
This property has been previously nominated for deletion. Previous discussions can be found in the archives.

Documentation

country
sovereign state that this item is in (not to be used for human beings)

Represents

historical country (Q3024240), state (Q7275), sovereign state (Q3624078)

Data type

Item

Template parameter

e.g. "subdivision_name" in en:Template:Infobox settlement, if subdivision_type = Country

Domain

geographic features/places: all (note: this should be moved to the property statements)

Allowed values

Subclasses of:

(note: this should be moved to the property statements)

Example

Wusung Radio Tower (Q2270034) → People's Republic of China (Q148)
Antarctica (Q51) → not applicable
Mount Everest (Q513) → Nepal (Q837)
People's Republic of China (Q148)
Germany (Q183) → Germany (Q183)

Robot and gadget jobs

DeltaBot does the following jobs:

Move source to qualifier
Items with instance of (P31)=geographical feature (Q618123) should generally have this property.
Consistency should be checked - if the subject is of type "first order administrative subdivision", the linked country object should link back using is in the administrative unit (asymmetric reciprocity).

Tracking: same

Category:Categories matching P17 on Wikidata (Q32085240)

Tracking: differences

Category:Categories not matching P17 on Wikidata (Q22158802)

Tracking: usage

Category:Pages using Wikidata property P17 (Q20116958)

Tracking: local yes, WD no

Category:Country not in Wikidata, but available on Wikipedia (Q22158803)

Complex contrains

countries should agree: ATE in single country
current countries should have best rank, historic or disputed - normal, absolutely wrong - deprecated (Help)
Violations query:

SELECT DISTINCT ?item WHERE  {   ?item  wdt:P31/wdt:P279 wd:Q15916867        . # ATE in single country   ?item  wdt:P17            ?countriesOfItem  .   ?item  wdt:P31            ?class            .   ?class wdt:P17            ?countriesOfClass             # disagreement   FILTER NOT EXISTS {     ?item wdt:P17 ?countriesOfItem        .     ?class    wdt:P17 ?countriesOfClass       .     FILTER(?countriesOfItem = ?countriesOfClass)   } }

List of this constraint violations: Database reports/Complex constraint violations/P17#countries should agree: ATE in single country

See also per-item reports related to country (P17) usage

Discussion

This should be sovereign state

Latest comment: 6 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

"Country" is not synonymous with "sovereign state. eg. Ireland is a country, Eire is a sovereign state. Northern Ireland is just as much a part of Ireland, indeed people from Northern Ireland can claim Irish citizenship. Country is geographical concept with political aspects.Leutha (talk) 23:34, 12 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

Ireland (Q22890) is not a country. Northern Ireland (Q26) is (though it is not a sovereign state), and Ireland (Q27) (which is also a sovereign state) is as well. Ireland (Q22890) is an island on which both of these entities exist. This database is supposed to mostly embody things written on the various Wikimedia projects. See en:w:Ireland_(disambiguation). I agree that it should be "sovereign state", though, seeing as Northern Ireland (Q26) is a country but not a sovereign state. --BurritoBazooka (talk) 05:39, 20 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

I don't think it should be sovereign state. There are already lots of things explicitly allowed above which are not sovereign states, we can already say which items are sovereign states and which aren't via instance of (P31) on the relevant items and we can say which item something is part of via located in the administrative territorial entity (P131), so there's no need for this to be overly restrictive. In fact, I would go in the opposite direction and allow pretty much anything with an ISO 3166-1 country code (which would include overseas territories and (more of the) highly autonomous places) instead of picking and choosing which ones are autonomous enough and which aren't (e.g. why is Greenland allowed but not Hong Kong?), because this is a generic property used for a wide variety of things and sometimes it makes sense to allow a broader range of values. - Nikki (talk) 09:23, 19 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

I agree with both @Leutha, Nikki: "Country" is not synonymous with "sovereign state". Wales is a country - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wales enwiki Wales Talk Page, which states: The issue of whether Wales is a country or not has been repeatedly raised. The result of all these debates is that Wales is indeed a country. This has been confirmed in formal mediation. All external references state that Wales is a Nation, including the Welsh Government, the UK Government, the National Museum of Wales, the National Library of Wales, the Untiversity of Wales etc etc. The description of a property should describe that property and not be in conflict with it. Wales is not a sovereign state, but we are a country. We already have a property for sovereign sate, therefore please amend and close down the bot which changes 'Value Wales (Q25) automatically replaces it with United Kingdom (Q145). In addition, all changes done by the bot should be undone. As said above by Leutha, 'Country' is geographical concept with political aspects'; a 'sovereign state' is a political concept with geographical aspects. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 08:09, 6 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

Should countries have statements with country: themselves?

Latest comment: 7 years ago15 comments9 people in discussion

For example, the following statements currently exist:

Are these correct? They seem redundant and not really reasonable to me. —DSGalaktos (talk) 09:18, 31 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

It depends on how you read the statements.

If you read "Germany is located in 'Germany'", this doesn't seem logical. (P:P131 would imply that)
However, the meaning of P17 is broader: If you read: "Q183 relates to the sovereign state 'Germany' ", this makes sense. It helps to determine which country the statements on Q183 relate to.

This makes it easy to allocate statements to countries that can appear on all types of geographical entities, such as timezone, "list of monuments", etc.

Hope this is makes it clear. --- Jura 10:24, 31 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

Okay, that makes sense, thanks. I added a statement to United States of America (Q30) as well. —DSGalaktos (talk) 10:49, 31 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

Sorry Jura and DSGalaktos, but it doesn't seem logic to me.

My problem is not with country (P17) (which is obvioulsy not located in the administrative territorial entity (P131)) but the the self link itself.

Germany (Q183)country (P17)Germany (Q183) can be read as « Q183 relates to the sovereign state Q183 » or « 'Germany' relates to the sovereign state 'Germany' » but not « Q183 relates to the sovereign state 'Germany' » (if you make a distinction beetween Q183 and 'Germany' then 'Germany' is not Q183 but an other item).

Plus, I don't see how it help nor can I see a case where is easier to say « something relates to itself ». Could you be clearer on the usefulness of this self link?

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 18:42, 14 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

These selflinks does not make sense for me. --Jklamo (talk) 21:25, 14 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

For the reasons why this self-link was introduced, see the previous discussion at Property talk:P17/Archive#Add a self-link to sovereign states? --UV (talk) 21:48, 14 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

Sorry but I'm still not convinced. Maybe I miss something or misunderstand the whole thing but it seems to me that this self link is just an illogic hack which is not needed.

Jura : « It helps to determine which country the statements on Q183 relate to. » make no sens to me. Q183 doesn't relate to a country, Q183 is a country and P31 is the easiest, logicest and cleaniest way to indicate it. How a self link could be « an elegant way to describe that an item describes a sovereign state » (as UV said in August 2013) when there is plenty other ways to do it with existing properties and without breaking a basic rule of common sens and database organisation ?

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 20:33, 15 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

Other than that some don't like them, are there cases where having them generates problems? --- Jura 11:50, 16 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

It's not that I don't like them, it's that I like logic and common sens. There maybe a logic behind that but noone explain it clearly to me.

A self link is kind of a problem in itself that why is a contraint that shouldn't be violated without reason (and accepting them without good reason is a slippery slope to others self link, like Albert Einstein (Q937)instance of (P31)Albert Einstein (Q937) - wich look exactly analog to Germany (Q183)country (P17)Germany (Q183) to me).

Redundancy is a problem too. If you want to indicate that France (Q142) is a sovereign state (Q3624078), why not simply use France (Q142)instance of (P31)sovereign state (Q3624078) ? It seems easier and more explicite to me than a self link.

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 19:19, 17 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

Given the odd "Einstein" example, I take it that it has no practical implications for you. --- Jura 21:01, 17 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

Odd? The whole idea is odd, therefore Vigneron's example is odd as well. Because there are a dozen countries which are a NUTS unit as whole, these twelve countries apparently showed up in the constraint violation list of NUTS code (P605), and the self-link was proposed as a solution. But the self-link is added to other countries like Germany etc. as well, and that makes no sense at all. Marking a country as a country (for the goals Jura mentions like timezone, list of monuments etc.) can be done with P31, as said before. Far more elegant.

Jura also mentions P131, that is not useful in these cases either.

