Wikidata:Requests for comment/Inverse constraint on cause-and-effect properties
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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- inverse constraints were removed --Pasleim (talk) 15:49, 11 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(This has surely been discussed before, and I apologize for not being able to find where. If previous discussion was conclusive for status quo, I don't oppose this being quickly closed.)
Are the inverse constraints on has cause (P828)/has effect (P1542), has immediate cause (P1478)/immediate cause of (P1536), and has contributing factor (P1479)/contributing factor of (P1537) more harmful than helpful?
Very often (maybe more often than not), the inverse statements of these properties provide little to no value. Particular effects often have no reason to be mentioned on the items belonging to their cause, and vice versa. This is particularly true when the cause or effect is best expressed as a generic value with qualifiers. The constraints suggest that inverse statements should be created whether they are relevant or not, lest the angry "violation" exclamation mark appear. It's my understanding that constraints should only have very limited, explicit exceptions.
Examples:
- The has cause (P828) statements on possession (Q43261319)
- The has cause (P828) statements on terrestrial gamma-ray flash (Q1584373)
- The has effect (P1542) statements on gerrymandering (Q476310)
- The has effect (P1542) statement on Goldwater rule (Q17007013)
- information-theoretic death (Q2671076)has immediate cause (P1478)aerobic decomposition (Q40953843)
of (P642)brain (Q1073) - The has contributing factor (P1479) statements on nuclear pasta (Q13590494)
- coincidence (Q2308809)contributing factor of (P1537)fatalism (Q29253)
Thoughts toward removing the inverse constraint on these properties? Swpb (talk) 15:43, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion[edit]
- In general I don't think inverse statements should be necessary anywhere, and I think the Wikibase software should be improved to obviate their use (see phab:T209559). Regardless, in the current environment, the way that has effect (P1542) is used (probably correctly) on gerrymandering (Q476310) indicates that the constraint isn't very useful. Some of the other statements seem less clear to me, but removing one half of each pair of inverse statements wouldn't cause any data to be lost, so if they're not useful in Wikipedia infoboxes then they're not necessary. I think it's worth noting that anyone could have added (or removed) the constraints, so it's probably not really necessary to have an RfC about them. Jc86035 (talk) 14:57, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- So I take it you have no qualms with removing these specific constraints? Re: the last part: I've been bitten before for assuming Project:Be bold (Q3916099) applied on Wikidata. If it does, that needs to be made clearer. Swpb (talk) 17:17, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Went ahead and removed the constraints. Swpb (talk) 18:20, 8 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]