Documentation

media legend
qualifier to describe the media of the statement. This avoids legend storage in the local infobox when the media is defined at Wikidata. For the date, use P585 instead

Represents

depicting object (Q45025858), caption (Q18585177)

Data type

Monolingual text

Template parameter

fr:Template:Infobox Biographie2: "légende"

Domain

image file (note: this should be moved to the property statements)

Allowed values

.{2,450}

Usage notes

For the date, use P585 instead.

Example

According to this template: Ernst Peschl (Q103198): image (P18) "Hermann Weyl.jpg" → language: en + text: "Peschl to the right"

According to statements in the property:
Douglas Adams (Q42) → A portrait photo of Douglas Adams
Basshunter (Q383541) → Basshunter singing at a concert in Halmstad

When possible, data should only be stored as statements

Robot and gadget jobs

DeltaBot does the following jobs:

There is Pywikibot script which quickly moves most captions from statements to qualifiers.

Tracking: usage

Category:Pages using Wikidata property P2096 (Q26690098)

Discussion

Ny svensk etikett

@Averater, Esquilo: mfl. Den här propertyn har fått ett utökat användningsområde. Hur justerar vi etiketten på bästa sätt för att det ska se vettigt ut på svenska? -- Innocent bystander (talk) 10:39, 31 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Innocent bystander: Beskrivning av media? Eller förklaring? Kanske Mediabeskrivning? --Averater (talk) 10:52, 31 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Averater:

Utfört! "bildtext" står kvar som alias. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 12:46, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Scope

Per Wikidata:Project chat#Caption for audio and video files it was decided to widen the scope of this property and also allow captions of audio files and videos. --Pasleim (talk) 11:22, 31 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For future reference, this is archived here: Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2016/07#Caption_for_audio_and_video_files. Inductiveload (talk) 13:35, 28 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"P18 on persons should show the person, so a legend isn't needed for that."

What does that mean? Danrok (talk) 03:55, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You are referring to the English description of this property. Well, if it is a picture of "John Doe", then the label "John Doe" probably does not make much sense. Better to write something like "John Doe at the Academy Award 2015". -- Innocent bystander (talk) 07:45, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've reverted that addition (made by Jura1) as it is misleading through being oversimplified and over generalised. Yes a label saying only "John Doe" is not useful, add more information as Innocent bystander notes. However, there are occasions when the only/best photo also includes other people so you need this property to say "John Doe (2nd from left), at the 1921 Fooian Convention", etc. Thryduulf (talk) 10:33, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure this can be improved, but it's hard to do it in 70 characters (total field size is 250 characters)?
--- Jura 10:39, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- What are you trying to say? Is there a need to say it? Thryduulf (talk) 10:46, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  - I think Innocent bystander explained it well. It happens on items such as John Leighton Wilson (Q16198720), Michael Domenec (Q16191119), Kit Williams (Q6417490), etc.
    --- Jura 11:08, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    - Ah ok, I think something along the lines of "Use more than just name of the subject to add most value" or "Adding only the name of the subject adds little value and is discouraged." Neither are perfect but they (aim to) convey what is discouraged and why. Thryduulf (talk) 17:35, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    - I think "Name at place 2014" is an approriate caption. If not, how have you guys designed the caption in infobox biografy templates? Do you prefer to use point in time (P585) and place? Tomastvivlaren (talk) 19:09, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Maintain content when the image is removed from the item

In my local wiki, if we have a picture of a headquarter for example, we add it to the item in wikidata and we remove the picture and its legend from the article because it shows up in the infobox with the added media legend. My question is, what if someone update the picture in the item? I understand that there is may be a better picture, but why do we lose the data saved in the media legend. Is there a way to be able to export it in Commons for example as a description or saved in an other place since it has been removed from local wikis because of redundancy with the infobox picture?--Helmoony (talk) 01:38, 9 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Helmoony: I know I'm replying to an ancient question, but it was unanswered, so… In my opinion, the best way to "replace" an image on WD is not to delete or overwrite the old image, but add the new one and set it to Preferred rank while setting the old one(s) to Normal. — Sincerely, Desoda (talk) 12:31, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another and even later answer: Now that there is Structured Data on Commons, the caption might live in it using this same value in the structured data of the file it belongs to. It might only be worth noting that there the context of the item here where it was used as image (P18) is lost and maybe the text is not appropriate without that context any more. --Marsupium (talk) 21:07, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is better validation possible?

