Template talk:Authority control/Archive 16

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Archive 10 ← Archive 14 Archive 15 Archive 16

Talk page errors

I see that back in 2018 a bot removed all parameters from this template in articles, and including parameters in mainspace is now a hard ERROR.

But now we have some ~100 talk pages discussing use of parameters in these templates in years-old discussions.

I don't see the harm in allowing these old discussions to stand-as is without declaring them to be errors. The module should stop yelling about editors just talking about {{authority control}} parameters.

Or else someone needs to refactor these old discussions to remove the parameters (which might destroy the context of the discussion and make it difficult or impossible to understand what they were talking about). wbm1058 (talk) 10:37, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

We could disable the error message in certain namespaces, or alternatively we could not worry about it. I see no particular harm in leaving these messages on talk pages as it will serve to educate editors of the best way to use the template — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:46, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
@MSGJ: Maybe you could downgrade it from {{error}} to {{error-small}} or {{strongbad}} in the talk namespace? The issue is that I patrol for real errors like the one currently on Talk:Controversies involving the Indian Premier League (Page is not a redirect, misplaced Template:R from move) and if that namespace is flooded with lots of pseudo-errors it makes my work harder. At some point searching for real errors becomes like searching for needles in haystacks. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:08, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
Sure, I'm happy with that. Looks like an almost identical template with a different name... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 05:09, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
The documentation of {{Strongbad}} says it cannot be used in article space — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:29, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
Right, but I'm just asking for it to be used on talk pages, not articles. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:53, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm OK with continuing to declare parameter use an {{error}} in articles. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:03, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
Okay that should be okay. I notice that {{error}} takes a |tag=span option to give a less strong error message. Would that be of any use? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:19, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm not too concerned about visual appearance, except that the message should be bold and red enough to make it easy to see. I don't want {{error}} messages to be hidden, which is a problem when lack of Wikidata is declared an error! What I am concerned about is that all pages that transclude {{error}} on "what-links-here" should be issues that need to be resolved by removing or fixing the thing that caused the error, thus making the page stop transcluding {{error}}. This includes errors that don't populate any maintenance categories, so the only practical way to find them is by checking "what links here". – wbm1058 (talk) 14:51, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
If you give me a week or two, I'll try and fix up all those remaining errors — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:05, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
All clear now, good luck fixing all those YouTube errors :) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:31, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Radical idea

What would people think about changing the words "Authority control" which very few people understand (check the archives of this template for much discussion), with the word "Identifiers", which is much more recognisable and is the term that Wikidata uses. Alternatively we could use "Unique identifiers" — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:29, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Would that not imply a change of scope? Perhaps I'm one of the people who's misunderstood, but I don't think all unique identifiers fall within the intended scope of this template. This is related to what we discussed earlier regarding centralising all identifier templates into AC; I don't think, for example, identifiers like E numbers belong here. – Scyrme (talk) 17:48, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Support: "Identifiers". (This is not so radical.) Grimes2 (talk) 20:40, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
What is your opinion on the scope of the template, as mentioned by Scyrme? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:23, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Its a wider term, but nevertheless accurate. Grimes2 (talk) 04:11, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
Also likely much less intimidating to those who don't know what it might mean. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:30, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
As "identifiers" is a simple English word, I think there is no need to wikilink it. If a link to Help:Authority control is useful, then we could rename that page accordingly. But I think I would prefer to centralise all documentation on Template:Authority control/doc rather than maintain separate pages at Help:Authority control and Wikipedia:Authority control — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:10, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
It might be worth reaching out to those editors who maintain {{Taxonbar}} and {{Chembox Identifiers}} and their corresponding modules for their input, particularly as {{Taxonbar}} is based on the work of (an older version of) AC. – Scyrme (talk) 22:31, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
Expanding the scope of the template in this way is really not desirable. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:35, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
I have not actually proposed to change the scope, just the words at the top — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:03, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Even if changing the scope isn't intended, it might have that effect anyway. The title is an important cue to editors. – Scyrme (talk) 12:59, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Script problem