Let's quote Bjung: "That's a very bad idea that no experienced database manager would ever implement. Technical problems should not be solved by polluting the database with properties that are useless for the end user. Such kludges are also difficult to remove later when users get accustomed to them and programs depend on them." Bever (talk) 23:45, 8 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Maybe fix the NUTS code constraint or NUTS code data layout if that caused a constraint violation instead of allowing self links in the form "country of country X is country X"? Eldizzino (talk) 12:00, 7 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

Add me to the list of those who don't understand the rationale behind this. I read the discussion at Property talk:P17/Archive#Add a self-link to sovereign states?, and the only reasons given there are:

First, "solve the problem described at Wikidata:Database reports/Constraint violations/P605#"Item country (P17)" violations"
- This apparently comes from the restrictions stated at Property talk:P605, specifically the one that says that "items with this property should also have country (P17)". In the discussion, UV mentioned that this circular reference would "make automated checks much easier", but didn't explain how exactly.
- In fact, a discussion was started there by Shlomo, in the section "Erroneous item constraint - P17 required", suggesting as a solution to "change the constraint that the item should either have a country (P17) defined or set the instance of (P31) to sovereign state (Q3624078)". For some reason, which wasn't explained, the preferred course of action was instead to propose a hack which requires this clearly redundant self-reference.
Second, "provide an elegant way to check whether an item describes a sovereign state."
- There's nothing elegant about saying France (Q142)country (P17)France (Q142). I can't see how France (Q142)instance of (P31)sovereign state (Q3624078) isn't considered the proper/elegant way to state that "an item describes a sovereign state".

Can someone please elucidate me? --Waldir (talk) 01:14, 24 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

The problem arises with any property that can apply to items for geographic locations of different levels including countries. --- Jura 05:27, 5 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

Those quirks should be removed, if a constraint really need this, the constraint should be fixed. Akeron (talk) 08:10, 1 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

P17 in Antarctica

Latest comment: 8 years ago86 comments8 people in discussion

I have seen statements like: "P17:Argentina" in Antarctica, and to be onnest, it feels wrong. I can accept that research-stations and the handfull of settlements who exists there uses such statements, but for islands and mountains etc, it looks terribly wrong.

How about located in the administrative territorial entity (P131)/location (P276):Argentine Antarctica (Ignálea) (Q646243) instead? -- Innocent bystander (talk) 13:54, 29 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

I think I once read something that suggested that the difference between Argentine stations and those of any other country is that Argentinians sit there mainly to assert their territorial claim ..

Personally, I think it would simplify things if we used P17="Antarctic Treaty area" for Antarctica. --- Jura 14:30, 29 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

Agree! -- Innocent bystander (talk) 14:37, 29 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

I made a corresponding item: Antarctic Treaty area (Q21590062) --- Jura 16:46, 29 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

That seems completely wrong to me. "Antarctic Treaty area" isn't a country any more than Antarctica is. I also don't understand the point of doing that. We already have continent (P30) which can be set to Antarctica (Q51). Using "Antarctica Treaty area" doesn't link it to the country either, which was presumably the whole point of setting P17 to Argentina in the first place. If you really want to say that it doesn't belong to a country, we can already use the special value "no value". - Nikki (talk) 05:11, 30 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

It's a sort of condominium (Q734818) with country codes and other things. As you mentioned elsewhere, using continent creates various systematic problems. --- Jura 06:34, 30 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

@Jura1: Lots of things which aren't sovereign states have an ISO code. Most of them are currently not considered valid values for this property, so the existence of an ISO code does not automatically mean an item should be used with this property. The only issues I've had are not with the data itself, but with the constraint reports being inflexible. The solution to inflexible tools is never to change the data, it's to fix the tools. Even if we do want to add P17 to make it clear that something in Antarctica is not in any country, we already have novalue for saying that. I don't see any reason why "Antarctic Treaty area" should ever be used as a value for P17, in the same way that I don't see any reason to set all items on the Moon to "country: Moon Treaty area" or all items in outer space to "country: Outer Space Treaty area" - none of them are countries, just areas defined by treaties which some countries have agreed to. If we want to say something is located in the Antarctic Treaty area, location (P276) would be the appropriate property. - Nikki (talk) 11:59, 13 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

ɾ Ok, sounds like we haven't solved the problems you had at the same time. P276 can seem suitable, but we use that mainly for events and movable objects. As far as I can tell, codes for the treaty area are the only ones that refer to a condominium, so it was a good candidate for P17. This is similar to subnational entities used in P131 that are administrated by some central or joint entity, but that are not the constitutent parts of sovereign states. Using P17:Argentina can be tempting - as Argentina is a country -, but P1336=Argentina reflects better the generally agreed view on the status of these areas. --- Jura 08:17, 2 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

While we are talking about Antarctica: This document (page 17) from the Norwegian Goverment can be of interest. From the maps on Commons, it looks like the extent of the Norwegian claim is not well defined. This document partly confirms that, but it also states that the Norwegian goverment do not oppose any interpretation of their claim, that it could include of all the area from the Coast to the Pole, including the Pole itself.

"Norske styresmakter har difor ikkje motsett seg at nokon tolkar det norske kravet slik at det går heilt opp til og inkluderer polpunktet."

-- Innocent bystander (talk) 08:40, 30 November 2015 (UTC) (And no, I am not Norwegian, and I do not support any claim of Antarctica, no matter its purpose.)Reply

Supposedly we could include the Norwegian claim in P17 as well (we currently do for a few others, even one of overlapping territorial claims), but including a distinct value in P17 would indicate more clearly the nature of the area. It's not in Norway (or in France or whatever), just because some national statistical authority included it. --- Jura 06:58, 1 December 2015 (UTC)Reply

"we currently do for a few others". Where?

Overlapping areas is not a big deal, as you say, we have many such.

If I remember correctly, there are areas within these Antarctic claims that are not affected by the Antarctic Treaty. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 08:42, 1 December 2015 (UTC)Reply

Have a look at the items listed with "applies to part" at Q21590062#P1336. --- Jura 08:48, 1 December 2015 (UTC)Reply

It seems that quite a few P1336 values need to be defined. Except for installations, probably not much use to duplicate them in P17.
--- Jura 09:14, 3 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

One of the questions brought up recently is if ATA would be "a region that is identified as a distinct entity in political geography". Clearly it's not physical geography. We (Innocent bystander and me?) do have now the issue that people added P30 with the continent to places that are not located on the continent, but only part of ATA. [1]
--- Jura 16:20, 4 July 2016 (UTC)Reply
I think it is better for us to have a consensus to use "country:novalue" than having repeated questioning of "country:ATA"-statements. My main issue here is that I do not want to see statements like "country:Norway/UK/Australia/Chile/etc" in the Antarctic. I am open for adding it in the few settlements that actually exists here, but otherwise not. And of course, adding Continent:Antarctic is an option, but you first have to check if the place really is on the continent. Many Lsjbot-items are related to places outside of the coast, some even on the bottom of the sea. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 18:20, 4 July 2016 (UTC)Reply
- People question what is new to them, no problem with that. Wikidata is new. Many people may also discover the treaty that way. There isn't really any issue with that. We add this by consensus so lets attempt to evaluate if it meets the suggested criterium "distinct entity in political geography". Interestingly, if one reads on that page it can include ATA. In any case, we need a way to identify locations that are within ATA. I can't really think of a better way to do that. Using P30 leads to the problem highlighted by here.
  --- Jura 19:04, 4 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

The Antarctic Treaty Area is not a country. If anyone can find a source stating otherwise, I'll be happy to change my mind, but in the meantime, we should be using "country:novalue" for all locations in Antarctica. Kaldari (talk) 20:05, 6 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Kaldari: In your opinion, is it possible to classify ATA as a "distinct entity in political geography"? Jura1's description of it as as a condominium (Q734818) looks valid to me! My opinion is that all ISO 3166-areas can be a "distinct entity in political geography". (Even if the entity "Svalbard and Jan Mayen" looks very fabricated to me.) That said, I am not 100 % convinced that this is a perfect solution. If > 75 % of all users who come across such a statement will remove it, it is probably waste of time to add and watch such statements. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 05:27, 7 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Innocent bystander: "Distinct entity in political geography" is not a valid definition of "country". (Yes, I know that's the definition that Wikipedia uses.) A country is the territory of a nation or state (according to pretty much any dictionary or native English speaker). I have no opinion on whether it's a condominium (Q734818). There is no book, journal, website, or database that calls the ATA a country besides Wikidata. According to [Wikidata:Verifiability]], claims must be verifiable in secondary sources. Kaldari (talk) 17:03, 7 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

ISO 3166-1 includes in countries. To make it clear that it should be used as value we could just add note it on the description of P17.
--- Jura 04:15, 8 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

I agree with Kaldari. ATA is not a country. We should use P17=novalue and P131=Argentine Antarctica (Ignálea) (Q646243). --Pasleim (talk) 19:53, 7 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

Using the special value "novalue" doesn't define that a given location is located within ATA. We still need a structured way to do so. Merely changing the label of Q21590062 to "novalue (ATA)" could achieve that. An alternative could be to create a new property for condominia.
--- Jura 04:15, 8 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Kaldari, Jura1, Pasleim: That ATA isn't a country in the meaning "the territory of a nation or state", I fully agree. From what I can see, the item about ATA does not claim that. In my opinion, adding "country:ATA" therefor do not add anything against any verifiability-policy. The problem I see here is principle of least astonishment (Q22668), not that the claim adds anything against any good source. The meaning of "P17:Q123456" is not decided by the P17-label in English, especially not when it is contradicted by the English description, the label in many other large languages, and the constraints. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 07:12, 8 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

