Template talk:Authority control/Archive 3

Category:Wikipedia:Authority control (key words only)
Does Category:Wikipedia:Authority control (key words only) serve any useful purpose? It was created in August 2011 and labelled "test / evaluation". How is it applied? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:25, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
 * It's in Template:Authority control/SWD and Template:Authority control divonly. -- WOSlinker (talk) 00:06, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

What about Dewey?
To my understanding, the most wide-spread library classification system is Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). Does anyone have time to add it here here? I notice that Infobox book use both Dewey and LC Classification. (In my country, libraries are currently leaving our national letter-based system for Dewey, with reference to globalization.) Mange01 (talk) 23:29, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Does Dewey have unique codes for authors people (and more than a handful)? Can you give some examples, please? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:51, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Dewey is a classification system (assigning codes to broad topics - eg/ 944, history of France). It's not an identification system - with very few examples, there's no specific Dewey codes for individual people. They're both library systems, but do quite different things.
 * Theoretically we could look at adding Dewey codes to (eg) History of France, but a) it's not clear how useful this would be, and b) there are complicated copyright issues (Dewey is owned and maintained by OCLC, who license it). Andrew Gray (talk) 18:12, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * DDC is implemented differently in different libraries, but many will suffix the first two or three letters of the first author's surname onto the DDC to serve as a shelf sequence. These are obviously not unique amongy authors, nor do they remain the same for any one author, as the base DDC changes when that one author writes on a different subjects. Several editions of the same work by the same author may thus bear the same DDC but different OCLC, ISBN, LCCN, and possibly even different publishers. LeadSongDog come howl!  20:29, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

OBIN
OUP are starting to produce an in-house identifier for their biographical databases - OBIN (details). Worth including? It's valid for about 55,000 people at the time of writing, most of whom we can reasonably expect will eventually be covered in WP. Andrew Gray (talk) 18:14, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * For me, a key factor would be how many of those subjects would not have a VIAF. If that's significant, then yes, we should include it. We'll leave the question of why ODNB don't just use VIAF for another day... Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:19, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to add ORCID to our citation templates
Please see Help talk:Citation Style 1. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:37, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Make it smaller
For a casual Wikipedia reader (or even hardcore one if you like) this string of numbers is highly irrelevant. While it is a good addition, it hardly warrants a page-wide infobox. Maybe just big enough to show VIAF and the number? If other cataloguing systems are added, maybe then it could be page-wide. Now it's just plain confusing. --Sigmundur (talk) 07:15, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I concur with this. A floating box would be quite sufficient. — Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   13:51, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Other cataloguing systems are already included; see the example on my user page. That said, I'd still like to see this as a module of biographical infoboxes. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:00, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

ISNI
Should we add an ISNI parameter? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:06, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
 * This is now in hand; see the following section. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:22, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

GKD and GKD-V1
Can someone please remove GKD and GKD-V1? As said above both identifiers are deprecated (now part of GND) and empty. Thanx --Kolja21 (talk) 19:21, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * This is in hand; see the previous section. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:22, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Great! I've changed the last SWD entries, so the parameter SWD can now be deleted as well. BTW: You might want to change in Module:Authority control the name of GND from "Universal Authority File" to "Integrated Authority File". It's the official translation. --Kolja21 (talk) 00:57, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I've removed SWD and changed the GND label. Tpt (talk) 07:11, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

ORCID and ISNI handling
A quick update on ISNI/ORCID as discussed above - after making some enquiries, the long-term plan is to investigate deduplication & merging of IDs between the two, but there's no firm plans and it's not going to happen any time soon.

So the state of play is that any one person may (and often will) have an ORCID and an ISNI, both using the same numbering scheme, checksums, etc. We should probably handle them seperately for the forseeable future - seperate identifier fields, resolving to seperate databases - and revisit the issue of merging in a couple of years. I'll file a Wikidata request to get a seperate ORCID property set up. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:15, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: ISNI has lots of duplicates, since it's mainly an import of other databases like VIAF, what is already a collection of authority control data and no original surce. Template:Authority control/ORCID is used less than 50x and mostly on user pages, since every one can create his own ORCID. So it's ok adding ISNI and ORCID to Wikidata, but I'm not sure if they should be part of Module:Authority control. --Kolja21 (talk) 03:23, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Module talk:Authority control
I've suggested that Module talk:Authority control be redirected here, to avoid spitting conversations. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:10, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

✅. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:23, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Authority control for works (and subjects)
Can I (should I) use on Book of Revelation or is this template only for people? Stuartyeates (talk) 02:20, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes and no. The template is not only for people, but VIAF is a collection of authority control data and in this case difficult to handle. VIAF 181843323 stands not only for the Book of Revelation but also for the TV series L' Apocalypse. The exact match is GND 4073055-4. --Kolja21 (talk) 03:32, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Is that an error in VIAF? Stuartyeates (talk) 03:42, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, a merging error. --Kolja21 (talk) 23:04, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

LCCN link
Is there a reason for last year's change in our target? Then I said here that the links are useful to me as a reader, and as an editor. That is no longer true of our LCCN link.

Because German wikipedia has not changed its LCCN target, I now visit the LCCatalog via DE.wiki whenever that biography is available (that is under my settings, via linkname "Deutsch" in the left margin). The content more useful to me, a human being, is available at a glance. Accurate catalog search is available by point-and-click.

--P64 (talk) 19:05, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * DE.wiki: James Cameron
 * EN.wiki: James Cameron


 * Another editor agrees, Wikipedia talk:Authority control.
 * --P64 (talk) 19:17, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * This was a suggestion from LoC - apparently id.loc.gov is more up-to-date. Old discussion at Template talk:Authority control/Archive 1. I'll ask Ed to comment here... Andrew Gray (talk) 22:19, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
 * --where I alluded to my disappointment and you replied six months ago, all of which I had forgotten.
 * [2a] id.loc.gov would be more useful if it provided that link which automatically searches the catalog for the correct "John Smith" (as lccn.loc.gov does) rather than provide a catalog-search composition window. That's one issue. [2b] That id and lccn searches return wholly different reports is another issue. (For Andre Norton, see below, I don't know how to interpret what the search via id.loc.gov provides.) [1] The inhuman display of data at id is a third. I will go back and number them 2a, 2b, and 1! -P64
 * I agree. We should be providing the link to the human-readable content not the machine readable content. All the better of course if a machine readable URL can be derived, but the focus is on humans. Stuartyeates (talk) 22:44, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * There may be some internet reliability problem. For Andre Norton now I reach the "id" instantly. but cannot reach the "lccn" target. Instead: "Bad Gateway. The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server." If this is recurrent, of course I hope for solution at the LOC end.
 * Now = both 15 minutes ago and now after preview here. --P64 (talk) 16:22, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Read before attempting automatic modification of or based on the contents of this category
This category needs comparison to "Pages with LCCN identifiers", and the LCCN numbers added to authority control on many (approx. 1/4 million, as of April 2013) articles. The LCCN numbers can be found from the VIAF pages by clicking the link next to the US flag on the linked page. This specific point might be appropriate for addressing with a script, or creation of a "Pages with VIAF and no LCCN" admin category.

Due to the way VIAF was built, the only entries that should not have LCCN numbers are non-English language authors and books that aren't 'notable' enough (in the English-language world) to be in the Library of Congress. Other VIAFs missing LCCNs are most likely duplicates, created by a bot (as of this writing, VIAF is actively addressing this issue with many 'ancient world' authors such as Sophocles Private communication, April 2013, Revent (talk) 2:47 pm, Today (UTC−5)).

