Property talk:P2028

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United States Armed Forces service number
number assigned by the US military to soldiers and sailors as the primary means of service member identification from 1918 until 1974

Data type	External identifier
Domain	According to this template: human (Q5) According to statements in the property: human (Q5) When possible, data should only be stored as statements
Allowed values	[\d-]+
Example	Louis Julius Freudenberg (Q20658456) → 1749623 Vincent Gerard Norton (Q69672248) → 32922190
Source	Service number (United States Armed Forces) (note: this information should be moved to a property statement; use property source website for the property (P1896))
Robot and gadget jobs	We may be able to crawl the NARA database of military service histories and match them to wikidata entries.
Related to country	United States of America (Q30) (See 771 others)
Lists	Items with the most statements of this property Count of items by number of statements (chart) Items with the most statements Items with the fewest statements Count of items by number of sitelinks (chart) Items with the most sitelinks Items with the most sitelinks, but no link to one Wikipedia (sample: Welsh Wikipedia, cywiki) Items with the fewest sitelinks Most linked wikis Items with the most identifier properties Items with no other external identifier Items with no other statements Most recently created items Items with novalue claims Items with unknown value claims Usage history (total) Usage history (main statement) Chart by item creation date Map of people by place values: place of birth educated at work location residence place of death place of burial January 1st dates People with date of birth on January 1 People with date of death on January 1 People with both dates on January 1 Database reports/Humans with missing claims/P2028 Database reports/Constraint violations/P2028 Map Random list
Proposal discussion	Proposal discussion
Current uses	Total 115 Main statement 112 97.4% of uses Qualifier 3 2.6% of uses
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[create Create a translatable help page (preferably in English) for this property to be included here]

Distinct values: this property likely contains a value that is different from all other items. (Help)

List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P2028#Unique value, hourly updated report, SPARQL (every item), SPARQL (by value)

Single value: this property generally contains a single value. (Help)

List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P2028#Single value, hourly updated report, SPARQL

Format “\d+”: value must be formatted using this pattern (PCRE syntax). (Help)

Exceptions are possible as rare values may exist. Exceptions can be specified using exception to constraint (P2303).
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P2028#Format, SPARQL

Type “human (Q5)”: item must contain property “instance of (P31)” with classes “human (Q5)” or their subclasses (defined using subclass of (P279)). (Help)

Exceptions are possible as rare values may exist. Exceptions can be specified using exception to constraint (P2303).
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P2028#Type Q5, SPARQL

Allowed entity types are Wikibase item (Q29934200): the property may only be used on a certain entity type (Help)

Exceptions are possible as rare values may exist. Exceptions can be specified using exception to constraint (P2303).
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P2028#Entity types

Repurposing for wider coverage

It is being proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Service number to broaden the scope of this property, so that it applies to other units. Please join the discussion there. − Pintoch (talk) 15:58, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Is there still an idea to broaden this to other nation's military identifiers? Sam Wilson 10:32, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

---

Reviving the discussion; User:Andrew Gray proposed a property for "Service number" of armed/security forces personnel. The proposal may be seen at: Wikidata:Property proposal/Service number. Many opined that would be better to re-purpose this property instead of creating a new one. I am reviving the discussion to arrive at a consensus. We have the sources to retrieve the service number, but there is no appropriate property on Wikidata. Pinging users who participated in the property proposal, @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), ديفيد_عادل_وهبة_خليل_2, Pigsonthewing, ChristianKl, Jura1, Pintoch: @Samwilson: KCVelaga (talk) 09:11, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

• I have no problem either way. --RAN (talk) 13:53, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

• Wow, I'd forgotten about this - it got a bit stuck last time around. Reading over the old notes, I think the past discussion at project chat and the property proposal showed three things:

1. this property, as currently scoped, is very narrow, unlikely to be used much, and there is interest in a more general one that would cover all countries/services (with qualifiers!);
2. to get there, most people preferred the idea of repurposing/extending this one over creating a new property;
3. it wasn't clear if we could actually repurpose this one (in part because it would involve switching datatypes from external-id to string; I don't really know how that works).

I think a generic service-number property with a qualifier to say what it refers to is still the best option but I don't know what would be the most appropriate method to get there and I have no preference as to how we do it (repurpose this or delete/create new). Andrew Gray (talk) 22:31, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

@Andrew Gray: Thanks for the comment. Pinging @Mahir256: to help us with this. KCVelaga (talk) 06:30, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Since this property is used only on nineteen items--far from being complete and without any clear indication that this property is still being added to items or is being used in other projects--it would not be difficult to add qualifiers (applies to jurisdiction (P1001) perhaps?) to make this property refer to a more general armed services number. Were it present on more items, or were there some technical issue to be resolved in widening this property's scope, I'd agree that a new property would be necessary. Let's wait for more people that are still around who voted on the initial proposal, and perhaps some who are still around who added some existing values of this property, to hear their thoughts. Mahir256 (talk) 15:39, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

• What would be the use case? BTW We don't "repurpose" entities at Wikidata. --- Jura 13:47, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

@Jura1: You mean "use case" as where will the proposed property be used. I think then we should have a new property. KCVelaga (talk) 07:10, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Which items should have what values? Items seems to have dozens if not hundreds in mind you want to add. Can you detail them? --- Jura 09:18, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

@Jura1: Sorry for missing this. Here are a few examples;

• Joginder Jaswant Singh (Q1895936) -> IC-16078
• Somnath Sharma (Q3595115) -> IC-521
• Joseph F. Farley (Q6282971) -> 1000
• William H. P. Blandy (Q2579087) -> 8247

The pattern of these number greatly vary from country to country, and also within different forces of the same country. KCVelaga (talk) 06:19, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

• Since it is just a numerical value, the number 1000 will be recycled by each county, I think we prefer having unique numbering. --RAN (talk) 20:35, 31 August 2023 (UTC)