Property talk:P6/Archive 1

This page is an archive. Please do not modify it. Use the current page, even to continue an old discussion.

I think that for now we should restrict this property to a particular country, or whatevel level is more relevant. For instance mayors are called "maires" in France but "bourgmestres" in Belgium. Word variation are faitly arbitrary, and they mean that the label should not be the same in France and Belgium. --Zolo (talk) 21:23, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to boldy rename this to "head of municipal government". While technically there are a handful of mayors who are the heads of county governments, they should have their own property anyways. This is in keeping with "head of state"... Though I'm still looking for a good neutral term for what in America we call governors... Anyone have any ideas? — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 22:48, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

From a logical point of view, I think "head of municipal government" is the equivalent of a US state governor and a head of State. In each case, that is "head of entity". Of course there are differences between them, but there are also large differences across heads of states. Maybe we could merge them in a single property ? No idea about the label though... --Zolo (talk) 22:59, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for my bad english. I've the point of view of a french speaker in Switzerland. In Switzerland (french part), we have président de commune, syndic or maire it's depend of the area. So, I agree with the neutral head of municipal government. Ludo29 (talk) 16:33, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I have changed it to "chef de l'éxécutif", or please change to "chef du gouvernement municipal" (or any other phrasing) if you think it is better. --Zolo (talk) 22:25, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

The description says: town, city, or municipality. So why not "head of local government"? --Kolja21 (talk) 14:18, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

"chief administrator" looks strange. Is this a political or an administrative position? -- Lavallen (block) 16:58, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

This property is only intended for municipals (according to the name), so a country cannot have this value (e.g. U.S.A. -> Barack Obama). What about defining a more generic property, which can be set for every geographical feature? This would make searching easier, for example. If I would like to search for all official jobs a person had, I only have to search for one property, not for severals (head of municipial, head of country, ...). --Faux (talk) 11:17, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I guess we the scope of this property can be adjusted, but I think that for the time being, it makes sense to have a special property for countries, because of the frequent duality head of State / head of government. --Zolo (talk) 12:40, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

"Head of local government" would be better. --Kolja21 (talk) 21:49, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Please see my proposal at Property_talk:P46#One_property?. SPQRobin (talk) 23:01, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I put a request for deletion of Property:P46 on WD:PFD#Property:P46. There seemes to be a consensus to merge it with this property and enlarge it's scope to head of any government (local, regional, national, supranational-?). Please join the discussion there.--Šlomo (talk) 19:41, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Not every municipality has Wikipedia articles = Wikidata items for the chief administrator. Datatype should be string instead of item. IW (wikidata addict) 13:13, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I got to this page to say exactly that. The mayor of a small commune is definitely not inherently notable by Wikipedia standards, but his or her name warrants a mention in the infobox.Andrei Stroe (talk) 09:17, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

This is a problem for many properties, but changing the datatype is really not the way to go. Wikidata is about semantics and linked data. Using a string datatype would run counter to that. When you identify through an item, you make sure that you identify unambiguously a single person (while many people have the same name), you allow better internationalization for languages that do not use the Latin alhpabet, and much more importantly you create relationships between everything relating to this person. If you use the item datatype, you can easily find that the mayor of X is also the chairm of Y, and that he later wrote a book about local politics. You cannot do that using an item datatype. What we need is not to change the datatype, but to change the notability policy so that many more people can have their own item. --Zolo (talk) 09:44, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, if we want to take it in this way, it would be better to change the notability policy. Defining more and more exceptions is not purposeful. IW (talk²me) 17:05, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

• I disagree with Zolo. First, changing the notability criteria is likely not going to happen, especially for low-level positions like a small-town mayor. Second, it would require the creation of 100,000s of stub articles for these mayors that require only more and more work and coordination, not lighten the load as intended by Wikidata. --P199 (talk) 18:19, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
  • No, the mere existence of an item doesn't require the creation of an article. --  Docu  at 00:14, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

String datatype is bad idea. It allows specify only person's name, no place of birth, no portrait, ... Some persons already have items/articles, are we broke links to they? If no, then we need two properties: one string and one item. But this increases complexity of data processing algorithms (for example infoboxes). Current implementation is more better. — Ivan A. Krestinin (talk) 20:17, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

---

Hi Inkowik, Andrei Stroe, Zolo, P199, Docu, Ivan A. Krestinin, and others,

I've got the same question. At first, using 'string' doesn't seem a very good idea but − with or without the notability criteria − creating a items for each head of government (P6) doesn't seem a good idea either. For France, there is 40 000 communes and the head of government (P6) is elected every 6 years (roughly 1/3 of them stay for 12 years or more) since 1790 (in 1790, there was an election every yaars). So there would be probably more than 500 000 items to create and probably no data to put in 95 % of this item other than « mayor of QXXX ». Since we can't do that (or with great difficulties and a not before a looooong time), the communes of France wouldn't have a exhaustive list mayor (and I'm just talking of France, there is 200 other countries in the world…). That's why 'string' seems the « less bad » solution to me.