You can help with this by doing 'name' searches for other VIAFs when you find a VIAF entry with no LCCN, and reporting duplicates to them via the 'feedback' link on the VIAF site. Doing so would be extremely helpful.

(the editor who added this, User:Revent, is specifically asking VIAF to look at what I have said here, and comment/elaborate if needed)

This is text that I have attempted to add to the category page. User:Pigsonthewing has repeatedly deleted it, so I am putting it here.

Revent (talk) 22:26, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Rewritten in Lua
I've rewritten the template in Lua inside of Module:Authority control. I have also made some changes from the Wikitext template: I've also design the module in order to be easily changed to use Wikidata data as fallback if the community agree. I've added a lot of cases to Template:Authority control/testcases to test the new Lua module called by Template:Authority control/sandbox. Is anyone opposed if I make the main template use the module? Any bugs/remarks/suggestions?Tpt (talk) 13:08, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Add support of ISNI.
 * 2) Validation rules for VIAF (is a number), LCCN (3 letter + "/" + 2 or 4 digits + "/" + 6 digits) and ISNI (15 digits + 1 digit or "x" or "X")
 * 3) Removes of SCOPUS, GKD and GKD-V1 idenfifiers (no article use them).
 * Apart from introducing a new language, what are the actual benefits of the Lua version compared to the old Media Wiki template? I don't see any need to substitute the existing code with a Lua module. You know, never change a running system. De728631 (talk) 16:31, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The benefits:
 * Clever validation of ids and management of input variations (by example the ISNI can be input as "1234-1234-1234-1234" OR "1234 1234 1234 1234" or "1234123412341234" and output in the canonical way "1234 1234 1234 1234").
 * Ability to get ids from Wikidata (then phase 2 will be deployed). As link to authorities are a not controversial thinks it would be amazing to share these ids in Wikidata and output them with only a in the articles. With that, we won't have any bot edits related to ids in the articles and the update of ids, if needed, will be done once for all Wikipedia.
 * Run faster.
 * Tpt (talk) 17:01, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The 'run faster' argument could convince me. While I guess that the validation could somehow be coded by standard means as well, that might become unduly slow to load for some browsers. As to Wikidata, I'm not a big fan of centralised data bases so I won't judge this approach. De728631 (talk) 17:24, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Lua code is not run by browser but by the server, at the same time as parser functions execution. So, move to Lua will affect only the rendering time on preview and on save. As the validation is not a too heavy thing, I hope that the Lua code will be faster than the based on parser functions one. Tpt (talk) 17:37, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * While I'm not in a position to review Tpt's code; any of the benefits he describes would justify this change; all of them more so. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:22, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Presumably, the various numeric IDs use check digits. Can we validate these? After all, that's what they're for. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:13, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Validation is really hard to do in template syntax, or at least that was the impression I got when I looked before. Hopefully Lua will make this practical :-).
 * VIAF has no validation/check digits; it's simply sequential. LCCN ditto (I think) but we can do validation that it's actually a correct and valid LCCN (it has to be formatted a certain way). ISNI has a check digit; see here for details. Andrew Gray (talk) 21:44, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The template rewritten in Lua already does some validation (for VIAF it check if is a number, for LCCN if it's 1 to 3 letter(s) + "/" + 2 or 4 digits + "/" + 6 digits, for ISNI, when spaces and hyphens are removed, if it's 15 digits + 1 digit or "x" or "X"). See Template:Authority control/testcases for some examples. I plan to add checksum validation in the future for ISNI and ORCID but I think that the first thing to do is to make the template ready for production. Can an admin review it and replace the content of the current template by ? Tpt (talk) 08:42, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

A couple of questions:
 * 1) Is Template:Authority control/testcases fragile in any way? Can we throw in a bunch of new test cases without fear to breaking anything in the live template?
 * 2) Most people run into ISNI in terms of ORCID does it make sense to add ORCID into the template, or as a layer of semantic sugar over the top as necessary?
 * 3) The ORCID handling should check that it's a valid ISNI, yes?
 * 4) We need to actively search for ways to validate the numbers we're not currently validating. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stuartyeates (talk • contribs) 10:50, 10 April 2013‎


 * ORCID is already included. As people can have separate ORCID and ISNI identifiers, we need to allow for both. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:53, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * For ORCID - We can actually detect if a given ISNI is an ORCID; ORCID has a specific range in ISNI, though I can't offhand remember what it is (0000-000x-... to 0000-003x-...?). What I'd like us to be able to do is: a) check if a given ISNI is in this range; b) if so, label it as ORCID/ISNI; c) if not, label it as ISNI.
 * As to general validation for things like VIAF ("check it exists in their DB"), this might be better as a script running on the authority records in wikidata? Andrew Gray (talk) 10:56, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Andrew, for your first point, how would that cater for someone with both? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:01, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * About as well as it caters for someone with two ISNIs or two ORCIDs (which is also likely to happen, I suspect) - I've emailed the ISNI group to check what their policy on future merging/deduplicating is. We should probably think about what to do with multiple identities within the same system; at the moment there's no real solution for this. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:13, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * As with VIAF, two ISNIs would be an error; and I suspect we'd do as we do with VIAF; and choose the most likely-looking. Having two ORCIDs is unlikely, as people apply for their own, using their mail address as an indentifier. However, a persona can legitimately have separate, ORCID and (other) ISNI identifiers. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:36, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The ORCID system launched with a user-signup system, but the plan is to support organisations/publishers/repositories bulk-registering researcher IDs as well. (see eg here). Once this gets going, we'll probably have a certain level of duplication within ORCID in the medium term, while the mass creations get matched and merged. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:44, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I've added the check-digit validation for ISNI and ORCID and some examples of wrong ids on the testcases page. For validation that require request to an external server, we have to use bots and Wikidata is, I believe, the best place to do it as the validation will, I hope, benefit to all Wikipedias.
 * @Stuartyeates Template:Authority control/testcases is not fragile. Add as many tests as you want on it! Tpt (talk) 18:35, 10 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Support (Disclosure, I'm running d:User:VIAFBot on Wikidata). In order for us to realize the full richness of Wikidata in Authority control we will need a LUA templte. I believe Tpt has implemented it correctly, and left some help on the Module talk page. Maximilianklein (talk) 20:50, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Module:Authority control

 * Moved from Module talk:Authority control, which now redirects here. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:24, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

This is what I determined for Wikidata correspondences. At the moment in the module the Wikidata numbers are just 0. - — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maximilianklein (talk • contribs) 21:29, 10 April 2013‎
 * + ULAN and NDL. There are also properties for CALIS (China), CiNii (Japan), and SUDOC (France). --Kolja21 (talk) 01:08, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll use them when the Wikidata support will be added (Wikidata phase 2 isn't deployed here yet). Tpt (talk) 07:07, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Wikidata phase 2 is now live. -- WOSlinker (talk) 17:26, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Ready to deploy?
Can we now deploy this? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:28, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think so. Tpt (talk) 05:53, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Can an admin familiar with this template please make the deployment discussed above? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:41, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. I'm not familiar with this template, so let me know of any problems please ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:55, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:38, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Can you also remove these subtemplates that are not longueur useful, please? Tpt (talk) 07:13, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