The meaning of a property is defined by its labels and descriptions! All the labels and descriptions of P17 I'm able to read mention the word "country" or "state". As there is no source stating ATA is a country or a state, the claim "P17:Q123456" adds false information and is against any verifiability-policy. --Pasleim (talk) 08:10, 8 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

I think we agree that it's verifiable that these places are located within the treaty area, that it is a structured way of expressing this and that the applicable country codes are ATA or AQ. The question is now what would be the best way to structure this. I think we are all open to reasonable suggestions.
--- Jura 08:25, 8 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Jura1: What about located in the administrative territorial entity (P131):Antarctic Treaty area (Q21590062)? Kaldari (talk) 17:39, 8 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

That sounds odd to me and it doesn't seem like the normal use of that property, but I can't quite explain why. I would rather use location (P276) over located in the administrative territorial entity (P131). - Nikki (talk) 19:05, 8 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

P276 would be inconsistent with other uses of that property (see discussion above). Given that ATA is a "Distinct entity in political geography", it should go into P17 or maybe P131. P17 has the advantage that it's equivalent level to most other values used with that property, but maybe P131 could do as well. Those Wikipedia versions that make use of it seem to use it as P17 (e.g. nnwiki). A simpler solution could be to improve labels and descriptions of the current property/value. For those who prefer not to follow ISO or nnwiki, can we have samples and definitions for the suggested alternate approaches?
--- Jura 18:09, 10 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

P131 looks more correct than P276... -- Innocent bystander (talk) 18:38, 10 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

So far P276 isn't used for geographical objects, so I would really go with P131. --Pasleim (talk) 08:52, 21 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

OK, so it sounds like the consensus is to replace country (P17):Antarctic Treaty area (Q21590062) with country (P17):no value and located in the administrative territorial entity (P131):Antarctic Treaty area (Q21590062). Does that sound correct? Kaldari (talk) 13:09, 27 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

As far as I can see, Yes! If you intend to fix this, feel free to close the thread on "Bot requests" about this topic! -- Innocent bystander (talk) 13:48, 27 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

The problem with "no value" is that it's virtually impossible to edit efficiently. Can we do an item instead?
--- Jura 13:54, 27 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

Kaldari offered to fix it with his bot. So you don't have to work. Moreover, it doesn't take more time to add a novalue instead of an item. --Pasleim (talk) 14:01, 27 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

I already did all the work so: can you illustrate your last point with PetScan, QuickStatement, Autolist?
--- Jura 14:04, 27 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

We shouldn't adapt the data structure of Wikidata to functionalities of external tools. Also quantities with units and monolingual texts aren't supported by Magnus' tools but still we use them.

I agree with Pasleim. External tools should adapt to Wikidata, not vice versa. Kaldari (talk) 18:09, 13 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

Currently we are following an approach consistent with ISO. If we change this, we would need to provide a reference for it. Can we see this before any change?
--- Jura 14:07, 27 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

Where was consensus made to follow the approach by ISO? And if there was consensus why weren't places like Norfolk Island (Q31057) or Bouvet Island (Q23408) not added to the above country list? --Pasleim (talk) 11:18, 31 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

The current approach was discussed last year. If you think we need to check P17 for other regions, this should obviously be discussed as well. -- Jura 05:33, 14 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

I didn't ask when it was discussed but where. Please point me to the discussion. --Pasleim (talk) 07:51, 14 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

Ah .. here. -- Jura 15:41, 21 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

We don't provide references for any of our current statements that places belong to the country of ATA, so I see no reason to require references for changing it. I also don't see how ISO is especially relevant here. The purpose and scope of ISO codes is different than the purpose and scope of P17. Kaldari (talk) 18:04, 13 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

It's normal that you have to provide a reference for your change. I can understand that it can be tempting to sign up to do some change without being able to substantiate it, but that's not what how it works. Please research your suggested approach and provide the requested reference for it. -- Jura 05:33, 14 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Jura1: You want me to find a source for every place in Antactica that says that it isn't located in a country? There are no such sources. Would you prefer that I just remove all the country claims and leave none? Kaldari (talk) 20:49, 14 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

A reference for the values that illustrates that it's consistent with the scheme you advocate for Treaty Area places. Similar to the reference and the definition we provided for the current approach. -- Jura 15:41, 21 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Jura1: Here is a reference:

Saul, Ben; Stephens, Tim, eds. (2015). Antarctica in International Law. Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing. p. 885. ISBN 1849467315. Antarctica can properly be characterized as something of an international anomaly. It is a large continent which has never been and is not now subject to the sovereignty of any nation. Under the Antarctica Treaty of 1959 the signatory nations agreed not to exercise sovereignty in Antarctica, although their claims to sovereignty were not extinguished.

Kaldari (talk) 21:44, 21 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

Reading the context, is this a US judicial view for the 1970s focusing on its installations on the continent in relation to some US act? It's not clear how this supports your approach for ATA in 2016 in general. It might mean they'd use P17=United States of America (Q30) or at least P1336=Q30 for areas with installations. Interesting find. I agree with what Innocent bystander wrote earlier: we shouldn't add such statement in P17 (even it's the US here). It could support adding Q30 to P1336 of some items. -- Jura 17:43, 30 August 2016 (UTC)Reply
- @Jura1: It supports the approach that was agree upon because it says that no country has sovereignty over any part of Antarctica. It goes on to say "Antarctica is not a foreign country, it is not a country at all; and it is not under the dominion of any other foreign nation or country." No one has suggested that we add statements about any US claims, so I don't know why you're creating a red herring about that. Kaldari (talk) 00:36, 31 August 2016 (UTC)Reply
  - The problem is that it goes on to say that the US makes such claims and it is an official US view of the 1970s. This doesn't match the current condominium view and I don't think it's sufficient to change from the view we agreed on last year and currently implemented.
    --- Jura 21:22, 7 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
    - @Jura1: How does the fact that the US has made claims on Antarctica mean that the ATA is a country? That's a complete non-sequitur. Even if Antarctica was a condominium, that doesn't automatically make it a country. The Gulf of Fonseca is also a condominium, but it's obviously not a country. So far, no one else here agrees with your position and you haven't done much to build any kind of alternative consensus or present any references backing up your position that the ATA is a country (other than citing a convoluted definition of "country" from Wikipedia, which isn't a reliable source, and using original research to argue that that definition makes the ATA a country). At this point, it doesn't seem like you are really interested in building a new consensus, but are just throwing up roadblocks to obstruct the current consensus. Kaldari (talk) 09:00, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
      - ATA could be used as P17, if we form a consensus to do that! "Country" as a property does not have to fit any definition in any dictionary in any language. We are here trying to form a relation between two items, not to replace the function of international law. It would be useful if the use of P17 could fit how "country" is used as a parameter in Wikipedia. Currently I do not think P17 does that. "Greenland", "Puerto Rico" et al are there often used. But if we demands such a thing as "sovereign state" we cannot use such items as ATA and Greenland in P17. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 09:18, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
      - I think a condominium fits well the definition brought up earlier in the discussion of the request for P17: "region that is identified as a distinct entity in political geography" (not by me BTW). As it's the only definition brought up so far and the US view for their potential territorial claims in the 1970s seems hardly sufficient as a reference for a solution in the 2010s, I think you primarily fail to provide what we expect from users.
        --- Jura 10:14, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
        @Jura1: So you're saying that things like the Gulf of Fonseca, Pheasant Island, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and maybe even the Pacific Ocean (which could be considered a condominium) should all be listed as countries even though no other source on the planet calls them countries? That doesn't seem sensible. If you have no actual sources to present to support this argument, I don't think you're going to convince anyone. Kaldari (talk) 19:26, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

The quote on p. 885 of Saul & Stephens is a bit of an odd one to pick - as noted, it's a quote from a US court ruling in the 1980s, dealing with a specific point of US law (is Antarctica included in "foreign countries"?). It's not particularly wrong, and it's certainly not a US-only interpretation as has been suggested, but it's a bit limited in context - a better summary of the situation is from the ATS:

Among the signatories of the Treaty were seven countries - Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom - with territorial claims , sometimes overlapping. Other countries do not recognize any claims. The US and Russia maintain a “basis of claim”. All positions are explicitly protected in Article IV, which preserves the status quo:

"No acts or activities taking place while the present Treaty is in force shall constitute a basis for asserting , supporting or denying a claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica or create any rights of sovereignty in Antarctica. No new claim, or enlargement of an existing claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica shall be asserted while the present Treaty is in force."

