User talk:Witidaka

Welcome to Wikidata, Witidaka!

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Best regards! ミラP@Miraclepine 21:48, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Invalid values for MacArthur Fellows Program ID (P9541)

Hi, your recent edits like this one adding MacArthur Fellows Program ID (P9541) to many items seem to be in the wrong format. All the links give a 404 page. --Haansn08 (talk) 18:28, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out.

I was approving suggestions from this tool:

https://mix-n-match.toolforge.org/#/list/1524/manual

but possibly the format has changed since that list was created. I was mostly looking to learn how to format data for importing my own data into that tool, so this gives me a good learning opportunity to update that data import.

The first few I tried it redirected to the correct person, so they do have this internal id number in some sense, though it may have just been an artifact of their old web site. Any thoughts on the best way to proceed? Witidaka (talk) 09:23, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

https://www.macfound.org/fellows/1074/ seems to be the last one that the old incrementing id redirects for, so it doesn't work for 2021 awardees. They do appear to have some other internal id called 'fellowid' like 162431 which is different from the incrementing one but most links use the more readable form.

I'll look at uploading a more up-to-date mix'n'match list with the new identifiers, as that was what I was hoping to learn to do anyway. Witidaka (talk) 09:55, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Could you clean up the wrong IDs? --Haansn08 (talk) 22:15, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't think the old ids are 'wrong' as such, see my comment here for more info: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property_talk:P9541

I think that when updating the url formatter to cope with some of the early urls, I could add a rule so that the old ids are formatted properly (basically they need a / at the end to redirect properly) so the link works when you click on them and mark them as deprecated.

I will experiment with that while updating the checks for the exceptions later. Witidaka (talk) 08:05, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Q6945057

Why does the Open Library page for this work begin by stating it is a paperback edition? It looks as though the work page is not a work page on Open Library. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:07, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi, the Open Library pages with W in the url, like https://openlibrary.org/works/OL69180W are for "works" but will also feature an edition based on whichever is at the top of the sorted list of editions of that work that are known to the system. (I'm not sure on the exact logic for the choice of edition when there are multiple, sometimes I get editions in a surprising language. Probably based on availability of a digital copy in the Internet Archive and other factors).

You can see the purely work related info by looking at the JSON format: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL69180W.json

Following the edition link in the aforementioned list of editions gets you to the edition page e.g. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3688094M/My_bondage_and_my_freedom and again the JSON shows how this is linked back to the work https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3688094M.json at a data level. ~~ Witidaka (talk) 11:10, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Open Library

Please stop immediately! You are adding Open Library IDs ending in M (which are for editions) to data items for works (and those IDs should end in W).

Please go back and revert all the edits you have just made. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:14, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I think you might be making the same mistake as the comment above you, and following a link to a Open Library Work page, and seeing that it also shows the most available Edition for that Work, and assuming that it's a a link to an Edition rather than a work.

I'm generally not trying to add Edition (OL*M) identifiers, only Work (OL*W) and Author (OL*A) ones, as the Editions get linked automatically by someone else via a bot.

I might have added a Work idea to an item that already has an Edition, but that's because many existing items combine those two things e.g. having a cover designer or an ISBN attached to what otherwise is a work. But again, I'm generally trying to avoid doing that and creating new works to link editions to when they don't exist. Witidaka (talk) 18:41, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Looking at my recent edits I do see a bunch that are linknig to Editions rather than Works, which is not what I'd intened. Possibly something has changed that has made the wikidata for web tool pick up the Edition ID rather than the Work ID. Hopefully not too long ago. I'll fix all the ones that have been linked incorrectly Witidaka (talk) 19:00, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

My mistake was to not notice that some of the book lists on Open Library, link to specific Editions rather than Works. I'm not sure if this is a recent change or not, I don't remember seeing it link directly to Editions before. Possibly a new option or a software change in the list creation backend, or just something I'd not noticed before. e.g. on https://openlibrary.org/ currently the top two lists link to Works, then the next three to Editions. The pages look very similar so I didn't notice the change. Witidaka (talk) 19:11, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