Some articles, for example Autonomous University of Barcelona, are displaying "Lua error in Module:Authority_control at line 366: attempt to concatenate a nil value." Line 366 is sectname = mw.wikibase.getLabel(qids[c-numsections]) .. pencil(qids[c-numsections]) and getLabel is returning nil. Some other articles, for example, Photon line 203, have a problem on a different line. I don't know if this is a script problem or a Wikidata problem. Johnuniq (talk) 03:45, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I have reverted my recent change and will investigate further... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:28, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Good luck, dealing with Wikidata is a PITA where every call can result in a problem. Johnuniq (talk) 06:38, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
All sorted I think. On Autonomous University of Barcelona, the problem was the lack of label. It will now fall back to the qid number. On Photon it was a "novalue" which has caught me out before! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:53, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

"Lua error in Module:Authority_control at line 204: wrong number of arguments to 'insert'. "

At Head Control System (which passes the template no parameters) * Pppery * it has begun... 13:48, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Checking now — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:47, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
Fixed, thanks for reporting — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:17, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Automatically link additional items

I propose that for items which have the property has part(s) (P527), this template should automatically add those parts as additional links. For example, on Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver there are currently no identifiers appearing because Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (Q7331479) doesn't have any. But we should also link Rick Jaffa (Q17372908) and Amanda Silver (Q15069865) separately, so it will appear like this:

This is currently possible using the |additional= parameter, but I think we could be doing this automatically. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:24, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

This code is now in the sandbox — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:05, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, might have to rethink this possibly. There are a ridiculous number of "parts" on some pages, for example see Goethe University Frankfurt — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:18, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I need people's opinions on this because we have articles like PEN International with ridiculous numbers of links. Options are:
  • revert this new feature completely,
  • keep as is,
  • restrict to a maximum number of additional rows (e.g. 4 or 5),
  • restrict it to people only (works for e.g. married couples, bands, etc.),
  • ...
— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:36, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
My proposed solution is to turn this off by default but allow |additional=auto to automatically add these additional links — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:34, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 Done and documented — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:15, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
Good solution! – Scyrme (talk) 15:24, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

ResearchGate

Propose adding a link to ResearchGate publications. Looks like a useful link for academics. Example below: 

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:43, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
Certainly is useful, comparable to Google Scholar author ID (P1960). – Scyrme (talk) 22:54, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose - this template is not intended for social network links. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:33, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
    Fair enough. I thought it was more like ORCiD or Google Scholar — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:02, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
    There's {{ResearchGate}} for adding this to external links sections. – Scyrme (talk) 15:28, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Europeana

Many dead links. I'm not very happy with that identifier. What can we do? Grimes2 (talk) 18:03, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

What proportion to do you think are not working? Is it the link which is not working or are the identifiers incorrect? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:42, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
The identifiers are correct, but Europeana has no media for many items. This leads to the message on Europeana website: "We can't seem to find what you are looking for." I made only spot checks, but approximately half of items show this message. Grimes2 (talk) 08:34, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Shall we just remove the link then? Or is the identifier not useful without the link, in which case we should consider removing it entirely. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:44, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
At this point of time, we should remove the identifier Europeana entirely. It affects to many articles: 139,785. Grimes2 (talk) 09:20, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
For the reconrd, this was  Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:43, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

