Talk:Key:species:wikidata

Where to get the WikiData-IDs?

I am looking for an easy way / a list for Wikidata-IDs that are supposed to be used with this key. Ideally filtered by "only trees". Can someone link a https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:species:wikidata or some wikidata index page for this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tordans (talk • contribs)

Go to a wikipedia page such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_acerifolia or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak and click on "Wikidata item" link in sidebar on the left (listed under "tools"). It will tak you to page such as https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q12004 - Q12004 or Q followed by some other numbers is a wikidata id of specific wikipedia article Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:41, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Yep, like Mateusz says. I looked into pulling a list of tree species from Wikidata using SPARQL, but it will be quite long, containing many (often rare) varieties. Plus, I had trouble filtering to 'trees' only. I favour manually adding some examples of common species to this wiki page using taginfo and general knowledge Jnicho02 (talk) 14:45, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

There are additional issues: different countries use different names for the same taxon. The really obvious one is London Plane which is often Platanus x acerifolia, but its official name in the UK & Ireland is Platanus x hispanica. In Spain Silver Birch is Betula alba, but elsewhere this is regarded as a nomen nudum, and the correct name is Betula pendula. Also Spanish taxonomy recognises two species for the Holm Oak Quercus rotundifolia and Quercus ilex. In general the name widely used in the formal botanical literature of the country is the one which should be used. Synonmy is a huge problem with scientific names, altering the name according to apparent synonymy often introduces serious errors (see wikipedia article for Lolium multiflorum & then compare to wikidata items). Another example the genus Sorbus was recently split into 5 separate genera, but this has not been widely accepted. Botanical names will continue to change (some revision of Sorbus is still likely) and I dont know how wikidata tracks such changes, particularly if a species is split. Briefly, although IPNI & Plants of the World try & maintain a single taxonomic view, this is a) unstable, and b) not necessarily used. Think how long it takes a tag to change in OSM & you'll see why. I'd say the general approach would be curated lists of trees in the name suggestion index, which, at least in iD, can pull in the wiki values. SK53 (talk) 21:35, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Ah, i'm glad that you noticed this Jerry, I was about to contact you. Most of us probably don't appreciate the complications. I've asked on the US Slack (where the iD devs hang out) about whether it is sensible to use the Name Suggestion Index to provide a shortlist of localised choices. Jnicho02 (talk) 07:32, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Synonyms should not be a huge problem, one taxon is ideally one Wikidata item that has the scientific name and all synonyms attached to it. For your example of the London Plane, just use Q161374, for the Silver Birch use Q156895. That's what Wikidata tries to solve, one concept means one item that has all the different names attached to it. This might not work for everything, but at least for taxonomic synonyms this should work. --Floscher (talk) 08:46, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

"but at least for taxonomic synonyms this should work" - the tricky part for taxonomic systems is that in at least some cases there are differing opinions what is synonym and what is not Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 11:33, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for all your answers @Jnicho02:, @Mateusz Konieczny:. A few info an thoughts--Tordans (talk) 04:45, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

- Could the OSM-Wiki-Wikidata-System be of help here? See my question at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Data_items#Import_genus.3D.2A_.28Q310.29. One advantage would be, that this only includes data that someone in OSM has used already, so its "more common" data.--Tordans (talk) 04:45, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

- I looking for a solution to make tree mapping easier for a few years now, https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/4240#issuecomment-410813774 is the best place to summarise the discussion IMO. It shows, that iD needs an external list, ideally from a trusted and maybe filtered wikidata-source. If this exists, it could be the basis for a "suggest"-feature in iD and other editors. I was getting nowhere for this with the genus-data, but hope that the wikidata-approach would work.--Tordans (talk) 04:45, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

You can try this query, it lists the taxons that are most commonly used on the wikidata items of trees: https://w.wiki/UiN --Floscher (talk) 22:27, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you @Floscher:, this is great. Is it possible to have a kind of category in this data? My idea is: I might not know if it is a "Winterlinde", but that it is a "Linde". So adding the later is better than adding nothing. But one needs the "category" of tree or a bit of hierarchie for this.--Tordans (talk) 04:45, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

@Tordans: If you aren't sure that a tree belongs to a species/taxon like Winter-Linde (Q158746), but you know it definitely belongs to a more generic species/taxon like Linden (Q127849): Go to the Wikidata page of the more specific item Winter-Linde (Q158746) and look for the property übergeordnetes Taxon (Property:P171), which links to parent taxons. Or just search Wikidata for the species of the tree that you are sure about. Any item with ist ein(e) (Property:P31) Taxon (Q16521) is fine.

It would be possible to add parent taxons to the queries, but not exactly trivial: Some taxons have more than one direct parent taxon and if you include indirect parent taxons ("grandparents", "greatgrandparents", …). --Floscher (talk) 14:44, 9 August 2020 (UTC)