"use Lua module, per discussion"
Since 9 May all articles are linked to Module:Authority control. Four questions: --Kolja21 (talk) 16:32, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Where is the discussion if not on the talk page?
 * 2) Since the articles are not showing the content of Wikidata, what is the use of Lua?
 * 3) How should an editor use this template in future?
 * 4) The page Module:Authority control/doc is missing.
 * Lua is a coding language for templates; nothing to do with Wikidata. The methods of using this template have not changed. Discussion is above, at (at the top of this page as I write; soon to be archived).  Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:48, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

ULAN identificator mistake
В Wikipedia ULAN идентификатор выдаёт ошибку, ссылка на другой сайт, в WikiData всё правильно. Протестируйте, пожалуйста. С уважением, --Пробегающий (talk) 16:25, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Suitable subject has no VIAF
I have found a subject, Henry Shimer, who published several papers in the 1860s-1890s, but who has no entry at VIAF. Do I record that at VIAF/errors (there's no relevant section at present)? Is there some other way of generating, or initiating the generation of, a VIAF? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:41, 21 May 2013 (UTC)


 * That's not an error because VIAF isn't a required parameter for the template to work. And Henry Shimer is certainly not the only author without a VIAF ID. VIAF entries are created at the discretion of the participating national organisations, so I think we here can't do anything about it. De728631 (talk) 18:41, 21 May 2013 (UTC)


 * 1. Does every person [creator of works] in the Library of Congress Online Catalog have LCCN id? and LCNAF webpage linkable using this template?
 * No, not every creator whose works are in that catalog. Search for Henry Shimer at authorities.loc.gov returns 30 'Shimer' listings including one for Henry. Ten of the thirty have bibliographic records (nonzero column two) but no link to any Authorized Heading or References (column one), thus no LCCN id. [Evidently 'References' means cross-reference, similar to our redirect.] Six of them including Henry Shimer are "from old catalog" but there are four others without LCCN id. By the way nine of the 30 listings have links and thus LCCN id as persons (column one) without any bibliographic records ("0" in column two; no works in the catalog). -P64
 * Anyway, is it possible to ascertain LCCN via the catalog record for one of someone's works?
 * ... No. There are works in the online catalog, which have LCCN id as works, whose authors have no LCCN id as persons. --P64 (talk) 20:56, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
 * For example see the catalog record for one item by Henry Shimer. (That is the only one online and "More like this" shows that Shimer is only in the "old catalog".)
 * The task may be equivalent to finding the catalog record for an author/creator, as for Henry Ford. That personal record gives the LCCN id as the first datum and in its URL.
 * --P64 (talk) 19:03, 21 May 2013 (UTC)


 * It's not possible to "create" a VIAF from scratch; as it's a union record of multiple databases, it needs an entry in at least one of those systems before it gets into VIAF. Those systems aren't always very active at recording authors of individual articles rather than monographs, which is probably why Shimer's not been listed before. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:21, 21 May 2013 (UTC)


 * In other words: VIAF is just a (very helpful) meta catalog. There is no authority heading for Henry Shimer at authorities.loc.gov and in the GND catalog. So (if not any other authority record exists) there can't be a VIAF number for this person. --Kolja21 (talk) 01:37, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
 * ... Thanks. Via that search one navigates --enter search text and type, plus four "clicks"-- authorities.loc.gov to lccn.loc.gov which is the human-friendly page linked from the foot of a DE.wiki biography (, repeating the example from ).
 * --P64 (talk) 21:33, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

== Institutional Identifiers ==

One to keep an eye on for the future. The proposed [Institutional Identifiers] for libraries and organisations in their supply chain. If this includes museums, it not only gives them a UID, but also, combined with accession numbers, a UID for each object or set of objects. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:38, 24 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Other such unique identifiers for global businesses are the nine digit Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) and the five character Commercial and Government Entity code (CAGE, or NCAGE) numbers. These are not likely to crop up in citations, but might sensibly be seen in company article infoboxen. LeadSongDog come howl!  18:42, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata support
I've updated the sanboxed version of the template (that is based on the sandboxed version of the module) to use Wikidata content as fallback: for each identifiers if the identifier is not set at the call of the template, the template will get the correspondent value, if it exists, from the item linked to the page in Wikidata. As we can currently only retrieve the data of the item linked to the current page this feature doesn't works in the template sandbox and have to be tested directly on article. [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jean-François_Champollion&oldid=554560655 here is an example where all ids are retrieved from Wkidata]. Is there any opposition to activate this feature by default?

Remark: If there is more than one value for the same identifier in Wikidata, the first value is used. This behavior will be changed in the future to use the value with the best rank when the rank feature will be implemented in Wikidata.

Tpt (talk) 07:57, 11 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I support this going forward, unless there's any tech issues I'm not aware of. (I've frankly gotten too lazy to put the numbers in the article templates). Regarding your remark, I used the Wikidata sandbox and found that it uses the second value when presented with multiple identifiers, although this could easily be overridden if desired. FallingGravity (talk) 09:20, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Support: most of the authority control data is already gathered on wikidata by bots and there is no harm to use it. I dont know how to make it default template on all pages but if it will start working same as interwiki links than one more source line will be removed from millions of article on all wikipedias. --Nizil (talk) 20:26, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

ULAN bug
ULAN template is generating wrong output with some numbers e.g. http://www.biografischportaal.nl/person_not_found?message=Geen+biografie+gevonden+met+deze+id%3A+500009826 instead of http://www.getty.edu/vow/ULANFullDisplay?find=&role=&nation=&subjectid=500009826 Richard Bruce Bradford (talk) 16:48, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I tried to fix it in Module:Authority control and it seems to work now (maybe only after purging a page). --WolfD59 (talk) 15:24, 29 May 2013 (UTC) Thanks now seems to be ok. Richard Bruce Bradford (talk) 16:41, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Authors with multiple LCCNs
As asked last year Faith Hunter has two entries for VIAF and LCCN. For such people should we add an extra parameter say "as" to provide the name VIAF=... LCCN=... |as=Gwen Hunter RDBrown (talk) 01:35, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Alternatively, we could put the template on the redirect page we have for them. Stuartyeates (talk) 04:10, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

LCCN formatting
The rules for formatting LCCN values are probably daunting to some editors, and are an inconvenience to the rest. Now that this template uses Lua, can't we encode them, so that raw data may be entered, and the template can handle the parsing? (It's also likely that Wikidata will store raw values, so we'll need to parse them once we import from there, anyway) Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:25, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * In Wikidata we have (most times) formatting like "no2010136878": fixed-width parts, without slashes, spaces or dashes. -- Ricordi  samoa  21:25, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Raw data like "no2010136878" as already supported by the module (try and it'll work). So it's now only a question of policy. Tpt (talk) 12:27, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * We've discussed it on Wikidata, and consensus was reached on using the most URL-direct form. -- Ricordi  samoa  00:54, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Joint biographies revisited
1. Today I visited our joint biography of the Brothers Hildebrandt illustrators. Tim Hildebrandt died in 2006. Greg Hildebrandt is living.

1a. (Among other things in the first of two revisions) I added links to WorldCat and LC Authorities (the useful page, not LCNAF) for deceased Tim, as the last listed External links; completed and labeled template Authority control for the living Greg; moved the latter above the one navbox for contiguity with the Tim links that may help some visitors interpret the template. Comments solicited. (footer before; footer after)

1b. VIAFbot added templateAC for living Greg in November. Why? Perhaps because de:Tim Hildebrandt (In anderen Sprachen: English) links our Brothers Hildebrandt. DE.wiki has a biography of deceased Tim only, no redirect for Greg Hildebrandt, Gebrüder Hildebrandt, or Brothers Hildebrandt (which I have supposed to be their signature on all collaborative works of art, under which they may be known in all languages). The link from our joint biography (In other languages: Deutsch) to de:Tim Hildebrandt was deleted prior to November, and added to our Tim Hildebrandt redirect to joint biography. The German authorities template Normdaten is completed for Tim correctly in the old-fashioned way (PND, LCCN).

