Talk:Q30

Oceania

Would you please stop removing info that the US is in Oceania. Hawaii, Guam, and Northern Mariana are all located in Oceania.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:14, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Official language

Us as no official language, this is the source used on the French wikipedia :

http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_lang.html

 – The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.86.141.133 (talk • contribs).

To do:

Some things that need doing:

• List of previous capitals, their start dates and end dates.
• List all countries that have bordered on the US at some point or another.

  This actually sounds quite complicated. What counts as a "bordering country"? The CSA and preceding republics? The Japanese Empire (when various American islands were occupied)? Countries neighboring the American Philippines? --Yair rand (talk) 00:58, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

• Start dates of contains the administrative territorial entity (P150) for the US states that don't already have them. I'm pretty sure this property goes by what the country itself recognizes, so data on the civil war secessions don't need to be entered there.
• Start dates, sources for time zones and public holidays. (Maybe legal sources preferred?)
• More international organizations that the US is or has been part of. (League of Nations.)

... --Yair rand (talk) 23:50, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

• This item probably needs a dual structure to deal with both its current status as a country/sovereign state, and its early status as an international organization/confederation/confederacy. That would probably include setting start dates for its current instance of (P31)s, and adding an instance of (P31) indicating its previous form with an end time (P582), and setting a start time (P580) for the country (P17) property. (The states of the US might also need member of (P463) properties targeting this item, with start/end dates.) --Yair rand (talk) 09:32, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
• Add 🇺🇸 Unicode symbol and potentially remove it from the english aliases.
• Add "The Economist Democracy Index" of 2021, 2022 and 2023 like it is on wikipedia. It seems that I cannot do this. Why?

Stop shortening English label

Please leave the label as the United States of America, not shortening it. The label can be used in infoboxes, so shortening it is unhelpful.  — billinghurst sDrewth 12:30, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Actually, that's a good reason to use the more common name. Both English and Simple use "United States", that term is well understood, and the unnecessary longer term is less appropriate for infoboxes. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:09, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

America could be sufficient as well, but it might need the "US of " to be understood?
--- Jura 14:56, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

America is likely to be confused with Americas, as outside of the US many use that term. United States is more widely understood to refer to the country specifically. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:26, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Possible confusion with the Americas isn't actually a factor for Wikidata labels. Let's keep it the way it used to be.
--- Jura 07:37, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Jura: It would be if "America" alone were to appear in infoboxes on other projects, as was the OP's argument. "United States" is more appropriate for that purpose. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:37, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

If the infobox has a country line, I don't the problem. In any case, you can still display whatever you prefer by overriding it locally. There is no need to change it at Wikidata.
--- Jura 07:36, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Actually there is. First, it's far more efficient to change it a single time here than to change every single occurrence across multiple projects. Second, some non-infobox templates, such as en:Template:Wikidata list, don't allow for local override. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:53, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

It's tempting to write that, but somehow it assumes that all infoboxes on every site look for the same. If they would, one could change it just once there. In any case, one just needs to learn how.
--- Jura 09:52, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

@Jura1: Could you please explain your comment? The major English-language Wikipedias (English and Simple) both use "United States"; why not have the English-language label match that? That is easy to do and would not require modifying multiple templates across multiple projects. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:12, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

I think you still have to learn how it works. If you look at w:Washington DC, you will notice that it uses a flag + "United States"; at w:Michelle Obama, there is no country of nationality, but the place of birth uses "U.S.".
--- Jura 08:28, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

In the instances where this label would be passed through (which would not include place of birth), "United States" will be preferred far more often than "United States of America". Nikkimaria (talk) 13:00, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't know what the best solution is, but I'd appreciate it if you guys stopped edit warring over it and cluttering up everyone's watchlists. Every single article that is PartOf the United States shows up on my watchlist when you make these changes. LtPowers (talk) 23:55, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, unfortunately there's going to be at least one more change - it seems pretty clear to me that there's no good reason to keep the "of America" label, since "United States" is the more common label. Perhaps unwatch temporarily if you don't care to see that? Nikkimaria (talk) 00:30, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Please just keep it "United States of America", not too long and covers it well. Please don't change the label to anything else, unless you achieved clear consensus here to change it. Thank you, Multichill (talk) 17:30, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