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 20:34, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I think WD:N is needed to be extended. Wikipedia notability criteria allow include information about heads of municipality at least to municipality article. Wikidata is structured storage, so this information can not be included to municipality item directly. So current WD:N covers only subset of Wikipedia information inclusion criterion. Large data volume is not very big problem if there is some official external database. Bots can sync Wikidata with it. Is some database exists in France? — Ivan A. Krestinin (talk) 20:56, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Agree with Ivan A. Krestinin that using a string does not seem convenient. If we just have the name of the mayor, it is not really helpful. Even for small communes, we often have the profession of the mayor, and the political party when available. This sort of thing is better done through a separate item. Yes 100 000 items about French mayors sounds many, but much of the maintenance can be assured by bots and automated tool. The only list of mayors I can find is http://www.francegenweb.org/mairesgenweb/ but the format is not really convenient, and it marked as copyrighted. I guess the simplest solution would be to extract the data from fr.wikipedia as they are already there. --Zolo (talk) 06:44, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Ivan A. Krestinin : as I said, WD:N is not really the problem because 1. the second and third points already allow to create the 500 000+ items of mayors of France 2. the main problem is that there is no database. There is no database (official or not) and more « worrying » there is no data *at all* for most of these mayors (it's particulary true for the mayors elected more than 50-100 years ago but also for the nowadays mayors of communes under 1000 inhabitants, FYI : roughly 60 % of the communes of France). There is an database for the 3 last elections on the official site interieur.gouv.fr but AFAIK it doesn't tell who is the mayor… (only the « conseil municipal »).

Zolo : francegenweb.org is not incomplete and not allways reliable, same problem on the wikipedia articles…

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 19:34, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

the polish version says burmistrz, the german one Leiter der Gemeindeverwaltung. Both means: mayor. The english version says chief administrator of a town, city, municipality, country. Maybe someone wants to fix it in whatever direction is usefull. Because in Poland the prime minister is now a mayor (at least for germans and poles :) ) ...Sicherlich (talk) 19:24, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I choosed "ledare" for Swedish, I guess that you can understand what it means. "chief administrator" can be misunderstood in Swedish. -- Lavallen (block) 19:36, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

i guess it means "leader". so this item is meant to be for everything? leader of a country, a city, a company, a music band, a military unit, a religious group? Seems this item tries to be everything at once and I dont think this will work out. ... by the way en:Head of government does not include all what is mentioned here but the head of a state. ...Sicherlich (talk) 19:51, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I see it was changed today here. As this totaly changes the meaning of what was written before and does not even fit to the meaning you would expect i revert this. ...Sicherlich (talk) 19:56, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

The property for "prime minister" will be deleted, that why it has been changed. "ledare" is not good but it's hard to find a good short word for this, and I do not want it to be confused with CEO/MD of an "administrative unit". That is something different. -- Lavallen (block) 20:03, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

okay so delete if you want to. But then fix first the rest and maybe change wikipedia as well. if the en:Head of government is the leader of a city as well it should be written there. or is wikidata having its own definition? ... IMO it's not the case but hey who am I. For me it seems simply wrong. and it is for sure for the polish and german description ...Sicherlich (talk) 20:06, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Properties 6 and 46 are being merged. I will deal with the labels once I'm done combining them. Please stop reverting me in the mean time. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:16, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

so on different watchpages will pop up that obama is the mayor of the US but that will bother nobody? maybe change the label to usefull names first? - as well the english one as Head of government is not a mayor but its written that it is a mayor as well? So first putting confusion and at some point in time later maybe finding an idea how to fix it? Interesting approach ...Sicherlich (talk) 20:21, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I am working as fast as I can. There is no good way to merge properties right now, and I've got 250 of them to do. If you would like to help convert the labels and descriptions for Property:P6 so that they reflect that the property applies to all levels of government, it would be appreciated. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:36, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't even have a name for that what is created here. and it seems there is no name in english or swedish as well. IMO the first way would be to give this item here a proper name; at least in english. so nobody wonders or if he can find out. for me it looked like vandalism. ...Sicherlich (talk) 20:43, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Will it be qualifier for former heads? Infovarius (talk) 06:53, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