2. For comparison, perhaps useful in this discussion, I also revised our biography Lynn Poole of a man whose wife Gray Johnson Poole is at least half notable. She is mentioned in the biog, of course, perhaps more than usually because some of their works were collaborative. This is not a joint biography but VIAFbot missed it entirely, so I am responsible for the entire section Lynn Poole. I added standard link to Gray Johnson Poole at WorldCat and LC Authorities --as for Tim Hildebrandt-- and the completed template for Lynn Poole. Comments solicited.

--P64 (talk) 01:53, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
 * For me the real solution to these issues is to put the machine readable data on Greg Hildebrandt and Tim Hildebrandt. I'm not sure whether that would break much. The rules about who is allowed a redirect are much more broad. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:06, 28 June 2013 (UTC)


 * By the way, we do not have many redirects in category, which covers only 2-1/2 of ten on my list (including Tim H, not Greg H). Commonly, I see now, that is because we have the redirect but template redirect to joint biography has not been used.


 * 3. Our redirect Greg Hildebrandt now carries only one interwiki link, which redirects to the Spanish joint biography. In turn that links EN, FR, PT, and RU joint biographies (the five joint biogs link each other exclusively).
 * At this stage may we infer with some confidence that DE and ES alone have pages for Tim H and ES alone has one for Greg H?
 * For another example, our Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire and no:Ingri d'Aulaire link each other and our redirect Ingri Parin d'Aulaire carries no interwiki links.
 * Will interwiki links now or soon be repaired automatically if we put template authority control on redirects (perhaps only one per person) to joint biographies?
 * I suppose there are other considerations, probably more important ones. --P64 (talk) 19:15, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
 * By the way, VIAF has assigned at least one Personal ID to the Hildebrandts --because the national library of Canada does so, i infer; one to the pair jointly and one to each separately. --P64 (talk) 23:15, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Having multiple Authority control in a single page can confuse Wikidata bots; I had to take care of Tim and Greg separately. IMHO all "joint biographies" should link to Authority control codes of "joint AC entries" only (as ); we could then populate AC codes on, maybe using Wikidata as fallback. -- Ricordi  samoa  01:14, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
 * This is going to be an issue with all pages in Category:Articles about multiple people and descendants. When'd the best time to go through them and make sure they're right? now, or at some later point? Stuartyeates (talk) 10:25, 1 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I didn't know that category. Thanks to some heavily used subcats (duos, married couples) its coverage of joint biographies is rather good, but I suppose we will find many more via search for 'and' in the titles of WP:BIOG articles.
 * Perhaps EN.wiki (WP:BIOG? WP:CAT?) needs a joint biographies /multi-biographies task force. Here or nearby, I suppose we might work out how to rearrange interwiki linkage [i haven't followed developments there] at the same time we place template AC on the primary redirect pages for individuals --if that is what we will do. CatScan V2.0beta tells me that none of the 1000+ now have VIAF identifiers. --P64 (talk) 19:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
 * A new taskforce is probably not required. What we need to do is (a) find / write a clear statement of how we should be working (b) do a sampling of how systematic / large the problem is (c) either fix it by hand or approach the various tool building communities. The tool-building communities will require (a) and (b) before engaging. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:11, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
 * If there were a taskforce I suppose it would do other things, too, such as determine whether to put {R from person} redirects in categories such as
 * For ten illustrator or writer-illustrator couples I know, I added the missing redirects. For all 20 redirects I added, where necessary, the joint biographies template, {DEFAULTSORT}, birth and death year categories.
 * The most interesting is Ingri d'Aulaire and Ingri D'Aulaire where I included one manual interlanguage link and relevant comments. Comments solicited from anyone interested in this project.
 * I did not insert any {Persondata} or {Authority control} template and none of the 20 redirects has one. --P64 (talk) 21:02, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Apparent bug in LCCN entries
I've found what is apparently a bug in the LCCN entry. The template decodes the entry for Anatolius of Laodicea "LCCN=nr/2003/025749" to link to the address: http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr2003025749. This address is apparently incorrect. Looking up Anatolius in the LOC Authorities page, I find that the permalink for Anatolius is http://lccn.loc.gov/nr2003025749, which is a live link.

I've tried the LCCN links for a number of other historical persons and it seems this is a general problem. If this is not a transient problem at the LOC, it looks like some recoding of this template is called for. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 20:27, 1 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Just checked these links and they all work now; apparently it was a temporary problem at the LOC. The linked page provides more detail than the alternative permalink so there's no reason to change the template. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 02:10, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
 * There is some performance issue. Five minutes ago I found immediate access to Anatolius at LCAuthorities; "Connecting..." without success to Anatolius from LCNAFile. Two minutes ago, immediate access to both.
 * Perhaps those of us represented in the U.S. Congress should ask for more money. During two years of high activity here I have found links to loc.gov served with exceptional irregularity. --P64 (talk) 19:10, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Lua module
I miss a short description how one can use the authority template with the infos given by Wikidata. How many articles are using Wikidata as source right now? --Kolja21 (talk) 21:39, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Redirects from individual people
This continues one aspect of the recent discussion Template talk:Authority control/Archive 3.

is populated by template R from person among others. As I use CatScan recently, it appears that none of those 1000 redirects have VIAF identifiers. Perhaps none transclude this template. Should they?

I learned this hour that DE.wiki does use the German versions of templates Authority control and Persondata in redirects --although the Normdaten template does not generate a display on the redirect page.
 * DE.wiki: Bessie Delaney ; code

--P64 (talk) 01:53, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * update link, add two links --P64 (talk) 15:06, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I support the application of Authority control to such redirects. We could also consider adding an infobox (subject, of course, to WP:V and WP:BLP. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:43, 21 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Target article should link to {R from person} --before we go ahead, i hope
 * Suppose that our should carry personal Categories and interlanguage links (as some do now), templates authority control, persondata, and {some infobox}. Target articles such as joint biography and spouse biography should provide links, presumably using personal names, to their incoming {R from person} pages. By target "articles" I mean the entire display including framework that now holds an article's interlanguage links.
 * Offhand I prefer the article footer, immediately following or preceding the "Categories" line. For example:
 * More categories: Allan Ahlberg, Janet Ahlberg
 * --following Categories in joint biography Janet and Allan Ahlberg
 * People who redirect here: Gray Johnson Poole
 * --preceding Categories in spouse biography Lynn Poole.
 * We might effect the latter example by hand (done, current version) and might improve the appearance by well-designed template. I suppose we need revised software to effect the former, immediately following Categories.


