Wikidata:Property proposal/Generic

Property proposal:	Generic	Authority control	Person	Organization
	Creative work	Place	Sports	Sister projects
	Transportation	Natural science	Computing	Lexeme

See also

• Wikidata:Property proposal/Pending – properties which have been approved but which are on hold waiting for the appropriate datatype to be made available
• Wikidata:Properties for deletion – proposals for the deletion of properties
• Wikidata:External identifiers – statements to add when creating properties for external IDs
• Wikidata:Lexicographical data – information and discussion about lexicographic data on Wikidata

This page is for the proposal of new properties.

Before proposing a property

1. Search if the property already exists.
2. Search if the property has already been proposed.
3. Check if you can give a similar label and definition as an existing Wikipedia infobox parameter, or if it can be matched to an infobox, to or from which data can be transferred automatically.
4. Select the right datatype for the property.
5. Read Wikidata:Creating a property proposal for guidelines you should follow when proposing a new property.
6. Start writing the documentation based on the preload form below by editing the two templates at the top of the page to add proposal details.

Creating the property

1. Once consensus is reached, change status=ready on the template, to attract the attention of a property creator.
2. Creation can be done 1 week after the creation of the proposal, by a property creator or an administrator.
3. See property creation policy.

On this page, old discussions are archived. An overview of all archives can be found at this page's archive index. The current archive is located at 2026/10.

General

‎has language or spelling variant

   Under discussion

Description	the (multilingual) label of the linked item is a a language, spelling or etymological variation of the label of this item
Data type	Item
Domain	Wikimedia disambiguation page (Q4167410), family name (Q101352), given name (Q202444)
Example 1	Gérard (Q13480879)↔Gerard (Q1261347) (name variant)
Example 2	Neuman (Q347493)↔Neumann (Q201364) (disambiguation pages for name variants)
Example 3	Miyamoto (Q24090423)↔Miyamoto (Q27265845) (names that are distincts only in their native language)
Example 4	Étienne (Q15727982)↔Steven (Q17501985) (etymological connexion only)

Motivation

Normally and for obvious reasons, items are not created for spelling variations and forms in other languages, with two major exceptions: disambiguation pages and items about names (although how exactly these are split may vary from wiki to wiki). There is a very strong impulse to group these items in some way. Currently this is causing names and name-based disambiguation pages to accumulate said to be the same as (P460) statements. Because these statement are based on etymology, not simialrity, this results in some patently absurd statements uch as Étienne (Q15727982)said to be the same as (P460)Steven (Q17501985), something no one would ever argue, yet the statement is present on both items.

said to be the same as (P460) is clearly inappropriate for this use, and unless there is a willingness to redefine it or fight (and it would be a huge fight!) to remove these statements, a more specific property for this specific usage seems warranted. Circeus (talk) 01:29, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

Discussion

•  Support --Gymnicus (talk) 12:30, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

‎contains nutrient

   Under discussion

Description	Food contains nutrient
Represents	nutrient (Q181394)
Data type	Item
Domain	item
Example 1	Golden Delicious (Q201996)→magnesium (Q660)mass (P2067)4.15 mg
Example 2	Golden Delicious (Q201996)→water (Q283)mass (P2067)85 g
Example 3	Golden Delicious (Q201996)→protein (Q8054)mass (P2067)0.102 g
Source	https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
See also	food energy (P7971)

Motivation

I've been thinking how FoodData Central (Q7866379) may face defunding or becoming unavalible outside of the US in the future. But this data is public domain and we could import it, right? So here I am proposing how this data could be mapped. I assume we need two properties: contains nutrient and reference amount. The USDA api also returns the sample size for each value which might also be a useful piece of information.

