Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wikidata Ontology Course (ID: 22977619)
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Applicant Details
[edit]- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
Peter F. Patel-Schneider
- Organization
N/A
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
N/A
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
Main Proposal
[edit]- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
Wikidata Ontology Course
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2025-04-11 - 2025-06-27
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
International (more than one country across continents or regions) Peter and Ege will be in Turkey, Canada, and the United States of America when preparing and giving the course. Guest lecturers will be chosen without regard to geography. The course itself will be online, with no geographic requirements on participants.
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Not applicable
- 6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)
Wikidata is an extremely large knowledge base, and contains many inconsistencies and errors. While some of these are impractical to track, there are a lot of issues that are formulaic and possible to tackle. Efforts to track these issues are very limited, and the efforts to fix them are even more limited. The wiki way to approach these problems requires the solution process to be collective, interesting, and fun. The Ontology Wikiproject has long been doing work to progress this, in order to make Wikidata a more robust database. However, the visibility of ontology-related work on Wikidata is very low as is the understanding of Wikidata ontology. We aim to increase the visibility and reach of Project Ontology by educating Wikidatans about the Wikidata ontology and encouraging them to be active members of the project and help in improving the Wikidata ontology.
The main technical problems on Wikidata that we are tackling are:
- Lack of easy-to-understand guidelines for building and modifying the Wikidata ontology. For example, the two main properties of the Wikidata ontology are P31 (instance of) and P279 (subclass of). These two properties are often misused, to the point that useful extracts of Wikidata often just treat them the same.
- Lack of easy-to-understand methods for retrieving non-trivial information from the ontology. For example, it is difficult to retrieve class order information, which if available could help in reducing the many type-token mixups that are prevalent in Wikidata.
- Lack of understanding of the constructs in the Wikidata ontology and how they interact to provide the basis for all information in Wikidata. For example, currently disjointnesses is an underused construct in the ontology, and where it is used it has lots of problems. More and better use of disjointness would help structure the ontology to provide a better basis for other information in Wikidata.
Our current effort to alleviate these problems is to design and present a course on the Wikidata ontology. The course will present information on the Wikidata ontology and techniques for extending and repairing the ontology in a way that is easy to understand. The course will produce Wikidatans who are knowledgeable about the Wikidata ontology and likely to join and be active in Wikiproject Ontology. Running a course also provides us with direct feedback on what methods are best for disseminating information related to the Wikidata ontology that can then be used to improve other methods for disseminating this information, including static wiki pages.
- 7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.
We plan to have 6-8 weeks of online sessions with 10-15 participants.
Sessions will include presentations, discussions, tutorials, etc. We will have other contact hours every week. Applicants are expected to spend about 2 hours of their own time every week for better understanding the topics being presented and to develop a group project, plus a larger amount of time late in the course for completion of their projects.
Expected Timeline:
Immediately after grant decision is announced and continuing for 1-2 weeks:
- Collecting applications.
- Creating course content, which will continue throughout the course.
Tentative course schedule: Week 1
- Recap of Wikidata
- items, properties, statements, values, qualifiers, ... - types of qualifiers - provenance, simple, restrictive - vague qualifications - of (deprecated)
Week 1 and 2
- Basics of ontologies and how ontologies are implemented in Wikidata,
-what is an ontology in philosophy? Aristo's taxonomies etc. as the first examples - what is an ontology in knowledge representation - examples from FOL and DL - expressive power - what is the Wikidata ontology - classes, instance (P31), subclass (P279), subproperty (P1647) - what is a foundational ontology and how the Wikidata ontology relates to foundational ontologies - ontologies as part of the representation vs ontologies as regular information - difference between instance (P31) and subclass (P279) - making decisions when creating an ontology - how do qualifiers/deprecations interact with the Wikidata ontology - instance - temporal occasionally - subclass - temporal ever? - domains - external domains, internal domains
- Examples of domains implemented in the Wikidata ontology.
Week 3
- Querying the Wikidata ontology with SPARQL, using the WDQS and the QLever Wikidata service.
- simple queries, instance and subclass - why simple queries do not work - problem with size - WDQS times out - problem with subproperties - hard to write/hard to query - difference between class hierarchy and property hierarchy
- Editing the Wikidata ontology and adding new information
- Direct editing - Editing tools, including OpenRefine
- How Wikidata constraints interact with the Wikidata ontology.
- Wikidata constraints - property based - limitations on constraints - what would make constraints better
- First project discussions
Week 4
- Extending the Wikidata ontology into a new domain.
- Advanced ontology constructs in Wikidata, including disjointness and class order.
- metasubclass, etc. - Wikidata property - what is disjointness - how is disjointness represented in Wikidata - how is disjointness supported in Wikidata - what is class order - how is class order represented in Wikidata - how is class order supported in Wikidata - what other types of advanced constructs could exist, such as requirements on the shape of the ontology
- Project discussions
Week 5
- Problems in the Wikidata Ontology, including violations of constraints, disjointness, and class order
- Project discussions
- Topics related to participant interests or projects
- Guest presentation, possibly industrial use of the Wikidata ontology
Week 6 (perhaps with a week gap to allow more time for project work)
- Presentation of group projects
- Evaluations of projects
During the first half of the course we will have time devoted to answering individual questions.
During the last half of the course we will have time devoted to group sessions related to projects, meeting with the groups according to their needs and at mutually available times. Projects may continue after the end of the course.
- 8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc. Team members involved in the grant application need to be aware of their involvement in the project.
