105 lines
5.0 KiB
Markdown
105 lines
5.0 KiB
Markdown
---
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id: new-entities
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title: Creating new items
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sidebar_label: New items
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---
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OpenRefine can create new items. This page explains how they are
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generated.
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## Words of caution {#words-of-caution}
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- The fact that OpenRefine does not propose any item when reconciling
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a cell does not mean that the item is not present in the Wikibase instance:
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it can be missed for all sorts of reasons. Please make
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sure that you are not creating any duplicates!
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- Make sure that the items that you want to create are admissible in
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the Wikibase instance. For Wikidata, see the [notability guidelines](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Notability);
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- Deleting items generally requires special rights: if you want to revert an
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edit group that includes new items in Wikidata, you will need to ask an
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administrator to do it.
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## Workflow overview {#workflow-overview}
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Here is how you would typically create new items with OpenRefine:
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- Reconcile a column;
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- Mark some of its cells as new items. This will not create items yet.
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If you need to mark many rows as new items, use the **Reconcile** →
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**Actions** → **Create a new item for each cell** operation.
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- Create a Wikibase schema as usual, using the column where your new
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items are marked;
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- Perform the edits: the new items will be created on Wikidata at this
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point;
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- The cells that you had marked as new items will now be reconciled to
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the newly-created items.
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It is often useful (but not mandatory) to treat new items in isolation
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and use a dedicated schema for them. This helps you add many statements
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on the new items (including labels and descriptions) without risking to
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clutter existing items with redundant edits. Use a facet on the judgment
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status of the reconciled column to isolate new items and perform their
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edits separately. As always in OpenRefine, only the rows covered by your
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facets will be considered when uploading the edits to Wikidata: if a
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cell is reconciled to a new item but is excluded by the facet, no new
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item will be created for it.[^1]
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Note that even if you know that all items in your column are new, you
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will still need to make a first reconciliation pass by selecting the
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Wikidata reconciliation service, and then setting all reconciliation
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statuses to \"new\". If you skip the first part, OpenRefine will not
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know that this column is reconciled against your Wikibase instance (it could be
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reconciled to other services) so it will not let you use it in place of
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an item in a Wikibase schema.
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You can also perform the edits with QuickStatements - in this case, your
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OpenRefine project will not be updated with the newly created Qids.
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## Adding labels to new items {#adding-labels-to-new-items}
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The text that is in a cell reconciled to \"new\" is not automatically
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used as label for the newly-created item. This is because OpenRefine has
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no way to guess in which language this label should be. When adding new
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items, you need to explicitly add a label in the schema. This label can
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use the reconciled column as source, but if you have other cells matched
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to existing items, be careful not to override the labels of these items
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(if it is not your intention).
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OpenRefine will refuse to perform edits where new items are created
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without any labels (as this is considered a critical issue). Other
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issues will be raised if insufficient basic information is added on the
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items (but these other warnings will not prevent you from performing the
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edits).
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## Marking multiple cells as identical items {#marking-multiple-cells-as-identical-items}
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If you mark individual cells as new items, one new item per cell will be
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created. Sometimes multiple rows refer to the same item. OpenRefine
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makes it possible to mark all the corresponding cells as the *same* new
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item. Two conditions have to be met:
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- the reconciled cells must be in the same column (it is not possible
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to mark two cells in different colums as the same new item);
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- the cells must contain the same initial text value.
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If these two conditions are met, then isolate these cells with facets
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and go to **Reconcile** → **Actions** → **Create one item for similar
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cells**. This will mark the cells as new and referring to the same item.
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## Retrieving the Qids of the newly-created items {#retrieving-the-qids-of-the-newly-created-items}
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Once you have performed your edits with OpenRefine, any new cells
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covered by the facet will be updated with their new Qids. You can
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retrieve these Qids with the **Edit column** → **Add column based on
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this column** action and using the `cell.recon.match.id` expression.
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Note that you will no longer be able to isolate new items with a
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judgment facet at this stage (because the judgment will be updated to
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**matched**) so it can be worth marking these rows (for instance with a
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star or flag) before performing the edits.
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[^1]: The only exception to this rule is when marking multiple cells as
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identical items: in this case, if one of such cells are included in
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the facet, then all the others will be updated with the newly
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created Qid once the edits are made.
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