Wikidata:Property proposal/SPLC Individual ID

SPLC person ID[edit]

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Authority control

Done: SPLC individual ID (P8534) (Talk and documentation)

Description	This is an identifier for individuals that are on file with the SPLC
Represents	Southern Poverty Law Center (Q2061914)
Data type	External identifier
Example 1	Matthew Heimbach (Q65705971) → matthew-heimbach
Example 2	Mike Cernovich (Q19877764) → mike-cernovich
Example 3	Alex Jones (Q319121) → alex-jones
Source	https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual
Number of IDs in source	133
Expected completeness	always incomplete (Q21873886)
Formatter URL	https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/$1

Motivation[edit]

The SPLC is a non-profit organization that keeps track of hate groups and individual extremists. Labelling hate groups is often difficult in Wikidata and Wikipedia, an external identifier with extra information may often helpful as reference and for further information for users to educate themselves about a particular group. While these entries are up for debate, Wikipedia writes "Since the 2000s, the SPLC's classification and listings of hate groups (organizations it has assessed either "attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics")[10] and extremists[11] have often been described as authoritative and are widely accepted and cited in academic and media coverage of such groups and related issues".

While this does describe living people, often the entries are not controversial per se and overlaps with self-identification of these individuals (e.g. Matthew Heimbach (Q65705971) is described as "American neo-Nazi" in Wikidata.) Also, currently these items have plenty of outlinks to Twitter/Facebook/Youtube but no real authority control. Hannes Röst (talk) 18:14, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]