Grants:Project/Rapid/Csisc/SPARQL: Be connected to Wikidata/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2018-19 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Csisc/SPARQL: Be connected to Wikidata.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Thanks to the significant number of attendees to this Wikidata meeting, We succeeded to disseminate Wikidata as an ontological resource for computer science research. The SPARQL tutorial provided an excellent environment to explore Wikidata in depth, discuss its data model and hierarchical structures and find critical limitations of the database. The Research meeting during the afternoon contributed to the establishment of a research collaboration with Université Aix-Marseille concerning Wikidata and to find interesting ideas to develop Wikidata. For example, we are thinking of applying Answer Set Programming, Description Logics and OWL2 EL on properties to ameliorate linked data quality of Wikidata.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Introduce Wikidata and Wikidata query service to computer scientists and developers in Sfax, Tunisia	31 participants to the event. We developed a translated edition of the presentation "Introduction to Wikidata" of Andrew Lih so that it can be used to introduce Wikidata to French-speaking countries. The presentation slides are available here.	We have made an advertisement for the event in the social media and in the institutions of the University of Sfax to encourage people to get involved.
Give interested people the required basic and advanced SPARQL skills to make Wikidata queries	An advanced SPARQL tutorial has been developed for this event so that French-speaking users of Wikidata can develop their proficiency in SPARQL. This tutorial does not just teach users how to use Wikidata query service. But, it also provides details on how to use SPARQL to query Wikidata and other databases such as DBPedia in the same time (Federated queries). The tutorial slides are available here.	We invited Prof. Odile Papini from Université Aix-Marseille who is a specialist of semantic web to introduce ontologies, description logics, answer set programming, RDF, OWL, RDFs and SPARQL to participants during the event.
Assessing the linked data quality of Wikidata	A Wikidata query service-based interface has been developed to track matters within the data provided by Wikidata. This interface is available in https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Database_evaluation.	A two-hour session was organized on the evening of June 27, 2019 for interested participants to create queries to find possible matters within the data structure of Wikidata.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?
- The event allowed us to organize semantic web research meetings after lunches. These meetings have contributed to the establishment of a research collaboration between the University of Sfax and Université Aix-Marseille concerning semantic web research including Wikidata-related research.
- This event has allowed to disseminate Wikidata across computer scientists from Tunisia. Before the event, Wikidata is mostly not known by interested scientists and DBPedia is used instead. Other similar events can occur in other regions of Tunisia in the next years.
- All participants were satisfied with the Wikidata SPARQL tutorial and most of them have achieved interesting SPARQL proficiency after the event.
What did not work so well?
- The price of the meeting room had changed after we made the grant application due to changes in the policy of the University on January 1, 2019.
- The invited second speaker did not come to the event due to personal reasons.
What would you do differently next time?
- We will apply next time in March to avoid policy and fees changes.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

Renting a room: 1245.600 TND = 430.63 USD
Accomodation for one speaker: 385.600 TND = 133.31 USD
Cartridges, Banners, A4 Papers: 599.765 TND = 207.35 USD
Lunches and Coffee Breaks: 3240.000 TND = 1120.14 USD
Overall: 5470.965 TND = 1891.43 USD
Remaining funds: 5546 TND - 5470.965 TND = 75.035 TND = 25.94 USD

Remaining funds have been used or will be used for other approved mission-aligned activities. This use has been requested in writing and approved by WMF.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?