ISIL formatting

The display of ISIL is not working correctly when there are multiple identifiers, for example on Russian State Library. I'm sure this was working before, so not sure what has changed. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:40, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Not sure how to fix this. The problem is that this identifer has two different formats depending on whether there is a link or not, so it doesn't fit with the code of any of the other identifiers. Maybe simpler to try and work out why Russian State Library (Q1048694) has two different ISIL values and perhaps one of them is not correct. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:58, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Russian State Library, ISIL national contracting authority for Russia, should have ISIL RU-1 (like ISIL DE-1). I don't know, why there is a second one. I can't find sources except https://fl.bib-bvb.de/bibkonto_mod_perl/ILV.pl. Grimes2 (talk) 10:14, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
It was added back in 2014 by Павло Сарт. I've marked RU-1 as preferred for now — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:24, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Correction: According to https://slks.dk/english/work-areas/libraries-and-literature/library-standards/isil Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology is ISIL national contracting authority for Russia. Grimes2 (talk) 10:29, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

WorldCat

Retrieved from archive

As noted many times in the archives (e.g. Template talk:Authority control/Archive 12#Broken identifiers), the WorldCat (via VIAF) links do not work in most cases. I think it is time to simply remove them from this template. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:44, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

As noted at wikidata:Wikidata:Properties for deletion/P7859, WorldCat is being shut down and this property is being considered for deletion. We have had a problem with broken links since the start with the WorldCat (via VIAF) and WorldCat (via LCCN) types, so perhaps this is the right time to remove this identifier from the template? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:48, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
Green tickY OK Grimes2 (talk) 15:59, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
Removed on sandbox — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:39, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
I am proposing that we remove WorldCat (via VIAF) now. WorldCat (via LCCN) was removed some time ago. The actual WorldCat property can probably remain unless/until the property is actually deleted or the webpage finally shuts down. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:53, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
I'm sad that WorldCat Identities is being shut down, as I've found it very useful for finding many of the other authority control links that we use here. But its shutdown is nothing we can do anything about here, so I agree with its removal from the authority control boxes in all forms. I don't see why we should wait to do so; that only invites a situation where we show invalid links for a while until we catch up. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:58, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
I'm okay with removing it. I don't think it has closed down yet, but it was announced that it will close later in the year. Perhaps some people would prefer to keep it at long as possible. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:14, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Update and question: WorldCat (via VIAF) has been removed from live template. WorldCat has been removed from sandbox and can be removed completely unless anyone disagrees. FAST ID (P2163) seems to direct to the WorldCat website - will that need removing as well? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:26, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

No. That are two different databases: https://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n79-3362/ and http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1358961/. WorldCat Identities project is ending, in contrast to FAST. Never heard of problems with FAST links. Grimes2 (talk) 07:34, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
Okay that's good — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:14, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
red-outlined triangle containing exclamation point Warning Why did you remove VIAF from sandbox? This is the backbone of Authority control. I'm shocked. Grimes2 (talk) 07:49, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
Maybe some temporary brain dysfunction, not intentional :) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:13, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Replacement: WorldCat Entities

The replacement for Worldcat identifier seems to be WorldCat Entities ID (P10832) by OCLC. (https://id.oclc.org/worldcat/entity/E39PCjBmpqCRgMjGFXqMvKBFJC.html). Grimes2 (talk) 16:39, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Looks good! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:12, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
Probably makes sense to add this one at the same time we remove the WorldCat Identities link — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:26, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
I've replaced the IDs in staging already. Please revert, if I was wrong. Grimes2 (talk) 13:33, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
Perfect — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:28, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
Worldcat identities is shut down. The IDs redirect to Worldcat entities. See: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Properties_for_deletion/P7859
We have a redundancy in AC. We could rename Worldcat identities to Worldcat entities? Grimes2 (talk) 10:56, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Some of them redirect to WorldCat Entities. Some just say "Not found". Maybe time just to remove P7859? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:14, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure. WorldCat Entities ID (P10832) has only 1000 items. If WorldCat Identities ID (superseded) (P7859) would redirect all items, our problems were solved. I think its only a question of time. In future: Delete WorldCat Entities ID (P10832) and rename WorldCat Identities ID (superseded) (P7859) to Worldcat entities? I think, this needs a further investigation. Grimes2 (talk) 11:57, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
For now we can put it as a fallback option for WorldCat Entities. And probably shorten just to "WorldCat" — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:59, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Green tickY OK. Grimes2 (talk) 12:02, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Even if all WorldCat Identities ids did redirect to WorldCat Entities, deleting the latter property seems like a bizarre approach, particularly as any entirely new ids would only be created for Entities so only keeping Identities would freeze AC in an outdated state. A direct link to Entities is preferable to a redirect that may or may not exist, and it would make more sense to have WorldCat Identities display if no WorldCat Entities id is provided until Identities is no longer needed. (I don't have a preference regarding shortening Identities to just "WorldCat".) – Scyrme (talk) 15:48, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
That's exactly the way it has been done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:53, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Ah, alright then. (Looking that examples below it looks like both have been shortened, but since Identities is defunct that's probably fine.) – Scyrme (talk) 15:57, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
According to a press release, Worldcat entities has 150 million items. This is too much to handle with tools like Mix'n'match. So the redirect is the best solution. Grimes2 (talk) 17:21, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

