Wikidata:Property proposal/formal citation
formal citation
[edit]Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Generic
| Description | a formal citation string, if possible in the way the cited source prefers to be cited |
|---|---|
| Data type | Monolingual text |
| Domain | References |
| Example | Thomas Hanna (Q4495505) place of birth (P19) Waco (Q128244) Reference: → en:"Texas Birth Certificates, 1903-1935," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VH82-Q2T : 4 December 2014), Thomas Louis Hanna, 21 Nov 1928; citing Waco, Mclennan, Texas, United States, certificate 95667, Bureau of Vital Statistics. State Registrar Office, Austin; FHL microfilm 2,240,748." |
- Motivation
There are source that specify how they want to be cited. In the case of the FamilySearch records the information of the citation isn't easily expressible with existing Wikidata properties and it's useful to have the data as a text-string even if the content of the text string isn't structured data.
In the spirit of making it easy to reference statements I also think this property is useful for people who want to cite books but don't want to go through the effort of creating an item for the book.
I'm not sure about the name of this property. If you have a suggestion for a better name, feel free to suggest a better name. ChristianKl (talk) 19:15, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
- Discussion
Many citations have special typography, such as italics for book titles or boldface for volume numbers. I don't think we can reproduce this in a property value. In unusual cases the loss of special typography might even make it difficult to identify the source. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:51, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Oppose There is no good reason to encourage laziness of importing unstructured datas into a structured project, this would defeat the whole purpose. The citation some projects provide are there to be complete about the information, but in no world someone can impose a very specific way to cite him. Usually publications have there own formats for citation its customary to follow, not the way of the cited - this would make bibliographies totally inconsistent. author TomT0m / talk page 20:31, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
- @TomT0m: The current form of laziness is that people often don't contribute any sources. When Wikipedia's want sourced data's I think most of them would be happy if having the text instead of having nothing. Given that providing citation-backed data seems one of the main constraints from getting Wikipedia to integrate Wikidata I think it's worthwhile to make contributing sources easier. It's also possible to extract data from citations that are written in the common form of academic citations via a bot. ChristianKl (talk) 20:38, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
- It's the worst possible solution. There is citoid and a currently WMF funded project to make this easier, I'd hope they will solve it properly. There is billions of possible format for citation. Consider your example : why on earth would we replicate the datas present on the linked page in an unstructured way ??? It's probably generated from their datas ! we would almost have statement from each sourced by the raw URL ... this definitely would be absurd and to much effort to copy paste this string. This is for paper citations. author TomT0m / talk page 20:45, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
- Because the current solution is to not record the data at all. ChristianKl (talk) 12:26, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
- It's the worst possible solution. There is citoid and a currently WMF funded project to make this easier, I'd hope they will solve it properly. There is billions of possible format for citation. Consider your example : why on earth would we replicate the datas present on the linked page in an unstructured way ??? It's probably generated from their datas ! we would almost have statement from each sourced by the raw URL ... this definitely would be absurd and to much effort to copy paste this string. This is for paper citations. author TomT0m / talk page 20:45, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
- @TomT0m: The current form of laziness is that people often don't contribute any sources. When Wikipedia's want sourced data's I think most of them would be happy if having the text instead of having nothing. Given that providing citation-backed data seems one of the main constraints from getting Wikipedia to integrate Wikidata I think it's worthwhile to make contributing sources easier. It's also possible to extract data from citations that are written in the common form of academic citations via a bot. ChristianKl (talk) 20:38, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
- Oppose per TomTom. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:50, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
- Oppose per TomTom. The current solution to referencing not being ideal is not a reason to add unstructured data. Thryduulf (talk) 18:17, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
Comment @ChristianKl: this property proposal should at least be discussed with the Wikidata:WikiProject Source MetaData people. ArthurPSmith (talk) 15:26, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
Not done @ChristianKl: Lack of support.--Micru (talk) 15:26, 15 December 2016 (UTC)