Talk:Q33506

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Autodescription — museum (Q33506)

description: institution that holds artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, historical, or other importance
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Playing around with subclasses

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People, please be a bit more careful with playing around with subclassing. This caused many incorrect constraint violations. Multichill (talk) 13:50, 10 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Are subclasses for avoiding constraint violations or for describing the world? Yes, I know this causes constraint violations, but that’s because those items are wrongly described. An institution is not the same as a building. If you don’t want to separate the two for a given museum (though it’s inaccurate not to separate them), add instance of (P31)museum building (Q24699794) to it. (And either revert, or start discussion on the talk page; doing both looks like you’re absolutely self-confident that you have the Holy Grail, and don’t really care if somebody thinks differently. I made my revert before spotting this discussion, and have never done it if I knew about your talk page edit but kept the status quo.) —Tacsipacsi (talk) 14:02, 10 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You're trying to divide an existing concept in a more narrow version. The world is not black and white. A museum can be both an organisation and a building. For the more narrow interpretation for the building part we already have museum building (Q24699794). I'd suggest you create a new item for the narrow interpretation of a museum as an organisation instead of trying to convert an existing item into something different. Multichill (talk) 14:31, 10 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In many cases, it’s more convenient to handle museums as buildings and institutions at the same time. But it doesn’t mean they are the same. They are simply different concepts. Museum buildings are built some time, begin housing one or more museums some time (often not the same time, e.g. many European museum buildings were built as homes of noblemen or monarchs), and may become empty some time. Museums (institutions) are founded some time, may have more (or sometimes less) than one building, may move to another building, may merge with or separate from other museums etc. If, despite of these differences, the two don’t have separate items (yet), it should be explicitly noted on that common item so that editors are aware of the lack of differentiation and may split up the item to the building and the institution. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 15:05, 10 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I try to split museums and the buildings, but it is a long list. What we could do is start qyery with musea that don't have a property 'located in' and add to that museum an instance of 'building'. So every museum that is not yet splitted, becomes both a building as well an museum. With this solution all the constrains for buildings and museums will still work. --Hannolans (talk) 15:40, 10 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Having double entries for a museum and its building seems excessive to me. So many of their properties would overlap, and any omissions, like arguing that a building can't have a website, would be unhelpful. Vicarage (talk) 21:25, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Indicating a museum has an example of something there are many (but not too many) of

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Museums have owner of (P1830) but the warning about reciprocal statements suggests it is for singular things. How would I indicate that an aviation museum had a Lancaster bomber, so a search would show me where to see one? Vicarage (talk) 13:45, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if this question is still open.
I think the right way to go is to create an item for the specific Lancaster bomber housed in that museum. Then, it would be easy to query the museums that own an item which is an instance of a subclass of Lancaster bombers. Pere prlpz (talk) 12:29, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Museums need the properties of museum building

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While there is a distinction between a museum and a museum building (Q24699794) in practice nearly all museums only have one entry for the whole complex, which needs have the properties of a building to satisfy requirements like having a historic county (P7959). This seems preferable to widening building based properties to cover organisations. Similarly a museum is a tourist attraction (Q570116) Vicarage (talk) 21:19, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Vicarage: Many museums have a single building, but not all. There are also museums that moved throughout their history or opened in buildings that had notable usage before (for example, many European museums are housed in palaces that used to be owned by royal/noble families). Your statements make it impossible to properly model these more complex cases; while without these statements, it’s only more difficult, but not impossible, to model the common case of institution = building. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 08:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A palace reused as an art gallery, or a fort now open as a military museum, should be subclasses of both museum and building type. Its a tossup whether which of "Museum of Fortification" or "Fort Price" should be the label, which the alias. But we won't have this for every museum for a long time, until then we want to ensure that the museum as a "building with objects that tourists like to visit" is reflected in the classes of the museum type itself. Restricting the word museum to its governance organisation is unhelpful. A query for London tourist attractions should return 2 Tate galleries, and the National Gallery, not the Tate organisation nor the Sainsbury wing of the latter, and we shouldn't see property warnings when trying to describe them as buildings. Vicarage (talk) 12:01, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A museum is both an organization as a building depending on context. The world is not black and white, so trying to model it in a black and white manner will always fail.
As I said before: This item covers the combined concept. Don't try to apply a narrow concept to it. Multichill (talk) 19:14, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Combined concept? This makes little sense. Depending on context, in real world, a museum is either an organization or a building, but never concurrently both organization and building. I'd rather say that things will always fail if you conflate the data. Things may look fine only if you use some limited set of statements that happen to fit both organization and building.