In effect, under the Treaty, those countries which have a claim suspend it without losing the claim; those countries which reserve the right to make a claim continue to do so; and those countries which don't make a claim agree not to make any new ones. This is all a bit fuzzy and doesn't really map perfectly to the way we structure things on Wikidata, but it seems the P131 approach works regardless of what we interpret the Treaty Area to be - it's an area, yes, but it's certainly not a country and it's not quite a condominum or a disputed territory, either.

I agree that "country: Treaty Area" or "country: Antarctica" would also make sense if we defined these as a special case for P17. Really, I'd be happy with either - we just need to pick one, declare it standard, and get on with it. P131 has the benefit that it avoids anyone saying "oh, it's not really a country, remove" later (which will inevitably happen somewhere), and it's unarguable that *some kind* of administrative concept exists; P17 has the benefit we don't have to mess around with novalue properties and it's consistent with the way we handle every other landmass in the world. Neither is perfect, but either is defensible, and we shouldn't wait around for years trying for conceptual perfection. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:20, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

We actually did pick one last year and implemented that. Changing it now just complicates things going forward.
--- Jura 07:15, 14 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Proposal for solution I

The argument above has gone in circles for months. I think it's time to assess whether or not we have consensus. I propose the following solution:

Remove any existing country claims from places located in Antarctica
Add the claim: country (P17):novalue
Add the claim: located in the administrative territorial entity (P131):Antarctic Treaty area (Q21590062)

Please indicate below whether you support or oppose this proposal. Pinging interested parties: Pasleim, Jura, Innocent bystander, Nikki, Andy Mabbett, Thryduulf, Ymblanter. Kaldari (talk) 19:39, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Support, since this is the solution which most people seem to agree with in the discussions above and it seems like a sensible approach. Kaldari (talk) 19:42, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
Stöder I think there are other ways to do this, but this is a solution we can find a consensus around today. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 19:44, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
Support since I would never call Antarctic Treaty area (Q21590062) a country. --Pasleim (talk) 19:52, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
Support - this looks like the cleanest solution but I think we should also add some clear definitions on how to handle edge cases - comments below so not to derail this. Andrew Gray (talk) 20:18, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
Oppose - Wikidata shouldn't adopted the US view for the 1970s. Stating that's it's no man's land is just erroneous. The treaty area as a condominium matches the agreed definition "region that is identified as a distinct entity in political geography". As we still haven't seen a valid reference for the suggested model, I don't see what justification we would have to adopt it. We should definitely retain all country claims in the region. P1336 has been made for this specific reason.
--- Jura 22:23, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
- I agree that we should leave all P1336 country claims. Kaldari (talk) 04:54, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
Support One of good solutions for this delicate problem. --Jklamo (talk) 23:59, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
Support. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:32, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Proposal for solution II

The proposed definition for P17 is "region that is identified as a distinct entity in political geography". The Antartic Treaty Area is generally considered a Condominium. The solution we currently agreed on is the following:

Add the claim: country (P17): Antarctic Treaty area (Q21590062)
Add territory claimed by (P1336) to regions claimed by specific countries
Add the claim: located in the administrative territorial entity (P131): for any subregions

This use is consistent with country lists by various organizations. Please indicate below whether you support or oppose this. -- Jura 00:10, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Support -- Jura 00:10, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
Oppose -- I like this idea, I even prefer it. But I cannot see that we can form a consensus around it when we are so focused around the literal meaning of the label of our properties. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 05:22, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
- It depends on how you read "country: none": I think most agree that it's incorrect that this area can be appropriated by any state. -- Jura 10:12, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
Oppose Antartic Treaty Area is not a country. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:33, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
Oppose since I would never call Antarctic Treaty area (Q21590062) a country. --Pasleim (talk) 17:07, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
Oppose - I don't agree with defining the ATA as a country. Kaldari (talk) 23:47, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Suggested definitions & related properties

I feel like I should have put my Antarctic hat on and commented on this earlier - this is dangerously close to my day job :-). As noted above, there are some edge cases it would be good to have a clear line on.

Boundary. The Treaty area stops at 60S, and a constraint that located in the administrative territorial entity (P131):Antarctic Treaty area (Q21590062) & no country (P17) should only be used south of that line is sensible. This will include some (but not all) of the sub-Antarctic islands - eg South Orkney Islands (Q207383) but not Macquarie Island (Q46650).

Territorial claims. It is probably easiest to use located in the administrative territorial entity (P131):Adélie Land (Q184319), in addition to Treaty Area, for anything located in the relevant territorial area. About 75% of Antarctica is is one of the claims, and at a guess ~30-40% of identified features are in the Peninsula area and so covered by up to three overlapping claims. We should explicitly state these are also permitted values to go alongside Antarctic Treaty area (Q21590062). These regions can then have territory claimed by (P1336):[parent country], rather than putting territory claimed by (P1336) on every item. Andrew Gray (talk) 20:29, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Nationally-associated places (mostly research stations and other things with an owner). We need some way to say that Neumayer-Station III (Q7933) is associated with Germany (Q183). We should probably use operator (P137) for these, either listing a country or an organisation - this seems to be what embassies do and that's a good analogy.

If people are happy with these, I can start putting together a script to run a constraint report for them. Andrew Gray (talk) 20:18, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

If this is linked to your day job, can you advise us about any territorial claim your employer may have?
--- Jura 22:25, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Andrew Gray: Those all sound like reasonable suggestions to me. If you can generate a list of all the locations south of 60S, I would be happy to use it. Kaldari (talk) 04:57, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

I believe they rent an office in Cambridge. HTH. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:35, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Jura1: - I work in scientific support for British Antarctic Survey (Q918757). The UK (the country, not the organisation) has a territorial claim in the Peninsula area (British Antarctic Territory (Q165783)). As with all the national claims, this claim is effectively suspended under the Treaty. I hope this isn't considered a COI - I am certainly not commenting here in any official capacity, just as someone who has to think about Antarctic issues daily and hopefully understands some of the issues :-)

Territorial claims are complex and I don't pretend to understand the nuances fully, but I can't think of a better way to deal with them than P131, other than leaving them off Wikidata entirely, and I feel that wouldn't be very useful. Either way, they're secondary to the core issue here.

I've added some comments above re the quote Kaldari found, which seems to have caused a bit of unnecessary confusion. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:11, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

I think it might have if you had supported solution II. How about @Kaldari:: do you have a conflict of interest?
--- Jura 07:11, 14 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

My only conflict of interest is that I'm tired of talking about Antarctica and want to wrap this up one day :P Kaldari (talk) 07:22, 14 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

I think the monuments in Antarctica could use some curating. I finished protected areas some time ago.
--- Jura 07:27, 14 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Kaldari: - I've asked about a suitable SPARQL query. There's a sample one at query.wikidata.org (based on an arbitrary 3000km north of the Pole) but it feels like directly querying coordinate values would make a lot more sense than converting to distance. Once I've figured out how to do those I'll write a query for "everything below 60S" and one for each of the seven territorial claims. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:11, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Thanks to Xmlizer, here's a query for all ~20k+ items south of 60S (plus P17 and P30 where known).

For future use reference, this is everything with P30:Q51 between -40S and -60S (seems to mostly be sub-Antarctic islands and a bit of South America; will probably remove all these at some point) Andrew Gray (talk) 21:02, 15 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

One more thing that's just occurred to me - most (but not all) Antarctic places are currently tagged with continent (P30):Q50, which seems to have originated as a way to get around the P17 problem. Once we have everything marked as "Antarctic Treaty Area", it feels like this won't be needed any more. I think we can safely remove them - thoughts? Andrew Gray (talk) 20:45, 16 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Andrew Gray: Did you mean continent (P30):Antarctica (Q51)? That seems fine to me. Antarctica is a continent after all. There doesn't seem to be any controversy about that. Kaldari (talk) 23:39, 16 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Kaldari: this is what I get for doing properties from memory - yes, Q51! It feels like this is really a hack to of express the same thing; it's not really consistent with the way P30 is used in the rest of the world and I'm not sure we need it alongside the P17/P131 solution (whichever one we go with). P30 is currently a bit strange - the definitions say it should be assigned to countries, places on two continents (eg Istanbul?), and anywhere in Antarctica. At the moment, some continents are reasonable (a few hundred items), some are a bit high (a few thousand), and Antarctica has 48% of all P30 values. But this is a discussion to have over there once we've sorted this bit out, I suppose :-). Andrew Gray (talk) 09:34, 17 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Summarised

I've put together a summary of the recommendations here for future reference at Wikidata:Antarctica. Andrew Gray (talk) 21:55, 23 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Akrotiri and Dhekelia

Latest comment: 8 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

How should we do about Akrotiri and Dhekelia (Q37362)? I see Q60509 has Cyprus in P17, when it maybe formally is United Kingdom. Thoughts? @Tom Morris: who added that statement? -- Innocent bystander (talk) 13:26, 9 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

Innocent bystander: I was just adding country properties based on category membership. It wasn't a grand political gesture and I have no strong opinions on this matter. Feel free to revert/remove the claim. —Tom Morris (talk) 20:21, 9 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

It is always tricky when we have articles and categories that are dubious in their character, like both islands and nations. One essential question here is if Akrotiri and Dhekelia can be treated as a nation in its own, like the Channel islands, Gibraltar and the Indian Ocean Overseas Territories sometimes are. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 07:04, 10 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

I think that locations in Akrotiri and Dhekelia (Q37362) should have P17 set to either Cyprus or United Kingdom - I have no preference which (maybe the former for civilian places and the latter for military?) - the areas are not a country themselves. Thryduulf (talk) 19:20, 4 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

P17 with end dates but no replacement.