@Multichill: It is too long, and unnecessarily so since "United States" covers it equally well. Consensus is built on strength of argument and policy; there's not much here in the way of policy, but Help:Label supports common usage as a decision-making factor. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:38, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Just as a point of reference, after the first shortening at least two people were confused enough to create new items in wikidata for the country "United States of America" that I had to merge in. Please don't make changes to such widely used items without clear consensus - start on project chat or with an RFP if you really think it's important to change it. Otherwise it causes trouble for others. ArthurPSmith (talk) 16:02, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

@ArthurPSmith: It causes trouble for others to have the current label too. There doesn't appear to be a per-item RfC-type process on this project - how would one get "clear consensus" other than by discussing here? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:01, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

What Arthur said: start on project chat. You can find it at Wikidata:Project chat. 13:52, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata is a mirror of enWP and the label must be the same then the Lemma en:United States, this was the consens in enWP. Wikidata should take this into account. --Harry Canyon (talk) 00:14, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

No, it's not. Multichill (talk) 18:31, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

It seems to me that the most common name for the United States is "United States", surely not United States of America, which is only used in official contexts. It's like changing Italy (Q38) to "Republic of Italy" or "Repubblica Italiana". This is not just an abstract argument, it has important implications when this item is used for example in lists, when this will be implemented in Wikipedia. See for example [1], notice how weird it looks. --Ita140188 (talk) 02:48, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Please consider to not change the English label without prior discussion and consensus here, as it is very widely used item (and label), so frequent changes are not convenient.--Jklamo (talk) 09:20, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Reversion

@Sjoerddebruin : About your reversion of rang in instance of (P31): I know these change affect query result. In my opinion, United States of America (Q30) is, first of all, a country (Q6256) or sovereign state (Q3624078). I think the condition of Permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (Q6688521) should be under member of (P463) or part of (P361), but if you consider that is correct as a instance of (P31), at least it should not be the first value to get, as it happens in the others Permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (Q6688521). I proceed to move down. Thanks !.--Amadalvarez (talk) 16:11, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Link to iewiki

The link for iewiki should go to ie:Unit States de America, and not to the page about the states of the US. 77.180.121.40 11:16, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Please add national flower (rose)

Please add national flower (rose)

Sources: http://nationalrosegarden.com/the-national-flower/ https://statesymbolsusa.org/symbol-or-officially-designated-item/state-flower/rose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_symbols_of_the_United_States

GRE code

Add (Q1768199) 3590227 --Alexandronikos (talk) 16:55, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Avoid marking a preferred rank for one value for P31 "is instance"

As doing so will break queries that expect one of the other values. This happened recently with "sovereign state", so I'm bringing it up here in case people want to discuss it (and to serve as a warning). JesseW (talk) 05:10, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Population of the United States relative to the world

Hi, I'd like to point out somewhere that the population of the United States relative to the world is an estimated 4.3%. In other words, 1 out of every 23 people in the world is American. - 108.71.133.201 03:07, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

That doesn't need to be added independently to the item, as it can already be derived from the existing population figures on United States of America (Q30) and Earth (Q2). --Yair rand (talk) 19:05, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Timezones

I see two problems with the timezones currently: One is that it's inaccurate for most parts of the US to say they're in (for example) UTC-5, because that's only true for less than half of the year while Daylight Saving Time isn't in effect. It would be more correct to use only the actual named timezones (e.g. Eastern Time Zone). According to WP, the only areas that are actually on a UTC-based timezone and not a named one are Baker Island, Howland Island, and Wake Island.

More importantly, why is UTC-6 ranked as a preferred statement? This makes no sense, since the US doesn't have a single official or preferred timezone. It's also causing UTC-6 to show up on Wikivoyage as the US's timezone, which again is inaccurate and makes no sense. --Bigpeteb (talk) 17:41, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

P150 (administrative division)

25 of the states have rank "preferred" and the other 25 have rank "normal". Does this make any sense? --Reinhard Müller (talk) 21:51, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

@Reinhard Müller: All current subdivisions are supposed to be marked "preferred". I started work on changing them over a while ago, but I still haven't gotten around to finishing, so we have the current situation. --Yair rand (talk) 01:01, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Yair rand: Do you think you can finish that soon? In the current situation, if some routine queries the states of the U.S., it will only receive 25 of them. Thanks --Reinhard Müller (talk) 08:39, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Yair rand, Reinhard Müller: et al. When I look up which items in P150 does not have an "end date", I counted to 50 (states) with preferred rank. When I include normal rank, I counted to 58. When I look into details, I find that both Washington DC and DC are there. Why? 62 etc (talk) 18:54, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

@Sextvåetc: I didn't create any items, I only corrected some ranks. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 06:28, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

@Reinhard Müller: But is there any logic in counting DC twice?