WorldCat Identities ID (superseded) (P7859) has nearly 2 million values on Wikidata but WorldCat Entities ID (P10832) only has 850 values. So it does not seem to be well used yet! I'm just wondering whether we should have some kind of transition period (e.g. display old link as a fallback unless we have a value for the new link)? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:38, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Or we should display both IDs? So we can test the new WorldCat Entities ID (P10832). Grimes2 (talk) 14:59, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
Sure, that's also an option — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:52, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
So far WorldCat Entities (P10832) is not displayed. Or did I miss something? Please take also a look at Template talk:WorldCat#Update and clarification needed. --Kolja21 (talk) 01:19, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Regex (and lua)?

Punjabi (Q58635) has the WorldCat Entities id "Q217" which does not match the regex [a-zA-Z0-9]{26} on WikiData and is also flaged as being faulty here in AC, but it appears to be valid. It seems this regex is wrong, as I've been able to find other similar ids. eg. Slovene has the id "Q242". Likewise Russian has the id "Q229". All languages appear to have similar ids. In-fact, it seems all entities categories under "ontology" (as opposed to "work", "place", or "person") have an identifier in that form; for example, "continent" has the id "Q355", and "ocean" has the id "Q369". In contrast, the London Eye, categorised as a "place", has the id "E39PBJkhJCvJHt4bBPdCVyxRrq". Additionally, much like WikiData, WorldCat Entities gives ids like "P27" to identifiers (in this case "P27" is the entity id for "FAST ID"); these are also categorised as "ontology". These ids aren't necessarily 3 digits; eg. "Q1" is the identifier for "thing". I haven't confirmed that 3 digits is the maximum for "ontology" ids; it appears to the current maximum, but that might change as more ids are added. Matching up to 4 would probably be safe for a while.

I think the correct regex is (Q|P)\d{1,4}|[a-zA-Z0-9]{26}, and I'd appreciate if someone could look over it. It could probably be simplified; I simply went with the obvious approach (choosing one format or the other). – Scyrme (talk) 23:30, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I would suggest ([QP][1-9]\d+)|([a-zA-Z0-9]{26}) might work — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:10, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for that detailed analysis. I have updated WorldCat Entities ID (P10832) and Module:Authority control/config/sandbox with the new regex — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:20, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
Now deployed to live template — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:12, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

WorldCat Identities is dead

See d:Wikidata:Properties for deletion/P7859 * Pppery * it has begun... 21:51, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

No. WorldCat Identities redirects in most cases to WorldCat Entities. Grimes2 (talk) 22:04, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Only in some cases, and these links produces other results (no bibliographies). The project is dead and buried. --Kolja21 (talk) 15:16, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure how many of these links are still working. Is it time to pull the plug on WorldCat Identities? There is a lot of discussion on Wikidata:Properties for deletion/P7859 about how to migrate to WorldCat Entities. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:43, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
WorldCat Identities ID (superseded) (P7859) removed in sandbox. Any opposition to pulling the plug? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:54, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
It has been removed from the module — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:12, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Template:WorldCat id is up for deletion. You may wish to comment at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2023 April 17#Template:WorldCat id — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:27, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