Discussion

Any suggestions? –Shisma (talk) 14:44, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Previous proposal: Wikidata:Property_proposal/food_composition. GZWDer (talk) 16:55, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Teolemon
Vladimir Alexiev
Ash_Crow
d1g
Dhx1
Tris T7 ^{TT me}
Gobonobo
Ainali
Wkee4ager
Rtnf
Dguarrac
Middle river exports (talk) 13:59, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Wolfgang8741
Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Prototyperspective (talk) 13:14, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Notified participants of WikiProject Food

•  Support Very important if I understood it correctly now but aren't there other properties that can be used for this? Also see this issue in the largest open source food/calorie tracker app where I mentioned wikidata as a potential way to fix one of its biggest issues (and downsides compared to proprietary MyFitnessPal). --Prototyperspective (talk) 17:29, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

•  Support This is awesome. Would we be able to source real life Nutrition Facts labels? -wd-Ryan (Talk/Edits) 00:30, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

  well, I would personally only apply this to staple foods and broad food categories as oppose to branded food products. data for those is probably better suited for openfoodfacts.org. But as far as I know, there is nothing stopping you from creating items for individual products 🤷 –Shisma (talk) 08:22, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

  @Prototyperspective, Wd-Ryan: I changed the qualifier from quantity (P1114) to mass (P2067) since the former shall not be used with a unit. –Shisma (talk) 09:56, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

•  Comment If you want to create a new property for reference mass, then please fill out Template:Property proposal for it. Since nutritional values are almost always given in relation to 100g, it probably suffices to create a new unit akin to gram per 100 gram of solvent (Q21127659) so we don't need to create another property. --Dexxor (talk) 15:30, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

@User:Dexxor yes, lets use units like gram per 100 gram of solvent (Q21127659) instead – Shisma (talk) 07:13, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Created gram per 100g (Q139480227) for this purpose. Infrastruktur (talk) 20:03, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

@Infrastruktur: isn't that just the same as gram per kilogram (Q21061369) as 100g = 1kg? -- JhowieNitnek (talk) 15:53, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

@JhowieNitnek: "kilo" means "thousand". 1000g = 1kg. Yirba (talk) 16:18, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

@Yirba indeed my bad 🤦JhowieNitnek (talk) 17:32, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

@Shisma: Hi, if you want to propose two properties ("contains nutrient" and "reference amount"), could you please complete a {{Property proposal}} for each, please? There should be two boxes at the top of this page. Yirba (talk) 16:26, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

@User:Yirba sorry I didn't do it in the first place. is this alright? –Shisma (talk) 08:39, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. Actually, I had misunderstood what you had intended by the "reference amount" property, so this is very helpful for me to understand it. Although, I wonder if "reference amount" is only applicable to statements about nutrients, or whether it might also be useful for statements about other types of concentration, density, etc. On the other hand, I wonder if providing the amount in grams with a reference mass is really the right approach, or whether it would be better to record it as a percentage. Yirba (talk) 08:57, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Product labels usually give a nutritional quantity relative to a specific quantity. I think in the western world that is usually 100g. But in some counties it is the exact quantity sold. I would argue, having the same metrics as the source makes the data easier to verify. Shisma (talk) 09:08, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Fair enough. But my question about whether the "reference amount" property could be applied more broadly still stands. Yirba (talk) 09:39, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

I assume yes. But I cant think of anything yet. Shisma (talk) 11:56, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

@Shisma, please split the proposals in two separate proposal pages. And, ping all involved users there. Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 12:08, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Like so? –Shisma (talk) 07:09, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

@Shisma: I think ZI Jony meant you should create it as a completely separate page, not at the bottom of this page. For example, at Wikidata:Property proposal/reference amount. Yirba (talk) 18:18, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

@Yirba, thanks for the explanation. @Shisma, please create a new proposal page for Reference amount. Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 20:23, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

• @Prototyperspective: Please don't cast support votes if you think "there might be other properties that can be used for this". Casting support votes before the question is answered, is bad for the property creation process. Only cast support votes, when all the outstanding questions are answered to your satisfaction and the property is well-defined and it's clear that the property is needed and existing properties can't do the job.
•  Oppose with current description and four word label. The description should define what it means with nutrient. Does USDA have a controlled vocabulary here? What are their terms and how are they are defined? What terms do European authorities use? Are there any nongovernmental sources that should be referenced as well? ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 11:52, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