Latest comment: 8 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion

We have discussed if independent nations should have self-referencing statements like: "Canada: Country:Canada" or not. I do not remember what conclusion we came to, but my experience is that most such statements have sooner or later been removed.

A related question is how we should act with statements like this. The statement is fully true, but it is not replaced with anything, making it the most valid P17-statement in the item at the moment. Leaving the question if Western Sahara is a "country" independent enough to use with P17 aside for a moment, we have to solve this for many nations. Norway became fully independent in 1905 after almost a century as subject under Sweden. Some kind of statement have to be added next to "P17:Sweden, end date:1905". Should it be "P17:Norway, start date:1905" or "P17:novalue, start date:1905"? -- Innocent bystander (talk) 18:32, 4 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

Well, even the genetics project has issues with people merging completely unrelated items. It's likely to happen.

At mw:Wikibase/Indexing/SPARQL_Query_Examples#List_of_countries_in_1754, I added a query based on the discussion on Wikidata:Project chat. I think we should attempt to make such queries work.
--- Jura 19:12, 4 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Jura1: Was I unclear, how is that thread (which I remember) related to my Q above? -- Innocent bystander (talk) 05:14, 5 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

If one starts out with that query for a given year, one should eventually be able to find parts of these countries.
--- Jura 04:19, 8 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

But it was the P17-relations after 1976 for Western Sahara or after 1905 for Norway I was talking about. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 07:14, 8 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

To query the first one for 1980, Q6250 needs an inception date and a second statement with P17 (P17=Q6250). For 1850, Q20 (or an item with a similar geographic scope) would need a P17-statement related to Sweden.
--- Jura 08:33, 8 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

I think we need to work on better mapping of changes in geographic extensions .. your agglomeration proposal is a start.
--- Jura 21:25, 7 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

P17 for places in Jersey (Q785)

Latest comment: 1 year ago16 comments8 people in discussion

What's the value to use? For some reasons, it should probably not be United Kingdom (Q145) or Normandy. Jersey (Q785)?
--- Jura 13:50, 10 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

Use United Kingdom (Q145) with country (P17). You can use Jersey (Q785) with applies to jurisdiction (P1001) or country for sport (P1532) or located in the administrative territorial entity (P131). --Arctic.gnome (talk) 18:23, 16 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

@Arctic.gnome: Why would P131 be used here? What does that qualifier indicate precisely? --Yair rand (talk) 23:13, 18 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

@Yair rand: We use P131 for subdivisions of countries. For example, the Empire State Building is P17 United States and P131 New York State. But P17 can be used for client states and vassal states. British crown dependencies are in a grey area that could be a P17 or P131 value under our current parameters. --Arctic.gnome (talk) 06:20, 19 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

In the meantime I went ahead and used Q785 as "novalue" didn't quite work out. What do you base your recommendation for P17 on?
--- Jura 07:12, 17 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

I would use Jersey for P17. We already allow various things which are not sovereign states for P17 and I think the British Crown dependencies should be added to that list, because they are not part of the UK (as stated in this government document). - Nikki (talk) 01:41, 19 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

@Nikki: It looks like our current set up does allow British crown dependencies to be P17 values because they are a subclass of Client State (Q1151405). I'm not sure if it would stay like that if we did a thorough review of our political geography hierarchy, but for now it works. --Arctic.gnome (talk) 06:20, 19 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

Ok, as we seem to agree they should be there, I added them explicitly. As the hierarchy keeps getting changed without any explanation, we might otherwise loose focus what actually should be there.
--- Jura 06:32, 19 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

Jersey is not part of the United Kingdom, which is clearly stated in w:en:Crown dependencies. Hence it is very sensible to use Jersey itself as the P17 value. --Anvilaquarius (talk) 15:19, 21 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

I agree, I see no reason for not allowing Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man as a valid value for P17: they are self-governed, even if their head of state is the Queen (just like Canada), and even if they chose (freely, and in agreement with the Queen representing the Crown) to be internationally represented by UK (acting on behalf of the States governing each one of the dependency) instead of joining themselves to the United Nations and creating their own diplomatic missions, and even if their citizens were also granted (by UK) a British "citizenship" (but not a British "nationality") by a bilateral treaty.

These mutual relations can be freely revoked by them or by UK, but the dependencies cannot revoke themselves their dependency status with the Crown without a mutual agreement of the Crown (the Queen represented by its Lieutenant-Governor) and the States governing the dependency.

It would probably also require first a referendum of their population to approve (or reject) this proposal of constitutional-like status, that will then have to be endorsed by the States and then approved and promulgated by the Queen ; so they become fully independant like Canada, in a position where they would create a new separate kingdom in the Commonwealth, because these people would also loose their British citizenship at the same time (like it occured for Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders and many countries that are now independant but remained in the international organization called "Commonwealth", similar to the "European Union" which is also an international organization just like also the "United Nations", two organizations that these dependencies did not joined directly as full members, only as observers, just to remain united under the umbrella of the "British Crown" which is another international organization headed separately by the Queen or its official succession). Note that the British Crown itself is also not a member of the UN, it just chose to be represented as well by UK that acts on behalf of the Crown for international affairs (but international affairs conducted by UK can be vetoed by the Crown, which can instruct the States of its dependencies to give their response; as well the States of each dependency can veto a legislative decision made by the Westminster Parliament or which has no right to decide on behalf of these States except on domains where there's an applicable mandate for it still in validity).

The best we an describe this situation is that these 3 dependencies are "almost independant" countries, just like other "free associations" existing between some countries and New Zealand. But instead of being separate associations between each state and UK, they are first grouped in a required level by the Crown, which is then itself "freely associated" with UK. So the association between each dependency and UK is indirect.

In the past the Crown had only two dependencies (Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands), and there was no legal separation of the States of Jersey and the States of Guernsey, so all laws applicable for one was applicable for the other. But the Channel Islands were dissolved and split in two separate States, still full part of the Crown, so they are now two separate juridictions and each one of these two State can separately veto or endorse a British law (but most notably they can decide themselves their own taxes and budgetsn and apply distinct rules for their own respective citizenship, or their own rules for security, maritime affairs, travelers, air space, environment, import/exports of products with UK or with the European Union).

Even after UK (and Gibraltar ?) will exit the EU (next year), these 3 Crown dependencies can continue to work with the European Union under their own agreement and still with UK forced to represent their interest with the EU (and notably with France and the Republic of Ireland)!

Already these 3 dependencies already have their own diplomatic missions in France and Ireland, separate from diplomatic missions of UK in France and UK. France also has its own separate mission in Jersey.

UK does not have (or need) a diplomatic mission in these States because it can ask directly to the Crown which has delegated its own Lieutenant-Governors: the offices of these LTs in these 3 States already act as diplomatic missions representing UK interests, on behalf of UK.

As well there are local offices for the British police and British army, but not for the British justice because the respective courts of these States have a final authority, just below the Crown order. And the British courts are not locally competent, unless there's an arbitration decided by all parties, and this arbitration will generally occur somewhere else in Europe, in a "neutral" country (for example in the Netherlands, Belgium or Switzerland, or elsewhere in the world if needed to keep the neutrality and have the decision accepted by all parties). Verdy p (talk) 22:24, 19 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

Is the decision to not use UK for both Crown Dependencies (Q185086) and British overseas territories (Q46395)? Pragmatically I'd support that as I often select by United Kingdom (Q145) for maps, and the outliers confuse things, and there is no simple way to add exclusions for them. Vicarage (talk) 07:34, 7 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Vicarage: in a nutshell: British Overseas Territories are British territories, Crown Dependancies are not. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 11:19, 7 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