End date? --  Docu  at 07:12, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

That would be ok. Are we planning to store a full list of former heads in property of item? Infovarius (talk) 07:44, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Why not? There are normal rank statements with start time (P580) and end time (P582) qualifiers for former persons, and preferred rank statement with only start time (P580) qualifier for current person. This allow to insert the same person several times if the term is not continuous. Paweł Ziemian (talk) 11:54, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

In fact it would be quite stupid to delete information from the database when the government head changes. Also, by entenring the end date of someone's term, it will be possible to detect outdated information, something that doesn't seem feasible right now.

Several of this property's labels are leftover from before it was made to be used for governments other than municipal/local governments. Having statements that say things like "Barack Obama is the head of municipal government of the United States" can be quite confusing. Perhaps we should just remove all labels that were added before the change of scope? --Yair rand (talk) 09:31, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Unless you can update them, please do. You could also add an English note to labels in these languages, e.g. "OUTDATED LABEL, PLEASE SEE ENGLISH LABEL".

Generally, I try to edit them by removing parts that seem outdated. --  Docu  at 13:05, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Right now, this property allows items to have a list of all the people who have been the head of government (United States of America (Q30) can have all 43 presidents listed under this property). This is significantly increases loading time and it duplicates the data that position held (P39) collects in the individual politician's items. I suggest that this property be changed, so that the position be used as the value of this property, instead of individuals who hold/have held office under that position (e.g. President of the United States (Q11696) will be used instead of listing Obama, Bush, Clinton, ...). Any thoughts? --Wylve (talk) 08:52, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree (see Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2013/05#Political offices), but there are difficulties and we also need to be careful that we do not break anything in Wikipedias that might use this property. @Yair rand, Infovarius, Lavallen:. --Zolo (talk) 10:56, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

The number of "mayor of small town X" items we'd have to create is something to consider. --Yair rand (talk) 23:53, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Creating many items would be inevitable if we are to make querying a list of office holders of "mayor of small town X" possible. These small mayor offices may not be as notable as President of the United States (Q11696), but they are both entities that exist in the real world. If we ignore the small towns, we would have two separate systems of query for larger administrative divisions and smaller ones respectively. --—Wylve (talk) 16:22, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

I believe this would be covered by office held by head of government (P1313), thus such a change would result in a duplicate property. Popcorndude (talk) 22:39, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

This property requires that the target be a human (Q5), however it is used for various fictional countries such as The Capitol (Q14329433), Booty Island (Q834656), Angmar (Q719496), and Rivendell (Q218562). I propose that the constraint be extended to include fictional character (Q95074), so as to accurately represent all use cases. Popcorndude (talk) 16:06, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

While going through the constraint violations, I noticed that this property is used a lot on government bodies, such as cabinet (Q640506). Of course, in a way this makes sense, since the head of the government body is usually also the head of the governed region (although I am sure there are exceptions). I see two ways to resolve this:

1. Extend the value constraint to include entities that have instance of (P31) to a sub-class of the entity "ruling government body of a certain country/region/subdivision" (I don't think such an entity exists yet).
2. Change the violations to director / manager (P1037).

Personally i prefer option 2, because conceptually the leader of a government body (even if it is the ruling body) is different to the leader of region, even if in the vast majority of cases is actually is the same person. --Srittau (talk) 19:15, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

The talk page and the property page have different lists of qualifiers. The talk page has start time (P580) and end time (P582), while the property itself has replaces (P1365) and replaced by (P1366) additionally as mandatory qualifiers. I am not too happy about these qualifiers to be mandatory, to be honest. --22:48, 30 December 2015 (UTC), by Srittau (talk • contribs • logs)

If there is no preceding or succeding item, you can use "no value" and be happy. --Infovarius (talk) 13:45, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

The question is not to make Srittau (talk • contribs • logs) happy. The question is, whether the talk page and the property page agree and whether it makes sense to make a qualifier mandatory which in common cases doesn't have any known value. 123 (talk) 00:17, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

(1) Why should it be "quite necessary" to use a qualifier replaced by (P1366) or end time (P582) for an incumbent head of government, where neither is known? This is not a rare, but quite normal case.

(2) There is in fact no constraint on the property making replaces (P1365), replaced by (P1366) or end time (P582) mandatory.

(3) The large majority of properties are very parsimonious if it comes to mandatory qualifiers. 123 (talk) 00:25, 16 May 2017 (UTC)