Wikidata:Property proposal/construction start

construction start

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Generic

   Not done

Description	date that a construction project started
Represents	construction (Q385378)
Data type	Point in time
Example 1	10 Hudson Yards (Q15264124) → August 2013
Example 2	Eiffel Tower (Q243) → 28 January 1887
Example 3	Atomium (Q180901) → March 1956
Example 4	Aswan Dam (Q38891) → 9 January 1960
Planned use	Adding construction start to different buildings
Expected completeness	always incomplete (Q21873886)
See also	Property proposal/Generic#construction end
Single-value constraint	yes
Distinct-values constraint	yes
Proposed by	Joeykentin (talk)

Motivation

Now the only way to and the construction time is to add a significant event property and add construction with the a start time and end time qualifiers.  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Joeykentin (talk • contribs) at 10:51, April 17, 2022‎ (UTC).

Discussion

• @Joeykentin: What is wrong with the current approach?  Oppose pending response. Multichill (talk) 11:12, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
  • @Multichill I because every building ever then should have that in significant but because every building needs it it would be more useful to add this property Jhowie Nitnek 13:53, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
    • We have inception (P571) to indicate when the construction of a building started. If you want to detail it more, you can do so, but you don't have to do that for every building. Multichill (talk) 14:00, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
      • Inception would be better for when the idea of a building was conceived Jhowie Nitnek 14:14, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
        • Technically we can't call the inception(https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/inception) connected/related or similar as foundation (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/foundation) or construction started.

        And definitely we can use these properties (construction started & construction ended) for popular buildings:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonders_of_the_World#Recent_lists

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Wonders_of_the_Ancient_World#Wonders

        I think, We need a serious linguistic discussion here about inception (P571) (one word used for ~60 different type of words).... looks like it is too much massed-up. And here we have the opportunity to make things more clear and to the point.

         Support BeLucky (talk) 12:35, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

•  Oppose per Multichill. In my opinion, the current way is very flexible. --Tinker Bell ★ ♥ 16:05, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
  •  Comment Kindly give us a little explanation on it how we can do that .... It will help us understand the situation here. BeLucky (talk) 12:37, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
    • I've answered on the P571 discussion. --Tinker Bell ★ ♥ 20:34, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
•  Comment Looks like there has been a discussion on the same in past with no result in last. Here is the link to the English Translation of the original discussion (Property talk:P571#Qualifiers "start date" and "end date" for this property). - BeLucky (talk) 11:15, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
•  Comment @Lectrician1 is fixing the same here is the discussion: Property talk:P571#1 word inception for 58 different Words. @Joeykentin: @Multichill: @Tinker Bell: --BeLucky (talk) 14:44, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
•  Support "inception" can mean when construction starts, when the building is first proposed, when the building opens, etc. We need specific properties like this in order to clear up this possible conflation. Lectrician1 (talk) 15:16, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

   Comment Here I agree with @Lectrician1 .... we could use these properties (construction started & construction ended) to be more specific to somethings and not burdening the significant event (P793) for everything and inception (P571) is already out of the question here. BeLucky (talk) 05:34, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

•  Comment not sure to understand the problem, what is wrong with the current situation and how having more properties would solve anything ; and clearly one shouldn't use linguistic (especially not in only one language) to define a property (linguistic could be used to fix the label tho). And a property can always be express by multiples words (and if "construction start" is created it will also have multiple alias). Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 15:59, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Lectrician1 @Joeykentin looks like @VIGNERON got too much caught up with the word "linguistic" .... He looks very offended by it. Cheers. -- BeLucky (talk) 17:50, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

  The thing is inception can mean several things like when a project was started (so not the construction but the planning and stuff like that) and the construction. They are totally different things yet they both can be represented by inception Jhowie Nitnek 18:05, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Joeykentin @Lectrician1 @MasterRus21thCentury & @VIGNERON @Multichill @Tinker Bell Guys we need to agree or disagree on one point that inception/date founded/date formed/creation date/date of establishment/date commenced/inititated/introduced etc can be same/similar/loosely related but any of them can't be construction or incorporation. -- BeLucky (talk) 18:22, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