New identifiers

Added 4 identifier to staging. Grimes2 (talk) 06:54, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I've added the regex patterns to ADK, DB, Leopoldina and LexM. Would you mind creating the categories required? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:11, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
I got trouble with adding some library categories some time ago. Don't want to have that shit again. Grimes2 (talk) 21:18, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
These 4 have now been added — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:11, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

BBC Things ID (P1617)

Grimes2 (talk) 06:54, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Support, looks useful — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:12, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
Quoting from the page: "Some of the information displayed is brought in from open data sources such as Wikipedia and MusicBrainz". So no, I don't think it would be received well. That is also still just a "beta", it might be way too soon to add support now. Some people are less receiving about having these kinds of things added to pages.. Ipr1 (talk) 00:10, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

NCES ID (P2484)

Request to add NCES school ID (P2484) to Wikipedia Authority Control. NCES IDs are issued by the National Center for Education Statistics and is used to identify public schools in the United States. An example of an article where it would be beneficial to add an external identifier would be Erasmus High School, Stuyvesant High School, and Boys and Girls High School, among other public schools in the United States of America. Kind data (talk) 00:58, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Support Grimes2 (talk) 17:43, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Deutsche Bahn station code P8671

Only a few entries in Category:Articles with DB identifiers. Is there something wrong? Grimes2 (talk) 10:17, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

How many were you expecting? Maybe just slow to update the cache — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:18, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
Thousands. There are mostly foreign stations (not German) present. Grimes2 (talk) 10:24, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Making it distinct from Encyclopedic templates

I request that we try to make the Authority Control template visually distinct from the encyclopedic list templates, since as it looks like just another encyclopedic category template at the end of an article. Since it is a meta-encyclopedic tool that doesn't apply to an article's subject proper, I would think that ideally it should be de-emphasized from other end templates by making the title a lower font size, or at least changing the color of the title background to let users know it's not one of the subject templates. I myself was confused the first time I saw it and thought it was one of the list templates that applied to the article's subject, so I figured it must be confusing for article readers as well. (Sorry if I'm not familiar with specific terminology of items; I'm a more casual editor myself, probably why I noticed this matter to begin with.) -- CesarFelipe (talk) 17:18, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we can reduce the font size for accessibility reasons. We can discuss the background colors but it's already quite a bland color. What do you suggest? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:40, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
Would a light gray template color be doable? The current blue/lavender color has been well established as corresponding with encylopedic categories. If that's not doable, perhaps some kind of 'article metadata' title would be helpful rather than 'authority control' - which is only meaningful to current editors? I think anything would help that makes it clear at face value that the template is NOT an encyclopedic category.
Ch3wy (talk) 20:55, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Edit request 21 August 2023

Its In India not Pakistan 183.82.154.148 (talk) 05:02, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Can you explain more please? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 05:23, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

PhilPeople profile (P3233)

Would it make sense to include PhilPeople profile (P3233) in the Academics portion of this template?

Examples:

  • "David Chalmers (New York University)". PhilPeople. 2023-08-04. Retrieved 2023-08-04.
  • "Jürgen Habermas (Heidelberg University)". PhilPeople. 2023-08-04. Retrieved 2023-08-04.

