Help/Humans
About this page
This page explains when to create items about people in Metabase, which information to include, and how to link people to documents, presentations and projects.
Why we store so little about people
Metabase focuses on what people produce, not on the people themselves. For this reason, a person item only contains the information needed to link the person to their work.
When to create a person item
Only create an item about a human (Q23) when all of these are true:
- You need the person to describe who wrote a document, gave a presentation, or was responsible for an event or project.
- The information is already publicly available.
- Any affiliation you add has already been made public.
Examples:
- Tore Danielsson (Q64): a person with a matching Wikidata item
- Karin Glasemann (Q21985): a person without a Wikidata item, who has several relevant affiliations
Names and user accounts
Usernames
Some Wikimedians take part in movement activities under their username only.
- Do respect this.
- Do not publish their real name, even if you know it, unless they have publicly connected it to their username themselves.
Separate staff and volunteer accounts
Some people have one account for their work as affiliate staff and another for their volunteer work. For example, one person might give two presentations at the same conference, one as staff and one as a volunteer.
If the source material makes this distinction clear, do create two separate person items. This applies even if you know that both accounts belong to the same person.
For example, a conference program might list one presentation as given by Sven Svensson (WMSE) and the other by Sven123456. In that case, create one item for each name.
Linking people to other items
Use these properties to connect a person to a document, presentation or activity. Add the statement on the document, presentation or activity, not on the person.
- author (P19)
- The person who created a written work.
- Example: Strategic Inclusion of Library Data in Wikidata 2019 ‒ final Report (Q28) : author (P19) : André Costa (Q30)
- speaker (P33)
- The person who gives a presentation or speech.
- Example: Beyond Wikipedia: Cultural heritage and LOD on the Wikimedia platforms (Q68) : speaker (P33) : Alicia Fagerving (Q46)
- manager / leader (P32)
- The person who leads or coordinates an activity, such as a project or a workshop.
- Example: Content partnerships support (Q1) : manager / leader (P32) : John Andersson (Q63)
- Example: OpenRefine workshop (Q23073) : manager / leader (P32) : Sandra Fauconnier (Q22698)
Properties on a person item
Only the properties below may be used on a person item. This keeps the amount of personal data as small as possible. Do not add any other properties.
Required
- instance of (P5)
- Value: human (Q23)
Required if it exists
- same as on Wikidata (P1)
- Example: Q68773375
Only if the person has no Wikidata item
- affiliation (P34)
- Example: Wikimedia Sverige (Q9)
- Use the person's main affiliation.
- If the main affiliation does not apply in a specific case, you can override it with a qualifier on the item where the person is linked.
- If later affiliations are relevant for the linked data, you can add the qualifiers start time (P6) and end time (P7). Only do this if it is needed.
SPARQL
All people
PREFIX wb: <https://metabase.wikibase.cloud/entity/>
PREFIX wbt: <https://metabase.wikibase.cloud/prop/direct/>
SELECT ?item ?itemLabelEN ?itemLabelSV ?wikidata_iri
WHERE
{
?item wbt:P5 wb:Q23 .
OPTIONAL {?item wbt:P1 ?wikidataQ}
OPTIONAL {?item rdfs:label ?itemLabelEN filter (lang(?itemLabelEN) = "en")}.
OPTIONAL {?item rdfs:label ?itemLabelSV filter (lang(?itemLabelSV) = "sv")}.
BIND(URI(concat("http://www.wikidata.org/entity/", ?wikidataQ)) AS ?wikidata_iri)
}
ORDER BY ?itemLabelEN
Number of people
PREFIX wb: <https://metabase.wikibase.cloud/entity/>
PREFIX wbt: <https://metabase.wikibase.cloud/prop/direct/>
SELECT (COUNT(*) AS ?count_humans)
WHERE
{
?item wbt:P5 wb:Q23 .
}