Wikidata For Wikimedia Projects/AddIssue/Wikidata Across Projects

Wikidata Across Projects

Description of issue

I've noticed that Wikidata, as it is currently used, doesn't work well for connecting all the projects. It seems to work pretty well for Wikipedia, where there is often one page per language for each article. However, it is much more complicated to use on Wikibooks, where there may be multiple books that touch on a given subject. Since Wikidata doesn't allow multiple pages on a given project to be linked to the same Wikidata item, or for one page to be linked to multiple Wikidata items, this creates issues. For example, should Wikibooks:Cookbook:Milk be linked to Wikidata:Q8495? Should it link to a separate Wikidata item called "Cookbook:Milk" to create book-level specificity in Wikidata? What if someone wanted to create a book on the dairy industry that also discussed milk—how should that be handled? What if one wikibook connected across multiple languages diverges so much between languages that they are no longer equivalent—how would this be handled in Wikidata?

I don't necessarily have good proposed solutions, especially since I wasn't around when Wikidata was being developed, and I don't necessarily know all the complicated background. But, I think it's important to consider the issues I've raised in the context of Wikidata's core functionality across Wiki projects.

Happy to talk more about this/answer questions!

Affected Wikimedia Project(s)

Wikibooks, Wikiversity

Submitted By

Kittycataclysm (talk) 00:47, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dear @Kittycataclysm, thank you for your submission and New year's greetings to you! If I understand the crux of your issue correctly, the problem is on how to link a Wikidata Item that represents a concept, to multiple pages (or in this case, books) that share that concept? Perhaps a Category or other form of collective label? Also, sorry if this reply is so late in coming! Feel free to reply underneath if you have any further thoughts! Thank you again -- Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 12:15, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Danny Benjafield (WMDE) Thank you for your response! Yes, that is one of the big issues. Linking to categories is a potential solution, but categories at Wikibooks are a little unusual in practice (we have books, subjects, and shelves)—you can check it out here. Additionally, there is the Wikibooks cookbook, which has different conventions from the other books. I'll also refer you to a relevant conversation on the subject currently taking place at wikibooks. Cheers! —Kittycataclysm (talk) 13:08, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]