For general reference, it seems the librarian managed Book Carousels throughout the Open Library site only offer links to the Works (quote from their help: Carousels don't let you specify editions (OL...M) of works, so always click "use this work" when you add works to a list!) so I assume the lower down Carousels on the homepage are using a different code path and so generate different links. Witidaka (talk) 19:26, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

You have also been making the reverse mistake, such as here, where you added a work ID to a data item for an edition. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:23, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

A Beowulf translation, with commentary, by someone as famous as JRR Tolkien of a work with no known author is a gray area between Works and Editions. It's not just a mistake, and reflects on the fact that any two FRBR systems, like Wikidata and Open Libraries, are going to sometimes make different calls between what is a Work and what is an Manifestation/Edition. I believe it's standard practice on Open Library to list these things as works though I can't currently locate any precise language on their wiki setting that out. Witidaka (talk) 18:57, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikidata does not have a gray area for this. But OpenLibrary pages commonly contain mistakes, often many of them. The one reliable bit of information is the OpenLibrary IDs ending in M are supposed to be editions, and OpenLibrary IDs ending in W are supposed to be works. The actual entries on OpenLibrary using those ideas may be a complete mess, and frequently are, but that's the way their labeling system is supposed to work. Any errors at OpenLibrary need to be corrected there. --20:09, 12 August 2023 (UTC

I can see from reading around that Wikidata takes a very hardcore "everything should be a seperate edition of a single work whenever possible" stance, which is fine. But it'll still need to interact somehow with the wider world where places like LibraryThing (https://www.librarything.com/work/14871169), Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/55250709-beowulf-a-translation-and-commentary-together-with-sellic-spell), Worldcat (https://www.worldcat.org/title/873729342) etc. will perhaps draw a different line and will sometimes consider adaptions from/into plays/poetry/prose, graphic novels, annotated editions, loose translations or abridged children's books as seperate works within their systems. It might be easier overall for Wikidata to go with the general flow than to maintain a list of exceptions. ~~

Goodreads has separate items for works and editions as well. It's just that their database is poorly edited and thus contains many cases where the editions and works were not properly separated. WorldCat is a mess. Wikidata is not interested in copying a mess simply because a database has a mess. There are editors in specific subjects at each of those sites who are working to try to clean up the mess; I have communicated with some of those editors from time to time to resolve certain problems in Classical literature. Library databases, such as VIAF and the Library of Congress distinguish between works and editions, and Wikidata has chosen to do so as well. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:44, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

I feel you've got a very black and white view on something that is inherently a bit shades of gray. I've been surprised by how messy even the VIAF and national libraries that feed into it are when you get into the more obscure stuff. It's easy to look at the jumble of user/librarian submitted info in any of those places and conclude they are a mess and therefore automatically wrong. But the same could be done just as easily with Wikidata's biblographic info. It's very much a "all models are wrong but some are useful" type situation, I think. Anyway, I just wanted to add the odd coincidence I just discovered, the first words in the introduction to the book under discussion are: "This book is not an “edition” of Beowulf;", which amused me, source: https://www.tolkienestate.com/scholarship/beowulf-a-translation-and-commentary-together-with-sellic-spell/ Witidaka (talk) 19:26, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Please not that the title added in this edit is not the same as the one to which it was added. The Good Reads target is for a fiction collection. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:12, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

They Work For You

HI - only 2 out of the 3 They Work For You mix'n'match rows which you did were correct. Thomas Galbraith was Thomas Galbraith, 1st Baron Strathclyde (Q7789900) not Thomas Galbraith, 2nd Baron Strathclyde (Q335576). The 2.7k rows left to do are all complicated, in that (in general) at least a couple of MPs share the name. You need to check start & end dates and constituencies between TWFY and the wikidata item before making a match. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:35, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for catching that. I did intend to match to Q7789900, but I think I was misuing the Mix'n'Match visual matching tool. https://mix-n-match.toolforge.org/visual_match.html#catalog=6049

Because the 1st and 2nd Barons were in a grandfather/child relation, I could click through from one to the other via the father/son Tam Galbraith (Q7680454) and I assumed the tool would update the intended match based on what the wikidata iframe was pointing at, but I was wrong about that. Witidaka (talk) 07:41, 9 October 2023 (UTC)