Talk:Q352

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Autodescription — Adolf Hitler (Q352)

description: dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945
Useful links:
See also


Suicide by shooting

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Suicide by shooting is a suicide method; it is neither a manner, nor a cause of death. Could someone please remove it? - 2600:1702:31B0:9CE0:722A:D5FF:FE5F:7FD2 01:36, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Unknown/Unknown value

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@Multichill, regarding this: [1]. It is a big different between "unknown" and "unknown value". For instance if I do not know what postal code someone have, then it is "unknown". If I check a persons postcode to be WE154 Stockholm, Sweden, then that post code is "unknown" as such a value for postal code in Stockholm do not exist.--LittleGun (talk) 04:32, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

English description

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I changed the description to "Austrian nationalized German politician, leader of the National Socialist party and dictator of Germany (1889-1945), noted for starting a war leading to death of millions and for driving an industrial systematic killing of an ethnic group, Jews". The intent is to describe what the person is noted for, that is, state qualities picked by use of "Hitler" out of context. Someone reverted that to "Austrian-born German politician, dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945", which I find too short and uninformative; "politician" is extremely generic and bland and "dictator" does not need to be Hitler-level bad so is too bland as well. I also do not see how to capture the summary description I provided via properties and such. Is there a policy or guideline that could help? Dan Polansky (talk) 07:45, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Dan Polansky
  • Original version: Austrian nationalized German politician, leader of the National Socialist party and dictator of Germany (1889-1945)
  • Your version: Austrian nationalized German politician, leader of the National Socialist party and dictator of Germany (1889-1945), noted for starting a war leading to death of millions and for driving an industrial systematic killing of an ethnic group, Jews
  • My version which I took from en.wp: “Austrian-born German politician, dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945
See the following provisions on WD:D:
  • The description on a Wikidata entry is a short phrase designed to disambiguate items with the same or similar labels.
  • In most cases, the proper length is between two and twelve words.
This means that your version is simply way too long. The intent of a description is not to describe what the person is noted for, it is to disambiguate from other items of the same label, in this case items such as Adolf Hitler (Q100345867): Adolf Hitler as depicted in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comics or Adolf Hitler (Q20463000): painting by Andrea Badami. My version might not be the best there is but it is the definition used in en.wp. If there is no compelling reason to deviate, it’s generally good practice to follow the language-specific version of Wikipedia. --Emu (talk) 12:40, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. That is a bad policy, as for the number of words. Two words are a ridiculous number to start with. What is the rationale? Is there any discussion explaining the decision behind the policy?
There is also this: "Descriptions are not definitions ... The concept represented by the item is defined by the statements not the description." That is very bad; concepts need definitions and these cannot be assembled from statements since many of the statements are not defining; to the contrary, a statement can be verified to be accurate only once a definition or the meaning or scope of the concept is known.
Something is very astray here. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:15, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Dan Polansky As I said, the description is little more than guidance on which item to pick in a dropdown menu. It’s intended to be used by people (as opposed to machines). For this purpose it’s preferable to keep it as short as possible (in theory, the description “the human being” as opposed to “the painting” would be enough although that would be against convention). Descriptions have serious flaws if used as definitions:
  1. Wikidata is a multilingual project. It’s already hard to find good definitions in one language, finding perfectly fitting, matching and uncontroversial definitions in various languages seems to be almost impossible.