 * (Some solution along these lines should have preceded migration of personal Categories from targets to . Primarily because we lack this, I believe, personal categories reappear after they emigrate.) --P64 (talk) 17:37, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata support added
There was a discussion here, which from what I can gather resulted in a consensus in favour of adding Wikidata parameters unless overridden by the template as invoked. by copying the relevant bits from Module:Authority control/sandbox into Module:Authority control. If there are any objections, please let me know. Gabbe (talk) 09:21, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you. A good move, but we need to document how it works. If I write a new biography, and include an Interwiki link or a Wikidata link, do I then just add, with no parameters? Or do I need to enter the required parameter names, such as  . How long do I have to wait to see if the data is supplied by Wikidata, before knowing I need to go and source it?  Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:39, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * No need to enter the parameter names (if a parameter is not provided or with an empty value, the template looks if there is a value for the id in Wikidata and get it if needed). The data are harvested from Wikidata when the template is rendered. Tpt (talk) 12:39, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Script error
Can anyone see why there' a script error at Liudmyla Monastyrska? I've tried (in preview) all sorts of permutations of parameters, with no remedy. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:18, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I tried adding an VIAF identifier to Wikidata, which seems to have fixed it. A lack of identifier on Wikidata, however, should not generate a script error, so I've decided to until someone can tell me what caused it. Gabbe (talk) 14:51, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Good luck finding a solution! Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:35, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I have fixed the error in both production and sandbox code. Tpt (talk) 12:40, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:55, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

LCCN count going down over the past week
I've noticed the LCCN count on the project page linked to this talk page has been going down steadily over the past week; not a large amount; but enough to make me wonder what's going on... any info? I have been adding LCCNs to various biography articles because I think its useful to have the OCLC WorldCat Identities links as a good overview of what's owned by libraries and in what languages...; thanks--FeanorStar7 01:42, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It seems to be going back up significantly now (Aug. 25); I assume a bot is going thru and adding them; on a related note, some WorldCat Identities links don't work but that is probably an issue on the OCLC side.--FeanorStar7 10:54, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's because of a bot but because the template now gets data from Wikidata and there are more LCCN ids in Wikidata than here (most of them have been imported from de.wikipedia). Tpt (talk) 11:59, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info. This makes it clearer. It also appears that when I add just the LCCN; it must be pulling the VIAF and related info into the authority control template; VIAF, LCCN, and GND and ISNI data suddenly appear when I add the LCCN.--FeanorStar7 08:48, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Full page width?
Does this template really need to take up 100% width of a page by default? Most of the articles I see it on are like Scott Rosenberg (timely version) -- namely it consists of one short VIAF identifier, then takes up the rest of the page width with empty box styling. This seems unnecessary and visually is quite annoying. Steven Walling &bull; talk   01:19, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm sure there was discussion of this recently, but I can't find it... I agree. It is possible to embed it in an infobox, and that's my preferred solution. The current presentation is unnecessarily big and clunky (and even seems to enrage some people). —  Scott  •  talk  09:20, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I support embedding within an infobox, where present (though I envisage opposition to that, also - and indeed to any solution). Otherwise, full-page-width sits neatly on top of any navboxes in the article, Perhaps we could centre the template's content? Or add a switch to change the width, recommending FPW if there are navboxes, short version otherwise? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:21, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Full-width looks good to me, matching both the Categories display, which is almost always full-width, and any navbox, as far as I know.
 * I would like to get the stub tags out of there. A gaudy icon or three. One blank line and four lines of text as I view Scott Rosenberg (timely version).
 * Compare Scott Rosenberg (current). --among other things, stub tags deleted, a borderline judgment of content
 * I would like to get the blank link above Categories out of there when the article otherwise ends with our template or a navbox. --P64 (talk) 15:49, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Not showing in mobile
It seems that this template is not showing in our mobile view. Please see discussion at WP:VPT. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:29, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Categories on other Wikipedias
Category:Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers has only one interwiki link.

Category:Wikipedia articles with authority control information has eleven.

Category:Pages with authority control information, the parent category, and many of its other children, have none.

Is the category tree less well developed on other Wikipedias? Or is authority control less well deployed? (The number of interwikis for Authority control suggest the former would be the case - or perhaps the categories haven't yet been interwikied?)


 * I feel certain the answer is both. DE.wiki does use at least GND, VIAF, LCCN, IMDb, NDL, and FIDE in its Normdaten footer template. There the interwiki target of our cat VIAF identifiers is de:Kategorie:Wikipedia:Normdaten-Wartung, not strictly comparable and probably not what you expect. See de:Vorlage:NORMDATENCOUNT, a page in that Kategorie.
 * Let me revise that. Evidently DE.wiki counts and reports the number of pages with standard IMDb (movies) and FIDE (chess) links, alongside the others four ID as I reported last week, but it does not display those links using its authority control template de:Vorlage:Normdaten. --P64 (talk) 20:27, 5 September 2013 (UTC)


 * NO.wiki (interwiki "Norsk bokmål") has person pages for all 54 recipients of the Hans Christian Andersen Award --where we lack 8 and DE lacks a different 8-- but it does not put them in a category and a couple of well-developed biographies show no AC data, nor does 'VIAF' or 'LCCN' appear in the code. I guess they maintain control via Wikidata alone (and manually). --P64 (talk) 21:51, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

In particular, are any other Wikipedias using ORCID yet? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:40, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
 * When looking at ORCID, remember that it's a subset of ISNI and some will treat it as such. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:44, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

AC data at Commons
I added the template, with three parameter values, to our H. R. Giger and discovered before leaving that [a] it had been completed previously at Wikimedia Commons, [b] which had been linked to our biography (timely version).

Perhaps someone knows how to find such cases automatically. --P64 (talk) 15:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Adding MusicBrainz artist ids
Hi,

I've been working with some of the MusicBrainz people on getting data linked with Wikidata, and now I'd like to add the artist id data to the main authority control template. Currently we link to MB with, but this is now stored in Wikidata with d:P:P434. MB ids are a GUID, an example one looks like "6f050933-f23c-47ea-8479-a6d553788d82" (for Walk the Moon/Q7962114).

We should use a conditional switch so that the id only shows up for people who have an occupation for singer or musician (we can develop a better whitelist later on), so that we don't end up with people like Churchill having a link to a MB page. We can also use "instance of" --> "band" and so on.

At the same time, we should convert all uses of to be  instead.

Thoughts? Legoktm (talk) 22:28, 4 September 2013 (UTC)


 * If the conditional switch works, this would be pretty good to have, and an elegant solution to the "AC spam" problem. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:33, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
 * If MB has an entry for Churchill, and lists recordings which we don't, why would we not include that UID/ link? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:45, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, I think it's a balance of trying to give useful links to readers. His MB profile just says that someone put together a collection of his speeches in 2003, which imo isn't very useful, nor relevant. That said, if other people find it ok to just add links wherever they exist, I'm fine with that too :) Legoktm (talk) 15:14, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
 * For services like musicbrainz or IMDB, I think logging the identifier in Wikidata is worthwhile whenever possible (you never know!), but as it's essentially a link to an external service rather than identifier qua identifier, we should avoid exposing it when we wouldn't have included a normal external link to that site - and "is a musician" is a reasonably good proxy for that. (We can always include an override switch to display everything on a per-article basis.) Andrew Gray (talk) 13:30, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, here's what my Lua looks like: . Haven't tested it yet. Legoktm (talk) 11:32, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Please copy Module:Authority control/sandbox to Module:Authority control. I've tested it using template sandbox and it seems to work fine. Sample cases you can test with: Britney Spears should get a MusicBrainz link but Winston Churchill should not, even though he has one in Wikidata. I could do this myself, however I'd like someone else to check the code before it goes live on so many articles. Legoktm (talk) 16:09, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅ after Anomie reviewed it on IRC. Legoktm (talk) 23:37, 11 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Something is wrong at . Will investigate later... Legoktm (talk) 18:37, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Protection
Authority control/WORLDCATID and Authority control/ORCID have been unprotected. Presumably this should be reversed. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:10, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Does the (fairly new) Lua source code still call those subpages? If not, we should get rid of all of them. De728631 (talk) 18:01, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * That would delete a lot of history from the encyclopedia. Is that a good thing? It might be better to put some kind of deprecation notice at the top if they are no longer used. --Robert.Allen (talk) 18:35, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

