[OSM-talk] Creation of "Data Items" by bot for undocumented tags

[Joseph Eisenberg]

Data Items should not be created by bot for undocumented tags.

According to https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Data_items#Item_Creation_Process
the Data Items (aka "Wikibase" or "Wiki Data items") are automatically
created by a bot, even before a tag is documented, if a tag has a
certain standard format and more than 10 uses in the database.

The data item is created in this case with the text "‎Created a new
Item: Auto-updating from Wiki pages" - e.g.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Item:Q19947&action=history

This is confusing to users. For example, Item:Q19947 above,
"landuse=research" was created before there was a wiki page. Then
yesterday a user documented the tag with a page, but did not
understand why there was already a data item:

"Wikibase entry: evidence for preceding deletion? I've just created
landuse=research, but the data item
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Item:Q19947&action=history
was already existing in December '19. How was the data item then
created?"
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Wiki=#Wikibase_entry:_evidence_for_preceding_deletion.3F

Besided the potential confusion caused by creating these items by
bots, I think it is a bad idea to encourage wiki users to start
editing these data items without first creating an actual
human-readable wiki page to document the tag.

In theory, the "Data Items" can be useful if they properly document
how tags are used, in a way that is easier for computers to handle,
but this only works if the data is maintained and updated.

Creating a new wiki page (by human) will alert other users via
"Special:Recent" and "Special:NewPages", while the stream of items
created by bots is too much for humans to maintain, and the page names
are too obscure (Item: Q19947 is meaningless) to be scanned by humans.

Therefore, I propose that Yurikbot be changed to only add new data
items for documented tags which already have a wiki page in at least
one language. I do not see a benefit to creating date items for
undocumented tags.

Joseph Eisenberg