Reconciling without names

Hi all,

I would like to discuss one use case that I think the current API does
not serve well, I think.

The reconciliation API assumes that reconciliation queries contain at
least a name (as basic search query). It is then possible to add other
constraints (type, properties). However in many situations the user does
not have any name to supply.

The most common situation where this is a problem is when the user has
access to a unique identifier, supported by the reconciliation service
as a property. Supplying such a unique identifier as a property in a
reconciliation query should be enough to identify the candidates, but in
the current API a name also has to be provided.

Currently, for Wikidata reconciliation, unique identifiers have priority
over the search query, so if you find yourself in this situation you can
use any random gibberish as name. If there is an exact match via some
unique identifier that you supplied, the name will be ignored.

Example:
{"query":"a347682ebf327cbd37e834","properties":[{"pid":"P3500","v":"53616"}]}
will return the item with Ringgold identifier "53616" even if the query
has nothing to do with its name.

However that is not extremely intuitive or user-friendly… So in a future
version of the protocol I would be interested in making those sort of
queries more natural.

Any thoughts about how it should work?

Cheers,
Antonin

Received on Sunday, 10 November 2019 11:45:20 UTC