E.g. properties like inception (P571) would rarely have the same value for both organization and building, and then you'd have to use some qualifier to clear things up and indicate what the statements are actually for. This way it'd be very difficult to retrieve the relevant data when organization data is needed or vice versa, and all in all things seem just messy, as opposed to normal approach to store the data for distinct entities in distinct Wikidata items. 2001:7D0:81DB:1480:91D1:C0EA:7639:2B8 09:49, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If one item covers both the institution and the building, then it's ill-defined. The standard solution is use one item for the institution and another for the building, and it used in hotels, schools, municipalities, and a lot of institutions. If we want to use a single building it should not be "museum" but "museum with a single building or architectural structure". Or even better: if one item is about the institution and the building you just need to put instance of (P31) of both museum and museum building.
Now virtual museum (Q1225034), which has no buildings, is a subclass of museum (Q33506), and this is a problem.
Therefore, we should remove the building properties from museum (Q33506).--Pere prlpz (talk) 14:11, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Museums preserve artefacts and present narratives. Sometimes, like with a castle or ship, the monolithic object is the key artefact preserved, sometimes, like an art gallery in a deconsecrated church, the museum's narrative purpose is weakly linked to the merits of the building. And for some museums the physical building is an irrelevance. Presenting a website as 'virtual museum' indicates the desire for it to fit into the class of museums. A city might run multiple sites under a single organisation, but they are presented as individual locations. And aviation museums have multiple hangers but no-one would want WD entries for each one. Museums are complicated things, we don't want to be proscriptive to say a museum can only be an organisation or a building, we don't want to deny the history of a building merely because its been reused as a museum, we don't want to double double up entries to ensure every building has an overseeing organisation. Vicarage (talk) 15:47, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, yes, sometimes and for some museums this is sort of approximately the case, but statements in this class item apply to every single museum instance not only to some museums. Due to current P279=architectural structure/tourist attraction/facility statements every single museum is classified as an individual architectural structure and an individual geographic/physical object (via parent classes) which is plain wrong. I'd say foremost we want to avoid the data structure which is plain wrong.
Obviously there are many museums that don't operate in a single building or as an only occupant of a building. Virtual museum maybe isn't the best example indeed but aviation museums with multiple hangars which you mention is a good example of this, also there are open-air museum (Q756102) etc.
I don't see what makes you think that an item needs to be created for every single hangar of an aviation museum if all mususems weren't classified as buildings. You can still create items for individual museum buildings only where necessary (building itself is notable, useful statements can be made abou it). 2001:7D0:81DB:1480:1D45:C93A:2606:6410 08:27, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are you @Pere prlpz?
See https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Talk:Q575727 where I initially thought has use (P366) should be used instead of instance of (P31), then changed my mind. And here is the issue is clear, and ships aren't buildings. As said way up thread, its too complicated to apply a blanket rule. Vicarage (talk) 09:40, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Vicarage: No, I'm not the anonymous user, although I mostly agree with them - but I think a virtual museum is a better example that a museum spanning several hangars that aren't individually notable. I think another good example is a museum that spans several buildings that are individually notable, like Museum of the History of Barcelona (Q3571337).
About museum ship (Q575727), I agree with you that it can be used as instance of (P31) but for any meaningful use of museum ship (Q575727) on any property, museums should stop being subclasses of buildings.--Pere prlpz (talk) 09:51, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think whether museum ship (Q575727) should be used with P31 or P366 does not directly relate to the issue we are dealing with here. However that item currently has similar classification problem (I commented on it here: Talk:Q575727#Watercraft vs. musem).
Vicarage, you say we shouldn't apply a blanket rule but at the same it seems this is exactly what you insist on doing. You tend to ignore that in reality things are more complicated (there's a distinction between museum organizations and museum buildings) and therefore advocate a blanket rule to classifiy all museums as architectural structures and an individual geographic/physical objects which contradicts reality. 2001:7D0:81DB:1480:1D45:C93A:2606:6410 11:39, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What historic county (P7959) related requirement? If property of a building is required in an item that is an item that is (primarily) for an organization then I'd say there's a problem with the requirement itself. It may require some work to figure out where each statement should go, where needed additional items can be created. I'm sure this all can be sorted out in a clear way. But if instead all museum organizations are classified as individual buildings, and all museum buildings are classified as organizations then all the data is messed up and in many cases simply wrong. Currently all museum buildings and organization are additionally classified as tourist attraction (Q570116) instances, and so in your example in addition to 2 Tate galleries it still also returns Tate organization as a tourist attraction which probably isn't desirable, and there is no way to clear this up if the data is simply conflated.
I don't know if really "nearly all museums only have one entry for the whole complex". I know of many cases where items for both building and organization exist, and in some cases also items for multiple buildings of a single musuem exist.