How to deal with duplicate VIAFs?
e.g. James Hayward is all of these: - David Gerard (talk) 09:05, 19 September 2013 (UTC)


 * VIAF has "virtual" in it's name. And some of the constituting real Authority Files focus on natural persons, some others (like LoC) make a distinction between different "bibliographic identities". Deduplication in the constituent files may eventually yield in a reduction to only two different VIAF records (note that the LoC record linked at means a different person but the mixup produced by the other files and the reinforcement by en:WP linking with exactly this VIAF number outweigh this), and maybe a future version of VIAF can emphasize that they are very closely connected by a "biological identity" relation (the LoC record behind  gives the pseudonym as a note, the opposite note for  is missing), but this still won't be sufficient for the template here, where any parameter must only be given once. Wikidata on the other hand does not have this technical restriction and several VIAF links could be pulled in. In a sense,  is the most correct number (biological person like in the wikipedia article, fullest discriminatory power since the birth date is given), but on the other hand it is the least attractive, since only one record is clustered there and no interconnection is possible (and this number is most likely to change in the future, when the only record will be assigned to a different cluster). -- Gymel (talk) 13:27, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
 * i) For use in the template, pick the one that looks most complete. ii) Report the issue at VIAF/errors. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:10, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
 * yeah, I've just listed it at the errors page for now - David Gerard (talk) 14:20, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Is it a bad idea to put multiple copies of the template on a page? Sometimes it is not clear which VIAF record is "most complete", e.g. . --Robert.Allen (talk) 18:40, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Only one copy of the template, according to occasional replies here (eg, Template talk:Authority control/Archive 3).
 * For James Hayward introduced by David Gerard here last fortnight, I added supplementary External links to WorldCat (1) and LC Authorities (another 1), with a visible warning (James Hayward). And a talk-page explanation of this service to readers, as I understand it (Talk: James Hayward). Andy Mabbett promptly replied somewhere, not the Hayward talk page, that (the VIAF aspect of?) the problem should be also be reported on our VIAF errors page.
 * I have not added other VIAF pages to External links, only WorldCat or lccn.loc.gov pages. I suppose that the second VIAF, if some service to readers, is valuable for one or two of the links in the bundle --the German, French, or Hebrew, etc, if not the WorldCat or lccn. If so then provide the useful one(s) explicitly, I suggest.


 * What about Wikipedia links in the VIAF bundles, or lack thereof? Eventually there should be one that points to the one en.wiki biography whose VIAF link points there (reciprocal links). Recurring discussion on this page does not make clear to me whether the VIAF project or the WikiData project has previously, does now, or will soon monitor or revisit us. --P64 (talk) 19:40, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I think adding the separate links to the External links section is a good workaround until it gets straightened out. Thanks for the help! --Robert.Allen (talk) 21:13, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I did indeed - just above your post, in this very section. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:23, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

multiple parameter values

 * 1) The tool d:User:Magnus Manske/authority control.js detects multple BNF identifiers at Q57074 Nelly Sachs. When clicking on the links at the viaf.org page it seems that both BNF direct to the same results. Such a valudation might be a future use issue.
 * 2) I added "Leonie Sachs" as an alias to Q57074 Nelly Sachs.
 * 3) Please note that the record contains two ISNI values one for the name Nelly Sachs and another for "Leonie Sachs".
 * 4) Please verify how multiple parameter values for the same parameter name |FOO=bar|FOO=foobar are evaluated (only the last value is relevant) and verify how Lua is handling multiple entries. Module:Authority control might need a change. ‫·‏לערי ריינהארט‏·‏T‏·‏m‏:‏[//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/user_talk:%D7%9C%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%99_%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%98?action=history Th]‏·‏T‏·‏email me‏·‏‬ 00:04, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The Nelly Sachs case is the expected behaviour. ISNI is about names not about people. Authors who make frequent use of disposable pseudonyms can have hundreds of ISNIs; contemporary academic authors can have multiple ISNIs, each assigned by a separate publisher, plus an orcid.org ISNI. Stuartyeates (talk) 06:20, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

request at d:Wikidata:Property proposal/Authority control
Please note the requests for ‫·‏לערי ריינהארט‏·‏T‏·‏m‏:‏[//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/user_talk:%D7%9C%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%99_%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%98?action=history Th]‏·‏T‏·‏email me‏·‏‬ 10:10, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Russian State Library (RSL)
 * 2) WKP identifier
 * 3) NSZL identifier
 * 4) BNE identifier
 * 5) SELIBR identifier
 * 6) BIBSYS identifier
 * Please add 'SELIBR', 'LIBRIS', 906, selibrLink · T · Database reports/Constraint violations · en:category:Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers to the Lua module. Thanks! ‫·‏לערי ריינהארט‏·‏T‏·‏m‏:‏[//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/user_talk:%D7%9C%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%99_%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%98?action=history Th]‏·‏T‏·‏email me‏·‏‬ 11:56, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. Tpt (talk) 12:27, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

The following new properties are available: They work fine. BNE can be linkified. I will post a note later. More identifiers to come. Best regards ‫·‏לערי ריינהארט‏·‏T‏·‏m‏:‏[//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/user_talk:%D7%9C%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%99_%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%98?action=history Th]‏·‏T‏·‏email me‏·‏‬ 22:54, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
 * 1)  d:Property:P949 NLI (Israel) identifier for Israel see linked pages
 * 2)  d:Property:P950 BNE identifier for Spain see linked pages
 * 3)  d:Property:P951 NSZL identifier for Hungary see linked pages

Whitelisting more items for MusicBrainz artist links
Hi, I'd like to request to whitelist a few more Item IDs for the MusicBrainz whitelist. So far, I've come up with the following:
 * composer (for example Howard Shore, Danny Elfman, John Williams, Ramin Djawadi, Jerry Goldsmith)
 * conductor (for example Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Ben Foster)
 * singer-songwriter (for example Amy Macdonald, other people from d:Special:WhatLinksHere/Q488205) (this seems to be a subclass of singer, maybe this could be used?)
 * record producer (for example Paul Kalkbrenner, Fritz Kalkbrenner, Armin van Buuren)
 * DJ, club DJ (sorry, this is not my kind of music, no list of examples :P) (club DJ is again a subclass of DJ, does that help?)