I just added media legend (P2096) in several languages to image (P18) on Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant (Q830697) and noticed that, if I failed to specify the language, it wouldn't allow me to submit (obviously) but didn't indicate which instance was failing validation. Is it possible to make the failing value be outlined in red or something, with a rather more obvious indication of validation failure. — OwenBlacker (talk; please {{ping}} me in replies) 22:34, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The legend you added seems entirely redundant.
--- Jura 22:38, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wikisyntax

Hi all! Should in your opinion wikisyntax be allowed for this property (e.g. here) or not? In the latter case, it would be better to specify it somewhere. Bye, --Epìdosis 17:10, 14 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I’m unsure about italic, but internal links should definitely not appear in legends: it may work on one wiki (e.g. Wikipedia), but turns red on the other (e.g. Commons or Wikisource). —Tacsipacsi (talk) 23:19, 14 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose of the property is to avoid "legend storage in the local infobox". Local infoboxes usually allow internal links to provide better context, especially considering sparse space for a reasonable description below an image. So, links should be allowed in "media legend" too. The red links in Wikimedia projects can be prevented by formatting links as inline interlanguage links.--Роман Рябенко (talk) 20:15, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

True, those links are useful in infoboxes. But our data isn't intended purely for use in Wikimedia projects. To users outside of our Wikimedia ecosystem, wikisyntax like inline interwiki links aren't really useful and would have to be specifically processed or removed. Which makes wikified legends less useable for them. --Kam Solusar (talk) 05:00, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So, the Wikipedia syntax could possibly be allowed only for those items which are "for Wikimedia site use only"? Is it possible to associate a Wikidata item with the media description as an alternative to marking up that item in the text of the description? For example, the description of the image of the item Q278846 refers to item Q1457886, but I do not know how to declare the connection. --Роман Рябенко (talk) 10:38, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I replaced the wiki markup with "depicts" statements in my example. This seems to be the closest equivalent. --Роман Рябенко (talk) 11:09, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

2019 deletion request

Archived at Wikidata:Requests_for_deletions/Archive/2019/Properties/1#media_legend_(P2096). --- Jura 14:39, 29 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalization?

Should a media legend be in sentence case, i.e. starting with a capital letter, for languages for which this is applicable? Thanks for any opinions, --Marsupium (talk) 21:58, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For me, it’s quite obvious that captions should be formatted however captions are usually formatted in the given language – if they’re usually sentence-cased, then sentence-cased, if lower-cased, then lower-cased, if title-cased, then title-cased; if captions usually have a final stop, then they should have one, if they usually don’t have, they shouldn’t have here either; and so on. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 00:11, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, the used language matters, I guess most scripts don't even have something like capital letters anyway. Still I don't think there are clear uniform rules for all languages that everyone agrees on and is aware of. Settling on a format here makes it easier for data consumers to get possibly change a fixed format to their needs. It could be useful to collect rules here per language. So for English should we follow en:MOS:CAPFRAG for example? Marsupium (talk) 00:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think the rules can be deferred to the Wikipedia in the given language, in any language that has a Wikipedia and that Wikipedia has written rules concerning captions, not only in English. (For example, in Hungarian it’s hu:Wikipédia:Formai útmutató#Képaláírások.)

I’m not sure about your data consumer concerns. Captions are human-readable texts, not really suitable for further processing. Also, without constraints (and we’re without constraints, as constraints can’t handle different rules in different languages), we have no guarantee that all, or even a majority of, captions in a given language follow the set rules. If the rules are collected, this should be for the benefit for editors, who can achieve a mostly uniform format, not for the benefit of data consumers. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 02:38, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, all that sounds reasonable. As for the data consumer: A majority for now are probably infoboxes on Wikipedias and on Commons. If they get the captions from here in a well-defined format, its easier for them to process them. If Wikidata already provides them as you propose "formatted however captions are usually formatted in the given language" then they don't have to take care about capitalizing the first letter (for English captions for example). That makes sense, so thanks! :-) --Marsupium (talk) 03:19, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

According to the description, the usage of this property “avoids legend storage in the local infobox when the media is defined at Wikidata”, so its main if not only purpose is to serve infoboxes, thus I think infoboxes can count on the value being available in a format that they don’t need to process further. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 19:15, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it makes sense to me and we may assume or hope that Wikipedias and possibly other projects in a single language share the same styles. Thanks for helping me wrapping my mind around this! :-) --Marsupium (talk) 20:50, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Property talk:P2096

Contents

Documentation

Discussion

Ny svensk etikett

Scope

"P18 on persons should show the person, so a legend isn't needed for that."

Maintain content when the image is removed from the item

Is better validation possible?

Wikisyntax

2019 deletion request

Capitalization?

Navigation menu

Property talk:P2096

Documentation

Discussion

Ny svensk etikett

Scope

"P18 on persons should show the person, so a legend isn't needed for that."

Maintain content when the image is removed from the item

Is better validation possible?

Wikisyntax

2019 deletion request

Capitalization?

Navigation menu

Search