Wikidata:Property proposal/SABRE wiki ID

SABRE wiki ID

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Transportation

Done: SABRE page ID (P11000) (Talk and documentation)

Description	identifier for a page on the SABRE wiki (Society for All British and Irish Road Enthusiasts)
Represents	SABRE wiki (Q113089451)
Data type	External identifier
Domain	item
Allowed values	`.*`
Example 1	A1 road (Q279859) → A1
Example 2	B9160 road (Q89040201) → B9160
Example 3	Ayr (Q654216) → Ayr
Example 4	Ness Bridge (Q112245379) → Ness_Bridge
Example 5	Broxden Junction (Q4976927) → Broxden_Roundabout
Example 6	Transport Scotland (Q7834896) → Transport_Scotland
Example 7	cattle grid (Q2164694) → Cattle_Grid
Example 8	runaway truck ramp (Q268756) → Escape_lane
Source	https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page; https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Contents
Planned use	Linking of most roads that we have items for should be straightforward by road number. Other items can be discovered in SABRE wiki's Category:Contents (made easier because SABRE wiki tends to repeat items between top-level categories and lower-level categories, rather than only lowest-level categories). Localised physical features of a particular type are probably most easily matched by coordinates. Generic and non-localised pages may be worth running through OpenRefine or Mix'n'match.
Number of IDs in source	28,500
Expected completeness	always incomplete (Q21873886)
Formatter URL	https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=$1
Applicable "stated in"-value	SABRE wiki (Q113089451)
Single-value constraint	yes
Distinct-values constraint	yes
Wikidata project	WikiProject Highways (Q2354239), WikiProject United Kingdom (Q10816927), WikiProject Ireland (Q6878112)

Motivation

SABRE wiki (Q113089451) describes itself as "the most complete archive of information on the British and Irish road networks on the web". [1].

As well as a detailed directory of UK and Irish roads, it contains pages on individual junctions, locations (as nodes in the road network), bridges, organisations, signage, and other pieces of highway engineering; as well as further topics of relevance to the history and geography of the network.

It would be a useful resource to match our items to, and a useful external link, perhaps in particular for Commons infoboxes.

Note: As noted last year at Wikidata:Property_proposal/curid, overwhelmingly our links to external wikis are by page title rather than page ID (with only a handful of exceptions), so that is what has been proposed here. However constraints should be set to encourage MediaWiki page ID (P9675) to be added as a qualifier. Jheald (talk) 19:20, 14 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Proposed. Jheald (talk) 21:08, 14 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Since this is a Mediawiki site, it would be better to use the pageid for identifier. That would also result in allowed values be \d+ and formatter url https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?curid=$1. Example: Ness bridge. Infrastruktur (talk) 22:29, 14 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Infrastruktur: Per the discussion I linked above (this one), as of December 2020 there were 61 external wikis we link to by page-title, versus 6 by page-id. Personally I would be happy either way, but I would slightly prefer page-title. The page-id may be slightly more stable (remaining the same if the page is moved), and likely to be slightly more normalised (as the page-title may have some variants that also work as links). On the other hand, SABRE wiki is pretty mature now as a wiki, so I would expect relatively few page moves, with any that do happen likely to leave a redirect, so the link would still remain and still work even if the normalisation would be lost. My reasons for slightly preferring page-title are that I think it is more likely that users will readily find it and add it (whereas you have to know to look under 'Page information' in the sidebar to find the page-id by hand); and also I think page-title would give a more meaningful link-text from Commons infoboxes, showing exactly the page that would be linked to, so might be more helpful to users there. (Also page-title rather than page-id may be the link that external users may be more likely to have recorded, if they were seeking a match).

Of course the discussion about making IDs non-meaningful is one with a long history, leading not least to our own Qids. Here I think that with a MediaWiki page ID (P9675) qualifier we can have the best of both worlds, allowing us to periodically check the the page-title is still in sync and correctly normalised, while preserving the user-friendliness of using the page-title as the ID. But I would be content either way. Jheald (talk) 08:57, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Using page title is more convenient to most people I guess, which would explain its popularity. I think it's kind of pointless to supply both a title and a page ID using a qualifier, so it would be better to just settle on one. I'm glad you voiced a preference for the page title, that should be the choice then. Infrastruktur (talk) 09:36, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]