Peaceray (talk) 18:24, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Looks good to me — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:21, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
Support. Grimes2 (talk) 12:21, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
Added to sandbox and tested below — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:44, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
plus Added — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:37, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Possible confusion caused by this template's wording

See Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1197#How_to_correct_nationality_pulled_from_a_database?. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 17:11, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

This confusion seems related to broader confusion about what the template is intended for. Evidently there was an expectation that the template is supposed to display data about the subject when this is never the case for any of its fields.
Retitling the template to make the purpose clearer has been suggested before and might help with misinterpreting its content. Perhaps if the displayed title was changed from Authority control to Authority files and identifiers or Authority control databases. These titles would be longer but there's plenty of room to display an extra word or two; I don't think they'd be too long. Including the word "databases" might be particularly helpful in avoiding this kind of confusion by making it clearer that the template links to such resources rather than displaying information about the subject. Even if someone doesn't know what "authority control" means, they'll probably know what a "database" is and would be more inclined to interpret "national" as "national databases" rather than "subject's nationality".
Simply calling it Identifiers has been suggested before, but I think that could cause confusion about what kind of identifiers from Wikidata ought to be displayed by this template and it's vague enough that someone might still assume that the template is intended to display 'identifying information' like nationality rather than link to external authority files. – Scyrme (talk) 18:03, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
I am happy to add the word "databases" to the title if people think that would be clearer and avoid confusion — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:35, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
This is now on Module talk:Authority control/testcases if you want to take a look ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:12, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
Looks like an incremental improvement to me. "Authority control" is guaranteed to confuse anyone unfamiliar with the concept, whereas "authority control database" at least hints at the purpose. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:25, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:38, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

NLP identifiers

None of the NLP identifiers is linking correctly now. There is some conversion going on at Wikidata which replaces A17196619 with a0000001719661. So I think we need to add the new format as a valid pattern when checking, and when the conversion is finished we can remove the origina format. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:48, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

See wikidata:Property talk:P1695#Fix of values — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:32, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
The conversion seems to be complete so I have now removed the obsolete patterns — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:51, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Unnecesssary tracking categories

I don't think all the subcategories of Category:Articles with authority control information are being used, nor do I think they are useful. I suggest we keep all the error categories, i.e. subcategories of Category:Articles with faulty authority control information, but remove all the non-error tracking categories. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:58, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Without Category:Articles with suppressed authority control identifiers it's not possible to check whether there are pages suppressing identifiers which shouldn't be suppressing them.
I think the rest of the categories just track which pages are using a particular identifier. The only use I can think of for that is that it might be worth knowing how many pages are using an identifier if there's a discussion about removing it from the template. If a identifier isn't used much the impact of removing it will be low. If an identifier is used on hundreds of thousands of articles the impact will be high. That said, the rationale for removing identifiers is usually technical so the impact isn't all that relevant. – Scyrme (talk) 15:13, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
I wasn't proposing to stop using Category:Articles with suppressed authority control identifiers. I think we can find the number of articles using a particular identifier in a more efficient way, I'll be back when I have the answer ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:20, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
I have made a template ({{Authority control/usage}}) which will query the Wikipedia articles which have a value for a certain property. For example: click P1907 usage and then press the Run button. Would this be a good link to include on the documentation page? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:23, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
Wouldn't hurt to have it documented in-case the extent of use becomes relevant to something like a proposal to remove an identifier, if the categories are to be deleted.
However, I tried running it on a particularly widely used property (Library of Congress authority ID (P244)) and received a "Query timeout limit reached". Assuming I didn't mess something up, this method seems to struggle with very widely used properties. Maybe knowing it's too big a task to fully process is good enough? Or are there other reasons it might timeout? If there are other reasons, it can't be inferred that a property is widely used on Wikipedia just from a timeout.
Maybe it doesn't matter; like I said, the rationale is usually something technical so the extent of usage may not be very relevant in practice. – Scyrme (talk) 18:48, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#KulturNav?