The data quality in Wikidata is what it is, there are a lot of problems both with and without museums. I'd say this means that we have work to do. Instead we might declare that long-standing inconsistencies, dissonances and plain errors are intentional, as some of us might find that this makes our work easier, but what would be the point really. 2001:7D0:81DB:1480:91D1:C0EA:7639:2B8 09:49, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. There are museums with a single building, museums with a handful of buildings across a city or even a region, and museums with no buildings, like virtual museum (Q1225034) which is a subclass of museums.
If a museum is also a building, that museum item may have instances of museum institution and museum building, but not museum be made a subclass of building.
In fact, we are even more strict with hotels, which usually are a single building but we use separate items for the hotel building and the hotel organization.
Can we remove building subclasses from the museum item? Pere prlpz (talk) 19:15, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No. Can you provide examples of organisations that own single hotels that have a double entry system? Or does our treatment just reflect that most hotels are parts of chains? Vicarage (talk) 20:08, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For example:
Additionally, you can see Talk:Q27686 for several instances of the same discussion about hotels.--Pere prlpz (talk) 11:00, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can we already remove the instance of building from this item to stop virtual museums and other museus that aren't buildings from showing up as buildings? Pere prlpz (talk) 11:07, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you do, the vast majority of museums that are buildings will drop out of queries for buildings. Fundamentally we need to accept that a virtual museum is not a museum, as the definition of the latter is a repository of artefacts in a structure. There are only 169 links to virtual_museum, far too few to disrupt the main museum category. We need to change virtual_museum to be associated with museum in a different way. Vicarage (talk) 11:28, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are a lot more than the virtual museums that are not a building.
The description of this item in English is "institution that holds artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, historical, or other importance" (in English and equivalent in other languages). If you think that this item should be for "institutions that holds ... and are also a building" then the description should be changed and it should be removed from a lot of institutions, and replaced with a new item that mean "institution that holds artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, historical, or other importance".
Otherwise if the problem is that you think that all the items that are now museum (Q33506) should appear in searches for buildings, it's very easy to add add instance of building (Q41176) or museum building (Q24699794) to each of them with an script (or even with PetScan) - provided that, as it seems, you are sure that all of them are buildings - and leave this item with its original meaning. In fact, that's equivalent to when somebody added subclass of building to museums and converted each museums to a building. Pere prlpz (talk) 11:47, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If we take the example of a Historic Dockyard, say Chatham Historic Dockyard (Q5087663). It contains a couple of exhibit ships, a submarine and 100 historic buildings, 50 are listed. It hosts a lifeboat collection that it does not own. The controlling organisation (Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust) decides to make a virtual museum for some aspect of the site's history. If we have WD items for the charity, overall site, vessels, buildings, charity and the special website, how can we arrange them so queries by all our users give neither too few or too many results. Clearly someone wanting specific rope-making buildings or submarines can find them, but needs help with finding how they can visit, and how can tourist or institutional queries be handled, getting one site to visit, one website or one set of contact details. Edinburgh Castle (Q212065) is even more complicated, it has rented space to lots of museums, and someone might pay admission to the site just to see a regimental museum. Vicarage (talk) 12:43, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PS, we want a solution that handles the really complicated, but also folds down to 1 WD item for a local history museum in a small town. Vicarage (talk) 12:54, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To handle even the most simple cases we need:
  • One class of museum buildings.
  • One class of museum institutions.
Additionally, it might be useful to have a class of "museum institution which is also a building" - at least you and some other participants in this discussion find it useful, although I would prefer to use two instance of (P31) for such institution-building ensembles, in the cases where it wouldn't be preferable having two items.
The first one is already solved: museum building (Q24699794).
Now the question is which items are about the second and the third. I see two possible solutions:
  • Leave museum (Q33506) as "museum institution which is also a building" and change its description accordingly, and create a new class for museum institutions.
  • Leave museum (Q33506) with its original meaning of museum institution according to its description, and create a new class "museum institution which is also a building".
If that institution-building ensemble is to be used, I favour the second solution because otherwise we would be changing the meaning of an existing element, which is very disruptive to Wikidata. In any case, we need a museum institution item. Pere prlpz (talk) 13:18, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I like the idea of museum_institution, as it could also take on the charity/governance properties, and is independent of museum_building. Being part of both classes makes something a museum_institution_which_is_also_a_building. Any museum_building that is not a museum_institution itself should refer to one or some other organisation with operator (P137). Rather than change museum, you could retire it, inspecting every occurrence and giving assigning to one or both classes. But you'd have the problem of sub-museum types, like maritime museum (Q1863818), a very useful feature, and it would break so much, so I don't think we can.
Why not have all 3 classes in play: museum, museum_building and museum_institution. Leave the former alone and allow people who care about museums that aren't buildings to use the last two properties in combination as filters. Once all buildings are labelled, remove building from museum.
