Topic on User talk:Bovlb

Hi, I have no idea why this item was deleted, but when deleting items it would be nice if you could also fix all the pages that use that item. In case of many items storing metadata for artworks, we often move matadata to Wikidata and remove it locally to ensure that all copies of an artwork have the same info. Deleting such items would require moving the metadata back to Commons.

Also Q108184575, Q108185816 & Q108185747 were deleted for the same reason, while being used on Commons.

Hi! Thanks for following up with me.

These items were deleted because they were created by a known long-term abuser who frequently creates many items in this topic area that blend fact and fiction in a way that is very hard to disentangle. This particular deletion run included a number of items that had been in existence for some time, and my current policy is not to go so far back as I did in those cases. You can see some related discussion at Wikidata:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive/2023/07#Lake_Como_(again), and more background on this specific LTA at en:Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Alec Smithson.

I am taking your communication as an undeletion request, and I have undeleted these four items. I do ask, however, that you take on responsibility for checking that they do not embody hoaxes.

As an aside, in the event that we delete items that are linked to from other pages, it is considered best practice here not to remove those links on deletion. We have a bot that tidies them up after a short delay, and this practice makes it easier to undo deletions. I'm not sure whether you are talking about other Wikidata items here, or something in SDC. If the latter, then we have been historically bad at considering SDC links, but we are trying to do better. Out tooling could use improvement in this area.

Thank you. Those 4 were just tip of the iceberg, and I am somehow running into a lot of deleted Wikidata items used by Commons files, deleted by various admins for various reasons. Files on Commons that use c:template:Artwork can pull a lot of metadata about artwork from Wikidata and can copy missing metadata from commons files to Wikidata with a single click, using QuickStatements. Unfortunately QuickStatements break down when dealing with redirected or deleted items. What is worse is that bad items also block single-click creation of new items on Wikidata. So my approach at the moment is to just remove all the references to deleted items which are sometimes stored in several SDC properties and/or in the wikitext of the description. I will try to undo my changes for those 4 files and verify undeleted items. Also please lobby for better tools at seeing usage of Wikidata items on other projects, the same way admins on Commons see all the places a file is used on other projects before they delete it.

You're certainly giving me some things to think about.

The mass deletions I made back then were done with a script I wrote. My script looked for various reasons to exclude items from the deletion list, but that did not include SDC. I certainly could have incorporated a check for SDC usage, but I just wasn't as aware of it back then. I don't know what the story is for the deletions by other admins.

As you might see from Wikidata:Request_a_query/Archive/2024/01#Notability:_Structural_need, I am currently working on a tool that classifies items for notability according to the three criteria. In particular, I am trying to take an expansive view of "structural need" that includes not only Wikidata links, but also SDC, and selected external projects like Open Street Map. I'm hoping that use of this tool will reduce problems of this type in the future. Unfortunately, I have a day job and many other distractions, so my progress is not always rapid.

If you have a list of other affected items, please let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Another thing to remember is that many items are connected to Wikidata items though hardwired link in Wikitext and no SDC. For example File:Vieille Turquie (L'exécution).jpg is linked to Q124539574 through wikitext (can you undelete by the way). There is a lot of confusion about digital representation of (P6243): when I proposed it it was a SDC property to connect any SDC item to Wikidata item, but before it was approved it got modified to only include 2D artworks, which leaves all the photographs of sculptures without a good way to link to wikidata. Some people use main subject (P921), but since P921 has other meanings it is kind of a mess. For example for a photo of a sculpture P921 might point to a person or a sculpture item. As a result SDC is not set for many files and we rely on Wikitext marking.

That's interesting. File:Vieille Turquie (L'exécution).jpg is linked to Q124539574 using the "wikidata" parameter. I see that this parameter has existed for years, but I wasn't aware of its existence, and I have no idea how to search for it when considering an item for deletion. I cannot recall its ever having been mentioned in a deletion/undeletion discussion. I think this may be a problem to solve at the Commons end to get these into SDC. I have undeleted Vieille Turquie (Q124539574) and have fixed it up a little, but it still bears no indication of notability.

I appreciate the concerns of Commons, and I would love see Commons using Wikidata more, but I hope you also see that we have a deluge of trash being dropped on Wikidata every day, and admins need to be able to sort through it efficiently. Hopefully if I can get my tool using SDC, that will alleviate much of the problem. If you have any other APIs (e.g. searches) you think we should be checking, please speak up.

I totally agree about the trash dropped on Wikidata, and also realize that empty items, even if connected to Commons have no place on Wikidata. I have no clue why some users, create empty items and connect them. I suspect that what is going on is that you can create new item by following the following steps:

1. create a new empty item for and artwork
2. connect it to the file by adding "wikidata" parameter to c:template:Artwork or adding P6243 statement
3. locate icon on top of the file and click it. This should triggers a data transfer to Wikidata using QuickStatements.

It seems to me that someone was following this process but forgetting to do step 3. Any way, If you run into more empty items for artworks, I can volunteer to try to fix them before they are deleted. Also there is a way to search for which file links to a specific item, like: in SQL database you search for files with external link to https://reasonator.toolforge.org/test/?q=Q124539574 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q124539574. Most Commons file-namespace infoboxes that rely on data from Wikidata use c:Module:Artwork code and that code adds icons with those 2 links to all files that pull metadata from Wikidata. For example quarry:query/64996 is using this strategy for creating some QuickStatements.