Wikidata:Property proposal/World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions ID

‎World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions ID[edit]

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Place

Done: World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions ID (P11897) (Talk and documentation)

Description	WGSRPD is the worldwide system for the classification of distribution of plants, many are countries, states etc but others follow geographic areas rather than political borders. This classification is used extremely widely on Wikipedia already eg Wikiproject plants.
Represents	World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (Q8035770)
Data type	External identifier
Example 1	Buenos Aires (Q1486) => AGE-BA
Example 2	Alabama (Q173) => ALA
Example 3	Mexico (Q96) => 79,00
Planned use	We will use this property to mirror on Wikidata the agreed scientific standard for plant distribution. It will act as the authority control for plant distributions on Wikidata the same as its used professionally e.g Plants of the World Online uses this classification. This will much more easily allow us to generate interactive species distribution maps on all language version of Wikipedia, for an example see Asparagus horridus (multiple areas for multiple kinds of distribution can be shown, eg native range, introduced range and extinct range). This should be a very stable ID and should help with data quality for plant locations by providing a very clear list for the property constraints.
Number of IDs in source	Around 1000, if a 3rd edition is published this could increase
Expected completeness	There have been two editions of the classifications, there are around 1000 locations which could currently use this ID, if a new edition is published then more may be added.

Motivation[edit]

We want to use this to import data about plant distributions into Wikidata, this will allow us to create plant distribution maps on any English Wikipedia article for plants with species distribution data available from POWO (see Asparagus Horridus for an example), but also on other Wikipedias as requested. We have been working with Wikiproject Plants and Kew Gardens, the maintainers of Plants of the World Online to plan this upload for around a year. Note: distribution of a species means locaton in an area, not covering the whole of the area, the latest edition of WGSRPD has helped refine this with more granular areas, if there are future updates, this may improve further.

John Cummings (talk) 11:33, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

Support property proposal, but I have concerns about using this as a source for importing distribution data; we need to be clear that it (apparently) indicates presence in a country, not distribution throughout all of that country. The distribution map for Coincya wrightii (Q5141591), for example ([1]) highlights the whole of Great Britain, whereas it is in fact endemic to the 445-hectare isle of Lundy. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:22, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I think this is my mistake in explaining how they describe distribution, they describe the species as being located in that area, rather than being distributed over the whole of it. I've added a note to explain this a bit better. John Cummings (talk) 12:53, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Question Should the data type be external-id? 2A01:CB14:D52:1200:E83C:8801:DBA0:512C 17:37, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Yes it should :) thanks, fixed. John Cummings (talk) 18:18, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In general, these maps will not accurately reflect distributions. They should be used sparingly. Abductive (talk) 09:42, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd agree that these maps used individually might not always accurately reflect distributions, but used correctly a collection of them creates a good guide. Battleofalma (talk) 15:04, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, will be useful for helping create scalable mapping data for distribution based on existing records. Battleofalma (talk) 09:40, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Andrawaag (talk) 10:51, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support MartinPoulter (talk) 12:32, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]