I'm not sure what the process is for updating the whitelist (except for asking here, of course), so any feedback/pointers in the right direction are much appreciated! --Mineo (talk) 13:13, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Mineo, ✅! Requesting here is just fine. If you use you'll get a faster response. Legoktm (talk) 01:38, 14 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for responding, Legoktm, but it looks like you forgot conductor. I'd also like to know if there's any way to link to the requirements in the documentation - right now it's just a manually maintained list :( --Mineo (talk) 11:43, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Oops, done. We could theoretically write a lua module to get the list, however we would only be able to access the numbers, not the labels because of 47930. Legoktm (talk) 15:45, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

MusicBrainz category
Judging by our article on Jerry Goldsmith, we have no tracking category for articles with MusicBrainz identifiers, unlike, say, Category:Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:50, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * There is Category:Articles with MusicBrainz artist links, but this template isn't populating it... Legoktm (talk) 16:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Indeed, but for other identifiers, we have a set of categories, which this one should mirror. Can someone oblige, please? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:54, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Module%3AAuthority_control&diff=577298608&oldid=577296078 done], see Category:Pages with MusicBrainz identifiers. Legoktm (talk) 16:04, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:52, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Mixing WP and Wikidata
It would help in handling authority control if we could see from which source the data come, without the need to open the source code. Perhaps we could add " (WD) " behind the authority control taken from Wikidata. --Kolja21 (talk) 13:53, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree. Indeed, it will help (would have helped me this fortnight) even to provide " (WD) " at far right if any datum is taken from Wikidata. --P64 (talk) 15:26, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * BTW: I've seen that the English Wikipedia and WD still got a lot of "undifferentiated" VIAFs (and/or GNDs, type n). Also there are dead links: VIAF Cluster has been deleted. Both could be removed by a bot. (The German WD has a tracking list for these errors.) --Kolja21 (talk) 18:08, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * We should in my opinion delete the local English Wikipedia data, so that all our data is pulled from Wikidata. I copied basically all of the enWP data to Wikidata, and since then it has only been cleaned. So I believe this task is ready. Although I dont want to be too quick, maybe there are some reasons still to keep local IDs and not pull all of them from WD? Maybe we can set a date when we can try to migrate? Maximilianklein (talk) 16:50, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
 * During the last six weeks (especially the first fortnight mentioned above) I fixed perhaps 100 data and added perhaps 100 in the footer templates of biographies here and at German Wikipedia. Added perhaps 10 templates {Authority control} and perhaps 1 template {Normdaten} --more than 10 and 1 but all these numbers convey orders of magnitude base 10.
 * At least, I know from my watchlist, other en.wiki editors this month add LCCN id to existing templates {Authority control}. That is inevitable so long as we retain the template. I suppose that some add the template but I don't know that; none would show up on my watchlist.
 * I have at least 10, probably 20, completed templates ready to go when there is some resolution of what to do about redirects (see above discussions of joint biography, mainly). Of course I plan to revisit those redirects and I might visit Wikidata instead, or as well, after learning the rigmarole --how to add entities, field names and their values and sources, even comments.
 * So long as we have the template and it does support assignment of parameter values --rather than set which fields of Wikidata to display, and so on-- Wikidata needs to revisit biography footers. The same is true of template Persondata if WD has harvested there.
 * --P64 (talk) 18:30, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for doing that work. I would be interested hear what your experiences are like working with AC and Wikidata. Because, if we can switch to relying on Wikidata it would be really great to be able to incorporate 13.900 VIAF redirects have been corrected @ deWP: see here.
 * Now that I'm thinking about it, it would not be necessary to delete the en.wp data to start using Wikidata AC, it would just require one line of code in the template. So if we want to switch, we can very easily, and I would advocate for that. Maybe that would also give de.wp incentive to switch if en.wp took the first step. Maximilianklein (talk) 17:50, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I would like to get your thoughts, and potentially help move this to RfC: "Question:
 * Let W_1 ... W_n be Wikipedias.
 * And T_1 ... T_n be common Templates of {W_i} all represtented by a Wikidata Property P.
 * And V_t_1 ... V_t_n be the values of Template T_i harvested into Wikidata as P.
 * In our case we have for example:
 * Let W_1 := English Wikipedia, W_2 := German Wikipedia
 * T_1 := Authority control T_2 := Normdaten
 * Q= Q18391 Elie Wiesel
 * P = P214 VIAF.
 * V_1 = "108176447" != V_2 = "49233033"
 * In this case, its a bit weird, because during import time, my bot found a redirect at VIAF for 49233033 when importing the English data, so id didn't actually import what's on the page in English currently. However V_1 is the correct ID now. Even though this happened in a strange way, by bot fixing, it is equivalent to the case that it was manually corrected by a human.
 * So my feeling is that, and it would be best to delete the local data at W_1, and adjust the template to display V_1 and V_2 (or all sourced values). This would push the potential need of a merge or correction in front of the noses of all {W_i}, and once it was fixed on Wikidata, all {W_i} would be displaying corrected data.
 * It seems really strange, but I propose the solution is delete our local template parameter-values, so the fallback mechanisms fetch Wikidata data by default, and then still keep manual override for when its needed. Thoughts? Maximilianklein (talk) 23:07, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * In my opinion (a) it should be as close as possible to the way language data is now handled. (b) control of how (or whether) it appears the wikipedia article should be left to local language editors. Stuartyeates (talk) 01:21, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I think your final paragpah is the correct solution. You're going to need a plain-language explanation, rather than pseudo-code, if you want people to understand an RfC. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) I think it is time to move all enWP AC to Wikidata (with a timestamp: date of import). With this task all GND Tn's and "undifferentiated" VIAFs should be deleted. The rest of the clean up can take place on Wikidata.
 * 2) Maybe it would be worthwhile the create a new template with a name like "Authority control on Wikidata" without the possibility to add new numbers. After the job is done, the template "Authority control" could be deleted. --Kolja21 (talk) 19:23, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, I like that solution, creating a second template without ever needing to delete the original. One thing I could to help that is to place the "Authority control on Wikidata" template on English pages that don't have AC locally, but could have them from Wikidata. Maximilianklein (talk) 23:11, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

SELIBR
SELIBR links have appeared to change format from http://libris.kb.se/auth/5459598 to http://libris.kb.se/bib/5459598. Just wanted to confirm that this is universally so and see whether the template should be updated. czar ♔  04:50, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I think these are two different databases:
 * auth = authority records: http://libris.kb.se/auth/195101 -> Adam Mickiewicz
 * bib = bibliographic records: http://libris.kb.se/bib/195101 -> book by Hartmut Ullrich
 * --Kolja21 (talk) 04:49, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

d:Property:P1003 · NLR (Romania) identifier

 * d:Property:P1003 · d:special:WhatLinksHere/Property:P1003 · limit=500 Gangleri (talk) 13:33, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

also consider P31 for MusicBrainz artists
The current Lua code checks for instance of (P31) band, but for other things like singer only P106 (occupation) is checked. That doesn't make much sense in my eyes. There are only very few artists that have things like "singer" as their actual occupation. Many others actually work in a very different job to get enough money, but they are relevant because of their work as an artist, not because of their job. So for theses setting P31 (instance of) singer (and others) in wikidata is fine, but P106 (occupation) probably isn't. Additionally, it is easy to find out if someone is a singer (listed as one in releases), but not easy to find out if this actually is their occupation. I still wouldn't consider this "AC link spam", since you wouldn't add P31:singer to Churchill, even if there is an MBID attached. --JonnyJD (talk) 17:59, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Good point. ✅. Legoktm (talk) 19:49, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