A historic building in an open-air museum would be museum_building, the site would be museum, the charity museum_institution
A historic building run by the local council would be museum and museum_building operator (P137) council
A virtual museum run by a charity would be museum operator (P137) charity
Tate (Q430682) would be a museum_institution field of work (P101) art, its subsidiary Tate Modern (Q193375) an art_museum, but Bankside Power Station (Q806832) a museum_building
museum_ship would be retired in favour of preserved_vessel, equivalent to museum_building, either also a maritime_museum or not if in private hands. Vicarage (talk) 14:06, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
museum (Q33506) is a museum institution. Any other definition or repurposing of the item will be contrary to the principles that Wikidata are currently built on. Please be sure to discuss this far and wide, as we all rely on museum (Q33506) being _not_ a building. Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 11:05, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with @Vojtěch Dostál that museum (Q33506) is museum institution and that changing it breaks Wikidata. However, we are not discussing to change it because it was already changed without much discussion, and we should change it back - that is, we should remove building related subclass of (P279) from this item.
I also agree with @Vicarage that "I like the idea of museum_institution". That idea used to be museum (Q33506) until somebody added building classes to it.
The other solution of creating a new item with the meaning this one used to have is a quite dirty workaround. Pere prlpz (talk) 11:15, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes the building class should be removed ASAP. Funnily, I see at least four similar attempts in the history of this item. Always reverted. Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 12:12, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If a museum is just the institution, we've a vast amount of work removing building properties from the likes of Tate Modern (Q193375), like its location, size and disabled toilets, and moving them to Bankside Power Station (Q806832), the building it currently occupies, and no-one has heard of. And what does little Dover Museum and Bronze Age Boat Gallery (Q5302509) become, it has no institution, its run by the council. I can see the merit in splitting museum into museum_institution and museum_building, and applying both to nearly everywhere, but that won't work for Tate Modern, and all the useful tourist stuff like access provision is needed for the visitor to the site, not the individual buildings within it. Lots of institutions are called things like the Mary Rose Trust, but the tourist attraction is the Mary Rose.
I think the ship has sailed a long time ago on your narrow definition of museum. Vicarage (talk) 11:33, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody has said Tate Modern (Q193375) is not a building.
We just said that museum (Q33506) means museum institution.
If Tate Modern (Q193375) is about a building in addition of an institution, it should have museum building (Q24699794) as instance of (P31) in addition to museum (Q33506).
And please notice that by adding building subclasses to museum (Q33506) you have narrowed it a lot to include only museums that are an institution and a building, leaving all other museum institutions out. Pere prlpz (talk) 11:54, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But if we remove architectural structure (Q811979) from museum (Q33506), a query for them in a town currently won't show the museum buildings. And with the same logic that a museum institution can't be a physical entity, then tourist attraction (Q570116) should be removed too, and I'll have no-where to go on my hols! Vicarage (talk) 12:09, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, from a purist standpoint, tourist attraction (Q570116) should also be removed from this item. Alternatively, we can discuss possible inclusion of non-material entities such as museums into the definition of tourist attractions. I am not sure how important the 'materiality' is for tourist attraction (Q570116), perhaps this was not properly thought through when tourist attraction (Q570116) was defined. Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 12:17, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Vicarage: If you are sure all the museum (Q33506) in some area are actually museum buildings (in addition to museums), it's very easy to add museum building (Q24699794) to all of them with an script (even with PetScan). However, I can tell you that this is not the case for the museums in my area, as here a lot of museums are in a preexisting building that is relevant in itself and has its own item. Pere prlpz (talk) 14:27, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would say the vast majority are, because of the very long tail of single building small museums. You would expect every museum institution and its building to be already connected in some way, but that certainly is not the case in London, even for the highest profile museums, the National Gallery (Q180788) (a right muddle) and Tate (Q430682). Are we even consistent linking institution with building? I've used operator (P137) for national heritage organisations, but I've also seen part of (P361), owned by (P127) or owner of (P1830) and parent organization (P749). If we can agree on that, we can then find parents for orphaned museum_buildings, or make them museum_institutions. Then parent museum_institutions without buildings can be given a museum_building tag. Vicarage (talk) 15:02, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello all. International Council of Museums (Q653054) approved a new definition for "museum" in 2022: “A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.” ICOM. This does not specify a physical building. And I can think of some museums (e.g. Museum of Transology (Q109498218) and Vagina Museum (Q55075068) which have not had their own buildings but been present in other spaces, sometimes with long gaps between permanent premises, during which the museum still existed but did not have a physical building. I think this supports what this discussion seems to be moving towards, which is that having the option for museum_building as a P31 would be helpful but should not be mandatory for all museums. Zeromonk (talk) 09:37, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is also the original meaning of this item.
I agree that it should be again the meaning of this item and "museum which is also a building" should be a different item - even if we are going to add it to a lot of museums with an script. Pere prlpz (talk) 14:28, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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