User:DutchTreat/Outreach/AuthorityControl

Current Practice
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:

History
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 and.

There was User:VIAFbot adding VIAF information to thousands of pages

Yet, there are a growing list of 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