Peter F. Patel-Schneider is a long-time researcher in knowledge representation with special interests in knowledge graphs, ontologies, and Wikidata. Has been editing Wikidata for nearly 10 years. Earlier publications and presentations on Wikidata include https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.03900 and https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Barriers_to_Using_Wikidata_as_a_Knowledge_Base.pdf
Ege Dogan is a Graduate in Computer Science and has been a Wikimedian for around 3 years. He was a cohort of the Organiser Labs course from 2023. He has conducted many Wikimedia workshops in university functions and elsewhere.
We have co-authored two papers about problems in the Wikidata ontology: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.15550 https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.13707
We started a group to address problems in the Wikidata ontology that meets regularly to discuss possible fixes to the Wikidata ontology
Mutual responsibilities:
- Creation of course content
- Selecting guest lecturers
- Presentation of course content
- Advising project groups
Peter F. Patel-Schneider will be responsible for:
- Publicity for the course in the Semantic Web community.
- Responding to difficult queries
Ege Dogan will be responsible for:
- Responding to queries about course structure, timeline, process etc.
- Responding to easy queries, directing the harder queries to Peter.
- Maintaining and administrating the Telegram group of the participants.
- Helping groups with external activities required for the execution of their own projects.
- 9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)
The target demographic is people who already understand how Wikidata works, as we will not be covering introductory Wikidata subjects. (If an applicant doesn’t have Wikidata experience but considerably similar experiences, that’s also okay.) Some things that would increase participants’ likelihood of being appropriate for the course are:
- Proficiency in SQL or SPARQL
- Proficiency in Python
- Theoretical knowledge in ontology, databases, representation theory, etc.
- Experience running projects
- Documentation skills
The workshops will be conducted in English. (Although provided that enough participants who feel more comfortable speaking another language are in the cohort, and want to work together, and have the necessary skillset to be a good team together, we can arrange the teams according to this so that their collaboration can take place in their own language. Outputs have to be in English.)
We will reach participants through channels that people already active in Wikidata use, such as the Wikidata Telegram group, the Project Chat pages of Wikidata etc. We will also personally invite some people we know to be good Wikidatans to apply.
Our engagement with the participants during the activities is described in the timeline.
After the course ends, we hope that most participants will want to be a part of the Wikiproject Ontology and join our Wikiproject Ontology Telegram group. We will keep the cohort Telegram group semi-active, letting them know of significant developments.
This approach is also aimed at making the Wikiproject Ontology group into a proper affiliate in the form of a User Group in the future, and people who have been actively involved in efforts, including the cohort for this workshop series, will be active parts of it. For these reasons, we believe that the retention will be significant.
- 10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)
No
- 10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.
N/A
- 11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
We have talked about this program for 2 weeks in the regular Wikidata ontology meetings. We have made a Wikidata page https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Ontology/Ontology_Course that detailed our plans and shared that page with the Wikidata Telegram group, Wikiproject Ontology Telegram group, and on-wiki for Wikidata.
The text we sent was:
@Egezort and I want to run a course on the Wikidata Ontology, designed for participants already familiar with Wikidata. The course will accept a limited number of participants and will present information about ontologies and how they form the core Wikidata. The course will have several exercises on analyses of and fixes to the Wikidata ontology. The course will end with a project done in groups, with consultation by us. Upon successful completion, participants will receive certificates. At this stage, we are looking for feedback and suggestions to improve the structure and content of the course (found in more detail at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Ontology/Ontology_Course) which will be incorporated into our application for a Wikimedia rapid grant to support the effort. Please share your thoughts! If you are interested in helping please let us know.
Thank you!
We received some support by community members in several places and an excellent response from the Wikidata team at WMDE.
- 12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Not applicable
- 13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)
Education
- 14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Not applicable
- 15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)
Innovate in Free Knowledge
Learning and metrics
[edit]- 17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)
How best to present information about the Wikidata ontology. How complicated can ontology content become before we start confusing people too much. How easy it is to get people interested in ontology and Wikidata maintenance work. How motivating are incentives in developing activities for User Groups. Are people that are our target demographic only interested in technical work, or are they interested in community building as well. What’s the ratio of people who would continue doing this community building work. The participant projects will explore areas of the Wikidata ontology and we expect to learn both by facilitating the projects and seeing the final results.
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 15 | We will try for 10 to 15 participants, in 3 to 5 groups. |
| Number of editors | 15 | All participants are expected to edit Wikidata. |
| Number of organizers | 2 |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | |
| Wikimedia Commons | 6 |
| Wikidata | 1000 |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | |
| Wikiquote | |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
The commons material will be course notes, one per week. The number of Wikidata items created depends on what projects are performed and can thus vary widely.
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
Yes
| Main Open Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| New Project Ontology Members | How many people join the Wikidata Project Ontology or Wikidata ontology Telegraph group. | 7 |
| Wikidata Items Affected Indirectly | How many Wikidata items are affected indirectly by the changes made in projects. This can be much higher than the number of change because the changes are in the Wikidata ontology and will likely affect all of the instances of the class. This number can vary very wikely based on the activities in the project, but we expect a large number of indirectly affected items. | 100000 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
- 20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)
Manual counting for metrics with small numbers. We will have the projects self-report and document their activities on Wikidata.
Financial proposal
[edit]- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lDKTvRn418VpVVPXZCs5sarCk8IMLnGR4pdoEDI5dtk/edit?usp=sharing
- 22. and 22.1. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in your local currency. (required)
5000 USD
- 22.2. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done only to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD.
5000 USD
- We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
Yes
Endorsements and Feedback
[edit]Please add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.
Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:
- Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
- Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
- Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
- Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
- Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).