  I'm no expert but I assume that, if the USDA lists something as a nutrient, then it is a nutrient. The example API call above lists the following nutrients for honycrisp apples:

Extended content

Iron, Fe Magnesium, Mg Phosphorus, P Potassium, K Sodium, Na Zinc, Zn Copper, Cu Manganese, Mn Thiamin Riboflavin Niacin Total Sugars Vitamin B-6 Folate, total Water Nitrogen Total lipid (fat) Ash Sucrose Glucose Fructose Lactose Maltose Fiber, total dietary Calcium, Ca Protein Carbohydrate, by difference Energy (Atwater General Factors) Energy (Atwater Specific Factors) Carbohydrate, by summation Sugars, Total Fatty acids, total trans Vitamin B-6 Choline, total Isoleucine Leucine Lysine Cystine Valine Arginine Histidine Aspartic acid Serine Total lipid (fat) Carbohydrate, by difference Energy Sucrose Glucose Maltose Water Total Sugars Calcium, Ca Potassium, K Zinc, Zn Selenium, Se Vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol) Lutein + zeaxanthin Niacin Pantothenic acid Protein Ash Starch Fructose Lactose Energy Galactose Fiber, total dietary Iron, Fe Magnesium, Mg Phosphorus, P Sodium, Na Copper, Cu Manganese, Mn Vitamin A, IU Vitamin A, RAE Carotene, beta Carotene, alpha Cryptoxanthin, beta Lycopene Thiamin Riboflavin Folate, total Vitamin K (Dihydrophylloquinone) Vitamin K (phylloquinone) Folate, food Tryptophan Threonine Methionine Phenylalanine Tyrosine Alanine Glutamic acid Glycine Proline

• Each of them has a unique ID. I suppose that counts as a controlled vocabulary, does it? – Shisma (talk) 15:31, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

  merriam-webster defines a nutrient as

  a substance or ingredient that promotes growth, provides energy, and maintains life

  I don't know it this is a good definition. – Shisma (talk) 15:36, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

  @Shisma

  Generally, it's unlikely that a dictionary provides a good definition in a case like this. Dictionaries are not created to provide controlled vocabulary with terms for purposes like this.

  According to ChatGPT, meaningful definitions are:

  USDA: “A chemical substance in food that provides energy; forms body structures; or regulates body processes.”

  FDA: “any substance of nutritional value found in food, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals.”

  EU Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006: "“Nutrient” means a protein, carbohydrate, fat, fibre, sodium, vitamins and minerals listed in the Annex to Regulation (EC) No 1925/2006, and substances which belong to, or are components of, one of these groups."

  IOM: dietary substances required for normal physiological function, growth, and maintenance of health

  WHO: substances obtained from food that are used in the body to provide energy, structural materials, and regulating agent

  Codex Alimentarius Commission: any substance normally consumed as a constituent of food, necessary for growth, development, and maintenance of health

  Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: chemical substances in food that nourish the body by contributing to energy production, maintenance, and growth

  These are all organizations who actually developed controlled vocabulary and likely had committees who thought long and part about how to define the term and what gets kept in and out by the definition. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 13:35, 21 August 2025 (UTC)

  What label and description do you propose? – Shisma (talk) 14:04, 21 August 2025 (UTC)

  I'm proposing that someone does the work of thinking through what label/description would make sense for Wikidata given the prior art that exists. That's what the work of proposing a property is about. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 15:09, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

  "Clear and unambiguous food descriptions are essential for accurate data usage and interchange. EuroFIR has adopted LanguaL (Langua aLimentaria), an internationally controlled vocabulary for systematic food description, to ensure standardisation and comparability of food data across Europe" [1][2]

  In Europe they also seem to use something called FoodEx2 standardized by EFSA which may or may not be relevant here. [3]

