Wikidata:Property proposal/YouTube custom URL

YouTube custom URL

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Generic

   Not done

Description	Custom URL of the YouTube channel of a person or organisation. Google documentation for it can be found here.
Data type	String
Domain	human (Q5), organization (Q43229)
Allowed values	[a-zA-Z-_0-9]+
Example 1	Brown Eyed Girls (Q483253) → officialBEG (site: https://www.youtube.com/c/officialBEG)
Example 2	Greenpeace (Q81307) → Greenpeace (site: https://www.youtube.com/c/Greenpeace)
Example 3
Source	YouTube
Formatter URL	https://www.youtube.com/c/$1
See also	YouTube channel ID (P2397)

Motivation

The YouTube channel can either have a username, a channel ID, or a custom URL. Channel ID already has a property for it, and it's somewhat related to the username, since one can find the ID from the username. Custom URL, on the other hand, is a completely independent user-created name, so it requires a separate property for it. It is also used as a template parameter on Wikipedia, as can be seen here. —capmo (talk) 16:07, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

•  Comment we had this at Wikidata:Property proposal/YouTube Username ID (plus a series of proposals discussed there). --- Jura 16:46, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

  Hi Jura, I understand the problem behind having multiple values for a single entity, but that's what we have bots for. Regular Wikipedia users won't make the conversion from the friendlier username or custom URL to the cumbersome channel ID in the articles they edit. We should import whichever value is informed in Template:YouTube and then a bot can do the conversion. —capmo (talk) 22:18, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

  Actually, there is a bot that does that. No additional property needed. --- Jura 10:44, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

  That's good. I know that the username -> channel ID conversion is feasible, but does it also convert custom URL into channel ID? If so, then I concur that this property won't be necessary. —capmo (talk) 22:21, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

  • @Mbch331: what do you think? If not, it can still be added  Oppose --- Jura 23:11, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

  • @Jura1: if you enter the full custom url, it will be converted to the correct channel id. My bot doesn't use the API, but fetches the information from the source code of the website. Mbch331 (talk) 11:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

•  Comment The custom URL can be converted into YouTube channel ID (P2397) very easily. In the example, you got Brown Eyed Girls (Q483253) → officialBEG (site: https://www.youtube.com/c/officialBEG) but by simply searching the name on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Brown+Eyed+Girls) and clicking into the channel again or reloading the channel site, you can find the YouTube channel ID (P2397) (UCepFAcPmJZz46lJN5gdv1Cg). Sun8908 💬 02:38, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks for the test, Sun8908. I think a bot will be able to do this conversion pretty easily. I just don't see the problem in having this info stored locally at wikidata. See for example the case of duplicate VIAF records for a single person. If both VIAF IDs are stored on an item, eventually they get merged at viaf.org too and a bot removes the merged ID from the item here. The same could be done with YouTube channel identifiers: all three ones could be allowed on wikidata, and a bot would deal with the conversions to channel ID (the only one that's guaranteed to be unique). Then, the username/custom URL could be removed, or kept for historical reasons. —capmo (talk) 13:45, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

  @Sun8908: You can do that much easier by opening page code and search for <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/...; moreover this tag is standardized in web. And given that 1) Youtube itself considers only /channel/ ids as canonical and 2) it is trivial to convert slug to channel id, the situation differs from X numeric user ID (P6552). And due to low added value and all above-mentioned,  Weak oppose. --Lockal (talk) 08:11, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

  Oh! I just found that Help:P2397 also states that by viewing any video on the channel and clicking on the user name below it, the URL will become https://www.youtube.com/channel/.... Maybe an explanation of converting custom URL to channel ID can be added to the help page. I think another property would be redundant, thus,  Oppose. Sun8908 💬 07:20, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

•  Support Assuming that some people have or will have some use of that new property in Wikidata. It seems useful per se as there doesn't seem to be another way to express that information. GNUtoo (talk) 20:49, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
•  Weak oppose I dont really see the value of this, using the channel id we can already map between our Q items and the youtube channel. What additional value does this bring that we did not have before? Why not use a qualifier for the youtube channel such as pseudonym (P742), name (P2561), nickname (P1449) or alternative name (P4970) which all seem to cover exactly this case. --Hannes Röst (talk) 17:50, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

   Comment The custom URL is the only information found in a couple of Wikipedia articles I've seen. If this property is available here, I'll gladly add such information to the corresponding Wikidata item, but I won't take the time to make the tedious conversion to channel ID, which could well be done by a bot. That's the only motivation behind my request above. —capmo (talk) 16:00, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

   Comment It is hard to support creation of a property that duplicates existing information, just so it is easier to enter for a particular user. Josh Baumgartner (talk) 00:01, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

•  Comment I'm conflicted on this, but just noting that currently website username or ID (P554) is used as a qualifier for this value. AntisocialRyan (talk) 18:15, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
•  Oppose as YouTube channel ID (P2397) already contains the information to link the channel. The custom URL is merely a shorthand that ultimately leads to the channel ID as represented in YouTube channel ID (P2397). Qualifier alternative name (P4970) can be added to YouTube channel ID (P2397) to list the custom URL name if desired. Josh Baumgartner (talk) 00:01, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Strong oppose This data is not notable. The numeric ID already provides the canonical stable identifier (which, in theory, this isn't) so there's no structural need. If wiki articles are using the custom URL and that's deemed problematic then I think it makes much more sense to have a bot checking for that than for the onus to be on Wikidata to archive them all. --SilentSpike (talk) 13:30, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
•  Not done - no consensus for the proposal --DannyS712 (talk) 01:29, 2 January 2022 (UTC)