Help:Contributing/import

Instead of hand-creating an item per author or source, use the external-authority pages in the semantic tools sidebar.

They fetch metadata from public services (Wikidata, dblp, OpenAlex, Crossref, Open Library, ORCID, YouTube) and let you pick the right record. They create a local stub item with the authority identifiers (ORCID, VIAF, ISNI, DOI, ISBN, YouTube IDs, …) and citation metadata (given/family name, published in, publisher as an entity, pages, volume, issue) — every imported statement carries an imported from <authority> reference. Each created item also gets a classic wiki page (Person:, Source: or Collective:) sitelinked to it, whose infobox renders the item's statements at view time — except book excerpts, which are part of a book and get only an item.

Page	Creates	Input
Special:AddPerson	a person item + a Person: page	name, ORCID iD, VIAF ID, ISNI, or a Wikidata Q id
Special:AddSource	a source item + a Source: page — see the class list below	class first, then the class-specific input
Special:AddCollective	a non-person agent item (organization, company, band, agency, institution, team…) + a Collective: page	a name

Every import flow offers a manual fallback: "No matching record? Create the item manually instead" — on the search page and on the candidate-selection page. The manual form is prefilled with what you typed in the search boxes (a person name is split into given/family, e.g. "Marie Curie" → given Marie, family Curie), so you correct instead of retyping.

People: lifecycle fields

The person review step pre-fills these from the authority when available:

• Date of birth / Date of death — day-precision date fields (YYYY-MM-DD).
• Place of birth / Place of death — entity search boxes: type a name to pick an existing place item (or type a Q-id directly). Create missing places first (see Help:Contributing/entities).
• This person is deceased — toggle, off by default; tick it to reveal the date/place of death fields.

Collectives: common classes

The collective class is inferred from the harvested Wikidata instance-of hints and adjustable on the selection step: private company, public company, non-profit organization, governmental agency, music band, educational institution, research institute, political party, trade union, religious organization, sports team — plus the generic organization / group of humans.

Special:AddSource is class-first

Special:AddSource opens on a class picker (choose the source type first); the page then shows the adapted search fields (if any) and the adapted review fields for that class.

Class	Kind	Search input
Book	parent	ISBN-13, title, or author
Scholarly article	parent	DOI, title, or author
Website	parent, manual entry	— (enter URL + title by hand)
Song · Film · Video	parent	title or author (Wikidata)
YouTube channel	parent	YouTube name or URL (exact match for a URL)
YouTube video	child of YouTube channel	YouTube name or URL
Book excerpt	child of book	— (manual: parent book + pages)
Web page	child of website	— (manual: parent website + URL)

• Child classes need a parent: for a book excerpt, YouTube video or web page you first pick the parent item (book, YouTube channel, website) with an entity search box. The line under the box — "Book not yet imported to RonzzWikiBase? import it yourself" — jumps to the parent's import page. On creation the child is linked to the parent with a part of statement.
• Book excerpts: after picking the parent book, fill the pages and optionally the volume and chapters. A blank description auto-generates as Pages a-b (Volume c) of {book} from the pages/volume fields and the book's title; blank year and author(s) fall back to the parent book's own values (Leave blank if same as the parent book).
• Website vs web page: add an entire website once, then add specific pages as child items (see the explanation on Special:AddSource/website).
• Duration (film, song, video, YouTube video): type MM:SS or HH:MM:SS — stored in seconds.
• A source needs at least one author — except a book excerpt that inherits its authors from the parent book: the review step requires picking author entities (person, organization or group — type a name to search, or type a Q-id). Create missing people first via Special:AddPerson. This is enforced at creation.

Workflow

For classes with an authority: search → review the candidates (same-name disambiguation) → create. Each candidate carries a see record details link to its canonical authority page (opens in a new tab). Repeating a lookup for an already-imported label reuses the existing item (create-or-skip). The English label comes from the authority; add fr/eo labels afterwards. Fetch failures degrade to manual entry at Special:AddSource/<class>/manual.

Notes:

• The authority lookups run only when you click search — never on page load.
• Author search on the book / scholarly-article / film / song / video pages narrows the results for common titles. Toggle between free text (an author name, e.g. Albert Einstein) and semantic entities (Wikidata Q-ids, comma-separated — e.g. Q937, Q42). The semantic mode resolves works by the author entities on the Wikidata hub.
• YouTube: paste a URL for an exact match (no match → no match for the provided URL), or type a name for the top 10 matches.
• The provenance form on Special:AddQuotation (and the other content pages) has entity search + autofill for attributed to and source: type a name, pick the entity, the item id is filled in. Manually typed ids still work.
• Citations use the source item's harvested metadata (journal name, publisher, volume/issue/pages, DOI, ISBN) and cite the source type correctly (a book quote cites as a book, a song quote as a song).

See also

• Help:Contributing — the hub
• Help:Contributing/entities — creating and editing items and properties
• Help:Contributing/semanticDynamicContent — page↔item sitelinks (incl. the Sitelink tab)