As for definition of nutrient, some of these are not adequate, I mean water is an essential nutrient (!). One definition was even circular. Most Food Composition Databases (FCDBs) seem to only care about a subset of nutrients relevant to humans, the norwegian one (Matvaretabellen) lists 57 of them for instance, some are unique chemicals other are aggregated values like for instance Retinol Equivalents (REs). For some nutrients it doesn't make sense to list them all, so for proteins you either list total protein content or break them down by their individual amino acids. Which nutrients should we list? If they have an unique identifier in any recognized FCDB then I would say that should be a requirement for inclusion. Infrastruktur (talk) 18:01, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

"EuroFIR Component Thesaurus version 1.6" seems to list all the nutrients typically found in european FCDBs. You can find login information under the section "Access EuroFIR Thesauri" at [4]. Infrastruktur (talk) 18:59, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

• If there are some nutrients that the FDC has no data on then this would just mean that the data would have to come from other sources. I think the link in Source in the proposal is not exclusive – if there are other sources, these could be added alongside. A problem that becomes clear by the above list is that foods usually would have a long list of nutrients. But it's more or less the most valuable data for foods and well-worth it. It needs to be added in one edit though instead of for example 50 successive ones. Also it would be good to lock such fields so they can't be vandalized and reliably show what data FDC has. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:55, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

  Here is a list of nutrients that can be added to a product in openfoodfacts: Translations - Names of nutrients – Shisma (talk) 17:37, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

  someone does the work of thinking through what label/description would make sense for Wikidata given the prior art that exists See also https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openfoodfacts/openfoodfacts-server/refs/heads/main/taxonomies/food/ingredients.txt and https://wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Ingredients_taxonomy OpenFoodFacts already did it. Doesn't this make this more or less solved? It could be that for some of the ingredients there's not yet a Wikidata property. And also USDA seems to list amino acids like glycine alongside while OFF has them separated (not in the ingredients.txt there). Maybe it remains to be clarified whether amino acids should be a complementary new Wikidata property. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:45, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

  The word ingredient has a different meaning than the word nutrient. The OpenFoodFacts gives "soya beans" as an example of an ingredient but "soya beans" is not a nutrient in the same class as the things listed as nutrients.

  We do have has listed ingredient (P4543) to make that statement about a product containing "soya beans".

  If you grow soya beans and put them into a food products and nothing else, than your product has one ingredient. That's different from asking what vitamins/amino acids/minerals are in soya beans. This distinction is exactly why you need well defined properties.

  It might be that OpenFoodFacts actually has a definition for nutrient, but if so it's not the definition for ingredient. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 12:28, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

  You're right; thanks. I thought nutrients was contained in there; https://wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Translations_-_Names_of_nutrients seems to be the right OFF place and USDA also seems to have a list but I couldn't find it and the API site seems down currently. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:39, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

 Conditional support I support the proposal as long as they don't insist on importing incomplete data from USDA. Infrastruktur (talk) 12:29, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

You suggest to only import a subset? Shisma (talk) 17:31, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

No. I'm strongly suggesting importing from a different Food Composition database (FCDB). I added items for the ones that are available online: Talk:Q139473542. The biggest issue with USDA FoodData Central is that it doesn't list all nutrients for some foods and also doesn't indicate which ones it doesn't list. I just checked the source data for foundational and legacy in CSV/JSON. Importing incomplete nutrition data will mean anyone who try to use FoodData Central/Wikidata for things like diet planning will get incorrect plans with nonsense such as eating a boatload of carrots doesn't provide any beta-carotene (it literally has carrot in the name). [5] In reality the measurement has simply not been done yet, but there is no indication of that. Infrastruktur (talk) 08:58, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

That should be solved by making sure to import from both databases, should it? – Shisma (talk) 10:12, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

The legacy database have quite a bit more measurements, but it too has the same issues as the foundation database: missing measurements, and no indications of them being missing. Here's one for cooked egg, with alpha-tocopherol calculated. [6] Compare that to egg yolk here [7] Not only are the values very different, but the second lists a lot more vitamin Es, here it's actual measurements. It says alpha-tocopherol in the parenthesis, but it looks like it's supposed to be alpha-tocopherol equivalents which is an aggregated value (mg-ATE). It doesn't list any vitamin D however. Here's another egg item with all the vitamin Es gone: [8]. While you should be able to trust the lab measured values, that doesn't help if you can't trust the database to list all the nutrients or use consistent naming (like for instance EuroFIR ID). If you import from an EuroFIR database, you will have none of these problems. Infrastruktur (talk) 14:42, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

