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Explanation regarding reversion of 'member count' unit constraint?

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Summary by CrystalLemonade

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Zherasonne (talkcontribs)

I noticed you reverted the application of a unit to the member count property of Q20684822 (Dreamcatcher). Per the current constraints for the member count property, one of the supported units (human, woman, etc.) should be applied to that count.

For the moment, I don't see that you've raised any particular objections against the unit constraint on the Discussion page on the member count property page.

Is there a particular (unspoken?) change occurring to the member count property that would render the application of units obsolete?

CrystalLemonade (talkcontribs)

I'm thinking that member count shouldn't use units, as it is common sense to think that musical groups have humans as members, unless you're talking about Aespa, which incorporates the use of virtual avatars as well. Dreamcatcher doesn't have virtual avatars, so I'm thinking that it should only have a number of members instead of number+unit.

Also, having the unit removed by maintenance bot further proves that member count doesn't need an unit.

Zherasonne (talkcontribs)

RE: DeltaBot, that doesn't necessarily support your stance of dropping the units for member counts. That rule (User:DeltaBot/fixClaims/jobs, search for P2124) appears to be designed to eliminate uses of "human" and "person" as units - it ignores more specific units like "woman", "man", etc. It seems a bit odd to have a rule slicing out the more generic units when it would be best done at the constraint.

After quite a bit of research, I can imagine a couple of different test cases that would be problematic for the current member count implementation. Those discussions should probably be had, but probably not on your Talk page.

More practically regarding member counts:

  1. I'm not entirely certain what programs or scripts have been written to rely on or use the member count property and the "expected" associated unit.
  2. I'm sure somewhere along the line someone else is going to try and "clean up" the "constraint-breaking" record again - and you'll have to sweep in and remove whatever unit is added each time.

Unless it is absolutely clear that a "less is more" approach is desirable for all known use cases (feel free to point out a particular Wikidata guideline if there is one), I would request that a fairly mild redundancy like the units on member count be acceptable until the associated constraint can be reviewed.

CrystalLemonade (talkcontribs)

If you have a question about the usage of units for a specific Property, use its talk page to ask your questions. In this case, use member count (P2124)'s talk page for further inquiries.