•  Strong support ~Namita (talk) 22:08, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
•  Strong support BeLucky (talk) 10:19, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose I see no virtue in speciating inception date for each special case someone thinks of - start of constrution, date of incorporation, whataver you come up with next. It's easily possible to represent the meaning of a P571 value by qualifying the statement with e.g. object has role (P3831) taking an appropriate value; and to have multiple qualified P571 statements for any number of inception dates in an item. It's easily possible to represent the construction period - which require an end date conspicuously but puzzlingly absent from this proposal - using significant event (P793) with start & end dates. The clear risk is that we merely move from supposed ambiguity about a single property, to ambiguity and confusion attaching to & between multiple speciated incept properties ... meanwhile, arguably, degrading ease of reporting by requiring report writers to understand that this sort of incept data is found over here, that sort of incept data is found over there; and again arguably degrading the contributor UI insofar as the use now has to choose from a deck of date properties rather than use the single property. And then; for how many occasions will inception and construction start meaningfully differ? And for how many of these cases will there be a robust source of data? To my mind, whilst I see the superficial attraction of more & more detailed properties, my experience of RDF leads me to the view that more & more tends to add all sorts of complexity and confusion without usefully solving any real problem, and instead I'd favour a better & better approach in which we use a using a simple deck of properties and properly qualify statements to convey meaning. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:03, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Tagishsimon Nobody wants to add qualifiers for a relationship as common as this one. It makes sense to have a property. Lectrician1 (talk) 05:17, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Lectrician1 All I can see is .... wikidata is being held back by few conservative people who held back by some self-imposed beliefs about wikidata not even knowing what is wikidata in first place ... It's common drawback of any open project with public contribution where anyone with any background and from anywhere can come in and edit without fully understanding the project at large and sometimes these users even reaches to higher levels without any hurdles with time. - BeLucky (talk) 10:16, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

  If you mean to imply that Tagishsimon is "holding back Wikidata... not even knowing what is Wikidata" and "without fully understanding the project", you might want to learn more of what you're talking about before putting fingers to keyboard. And if you don't mean that, you need to be more clear about what you do mean. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:16, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

•  Oppose keeping the timeline in one place with a series of significant events makes for easier interrogation, especially for buildings with multiple phases. Vicarage (talk) 06:50, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Vicarage Construction is not at all related to inception. This term (construction start) was there in inception (P571) and has been removed from inception (P571) and now proposed here as separate property. And for lots and lots of items out there construction is more then significant event so it has been proposed here as separate property. - BeLucky (talk) 11:35, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

•  Support I work a lot with building items and to be honest, the current usage of inception (P571) on these items is simply mess, as it is frequently used for both start of construction and completition/opening. It is appropriate to distinguish between the two and thus have more specific property.--Jklamo (talk) 13:38, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

   Comment @Jklamo Thank you for your support. Here is the Property proposal for Construction End: Wikidata:Property_proposal/construction_end - BeLucky (talk) 15:14, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

•  Oppose per the above. Use "inception". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:16, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
•  Oppose --Gymnicus (talk) 10:42, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

  @Gymnicus Reasoning? Lectrician1 (talk) 00:21, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

  @Lectrician1: As others have pointed out before me, other statements give us the ability to indicate the beginning and end of the build. Not only about the property inception (P571) but also about the property significant event (P793). so I don't see the need for the proposed properties. --Gymnicus (talk) 13:27, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

  Because every building has a construction start date and there are thousands of buildings on Wikidata? We can't expect people to take the annoying time to add significant event (P793) to clarify what they mean so most will just resort to using inception (P571) which could mean a variety of things other than construction start. This degrades data quality over a extreme amount of items about buildings. Lectrician1 (talk) 21:55, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

•  Comment -- Could any of @Tagishsimon:, @Vicarage: @Gymnicus: elaborate on the usage of significant event (P793) for storing the start and end time of any construction? I can see significant event (P793) is mentioned in the discussion, but the data type of that property is "Item" not "Point in time", so if we wanted to use significant event (P793), we would need to create items for "construction of X" and link item "X" with "construction of X" by using significant event (P793) on "X" and then use start time (P580) and end time (P582) in the item "construction of X". For example,

• Eiffel Tower (Q243)significant event (P793)construction of Eiffel Tower (Q123456789)
• construction of Eiffel Tower (Q123456789)start time (P580)26 January 1887
• construction of Eiffel Tower (Q123456789)end time (P582)31 March 1889

Am I right? If I didn't get it right, could you provide an example that shows how significant event (P793) could be used for storing the "construction start" and "construction end"? -- Rdrg109 (talk) 17:43, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

You would normally use point in time (P585) as a qualifier to the significant event. HMS Minerva (Q5633396) shows how I use qualifiers for ships, I expect buildings are similar Vicarage (talk) 18:09, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

@Rdrg109: In my opinion, you would use the statement Eiffel Tower (Q243)significant event (P793)construction (Q385378) with the qualifiers start time (P580)26 January 1887 and end time (P582)31 March 1889. The data object Zellengefängnis Lehrter Straße (Q187723) can be used as an example. --Gymnicus (talk) 19:22, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

•  Oppose We discussed significant event (P793) for ships, which have similarly complicated timelines https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:WikiProject_Ships. Building gestation has lots of dates with different meanings, which significant event (P793) seems to cover best. date of official opening (P1619) or service entry (P729) seems a more useful thing to record at the item level Vicarage (talk) 18:24, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
• @Rdrg109, Vicarage, Pigsonthewing, Gymnicus, Tagishsimon, BNamita:@VIGNERON, Rdrg109, Vicarage, Tinker Bell, BeLucky:  Not done Along with the sister property marked as not done, I'm marking this also as not done, similar reasons apply. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 17:52, 4 December 2022 (UTC)