The Wikipedia article says "The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remnants of the former British Empire and do not form part of the United Kingdom itself." So the question is what country (P17) could include them if not the UK? Vicarage (talk) 11:25, 7 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Vicarage: Hmm, good question - here I'm less sure (I'm more familiar with Crown Dependancies) - but they are part of the UK, aren't they? If you look at en:Bermuda or en:Cayman_Islands it says « Sovereign state: United Kingdom ». We need better sources and references here. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 13:31, 7 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/32952/ot-wp-0612.pdf is a 2012 FCO paper discussing the UK's relation with them both. It has an infobox "What are the Crown Dependencies? The Crown Dependencies are the Bailiwick of Jersey, the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Isle of Man. The Bailiwick of Guernsey includes the separate jurisdictions of Alderney and Sark and the islands of Herm, Jethou and Lihou. The island of Brecqhou is part of Sark. Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man are not part of the UK but are internally self-governing dependencies of the Crown. This means they have their own directly elected legislative assemblies, administrative, fiscal and legal systems and their own courts of law. The Crown Dependencies are not represented in the UK Parliament. The Crown Dependencies have never been colonies of the UK. Neither are they members of the EU.",

But it does not have the same infobox for the territories, https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2016/04/12/graham-john-wheeler-the-british-overseas-territories-and-direct-rule/ is a constitutional view, but I'm struggling to find a UK government definition. All documents are written with UK on one hand, territory on the other... Vicarage (talk) 13:52, 7 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

I have made the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey entries consistently their own countries. If there is disagreement we can consistently change them all back to UK. Vicarage (talk) 09:44, 8 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Should countries have a country? (i.e. self reference)

Latest comment: 7 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

There is a constraint on this property that says they should. But many countries do not, and some that did have had it removed. --99of9 (talk) 00:22, 5 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

To use P17 in that way is a good way to show that you have reached the top level. You will not get any further. -- Innocent bystander (⧼Takpagelinktext⧽) 04:48, 5 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

I also would prefer it. But it was removed from Australia (Q408), and when I checked United States of America (Q30) it wasn't there either. --99of9 (talk) 11:22, 5 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

Sometimes I wished we had a way to comment a statement, like we do in templates at Wikipedia:  -- Innocent bystander (talk) 12:45, 5 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

We had comment (DEPRECATED) (P2315), but it's been deprecated. I'm not sure how it would work, though, on a multi-lingual project. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:40, 5 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

One option could be to have item-datatype for those comments, allowing everybody to translate them as labels, (if they want to). reason for deprecated rank (P2241) is partly used in that way. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 18:54, 5 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

Belongs to vs. situated in

Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I'm wondering how to use P17 for an Australian monument which is situated in theUK. From a "situated in" perspective P17 should be UK, but the monument "belongs to" Australia.

In guessing embassies have much the same problem. Any suggestions are welcome. /Lokal Profil (talk) 07:40, 2 September 2017 (UTC)Reply

Well, if I remember correctly, operator (P137) is used for embassies to tell who "owns" the embassy, while P17 tells where it is located. Which nation is served by the embassy is another delicate problem. (For example embassies in Italy serving The Holy See and/or San Marino, or embassies in Spain serving relations between Andorra and the owner.) But I guess the latter is seldom a problem for a monument. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 08:26, 2 September 2017 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! operator (P137) it is. / Lokal Profil (talk) 18:35, 2 September 2017 (UTC)Reply

Arctic (Q25322)

Latest comment: 6 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

We have consensus above to apply country (P17)novalue and located in the administrative territorial entity (P131)Antarctic Treaty area (Q21590062), but how about Arctic related items? Looks like this is a grey area that we still haven't defined, which therefore I can have reasons and resources to add one of:

How do we think this panorama? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:51, 7 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

@Liuxinyu970226: The Arctic situation is completely different from the Antarctic - pretty much all of the land in the Arctic is uncontroversially claimed by one country or another, except for a couple of small islands, and anything in international waters wouldn't have a P17 anyway. We shouldn't need to do anything special in the Arctic that we aren't doing for any other sea region. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:15, 24 May 2018 (UTC)Reply

Population as qualifier

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Ethnic groups can be spread across various countries. In these cases, country (P17) can have population (Q2625603) as qualifier? Should we add population (Q2625603) as an allowed qualifier or add instances of ethnic groups as exceptions?--Malore (talk) 22:14, 23 April 2018 (UTC)Reply

England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland being automatically replaced with UK is causing errors

Latest comment: 6 years ago12 comments7 people in discussion

Hi

I stumbled upon this page when a bot made this edit to Inventory of Historic Battlefields in Scotland (Q6059933), this is incorrect as the database (as the name suggests) only covers Scotland, it is likely there are other cases like this that are being incorrectly changed. I would suggest there is are more nuanced rules needed, please can this rule be paused until this is addressed.

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 17:49, 24 May 2018 (UTC)Reply

@John Cummings:. Using applies to jurisdiction (P1001) for this would seem a better solution. Strictly speaking, this is correct - the country of the database, in the sense that P17 means, is the UK; compare to cultural heritage list of Brandenburg (Q1188463) which has country:Germany, even though it only applies to part of it. Note that this is already the established use for National Heritage List for England (Q6973052), as well, for a UK example. I've updated the item. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:01, 24 May 2018 (UTC)Reply

Thanks very much @Andrew Gray:. --John Cummings (talk) 22:30, 24 May 2018 (UTC)Reply

The bot is also changing battle sites in Wales, when Wales was free, a nation, a state and many other similar. The 'UK' did not exist at this time. Please stop! in fact, we don't need a bot to over rule common sense and human input! I suggest Wales and Scotland be removed from the code. John Jones (talk) 14:34, 4 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Obviously there should be a check for the time range of the item (to change to UK only after 1922 or something like this). --Infovarius (talk) 07:57, 5 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Agree. As a rough guide, anything before the 'Laws in Wales Act of 1542' (traditionally / wrongly known as 'The Act of Union') should be left as 'Wales'. 1412 - Who implements this? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 10:25, 5 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I ask again; request for constraint on dates for Wales before 1542. Politically, it's one rule for Wales, one rule for England. On Battle of Llanllieni (Q20584463) P17 / country = Kingdom of England (Q179876), unchanged by the bot! If this aint political, then what is? I wouldn't go as far as saying that this could well be construed as Wikidata ethnic cleansing Wales off the map, but it's not far off. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 16:18, 12 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

@Llywelyn2000: and two "John"s: I recently cancelled auto replacement of Wales one, due to those historic problems, feel free to re-add country (P17) Wales (Q25) in historic-related cases, like we currently allow P17 Northern Ireland (Q26) for NI sport-related items (https://query.wikidata.org/#SELECT%20%3Fitem%20%3Fvalue%20WHERE%0A%7B%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20p%3AP17%2Fps%3AP17%20wd%3AQ26%0A%7D). --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:17, 13 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Liuxinyu970226! Can we now undo the changes done by autofix in the (say) last year? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 06:32, 13 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, User:Llywelyn2000,

⟨ Battle of Llanllieni (Q20584463)  

 ⟩ country (P17) ⟨ Wales (Q25)  

 ⟩

does not much sense for me (as well as

⟨ Wales (Q25)  

 ⟩ instance of (P31) ⟨ state (Q7275)  

 ⟩

) - Wales wasn't an independent state in current boundaries (may be with exception of 1057-1063 years), as I know. Or we should use some more exact items like Kingdom of Powys (Q769782). --Infovarius (talk) 13:30, 14 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

@Infovarius: As per this "Chinese British"'s comment on Baidu Zhidao (copy-paste that url to [2] to see en/ru...), there was an independent Wales country existing before 1301 (Q5610) Statute of Rhuddlan (Q1190809), so frankly Wales (Q25) should have it's P17 usage way to describe this pre-1301 (Gre.) (or probably pre-1301 (Jul.)) things. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 10:39, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

@Liuxinyu970226, Infovarius, John Jones: Thanks Infovarius - I've changed the first you mention (Battle of Llanllieni (Q20584463) - as it is today in England. Good spot! Wales was an independent state in current boundaries, give or take a mile or two - and if you say a mile or two makes it a different country then you also need to change the word England to another, as it also gained / lost territory! Pre 9th century, separate kingdoms were linked collectively - and referred to as "Wales" or "Cymru"; first written 12c Book of Llandaf, also nationality = Welsh person (same document). This is how every historian (without exception) described this land of Wales after the Romans went back home. Llywelyn2000 aka Robin Owain (WMUK) (talk) 09:12, 22 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Holy Roman Empire

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The Holy Roman Empire doesn't have the statement country. That's strange. Please add it. --HRvO (talk) 17:44, 1 August 2018 (UTC)Reply

Historical country

Latest comment: 6 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Items tagged <instance of> historical country (Q3024240) throw a constraint error when used as a value of this property. Is that what we want? See for example Pictish stone (Q1666255) <country> Pictland (Q21004660). Should this be 'Scotland' instead? - PKM (talk) 20:51, 13 August 2018 (UTC)Reply

Same with colony (Q133156). Can we add this for value-requires-statement constraint (Q21510864)? Regards, Conny (talk) 16:17, 13 October 2018 (UTC).Reply

please rollback change from Greenland to Kingdom of Denmark

Latest comment: 5 years ago12 comments7 people in discussion

Moved from User talk:Ivan A. Krestinin

Greenland (Q223) is a autonomous constituent country in Kingdom of Denmark (Q756617) and Kingdom of Denmark (Q756617) is union af countries. --Steenth (talk) 20:23, 13 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