And what is the logic in setting Guam to a lower rank than Montana? 62 etc (talk) 13:17, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

I only took care for the 50 states. I didn't even touch the entries that aren't states. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 13:23, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

I am not putting any blame on anybody! I am asking if there is any logic behind this? 62 etc (talk) 05:19, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Please correct German Label

See Talk:Q30#Stop shortening English label. Similar is the German label. Currently it is the short text „Vereinigte Staaten“ and not the correct long text „Vereinigte Staaten von America“.

--H.-Dirk Schmitt (talk) 20:41, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Done Nuretok (talk) 18:44, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Here is not the English-language Wikipedia. The running back and forth is annoying (see version history). The lemma in the German-language Wikipedia is decisive, see Help:Label/de. I hope this ends the topic once and for all. --HarryNº2 (talk) 20:13, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

As Harry points out, there have been repeated discussions about the Lemma in the German Wikipedia (de:Diskussion:Vereinigte_Staaten and its archive). Just an idea: Someone who has been following these discussions could summarize the main points and add them to the top of the discussion page (on wikidata and on de-wikipedia) as sticky. Nuretok (talk) 06:18, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Regarding "Life Expectancy," "Official Name," and similar parameters

I will freely admit that I am brand new to Wikidata, and as such I may be completely mistaken when it comes to these issues, but a few data sets struck me as somewhat odd when I was originally scanning across this page.

• Nations do not have "life expectancies," since they are not living beings and thus (in theory, at least) do not have innate, physical restrictions that prevent them from existing indefinitely (ignoring, of course, internal or external threats such as national bankruptcies, invasions by neighboring countries, coup d'états, etc.). Since life expectancies are also normally used with regards to entire populations, such as the average life expectancy of humans or the life expectancy of Turritopsis nutricula (or theoretical lack thereof), having such a data set on this page suggests at first glance that there is a group of United States of Americas with a given average life expectancy, which is clearly not the case. Perhaps a better parameter name would be "Age," but if this were to be used, I would imagine it would be best to replace the annual values currently listed in the data set with a single running counter of the number of years between the current date and the value given by the "Inception" data set.
• Under the "Official name" data set, two values are given for English: "United States of America" and "United States," the latter of which is incorrect (and already listed under the "Short name" data set) and thus ought to be removed. Similarly, "United States of America (the)" and "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" are both listed under "Short name", despite both being adequately covered by the usage of "United States of America" within the "Official name" and "native label" data sets.
• This is admittedly quite nitpicky, but the United States technically does not have an "Official language" (to my knowledge, at least), and as such a "Common languages" data set (if one exists, that is) would probably be a better choice.

I would perform all of these changes myself, but seeing as I am brand new to this subdomain, I have not yet qualified for the autoconfirmed status necessary to edit this page. If someone else could perform them for me (or alternatively explain why I am mistaken in my reasoning above), that would be appreciated. — TheHardestAspect­OfCreatingAnAccount­IsAlwaysTheUsername: posted at 03:54, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Property:P2250 has some info on how to use the property for "life expectancy".

In general, Wikidata attempts to add statements based on Help:Sources and apply Help:Ranking depending on what is preferred by contributors/nitpickers. This can lead to several conflicting statements. This is somewhat different from Wikipedia's approach. Wikidata:Project chat might be the better place to discuss general questions. --- Jura 09:19, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

@TheHardestAspectOfCreatingAnAccountIsAlwaysTheUsername: I advice you to not look to deep into the exact wording of the label of the property. It should be viewed as nothing but a label, a very short description in one or a few words what the property is supposed to describe. Instead look into the property-page and related discussions around the property. 62 etc (talk) 09:40, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

coordinates of southernmost point (P1333), coordinates of easternmost point (P1334), and coordinates of westernmost point (P1335) of United States of America (Q30)

