In MediaWiki we have a "permanent link" option (both in the sidebar, and by clicking on a revision in the 'history' page) to get a stable link to that page as it appeared at the time. In Wikidata Query service we have the ability to get a link (and short URL) to either the query itself or the results display. However, the results that are displayed when that query is run are 'live', not 'permanent'. This makes sense in most circumstances - you want to have the most recent results! But, for exactly the same reasons that the "permanent link" to a revision of a Wikipedia article, a user could equally wish to link to the stable results of a query.
I would like to request the feature: to be able to get a link to a Wikidata query result which is permanent/stable.
This would allow, among other things:
- third parties to feel comfortable embedding visualisations without fear of vandalism.
- formal academic referencing to specific results
- comparisons over time between how our content has improved [c.f. those timelapse videos of Wikipedia articles growing revision-by-revision].
I realise that this would require some kind of storage/saving feature to be built (where the query result is kept in a static form in perpetuity) - not merely the query URL being stable. This implies that not ALL queries would be saved as stable results automatically but only upon user-request.