  2. Wikidata is supposed to be human and machine readable. Statements can be parsed by machine effortlessly. Descriptions cannot.
That being said, the modeling of Adolf Hitler (Q352) is subpar to say the least. The significant person (P3342) and partner in business or sport (P1327) are bordering on grotesque. Hitler’s role in the history of the 20. century (including the Holocaust and other genocides, the war and all the other atrocities) isn’t modeled in any really meaningful way. But this can’t be fixed by the description. --Emu (talk) Emu (talk) 16:18, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I find my version much preferable, but policy-wise, you have a strong case. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:17, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I now used this: "Austrian nationalized German politician, leader of the National Socialist party and dictator of Germany (1889-1945)". It is reasonably long; it uses the year range at the end that is very often used and seems to be some kind of an informal standard. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:11, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t think this is a terribly useful description. At first glance it looks as if he was dictator of Germany from 1889 to 1945. And “nationalized German” is problematic. First, I think you mean “naturalized” and even that might be technically true but is somewhat misleading given the pretty sketchy circumstances surrounding his naturalization. --Emu (talk) 07:46, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It is the description that was there before my edit (Special:Diff/1779653442), so it is the status quo ante disputes. The range in brackets is conventionally the range from birth to death, so I don't expect it to look like he was a dictator from 1889. As for "nationalized", that is a good point; what about "Austria-born German politician [...]" or "Austria-born politician [...]"? I am fine with both. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:38, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Since there is no second Adolf Hitler, I doubt the use of the life dates in general, see also Wikidata:Requests for comment/Use of dates in the descriptions of items regarding humans for this debate. But if you are dead set on the life dates, “Austrian-born politician (1889–1945), leader of the National Socialist party and dictator of Germany” could be a version that is acceptable to me. --Emu (talk) 11:27, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Or indeed “Austrian-born German politician (1889–1945), leader of the National Socialist party and dictator of Germany” which would be more aligned to en.wp. Or better still “Austrian-born German politician (1889–1945), dictator of Germany and leader of the Nazi party” (even more aligned to en.wp). --Emu (talk) 11:30, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
1) I think it is an established convention to have the year range at the end, for descriptions of persons/humans; 2) I do not think the description should be seen as a mere disambiguation tool, or we might just say "the notoriously evil guy" and be done with it, or "dictator (1889–1945)". I find it preferable to keep a general consistent standard that is reasonably descriptive and somewhat summarizing rather than merely identifying. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:30, 21 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that’s what descriptions are, disambiguation tools. And the part with “dictator of Germany and leader of the Nazi party” isn’t a consistent standard at all, it’s very rare for items to have descriptions that are that long. --Emu (talk) 08:43, 21 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
From what I have seen in Wikidata in the actual practice, descriptions are not used as a mere disambiguation tool, and I believe they lose their value if they are used only in that way. If I find more time, I may come up with a way to create a small report on that subject. In any case, the description that I am now defending here is the one that was in the entry before my time here. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:13, 21 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In debates about proper descriptions, everyone tends to believe their preferred style represents a widely accepted consensus or at least some sort of norm. I for one hope that this problem will be fixed with the end of descriptions as we know them, i. e. the introduction of automatic descriptions. In any case, further improving upon the item might be a better use of our time. --Emu (talk) 10:34, 21 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Country of Citizen Time Period for Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany

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Right now, the country of citizenship changes from the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany on 30 January 1933 with Hitler's assumption of the chancellorship. As the "seizure of power", that possibly has a reasonable case as the de facto start date.

The Nazi Germany entry sets 15 March 1933 as its origin; however, that definitely seems off, as not much of note happens on that day.

It looks the de jure start of Nazi Germany is the passing of the Enabling Act on 23 March 1933, according to citations such as - "With the Enabling Act now in force, the Reichstag could be effectively dispensed with. From this point on, Hitler and his cabinet ruled by decree, either using President Hindenburg as a rubber stamp, or bypassing him entirely, as the Act allowed them to." (Evans 419).

I'm going to update the Nazi Germany entry to 30 January 1933 for now, but is there opinions on setting one or both of these?

[1] Evans, Richard John. The Coming of the Third Reich Richard J. Evans. Penguin, 2005. Cursuviam (talk) 15:58, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I’m not an expert on German citizenship history but current usage both in this item and in Wikidata at large seems to be quite off:
  1. First of all, while German Reich (Q1206012), Weimar Republic (Q41304) and Nazi Germany (Q7318) had vastly different forms of government, there is no doubt that they are the same state (which arguably is also true for Germany (Q183), at least if you are a German constitutional lawyer)
  2. The Weimar Republic (Q41304) didn’t even have a unified citizenship – German citizenship was (by and large) a byproduct of citizenship of one of the federal states.
  3. A unified citizenship wasn’t introduced until 5 February 1934, not 1933 (this was of course part of the racist and ultimately genocidal politics of Nazi Germany)
I’m not sure what a correct solution could be (my hunch would be to use German Reich (Q1206012) for the whole 1871–1949 time period unless the specific federal state is known) and I don’t know of anybody who knows enough both of German citizenship history and Wikidata modeling to settle the matter. Let’s ping the WikiProject: Notified participants of WikiProject Germany --Emu (talk) 23:13, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for raising this question, because the problem has been known for some time. If you ask three historians, you will get three opinions. It is important that we find a consensus that is feasible for us. I am not a historian, just interested in history and can only give my opinion or how it has been handled so far. The period from 1871-1949 is generally divided into 3 main periods in Germany. (1. 1871-1918, 2.1918-1933, 3. 1933-1945/49). However, I find it a bit macabre to discuss this here of all places on this item, better is under German Reich (Q1206012) or similar. best regards--Cookroach (talk) 01:26, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also see:
For Germany there are for example:
M2k~dewiki (talk) 10:13, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the Norddeutscher Bund (Q150981), which had been transformed into a federal state on 1st July 1867, which in turn was territorially expanded in 1870 and renamed Deutsches Reich (Q1206012) in 1871, there was no German nationality. Instead, the citizenships of the respective constituent states, e.g. Königreich Preußen (Q27306), Königreich Bayern (Q154195), Königreich Württemberg (Q159631) etc., continued to exist. The law of 1 June 1870 introduced a federal citizenship, which (initially) for "North Germans" was conveyed via citizenship in one of the constituent states of the North German Confederation. These provisions also ensured that citizenship in all constituent states was regulated according to the same principles (by descent or naturalisation). The law was transferred to the German Reich and remained in force until the end of 1913. The German Reich and Nationality Act (RuStAG) of 22 July 1913 was based on the nationality of the member states. A person was German if they had citizenship in a federal state (so-called indirect Reich citizenship) or direct Reich citizenship.
The nationality of Germans would therefore been German Reich (Q1206012) from 1 June 1870 until 1949 additionally to the citizenships of the respective constituent states, e.g. Königreich Preußen (Q27306), Königreich Bayern (Q154195), Königreich Württemberg (Q159631) etc..
In contrast to the GDR, the Federal Republic of Germany always adhered to uniform German citizenship (Reich citizenship), so that under Federal German law, GDR citizens were also German citizens. Adherence to the common nationality was also the actual reason why the Reich and Nationality Act of 1913 was frequently amended, but the main features were retained and a fundamental reform of nationality law was avoided in order not to jeopardise the existing nationality link between the two German states within Germany as a whole.
In the GDR, the Reich and Nationality Act continued to apply unchanged until 1967. The GDR constitution of 1949 also expressly recognised only one German nationality; GDR identity documents and passports stated "Nationality: German". In 1967, however, the GDR introduced its own citizenship with the Law on Citizenship of the German Democratic Republic (Q16957), which included all Germans who lived on the territory of the GDR when it was founded, as well as their descendants.
With the entry into force of the Basic Law and the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany on 23 May 1949, citizenship would therefore be Deutschland (Q183). From 7 October 1949 onwards, residents/births in the territory of the German Democratic Republic (Q16957)also have German Democratic Republic (Q16957) citizenship
With reunification on 3rd October 1990, citizenship law in Germany was standardised again.
Weimarer Republik (Q41304) and NS-Staat (Q7318) are historical periods of Deutsches Reich (Q1206012) and therefore not an individual citizenship. PantherStrix (talk) 15:33, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@PantherStrix Thank you for your detailed information! Would you agree with this guidance for Wikidata modeling?
  1. Using country of citizenship (P27)German Reich (Q1206012) is fine from 1 June 1870 to 1949. Adding the citizenships of the respective constituent states is encouraged if they are known.
  2. We should disallow country of citizenship (P27)Weimar Republic (Q41304) and country of citizenship (P27)Nazi Germany (Q7318), maybe with an autofix pattern.
  3. Items with country of citizenship (P27)German Democratic Republic (Q16957) should always include an additional country of citizenship (P27)Germany (Q183).
--Emu (talk) 22:24, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Emu This would be the correct modeling for German citizenship. PantherStrix (talk) 04:35, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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