Shouldn't the coordinates of southernmost point (P1333) of the US being American Samoa, coordinates of easternmost point (P1334) being US Virgin Island, and coordinates of westernmost point (P1335) being Guam or Aleutian Islands? C933103 (talk) 09:42, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

USA is an instance of an historical country (Q30:P31:Q9954170 / Q9954170:P279:Q3024240)

Hi, I'm not sure that the P31:Q99541706 link is appropriate. It makes Q30 an historical country by dependency which is not true. The definition of Q99541706 is "nonexistent state that lacked recognition during its period of existence". USA aren't an instance of that. Two tags (start_time and end_time) were added but I'm not sure that it's a great structuration. Q30 seems to be the only still-existing country with a P31:Q99541706 association. Wouldn't it be more accurate to create a new entity "USA" with just that P31:Q99541706 association and link this new entity as an entity replaced by Q30 ? I can't do the modification as the page is protected.

Or instead of creating a new entity, one could just replace Q9954170 (historical unrecognized state) with Q15634554 (state with limited recognition) and keep the start time and end time.

--Sifalot (talk) 19:59, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

• historical unrecognized state (Q99541706) is the value being used at Q30#P31. This may be correct as it has an end date. However, the other P31 values are more current. Accordingly, I think that should have preferred rank. I adjusted that. Maybe there is a better solution? --- Jura 19:36, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

• Yeah I guess it should help, Thanks. It fits what was done for Indonesia (Q252), so I was wrong there are some existing countries with this tag. JesseW said here to avoid ranking P31 but I think it's better if existing countries aren't historical countries by default. --Sifalot (talk) 19:59, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

My comment was about marking only one of the equally preferred values with the higher rank; given that we now have a relevant use for distinguishing them by rank, making everything but the Q99541706 preferred makes sense to me, too. JesseW (talk) 03:08, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Barbecue: statement culture: United States of America should have a statement indigenous to.

Could you help me to solve the flag problem?--Carnby (talk) 16:42, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

It looks like you are asking about the flag (suggestion) on barbecue (Q461696)culture (P2596)United States of America (Q30) (at Q461696#P2596) which states "United States of America should have a statement indigenous to", and your attempt to address this with this edit, which I undid. I undid the edit because the geographical region should be the value (not the subject entity) of indigenous to (P2341). For example from a technical perspective barbecue (Q461696)indigenous to (P2341)United States of America (Q30) would make sense, but United States of America (Q30)indigenous to (P2341)barbecue (Q461696) does not.

As for the flag on culture (P2596), it appears that the value of culture (P2596) is intended to be a culture/people group, and the item for that culture/people group should in turn have a indigenous to (P2341) statement that indicates the geographical region where that culture/people group is/was located. However culture (P2596) also allows a country as value, in which case the suggestion doesn't make any sense. I'm not sure if culture (P2596) shouldn't allow a value that is a country (and indigenous to (P2341) should be used instead of culture (P2596) in this case), or if the suggestion is just wrong here. It looks like the value-requires-statement constraint was added here so perhaps @Dhx1 has more insight on this. –LiberatorG (talk) 16:11, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

@Carnby, LiberatorG: I have updated barbecue (Q461696) and culture (P2596) with suggested changes to how countries/states are referred to. Unfortunately I think this property has been misused and overloaded, and quite often has values being countries/states rather than people groups or cultures (there can be more than one) associated with a geographic area. Dhx1 (talk) 17:17, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you both.--Carnby (talk) 17:25, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Old English/angwiki Page Name

The currently-listed associated page on the Old English wiki is "Geānedan Rīcu America"; however, there aren't supposed to be macrons there (for authenticity). That page now redirects to "Geanedan Ricu America". I can't seem to edit this value on the Wikidata side, presumably because this is a semi-protected page and I'm a new user here. If the associated page name could be updated, that would be much appreciated. Kestrelguy (talk) 21:44, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

English label

I think the label should be the same as the article title. the article in English Wikipedia is "United States", so the English label should be "United States", just like many other countries.--El caballero de los Leones (talk) 03:31, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

• Support, long established at English Wikipedia. Hameltion (talk) 03:58, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Inception 1784

I was surprised that the 1784 date is the preferred one for the founding of the USA. I'd have have it the other way round, but as a Brit hesitate to intervene. Vicarage (talk) 13:55, 21 December 2023 (UTC)