, and maybe cultural identity is least controverse name for this.

This property should be used eg for easy categorization by cultural identity and occupation.

@Jarekt, Marsupium , PKM, ChristianKl: JAn Dudík (talk) 13:36, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

  •  Oppose "And what it he lived 150 years ago? there was no Poland in this time, so how to state he was Polish author?" you don't, especially not without a source. Nationalism is a bad ideology. Calling it cultural identity does not resolve any of the conflicts. If you take the current war in Ukraine, than there are plenty of people where the Ukrainians would say that the cultural identity is Ukrainian and the Russians say that the cultural identity is Russian.
One source I read suggests that the people in Odesa feel as Odesians and not as Ukrainians or Russians. What do you do with them?
Recently, we had a conflict when an Arab admin was trying to enforce that someone is not listed as speaking Moroccan Arabic. This is motivated by pan-Arab nationalism. If you add another property than you get more of those conflicts. Those conflicts are bad for Wikidata and proposing a property without putting any thought into how you would prevent those conflicts is a bad idea.
We don't want nationalism on Wikidata is a position that's different than those of other institutions, but I think it's worth taking. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 10:21, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Long overdue. Often sources describe a person in a concise short description, like "polish writer", "german composer", "Italian painter and writer". Currently there is no property to capture this vital information. We can list all the countries someone was a citizen of with country of citizenship (P27), and we can list their ethnic group (P172), or languages they spoke, which is great but those are often unrelated to what most sources describe them as. Templates like c:Template:Creator are attempting to analyze country of citizenship (P27), ethnic group (P172) and other properties and come up with "Nationality" used by the template, but often it leads to quite comical results. For example Adam Mickiewicz (Q79822), most sources like ISNI, GND E. Britannica, etc. describe him as Polish or Polish/Lithuanian poet, but nothing in the data captures that: his country of citizenship was Russia, (he also lived in France and Turkey), he spoke number of languages, and his ethnic group was Belarusian. The only place stating that he is a Polish poet is in the description, which is unsourced. We need a sourced way to capture this information. --Jarekt (talk) 13:29, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    How do you decide whether or not he's partly a Lithuanian poet (because he was born in Lithuania Governorate)? The claim about him having the ethnic group Belarusian comes from a Belarusian encyclopedia article. It's hard to access the article but I think there's a good chance that it describes him as a Belarusian poet. The Wikipedia article suggests that his father has a Polish Coat of Arms which suggests that it makes more sense to see his ethnicity as Polish than as Belarussian. He's likely marked as having a Belarusian ethnic group because some Belarusian nationalist wants to mark him as being a Belarusian poet by virtue of him having been born in the territory that's now Belarus.
    Given that someone cared enough to mark him as a Belarussian (and likely misused our ethnic group property for it), this means it has a potential for a conflict. Conflicts between nationalists about whose nation gets to claim a certain person are not fun.
Descriptions have the advantage of being able to be different in different languages. That reduces the conflict. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 21:37, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose too nebulous. What does it mean to be "American" other than citizenship or birth or residency? How would we find a reference for this fact? BrokenSegue (talk) 05:18, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    There are many sources. Maybe for contemporary people is this little problematic, but for people living in Europe in 19-20 century is this "identity" often well sourced, even if there are people with multiple "nationalities" according to national POV. JAn Dudík (talk) 10:20, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I still don't get it. Can you provide some sample sources for the examples above? I don't get how for the 19-20th century examples this is different from ethnic group. BrokenSegue (talk) 17:22, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The distinction is quite clear if you look at the usage instructions for ethnic group (P172). It is described as needing a "VERY high standard of proof" that the subject claims this specific identity for themselves, or at least would unambiguously be expected to have claimed it for themselves (for historical people whose ethnic group (P172) is supported by scholarly consensus). The broad ascribed identities that we're dealing with here are rather different; multiple opposing claims are, to some extent, normal, and sometimes a cultural identity is claimed that would've been anachronistic and entirely unknown when the subject was living. Nonetheless, having this property helps prevent making a mess of ethnic group (P172), while still recording commonly asserted claims that some people will want as a convenient categorization criteria if nothing else. --Hupaleju (talk) 07:32, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Making it easier to attach ethnic group information without strong references isn't a good reason for a new property. Yes people will often casually say someone is an "American painter" or "German scientist" but it turns out those statements are imprecise and if they were made precise they would be decomposed into other statements we already capture (e.g. citizenship / language / place of birth / ethnic group / etc). BrokenSegue (talk) 03:26, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Re: Making it easier to attach ethnic group information without strong references isn't a good reason: agreed of course, but this is not about "ethnic group information" in any sense, rather about ascribed cultural identity. I.e. precisely such casual statements as "American painter" or "German scientist", particularly when imported from existing sources/references of biographical information about historical figures. It might be quite useful to record that some reference is making a weak claim about ascribed identity, without that getting conflated with claims about ethnic group (P172) self-identification or scholarly consensus. --Hupaleju (talk) 10:50, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
 Oppose This property will be as a mess as ethnic group (P172). Also this is forbiden at least in France and Germany to label this thing. --Fralambert (talk) 12:25, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Fralambert: is it forbidden by law or just by social etiquette? — The Erinaceous One 🦔 08:25, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
By law, the countries can't take this information by censuses by exemple. Fralambert (talk) 12:45, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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