This is a documentation subpage for Template:Authority control. It may contain usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

This template is used on approximately 2,110,000 pages, or roughly 3% of all pages. To avoid major disruption and server load, any changes should be tested in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. The tested changes can be added to this page in a single edit. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

This template does not display in the mobile view of Wikipedia; it is desktop only. Read the documentation for an explanation.

This template uses Lua: Module:Authority control ( sandbox) Module:Authority control/config ( sandbox) Module:Check for unknown parameters ( sandbox)

This template uses one or more Wikidata properties; see § Wikidata for details.

Description

This template links Wikipedia articles to various library (and other) catalogue systems, for biographies and other topics.

This template draws its values from Wikidata. A pencil icon gives convenient access to the "Identifiers" section of the corresponding Wikidata item.

Empty instances

If there is no information in Wikidata for the specific subject, an empty instance of this template will be dormant, meaning it will be invisible on the rendered page. Thus, using this template on a page with no authority information is harmless. An empty instance of this template stays dormant in an article, until values are added to Wikidata, when it will then display them.

Validation

The template attempts to validate digits for all values and shows an error if the check fails.

Position

As a metadata template, the Authority control template should be placed on a new line, after the external links section and navigation templates, immediately before the categories.

Usage

{{Authority control}}

As a general guideline:

1. Insert the empty version
2. Click " Show preview" to see which sources are automatically pulled from Wikidata
3. If you know of more sources, add those sources to the article's Wikidata item, so that other language versions of Wikipedia will automatically benefit.

Suppression of identifiers

Identifiers can be selectively suppressed via the |suppress= parameter. For example MusicBrainz artist ID (P434) can be suppressed by typing:

{{Authority control |suppress=P434}}

Specifying the Wikidata item

If a page is not connected to a Wikidata item (for example, a page in draft space, user space or project space), you can specify the appropriate item to draw data from, by using the |qid= parameter.

{{Authority control |qid=Q49605590}}

To find the correct item, you can search the database. If there is not yet an existing item, you can create a new item.

As soon as the page is connected to a Wikidata item, this parameter will be ignored so you can remove it from the template.

Additional Wikidata items

In some cases, you might need to specify additional items to draw data from. For example,

• Bonnie and Clyde also draws data from Bonnie Parker (Q2319886) and Clyde Barrow (Q3320282)
• North Rona also draws data from North Rona Lighthouse (Q28831543)

To specify additional items, you can use the |additional= parameter. For example: {{Authority control | additional = Q2319886, Q3320282}}

To automatically add additional links from related items, use |additional=auto. This is useful for married couples, musical groups, etc.

Whitelists

A number of whitelists are configured, which allow only a limited selection of identifiers to be displayed. These can be used with the |show= parameter. For example, including |show=arts will only show identifiers which have identified as particularly relevant to the arts.

Multiple whitelists may be used. For example: {{Authority control|show=arts,SV}} adds identifiers from the arts and Sweden whitelists.

|country= can be used as an alias for |show= (but they can't both be used simultaneously).

Examples

Victor Hugo

{{Authority control |qid=Q535}}

Alexander Graham Bell

{{Authority control |qid=Q34286}}

Harry Forbes Witherby

{{Authority control |qid=Q352545}}

Carl Larsson

{{Authority control (arts) |country=SV |qid=Q187310}}

Rendering

The template is split into a number of sections, including "International", "National", "Academics", "Artists" etc. The template usually displays as a navbox with a header:

If all identifiers are in the same section, |state= is ignored, and the template displays on one line.

If you use additional qids to draw data from additional wikidata items, then a new section will be added for each. In this case, the identifiers will not be separated further:

This template's initial visibility currently defaults to autocollapse, meaning that if there is another collapsible item on the page (a navbox, sidebar, or table with the collapsible attribute), it is hidden apart from its title bar; if not, it is fully visible.

To change this template's initial visibility, the |state= parameter may be used:

• {{Authority control|state=collapsed}} will show the template collapsed, i.e. hidden apart from its title bar.
• {{Authority control|state=expanded}} will show the template expanded, i.e. fully visible.

Microformat

The template wraps each UID value with the HTML markup: <span class="uid">...</span>, which enables the first-found value to be included in an hCard microformat.

List of identifiers

Warning: 2 articles have faulty authority control information, see All articles with faulty authority control information.

The template gets its information from the following properties on Wikidata:

Additional tracking categories

This template may add the following categories:

• Category:Pages with authority control identifiers needing attention (0) – category to track errors
  • Category:Pages using authority control with parameters (1) – identifiers should be migrated to Wikidata
  • Category:All articles with faulty authority control information (2) – faulty identifiers to fix

Error reports

See a monthly parameter usage report for this template in articles.

See also

• Wikipedia:Authority control – editor information
• Help:Authority control – reader help
• Template:Taxonbar – authority control style template for taxonomic databases
• Template:Sports links – authority control style template for sports articles
• User:UBX/Authority control – for self-identifying as an AC user
• Commons:Template:Authority control – template on Commons

TemplateData