Wikidata:WikiProject every politician/Political data model
Data Model for Politicians[edit]
This is an attempt to document best practices for modelling data about politicians and the offices they have held. Ideally data should be modelled in as consistent a manner as possible across different countries, so that queries that work in one place will also work with minimal changes elsewhere. This is still a work in progress, and discussion on different/better approaches is always very welcome.
People[edit]
The politicians themselves should usually have the following data:
| Mandatory | |
| Where known |
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| Where appropriate |
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Holding Political Office[edit]
The core property for holding political office is position held (P39) (member of (P463) should not be used for this).
In most cases, it is preferable to use a specific item for the office being held (e.g. Mayor of New York City (Q785304)) rather than using a generic item, such as mayor (Q30185), qualified with of (P642)). (A list of such items for each country's national legislature can be found on the List of National Legislatures page.)
Dates of Office[edit]
Although a position held (P39) statement with no qualifiers is useful base information, especially when bulk-imported (e.g. from Wikipedia Categories), it is usually better to know when someone held office.
Usually this happens via start time (P580) and end time (P582) qualifiers:
| position held (P39) |
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| add value | |||||||||||||||
However, sometimes a source will list all the members during one legislative term, or all the members of a single cabinet, without providing detailed dates for each member (who may have joined or left at some point during the period). In such cases that information can be captured using parliamentary term (P2937) or member of cabinet (P5054) qualifiers, allowing more precise start time (P580) and end time (P582) to be sourced separately later.
| position held (P39) |
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| add value | |||||||||||||
| position held (P39) |
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| add value | |||||||||||||
Holding office more than once[edit]
If someone has held the same office more than once, with a gap between each period, there should be a new statement for each mandate, rather than having multiple start time (P580), end time (P582), parliamentary term (P2937) or member of cabinet (P5054) statements on a single statement.
If someone is re-elected, or re-appointed, to the same position for one or more consecutive periods, several different approaches exist. Which is more appropriate depends on the quality of source information available, and the level of data available for each mandate. In general it is advisable to look at which model is already in use for a given country, and to start a discussion before converting data from one approach to another:
Approach 1: a single statement[edit]
In this approach, the entire period is entered as one position held (P39) with relevant start time (P580) and end time (P582) qualifiers:
| position held (P39) |
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| add value | |||||||||||||||
Approach 2: a new statement for each mandate[edit]
In this approach, separate position held (P39) statements are added for each mandate:
| position held (P39) |
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| add value | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Although slightly more complicated to enter, this form allows for much richer data that is usually easier to query.
(Note: A few countries (see, for example, the Wikidata:WikiProject British Politicians/Data model) use this approach, but with discrete position items for each legislative term (each term-item being a subclass of the specific country's more general Member of Parliament (Q16707842) item — e.g. member of the 54th Parliament of the United Kingdom (Q35647955)). This approach was largely a work-around for problems with earlier Wikidata tooling, and should now be treated as deprecated, and not used unless a given legislature is already using that model.)
Other Common Qualifiers[edit]
- parliamentary group (P4100)
- electoral district (P768)
- end cause (P1534) is useful where applicable and known.
- Common values include: <dissolution of parliament (Q741182)>, <leaving party (Q30580660)>, <exclusion from a political party (Q1787171)>, <death in office (Q5247364)> (see all end cause qualifiers currently in use)
- statement is subject of (P805), where a separate item exists for a person's term in office (e.g. presidency of Barack Obama (Q1379733)). These should generally not be created unless they already exist (e.g. where a Wikipedia page exists for them)
Notes:
- elected in (P2715) may be set to novalue if the person was not elected (e.g. if they were co-opted or otherwise appointed)
- electoral district (P768) may be set to novalue where no electoral unit (Q192611) applies
- parliamentary term (P2937) may be set to novalue if the legislature isn't legislative term (Q15238777)-based
- parliamentary group (P4100) should be set to independent politician (Q327591) if not a member of any group
- end time (P582) should be omitted if the person is still in office, not set to novalue
If the value for any qualifier changes (e.g. if someone changes their parliamentary group), a new statement is required for each combination: a property should not be used multiple times as a qualifier on a single statement.
Membership Items[edit]
Items for parliamentary "member of" (e.g. member of the Parliament of Finland (Q17592486)) should use properties:
| Mandatory |
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| If applicable / Where known |
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As illustrated above, in some countries the preference has been to use term-specific membership items, such as Member of the 16th Lok Sabha (Q42509248), list of members of the 15th Lok Sabha (Q42509330), etc. This made data easier to manipulate with some common tooling (such as QuickStatements and Listeria (Q24045615) that otherwise struggle with someone having held the same position more than once). Where this approach has been used, the subclass of (P279) for each such item must also be set to the non-term-specific item for that legislature (e.g. member of the Lok Sabha (Q16556694)), and each position held (P39) statement must also include a parliamentary term (P2937) qualifier, so that standardised queries can be constructed without needing to know which type of item is in place.
Legislative Branch Items[edit]
Information on modelling the legislatures themselves, as well as the legislative terms, and constituencies, can be found at Wikidata:WikiProject_Parliaments
Elections[edit]
Information on modelling elections can be found at Wikidata:WikiProject elections.
Executive Branch[edit]
Head of Government[edit]
Cabinet[edit]
A parent class for the Cabinet itself (e.g. Cabinet of Wales (Q32859630)), with:
| Mandatory |
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Then, for each individual cabinet (e.g. Fourth Morgan ministry (Q27957662)):
| Mandatory |
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| Preferable |
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Cabinet-Level Positions[edit]
e.g. Minister for Health and Social Services (Q6865862)
| Mandatory |
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| Preferable |
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Non-Cabinet Ministerial positions[edit]
Junior positions can be modelled following the pattern for Cabinet positions; however the part of (P361) qualifier of the position statement should point to the government - e.g. Welsh Government (Q3112646) - rather than to the cabinet.