A discussion about if one of the Authority controls, KulturNav, is useful as a WP:RS. If you have an opinion, please join. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 05:38, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Where is this discussion please? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:34, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
@MSGJ Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#KulturNav? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:43, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Ah, now I see the title :) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:46, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

NCES ID (P2484)

Retrieved from archive — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:23, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Request to add NCES school ID (P2484) to Wikipedia Authority Control. NCES IDs are issued by the National Center for Education Statistics and is used to identify public schools in the United States. An example of an article where it would be beneficial to add an external identifier would be Erasmus High School, Stuyvesant High School, and Boys and Girls High School, among other public schools in the United States of America. Kind data (talk) 00:58, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Support Grimes2 (talk) 17:43, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't think this belongs in the "national" section — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:26, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
Changed to section 3 - "Geographic". Any other thoughts on this one? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:51, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
plus Added — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:30, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Klosterdatenbank (P3407)

Request to add Klosterdatenbank ID (P3407) to Wikipedia Authority Control.

Grimes2 (talk) 07:01, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Can you give any further information? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:18, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
It is a monastery database of the Holy Roman Empire and neighboring countries. https://adw-goe.de/en/germania-sacra/database-of-monasteries/ Grimes2 (talk) 08:29, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
plus Added — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:31, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Avoid Lua error when out of expensive function calls

I've coded this in the sandbox since Nagoya Grampus is currently Lua erroring. Any objections? * Pppery * it has begun... 22:41, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

The rest of that article uses 548 expensive functions and this template only has 3. Are you sure you're looking in the right place for efficiencies? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:11, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
The point isn't to be efficient (my sandbox change still uses 3). The point is to avoid throwing an unnecessary Lua error that's not this template's fault and is currently responsible for 7 of the 8 articles in Category:Pages with script errors * Pppery * it has begun... 22:22, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
Okay well go ahead, but this is a band-aid solution. I removed the first exist check because it wasn't needed. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:03, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

DAHR artist ID (P4457)

Request to add DAHR artist ID (P4457) to Wikipedia Authority Control. Discography of American Historical Recordings.

Grimes2 (talk) 19:03, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Authority control (arts) and ADK member ID

Article of architect Anne Lacaton has the template Authority control (arts). Unfortunately ADK member ID (Academy of Arts, Berlin ID) is not displayed. ADK has the sections Architecture, Fine arts and Performing arts. Grimes2 (talk) 20:04, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Replaced Authority control (arts) by Authority control. Grimes2 (talk) 11:06, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Can these please be collapsed by default?

Every time someone adds one of these eyesore "authority control" boxes to an article someone else has to manually add "state=collapsed" to it. This is a waste of time and attention. If they aren't going to be removed as more-or-less spam irrelevant (and inscrutable) to the vast majority of readers, they should at least be collapsed by default. –jacobolus (t) 23:53, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

A slight inaccuracy: Every time I add one of these to an article I always add the state=collapsed part myself. So it is not always someone else that adds them. I do think they have some value, but they should always default to collapsed. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:41, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
The current default is "autocollapse" which means that if another navbox is added to the page, then it will collapse. This default could be changed of course, if there was a consensus to do so — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:14, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
I don't like these boxes because I find their content to be irrelevant to me as a reader (or as a wiki editor for that matter) and confusing. To begin with someone who doesn't already know what these all are has no idea what they are going to get when they click any of the links (the scary and mysterious name "Authority control" doesn't help). But if they do click, most of the linked pages consist of metadata that seems much more intended for computer consumption than human, and most of them are written in a variety of non-English languages. It's plausible some of these might be interesting to someone doing very deep research about the subject, but anyone who cares could find those pages by some other method.
Making a big eye-catching purple box for it (even a collapsed one, to be honest) seems like a net-negative for the great majority of readers. "Auto-collapse" is IMO not a good default. These should be collapsed all the time, and ideally the collapsed box should not be so brightly colored. (Has anyone considered a gray background instead?) –jacobolus (t) 14:59, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
Does anyone oppose changing the default state to collapsed? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:59, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

automatic use of encykor_id when available

Korean items are not always well identified in western sources, it would be good to have an automatic link via the {{Authority control}} template for enwiki pages such as Jikji. MargaretRDonald (talk) 00:45, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