National Library of Australia required
The NLA is a library that covers Australian authors, and they feed into VIAF, so please add this component to the local template. thanks. — billinghurst  sDrewth  09:07, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Addendum. At English Wikisource and Commons we use the parameter , and at Wikidate the property is is "NLA identifier" (P409). — billinghurst  sDrewth  09:16, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅, see Fyodor_Dostoyevsky for an example. do you mind updating the documentation for the template? Thanks, Legoktm (talk) 19:29, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * documentation ✅. Thanks for the quick work. Appreciated. — billinghurst  sDrewth  04:49, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Wrong but existing VIAF, LCCN
Why does this template tell me VIAF:51750041 and LCCN:n/81/31673 here? --bender235 (talk) 09:41, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure why that is, but I've now removed the hardcoded values in the template so the module automatically gets them from the Wikidata item, which works. My guess is that there were some invisible characters after the number: to remove the last digit (1) of the VIAF number, I had to press backspace 4 times: once for the space, 2 times without any visible change and once more for the 1 to disappear.--Mineo (talk) 12:53, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Request to Add
Can someone please add the the NDL and ULAN identifier here? As such wikidata has a property/statement field for NDL and the ULAN. Of course that would mean an edit would be nessarcary to update the Module that this template is dependent on. To be able to pull that information from wikidata. --Clarkcj12 (talk) 16:17, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: Can you make those changes in the template and module sandboxes, so they can be reviewed and copied from there? Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:41, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I understand, but can someone please do that as I have tried updating the module sandbox and it doesn't seem to update. And someone check to see if I did something wrong? --Clarkcj12 (talk) 23:12, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: If you need help with the coding, you can try asking at WP:Lua requests. Protected edit requests aren't meant to be coding requests or feature requests, though - they are only for when the code in question has already been written and tested. Best — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 05:21, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
 * what do those acronyms stand for? Can you please also provide links to the wikidata properties? Thanks, Legoktm (talk) 19:53, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Sure, the NDL stands for the National Diet Library of Japan wikidata properties is Property:P349, with the correlating article on Wikipedia being wikidata item number Q477675. ULAN stands for Union List of Artist Names which the correlating item number is Q2494649, and the property number being Property:P245. --Clarkcj12 (talk) 20:04, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * ULAN is already there. ✅ for NDL. -- 签名 sig  at  17:32, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Usage in non-bigraphical articles
The template page tells you this: "At the moment, it is used almost exclusively in biographical articles." Is that encouraging or discouraging use in non-biographical articles? I would like to use the template in a geographical location article, which has a VIAF number and books about the subject on WorldCat and further sources, so I would like to use the template to link to those sources. Thank you.-- ɱ (talk)  18:48, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Whitelisting one more WD item for MusicBrainz IDs
The Beatles are now a rock band, not a simple unspecific band and the MusicBrainz Artist ID doesn't appear anymore on the page. Can someone add property P31 with value 5741069 to the whitelist? The code should probably just be

{ 31, 5741069 }, -- instance of -> rock band

TIA, --Mineo (talk) 16:06, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * What whitelist would that be? This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the template, which doesn't seem to have a whitelist. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:32, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅., the whitelist is in Module:Authority control. Legoktm (talk) 21:02, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, : in which case the first positional parameter should have been set accordingly - and since it's full-prot, was the correct template to use. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:11, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks to both of you! I'll try to set that parameter the next time. --Mineo (talk) 10:44, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

SUDOC
It seems that whoveer added SUDOC to this template didn't include the tracking categories used for other forms of AC. Can someone add them, please? Likewise for any untracked additions. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:45, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

MusicBrainz identifier is misspelled
MusicBrainz uses the term MBID to refer to all of the universally unique identifiers used in the project. In this case the identifier MBA should be changed to MBID for consistency with the MusicBrainz project. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 04:41, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Sync with Wikidata
Hi, could you add service categories like "Local VIAF value differs from Wikidata value". This is needed to track the next cases: — Ivan A. Krestinin (talk) 11:31, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
 * invalid ID was fixed on Wikidata, but the change was not reflected in enwiki;
 * ID was not copied to Wikidata.


 * ✅ (see Category:VIAF not on Wikidata and Category:VIAF different on Wikidata). -- 签名 sig  at  08:16, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
 * There is also Category:HDS not on Wikidata. -- 签名 sig  at  08:35, 2 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Docu. I try to process Category:VIAF not on Wikidata, but most of articles from this category contain invalid or deprecated VIAF IDs (example). So, looks like enwiki bot is needed. Situation in Category:VIAF different on Wikidata is similar: most articles contain "redirect" codes (example). Ivan A. Krestinin (talk) 11:41, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
 * "looks like enwiki bot is needed". What does that mean? These categories need attention not dismissal. What will "enwiki bot" do and in what respects will that be a change from what we/you/WikiData does now? --P64 (talk) 22:55, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * If there is a different VIAF on Wikidata, maybe we should use this instead of the local one. --  签名 sig  at  18:53, 11 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I totally agree, we should use the Wikidata value where possible. Maximilianklein (talk) 23:24, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Any idea when VIAF will start to use WD? --Kolja21 (talk) 15:44, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi could you also add the tracking categories Category:GND not on Wikidata and Category:GND different on Wikidata? Thanks --Kolja21 (talk) 23:42, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Placement, continued
This heading continues my usage May and June 2012 and this content continues the latter discussion Template talk:Authority control/Archive 1. (Placement meaning which pages get Authority control templates with which parameter values; Location meaning where in the page is the template.)

First, the state of affairs at our biography Daniel Handler has not changed from what I created and reported here. The footer contains and displays two completed templates, one for Handler and one for his fictional self Lemony Snicket; no a.c. template in our Snicket page. User:Kam Solusar alone replied in June 2012 and closed with advice that we complete one template with Handler parameter values at "his" Daniel Handler; complete one with Snicket values at "his" Lemony Snicket. (The one German record uses personal name Lemony Snicket and the Snicket template alone now gives GND=123374286.)

Second, whether or how to maintain distinct records or distinct ID for different names, such as Handler and Snicket, seems now to be a pending question at the German national library. For a correction I submitted this week I have email reply stating that pseudonym-related reports or requests are all on hold.

--P64 (talk) 20:36, 20 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Till December the GND created one single authority file for a person, including all pseudonyms. (Concept: Standardized name.) Now the GND adopts the Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard. RDA allowes multiple authority files for a person with pseudonyms. (Concept: Working with relations.) --Kolja21 (talk) 20:01, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Adding this template to users' pages
Just a quick note that recently the Administrators' noticeboard found that adding this template to wikipedia users' user pages without their prioir consent was a form of WP:OUTING and such edits should be reldev'd. The full discussion is here. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:13, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Please remove the VIAF link from the ISNI search field
I have no idea how it got there, but it's incorrect, useless, redundant (considering there's already a VIAF field of its own), and time-wasting. Thanks. Softlavender (talk) 22:34, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Can you be a little more explicit about which link is a problem in which search field. This template is used on many pages, maybe a concrete example? Stuartyeates (talk) 23:07, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The link in the search field I mentioned in the title to this thread, and viewable in the chart here: Template:Authority_control. (I think you may be confusing the appearance of the live template with this template usage/how-to article; I'm talking about the latter.) Softlavender (talk) 00:40, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Check digits
Some of the AC systems we allow use check digits (ISNI and ORCID, for example). Shouldn't we add code to the Lua module(s) to validate these, and emit error warnings, instead of displaying bogus details? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:20, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Module:Citation/CS1 does a lot of error-checking. Its ISBN and ISSN validation includes a check digit test. Search in the code for "ISBN-10 and ISSN validator code". – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:39, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Link me to somewhere that explains how the systems' check digits work and I'll code it up. Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:47, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you. ORCID; ISNI (those two should be the same; ORCID is a subset of ISNI) - I don't have details for the others; can anyone else help? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:02, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
 * That particular one is already implemented. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:06, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I wasn't aware of that (bad documentation!). Thank you. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:17, 16 April 2014 (UTC)