Hi all,

We had a lot of conversations about the Wikidata ontology during Wikidata Data Quality Days and WikidataCon. One issue came up again and again: New users unintentionally modifying the Wikidata ontology leads to errors and inconsistency. We would like to get your input about a first step that we propose to improve this situation.

What we are proposing

We are proposing to introduce a dedicated section on Item pages for classifying Properties. This section, named "Classification", will live below the Termbox and above the “Statements” section. The new section will make it more obvious that some Properties are special and modify the ontology. For consistency we will also have this section on Property pages.

This first step will only involve the display of statements after saving. We might consider making deeper changes to the UI and recommendation system at a later time, based on your experience with this change.

Please add your input directly to this ticket so that we can collect all of your thoughts in one place.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask.

Cheers,