I can only support user Steenth. What are the reason behind these edits. - Savfisk (talk) 20:41, 13 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

Is the situation differs from Scotland (Q22) and United Kingdom (Q145)? I asking because I do not see Greenland in ru:Список государств. — Ivan A. Krestinin (talk) 21:14, 13 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

The situation is different. Greenland has its own ISO 3166 code and not part of the European Union and the Schengen area. --Steenth (talk) 21:35, 13 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

Se also: en:Dependent territory#Denmark. Dependent territory is a better term for such areas. --Steenth (talk) 22:38, 13 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

I agree with allowing Greenland and the Faroe Islands as countries. They have their own ISO codes and are not included as subdivisions of Denmark on https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:DK (which implies that Denmark considers them quite distinct entities - many dependent territories have ISO 3166-2 subdivision codes from their parent country even when they have their own ISO 3166-1 code). We already use Netherlands (Q55), Aruba (Q21203), Curaçao (Q25279) and Sint Maarten (Q26273) instead of Kingdom of the Netherlands (Q29999) (there are only 803 uses of country (P17) Kingdom of the Netherlands (Q29999)). According to en:Denmark#Greenland_and_the_Faroe_Islands, Greenland and the Faroe Islands do not have a vote in the Danish parliament. That is completely different from the UK where the parliament includes a number of Scottish MPs - the third largest party is a Scottish one. According to en:Danish passport, there are different passports for Greenland and the Faroe Islands too. That's also different from the UK where there is no such thing as a Scottish passport. - Nikki (talk) 13:36, 14 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

@Ivan A. Krestinin: would it make sense to set up KrBot to use EditGroups for autofix batches like this one? Are there any other tasks that KrBot does and would benefit from that? Let me know if I can help. − Pintoch (talk) 16:31, 14 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

The edits were reverted. @Pintoch: Thank you for the suggestion. EditGroups service have stability issue. Is it fixed? — Ivan A. Krestinin (talk) 19:13, 14 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

No I still have not found the cause. If you prefer reverting manually, that is fine with me too. − Pintoch (talk) 19:31, 14 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

But then why Welsh and Northern Ireland can be countries? Are both having differents from England and Scotland? --2409:8902:9301:F7F8:1FC0:6702:8454:4E37 01:48, 30 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

@2409:8902:9301:F7F8:1FC0:6702:8454:4E37: Following the above discussions, Welsh was, at least before 1600s there were having a state called "Welsh", I have no idea and no time to judge anythings about NI. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 09:11, 6 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

PS: maybe Northern Ireland should never be "fixed as P17 UK", because I've heard that the Prime Minister Mr. Boris Johnson plans to let Northern Ireland to be UK's SAR? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 09:15, 6 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

WD:PC#Countries and their subdivisions and territory

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

See discussion in the project chat: WD:PC#Countries and their subdivisions and territory. --Yair rand (talk) 23:36, 14 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

When to make self-reference for country?

Latest comment: 11 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Hi,

I never understood why making a self-reference with country (P17) and even less when, but let's move on. Are these diff correct Special:Diff/802891819 and Special:Diff/802891715?

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 18:14, 26 December 2018 (UTC)Reply

An other recent example Special:Diff/847426562. @&beer&love, Jura1, Edoderoo, Romaine: Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 19:37, 18 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

What's the use of such circular statements? See also Talk:Q183#Circular statement deleted (about this change). Bever (talk) 02:31, 24 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Example: in Singapore (Q334) there are several countries, including the current itself. --Infovarius (talk) 10:43, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Contemporary constraint ?

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

User:Abián added contemporary constraint (Q25796498) for this property in Sept 2018 (diff).

I think this is wrong. I think, to assist searching, the rule we have previously been working to is that P17 should indicate the present-day sovereign state that an item, especially a place or a building, would be located in; or to the history of which it most closely relates. Anything else will make such items very hard to retrieve.

I have raised the issue at Wikidata:Project_chat#Country_(P17)_--_current_country_or_historical_country_? for people to give their thoughts. Jheald (talk) 14:05, 22 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Jheald: I answered there for your specific question but I'm not sure about your supposition « P17 should indicate the present-day sovereign state ». See for instance my discussion just above or the 69355 results of this query. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 17:25, 22 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

P131 as qualifier

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Are there any situations where it would be appropriate to use located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) as a qualifier to country (P17)? It's currently allowed as a qualifier, and used like that in 890 statements, but it seems like all of those should have P131 in a separate statement. --Yair rand (talk) 03:16, 25 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

contemporary constraints

Latest comment: 2 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Having contemporary constraint (Q25796498) is problematic, many items have an object (example: castle/etc) that has been destroyed/closed in year ..., but ruins/remains remain nowadays on that site and thus (also) in current country. Romaine (talk) 02:25, 3 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

cf also past discussion at Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2019/03#Country_(P17)_--_current_country_or_historical_country_? Jheald (talk) 16:37, 3 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

It's a bit of an issue that we both use the same item for a building and its remains, and use dissolved, abolished or demolished date (P576) as its destruction, and consider its destruction date to be its "end of existence" date. I don't think the constraint itself is really the problem here. --Yair rand (talk) 03:27, 4 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

I disagree. It is not only the remains, but also in general where a certain object has been (which now has gone). Also for historic objects users want to indicate where this is located in the world of today (example: Romans in the Netherlands (Q2272797)). If we want to describe where a certain object from the past was located, it is impossible to avoid the usage of modern geographical administrative territorial entities.

Also countries as such are relatively new. I can understand that there is a need to indicate the historic areas, but then I think this property might not the best place. Romaine (talk) 20:40, 23 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Italian

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

(I'll write in Italian). L'etichetta in italiano dovrebbe mantenere la maiuscola, come per "Stato", perché "paese" con la minuscola indica un piccolo centro abitato. --Phyrexian ɸ 02:30, 26 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

Still, I really don't know why P17=Q8646 and Q14773 are allowed

Latest comment: 5 years ago10 comments5 people in discussion

Of couse both Hong Kong independence (Q113301) and Macau independence (Q41517526) exist yes, but are both the reason both items mentioned in this section are suitable for country (P17) instead of located in the administrative territorial entity (P131)? If both are allowed for P17 values just based on their independentism (Q3318733)s, then why not country (P17)Scotland (Q22) just because of Scottish independence (Q891905)? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:12, 21 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

Feel free to revert them, the Wikidata is not a playground to claim a place to be independent. --2409:8902:9301:F7F8:1FC0:6702:8454:4E37 01:44, 30 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

I did revert it, as it breaks a lot of items. P131 is not a 1:1 replacement for P17, as many items would use something else such as P276 instead. KrBot's automove is thus not a good idea here. —MisterSynergy (talk) 08:15, 31 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

Yes, some items associated to a country are not naturally described as having a particular location at all. I noticed that due to this autofix many international clinical trials got a P131 statement, e.g. here. I suggest reverting these autofixes too (or remove location statement). 2001:7D0:81F7:B580:C5FF:DAE4:3034:916C 10:14, 31 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

I will write a script soon to revert all of KrBot's automoves. This needs to be dealt with manually, as in many situations Hong Kong (Q8646) and Macau (Q14773) are proper values for P17. —MisterSynergy (talk) 16:09, 31 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

@MisterSynergy, Andrew J.Kurbiko, Jdlrobson, Nemo bis: When Hong Kong and Macau became both sovereign countries? If somethings about their UK-control and/or Portugal-control periods needed, British Hong Kong (Q1054923) and Portuguese Macau (Q3916279) please. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:20, 5 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

Also, some items that was claimed so already has country (P17)People's Republic of China (Q148), e.g. Kowloon Walled City Park (Q10879145), what means them? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:31, 5 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

P17 does not accept "sovereign state" items only, as you can see from its value type constraint. At least in the past decades both entities enjoyed a fair amount of independence, and they were recognized as individual countries in the world. This is to be respected, even if some people dispute this fact. It is well possible that particularly Hong Kong is now about to be fully annexed to mainland China, so depending on the outcome of the current situation in Hong Kong it might be indeed the case that we do not want to use it for future events with P17 any longer. But that does not make the item ineligible for past events… —MisterSynergy (talk) 07:15, 6 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

