User:DutchTreat/Outreach/AuthorityControl
Current Practice
[edit]The current practice is to use the AC template without any parameters on pages. All data is managed centrally in Wikidata and will be retrieved from there:
Simply adding {{Authority control}} will display all the authority control information associated with the article in Wikidata. Managing the information in Wikidata ensures that it is available to other languages and projects as well. For full details see {{Authority_control#Wikidata}}.
History
[edit]Wikidata makes managing identities in a central place easy. AC wasn't always like this. In 2012, I viewed the VIAF as the centralize reference source for authority control records. Adding parameters to the {{Authority_control}} template was a task for many editors. A labor of love for some people like myself. In December of that year, I was busy adding LCCN and GND ids to AC templates like at Jean-Michel_Basquiat and Tsai Chin (actress).
There was User:VIAFbot adding VIAF information to thousands of pages[1]
Yet, there are a growing list of Wikipedia:VIAF/errors in the database. Getting these errors corrected was time consuming and not always clear.
Once Wikidata managed properties like VIAF ID (P214), GND ID (P227), and Library of Congress authority ID (P244). Then making corrections was no problem. All Wikipedia sites including Wikisource were able to use the same source.
Reflecting upon the book The Cathedral and the Bazaar, there are some parellels vetwee the OCLA VIAF and Wikidata
- ^ Contribs by User:VIAFbot: First main article edit was A.C. Reed on 13 September 2012. The last edit was 22 November 2012. Current the life of this bot thousands of pages were updated with VIAF data.
- Live edits 252,049 · (99%)
- Deleted edits 2,631 · (1%)