In cases where a primary source has values that are considered wrong or imprecise, they can still be rank as deprecated. If there is a more precise value available from another database, it can be ranked as preferred. We could now decide to better not import bad values because we may know they are bad, but in the future someone who doesn't know may in good faith do it anyway. When bad values are already present and down-ranked, that wouldn't be as issue. – Shisma (talk) 18:15, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

Changing my vote to  Oppose based on the non-committal reply. Infrastruktur (talk) 10:42, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

Oh, don't get me wrong. I personally do not insist on importing incomplete data as you say. But I don't see how what to import is subject to this proposal. I would certainly not import the kind of data you were talking about but I can't speak for everyone. –Shisma (talk) 10:52, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

•  Support Makes sense to me. To address some of the concerns: I don't think it's for Wikidata to define what a nutrient is. If an authority claims that something is a nutrient, then we can add that claim and reference that authority. Also, our claims are non-exhaustive. Of course it would be great to be as comprehensive as possible, but it's better to have something than nothing. -- Yirba (talk) 16:02, 12 May 2026 (UTC)
•  Support Miikul (talk) 00:29, 5 June 2026 (UTC)
•  Support JhowieNitnek (talk) 11:07, 6 June 2026 (UTC)
• @ChristianKl, Dexxor, GZWDer, Infrastruktur, Prototyperspective, Wd-Ryan: Would you like to give your final opinion based on the response? -- Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 17:23, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• @ChristianKl, Dexxor, GZWDer, Infrastruktur, JhowieNitnek, Miikul: @Prototyperspective, Shisma, Wd-Ryan, Yirba: Almost all major participants are in favour of creation. I marked it as ready! If any of you disagree, feel free to change the status to not done as no consensus. I'll wait 2-3 days before creating this property. -- Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 19:04, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

  @ZI Jony: "Food contains nutrient" does not look to me like a serious suggestion for a property label given our rules for property labels.

  When it comes to our properties, I do think that properties are supposed to define what our data users can expect. That's the standard, and it shouldn't be avoided because people are to lazy to engage with the existing definitions and come up with a definition that works for our usage. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 10:11, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

MediaWiki wiki

Mappola ID

   Under discussion

Description	Project about Mapping out the Poetic Landscape(s) of the Roman Empire
Data type	External identifier
Domain	inscription (Q1640824)
Allowed values	\d+$
Example 1	Funerary Inscription for Aelia Ingenua (Q141646860) → MPL00001
Example 2	Funerary stele of Aurelius Longinus (Q141647218) → MPL00002
Example 3	Funerary inscription of Maria Martina and L. Furnius Pribatus (Q141647747) → MPL00003
Source	https://db.mappola.eu/r/Inscriptions
Number of IDs in source	2125
Formatter URL	https://db.mappola.eu/r/Inscriptions/$1
Applicable "stated in"-value	Mappola (Q141647629)
Single-value constraint	yes
Distinct-values constraint	yes
Wikidata project	Epigraphy

Motivation

Accurimbono Ahc84 (talk) 18:39, 2 August 2024 (UTC) Alexmar983 Anna Clara Maniero Azzolini DerMaxdorfer Epìdosis Gabriel Bodard Jahl de Vautban JBradyK Liber008 Mentxu Zorita Piergiovanna Grossi (talk) Pietro Ortimini Prashanth sarcanon Emily Helm Hall

Notified participants of WikiProject Epigraphy. The database is a valuable resource for Epigraphy and it collects inscriptions that are relevant to the WikiProjet:Epigraphy. -- Anna Clara Maniero Azzolini (talk) 16:17, 5 October 2026 (UTC)