@MisterSynergy: "P17 does not accept "sovereign state" items only", the description says "sovereign state of this item; don't use on humans"; "both entities enjoyed a fair amount of independence" clearly-than-god wrong, even in the past UK-control, Portugal-control, or even under the Japanese-control era, they were both having sovereign-administrators, not eventually ever independented, "and they were recognized as individual countries in the world" unless if you can tell me that who accept "the Scottish independence, the Catalonia independence, and the Hawaii independence all are recognized around the world", your this claim is, at least to me, one of the sentences I meet which are most boastful; "This is to be respected, even if some people dispute this fact." which fact? Just use both as P17 because they "have independence movements"? "It is well possible that particularly Hong Kong is now about to be fully annexed to mainland China, so depending on the outcome of the current situation in Hong Kong it might be indeed the case that we do not want to use it for future events with P17 any longer." before I did some fixes, there are eventually having P17 statements said both Q148 and Q8646, aren't those breaking the NPOV? If not, then you should allow me to also cancel the auto-replacing of Scotland and Catalonia settings above, just because both are also having their "independence claims". "But that does not make the item ineligible for past events", again, they may parts of UK, parts of Portugal, parts of Japanese... but never ever parts of themselves. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 09:05, 6 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

I

Support Liuxinyu970226 here as just like what Dan Albertson said. --2409:8902:9001:6529:7264:FC90:523:57E6 06:47, 6 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

Issue with international

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I thought international is a legitimate value since it is excluded in the rules, and in items like malaria it works fine but on lexemes like this it shows error. Uziel302 (talk) 18:05, 21 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

Problems with new constraint: conflict with (Q21502838) Wikimedia list article (Q13406463)

Latest comment: 4 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion

@CamelCaseNick: As sensible as this new constraint may be, Property:P1456 (list of monuments) requires (Q21510864) P17, so I automatically added it to a lot of Wikimedia list items containing monuments, with the legislation of the monument designation (i.e. France) as the value, although the Wikimedia servers stand in other countries. -- Olaf Studt (talk) 21:20, 1 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Olaf Studt: I understand the item-requires-statement constraint (Q21503247) country (P17), but the value-requires-statement constraint (Q21510864)? Lists are not in a country and for the entries of the list, we have is a list of (P360) and the qualifiers for it, e.g. country (P17) or located in the administrative territorial entity (P131). But you are obviously right: Only one of those two constraints should stay. --CamelCaseNick (talk) 21:26, 1 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Lists can be related to a country, just like anything else. It must be for a reason why we didn't have this constraint for ages. --- Jura 21:28, 1 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Jura1: Of course they do. located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) had such a constraint already and you assume that constraints are reasonably complete, otherwise: we just missed it, would have been a good reason. country (P17) is not for might be somehow and somewhat related to the country, but is in country. --CamelCaseNick (talk) 21:31, 1 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

What leads you to believe that? --- Jura 21:34, 1 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Jura1: So you deny that country (P17)subproperty of (P1647)located in the administrative territorial entity (P131)? --CamelCaseNick (talk) 21:37, 1 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

I doubt that statement has much pratical impact on the workings of Wikidata. Somehow it seems the wrong way round. Did you add that too? --- Jura 21:40, 1 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

No, that was added in [3]. --CamelCaseNick (talk) 21:44, 1 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Conflicts with ship

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

This property conflicts with having "instance of" set at "ship". I suppose that this is to nudge towards "country of registry" country of registry (P8047). However, that property makes sense only for recent commercial ships, and is inadequate for ancient ships or for naval vessels. Rama (talk) 18:46, 16 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Just disabled the constraints preventing use of instance of ship and country of registry. This is due to the need for the "country" property on ships that have become shipwrecked or are museum ships. See: Property_talk:P8047#use_with_country. Infrastruktur (talk) 20:10, 22 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Used by Wikimedia Commons

Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

This property is currently not allowed to be used for pictures from Wikimedia Commons. Why is that so? --Gymnicus (talk) 13:48, 3 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

If you use the property of location (P276), you already imply in which country the photograph has been taken. Romaine (talk) 20:43, 23 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Incorrect replacement

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Here it says that "Value Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Q2184) will be automatically replaced to value Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (Q2305208)." It should not be like that. Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic = 1922-1991. Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic = 1918–1923. If someone was born after 1923, it mean this person was born in Q2184, not Q2305208. How to remove this task or whatever? Please, do if you can. --RenatUK (talk) 12:33, 26 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

Incorrect Autofix P17

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I saw that there is a bot (KrBot) that follows this erroneous doctrine "Autofix|pattern=Q5705|replacement=Q29" since the Catalan nation is divided by the French-Spanish border, that is, it is not only within the Spanish State, but also the French one. For this reason, I have removed it, at least provisionally, because the inconvenience is greater than keeping it. --KajenCAT (talk) 23:26, 7 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

Type constraint?

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This property clearly has some problems with being used in quite a few ways. I'm pretty sure it's original purpose is to say where an actual place is located. Could we add that constraint now or at what point could we? Lectrician1 (talk) 02:08, 18 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

historical countries

Latest comment: 11 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I see occasional entries where someone has added an incomplete, and often misunderstood list of previous countries a place has been in. But most places have been in a range of countries, even the unconquered England should have 4 historical countries, and it would be a huge complication to record that history identically for a range of sites. How can we encourage country (P17) to only be used modern countries? Vicarage (talk) 19:34, 9 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Oppose. We should eventually describe all historical states for all points on Earth. --Infovarius (talk) 16:38, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Possible new property contemporary_country

Latest comment: 8 months ago8 comments4 people in discussion

The issues of using both historical and current countries under country (P17) have discussed many times, both here and at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2019/03#Country_(P17)_--_current_country_or_historical_country_. I'm trying to sort out military operations, where not only is country (P17) used for the current country a battlefield is in, but also the country at the time (historically interesting), and even for the participants, which is wrong, but understandable for new users. One solution to this is a new property, contemporary_country to be used to record the country at the time an event happened. A new property would allow a clean move of the relevant existing country (P17) statements, avoid qualifiers, and could have a contemporary constraint applied. Then a not historical country (Q3024240) constraint could be applied to country (P17) for events with an message encouraging use of the new property. This is a similar idea to country of origin (P495) which applies to ideas/moveable objects, but is probably too much of a stretch to be used in this case. As currently there is no SPARQL function COUNTRY(location,date), and writing one is hard, I don't see a query based solution to the problem soon, and I expect the field to be populated slowly with a fair bit of human intervention.

Before I draft the proposal, I'd like to see if there is any support for the idea. Paging @Jheald, @abi, @VIGNERON, @Jarekt@Jmabel, @Infovarius, @Oravrattas, @SilentSpike, @Ghouston, @gerardM @Yair rand, @jura1, @Syced @Fralambert from the Project chat discussion in 2019. Vicarage (talk) 11:17, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Why would this be different than adding time qualifier to a country (P17) value? - Jmabel (talk) 19:46, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
User:Jheald's ideas at Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2019/03#Country (P17)_--_current_country_or_historical_country_? also have a lot of merit. -Jmabel (talk) 19:51, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

No traction for the idea yet only 6 instances of determination method or standard (P459) and valid in period (P1264) qualifiers for all occurrence (Q1190554) anywhere. We don't have a "contemporaneous" word to match present (Q193168), but one could be created. It would work if we had both NOW and THEN qualified entries, but in a transitional state it would be very muddled.

With 2 unqualified entries, which is NOW, which is THEN
With 1 unqualified entry, is that NOW, THEN or both. I've seen strong arguments on both sides.
With 1 qualified NOW entry, do you assume that its also a THEN, or is there an omission to be addressed.
With 1 qualified THEN entry, do you assume that its also a NOW, or expect to pick it up indirectly from location?
For battles, you could imagine having 3 entries, 2 THENs and a NOW, as that's why the battle is being fought

Can the constraint system cope with this logic and advise people of required changes. For moveable objects, like paintings, we use country (P17) and country of origin (P495), why not the same for the battles they depict. If you renamed the latter as 'original county' it could be used for events, but that seems clumsy. As often with WD, the data format needs not only to reflect the final goal, but to guide people doing queries to fix omissions.

I think that country is so over and miss-used that splitting its features might help, as we did for origin, citizenship and sports team. If Vicarage (talk) 20:03, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

I've raised an RFC on the issue, Wikidata:Requests_for_comment/Current_or_contemporary_location_and_country_for_events Vicarage (talk) 09:03, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Vicarage: just a small technical comment about the NOW and THEN points. It's not perfect but if you look at other data (especially data of the value item itself), you can usually pretty easily guess if it's now and/or then. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 11:26, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

It is not just events, it also involves buildings that have been partially or fully destroyed. This contemporary constraint is highly problematic as it ignores the fact that in daily life we locate destroyed objects in the country it is nowadays. As example Romans in the Netherlands (Q2272797). The Romans are dead many centuries, the Netherlands was founded in the 19th century. Still we talk about the Romans in the Netherlands.

To be even more clear: the basic rule on Wikidata is that every single building gets P17 for its current (and perhaps also past) country. Suddenly adding this constraint without proper dialogue first, ignoring the earlier discussions on this talk page, is not a proper way of working. Romaine (talk) 00:23, 20 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

See my detailed response at Wikidata:Requests_for_comment/Current_or_contemporary_location_and_country_for_events Vicarage (talk) 07:59, 20 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Add topic