What is this encykor identifier? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:58, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Suggested addition of EIDR IDs

I'd like to suggest the addition of the Entertainment Identifier Registry's content and party IDs, which are currently included in Wikidata as EIDR content ID (P2704) and EIDR party ID (P12142). Trivialist (talk) 02:05, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable, but I don't know anything about EIDR. What do others think? In the meantime you can try adding them to Module:Authority control/config/sandbox if you feel able — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:01, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
Seems to be related to DOI. Grimes2 (talk) 17:15, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

First one I checked, this, is a film in Dutch, but the site says the language is "fi" which I presume is "Finnish". Considering that at Wikidata this film has 38 identifiers already, I wonder, if we really want to add AC for movies and the like, whether there aren't more reliable (and informative) ones. Fram (talk) 17:30, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

And of the two sandboxed above, they claim "active = true", but our article states that it has been defunct since 2019? Doesn't seem like a good idea to include it. Fram (talk) 17:33, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Agree. Grimes2 (talk) 17:40, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

New additions

Today two new identifiers were added by Tom.Reding without mentioning or consulting other editors on this talk page. We normally allow at least a week for proposals of new identifiers, to make sure there is consensus, or at least no objections. Should these be reverted pending discussion? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:26, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

JPL Small-Body Database SPK-ID (P716) & Minor Planet Center body ID (P5736) were brought up at WT:AST 2 months ago, but can be left here pending discussion.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:47, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm not going to revert if no one objects, and I haven't looked into it myself. But next time, please show courtesy to editors who watch this talk page by proposing here first. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:10, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

AE member ID (P5463)

Academia Europaea member ID. AE member ID (P5463)

Grimes2 (talk) 16:21, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Error: Grammy Awards artist ID P7303

Error: Recently, this AC redirects to Grammy startpage. Obviously they don't like what we've done.

Grimes2 (talk) 12:26, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

 Fixed on sandbox — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:44, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
Fix confirmed. Grimes2 (talk) 03:51, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Deployed — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:46, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

P8189

Can someone can change please the link to the National Library of Israel. It was changed.
from: link = 'http://uli.nli.org.il/F/?func=find-b&local_base=NLX10&find_code=UID&request=$1',
to: link = 'http://olduli.nli.org.il/F/?func=find-b&local_base=NLX10&find_code=UID&request=$1',
--geageaTalk 22:06, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

 Fixed on sandbox.

Grimes2 (talk) 22:15, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

 Copied to live — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:14, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Amateur radio "On The Air" programs

Would it be useful to include support for amateur radio programs such as Parks On The Air, Summits on the Air, and Islands on the Air as authority control options? They assign unique identifiers to parks, mountain peaks, and islands, respectively. Luke10.27 (talk) 05:14, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

List of identifiers

Just noting here that a lot of the links on Template:Authority control#List of identifiers have disappeared, making the documentation page less than useful. This is due to Swpb removing Wikidata item of this property (P1629) from lots of properties on Wikidata, which this page relies on. I hope he/she is able to fix up our documentation page — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:35, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:BRD might be in order.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:47, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
Scanning class of non-item property value (P10726)'s talk ([1]), it looks like the familiar Wikidata item of this property (P1629) will eventually be deleted.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:55, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
The template and module are protected, so I cannot update them myself. I can work on an edit request. —swpbT • beyond • mutual 16:32, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
Yes please. I have little idea which properties to replace them with. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:37, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
Fixed. It wasn't the main module that needed fixing, but the documentation module: diff. —swpbT • beyond • mutual 16:40, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for sorting it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:38, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Tracking category for duplicate placement of this template

@MSGJ I wonder if there is a tracking category to track the pages where this template is placed more than once on the same page? Kanashimi (talk) 00:21, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Not to my knowledge, but we could set one up. Restricted to article space I suppose? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:50, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://mdwiki.org/wiki/Template_talk:Authority_control/Archive_16"