Denny didn't even use the word "deprecated".
Reification for statement-level provenance works, but you won't be able to sell it as an elegant solution to the problem.
So "could" - yes , "should" - ?? - probably not

If Wikidata is using statement-level provenance, there might be better ways to serialize it in RDF than reification in the future
e.g. NQuads: http://sw.deri.org/2008/07/n-quads/
or JSON ;)

For internal use I would discourage reification.
If using a relational scheme, a statement id, which can be joined with another SQL table for provenance is the best way to do it imho.

Before you are driving us all mad with explaining why reifiction is bad, I would really like you to justify why WikiData should consider reification.
I really do not know many use case (if any) where reification is the right choice of modelling. Before going into the discussion any further [1], I think you should name an example where reification is really better than other options.

All the best,
Sebastian

[1]http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-699/Paper5.pdf

On 06/22/2012 06:20 PM, Martynas Jusevičius wrote:

Denny, the statement-level of granularity you're describing is achieved by RDF reification. You describe it however as a "deprecated mechanism" of provenance, without backing it up. Why do you think there must be a better mechanism? Maybe you should take another look at reification, or lower your provenance requirements, at least initially? Martynas graphity.org On Jun 22, 2012 5:20 PM, "Denny Vrandečić" <denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de> wrote:

Here's the use case: Every statement in Wikidata will have a URI. Every statement can have one more references. In many cases, the reference might be text on a website. Whereas it is always possible (and probably what we will do first) as well as correct to state: Statement1 accordingTo SlashDot . it would be preferable to be a bit more specific on that, and most preferably it would be to go all the way down to the sentence saying Statement1 accordingTo X . with X being a URI denoting the sentence that I mean in a specific Slashdot-Article. I would prefer a standard or widely adopted way to how to do that, and NIF-URIs seem to be a viable solution for that. We will come back to this once we start modeling references in more detail. The reference could be pointing to a book, to a video, to a mesopotamic stone table, etc. (OK, I admit that the different media types will be differently prioritized). I hope this helps, Cheers, Denny 2012/6/21 Sebastian Hellmann <hellmann@informatik.uni-leipzig.de>:

Hello Denny, I was traveling for the past few weeks and can finally answer your email. See my comments inline. On 05/29/2012 05:25 PM, Denny VrandeÄ iÄ‡ wrote: Hello Sebastian, Just a few questions - as you note, it is easier if we all use the same standards, and so I want to ask about the relation to other related standards: * I understand that you dismiss IETF RFC 5147 because it is not stable enough, right? The offset scheme of NIF is built on this RFC. So the following would hold: @prefix ld: <http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html#> . @prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> . ld:offset_717_729 owl:sameAs ld:char=717,12 . We might change the syntax and reuse the RFC syntax, but it has several issues: 1. The optional part is not easy to handle, because you would need to

owl:sameAs statements: ld:char=717,12;length=12,UTF-8 owl:sameAs ld:char=717,12;length=12 . ld:char=717,12;length=12,UTF-8 owl:sameAs ld:char=717,12 . ld:char=717,12;UTF-8 owl:sameAs ld:char=717,12;length=9876 . So theoretically ok, but annoying to implement and check. 2. When implementing web services, NIF allows the client to choose the prefix:

returning URIs like <http://this.is/a/slash/prefix/offset_10_15> So RFC 5147 would look like: <http://this.is/a/slash/prefix/char=717,12> <http://this.is/a/slash/prefix/char=717,12;UTF-8> or <http://this.is/a/slash/prefix?char=717,12> <http://this.is/a/slash/prefix?char=717,12;UTF-8> 3. Character like = , prevent the use of prefixes: echo "@prefix ld: <http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html#> . @prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> . ld:offset_717_729 owl:sameAs ld:char=717,12 . " > test.ttl ; rapper -i turtle test.ttl 4. implementation is a little bit more difficult, given that : $arr = split("_", "offset_717_729") ; switch ($arr[0]){ case 'offset' : $begin = $arr[1]; $end = $arr[2]; break; case 'hash' : $clength = $arr[1]; $slength = $arr[2]; $hash = $arr[3]; $rest = /*merge remaining with '_' */ break; } 5. RFC assumes a certain mime type, i.e. plain text. NIF does have a

assumption. * what is the relation to the W3C media fragment URIs? Did not find a pointer there. They are designed for media such as images, video, not strings. Potentially, the same principle can be applied, but it is not yet engineered/researched. * any plans of standardizing your approach? We will do NIF 2.0 as a community standard and finish it in a couple of months. It will be published under open licences, so anybody W3C or ISO might pick it up, easily. Other than that there are plans by several EU projects (see e.g. here

the FOAF project or for RDB2RDF Mappers. Chances for fast standardization are not so unlikely, I would assume. We would strongly prefer to just use a standard instead of advocating contenders for one -- if one exists. You might want to look at: http://www.w3.org/community/openannotation/wiki/TextCommentOnWebPage and the same highlighting here:

http://pcai042.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~swp12-9/vorprojekt/index.php?annotation_request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FDesignIssues%2FLinkedData.html%23hash_10_12_60f02d3b96c55e137e13494cf9a02d06_Semantic%2520Web

NIF is simpler and the URIs have some features that might be wanted (stability, uniqueness, easy to implement). This is why I was asking for your *use case* . Note that: there are still some problems, when annotating DOM with URIs, e.g. xPointer is abandoned and was never finished. Xpath has its limits

is also expensive (i.e. SAX not possible). I think there is no proper solution as of now. All the best, Sebastian Cheers, Denny 2012/5/18 Sebastian Hellmann <hellmann@informatik.uni-leipzig.de> Hello again, maybe the question, I asked was lost, as the text was TL;DR I heard that, it is planned to track provenance of facts. e.g. Berlin has 3,337,000 citizens found here: http://www.worldatlas.com/**citypops.htm<

paragraph level? See e.g. how Berlin is highlighted here: http://pcai042.informatik.uni-**leipzig.de/~swp12-9/** vorprojekt/index.php?**annotation_request=http%3A%2F%** 2Fwww.worldatlas.com%**2Fcitypops.htm%23hash_4_30_**

7449e732716c8e68842289bf2e6667**d5_Berlin%2C%2520Germany%2520-**%25203%2C< http://pcai042.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~swp12-9/vorprojekt/index.php?annotation_request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.worldatlas.com%2Fcitypops.htm%23hash_4_30_7449e732716c8e68842289bf2e6667d5_Berlin%2C%2520Germany%2520-%25203%2C

in this very early prototype. Could you give me a link were I can read more about any Wikidata plans towards this direction? Sebastian On 05/16/2012 09:10 AM, Sebastian Hellmann wrote: Dear all, (Note: I could not find the document, where your requirements regarding the tracking of facts on the web are written, so I am giving a general introduction to NIF. Please send me a link to the document that specifies your need for tracing facts on the web, thanks) I would like to point your attention to the URIs used in the NLP Interchange Format (NIF). NIF-URIs are quite easy to use, understand and implement. NIF has a one-triple-per-annotation paradigm. The latest documentation can be

as highlighted here: http://pcai042.informatik.uni-**leipzig.de/~swp12-9/** vorprojekt/index.php?**annotation_request=http%3A%2F%** 2Fwww.w3.org%2FDesignIssues%**2FLinkedData.html%23hash_10_**12_** 60f02d3b96c55e137e13494cf9a02d**06_Semantic%2520Web<

. We are currently preparing a new draft for the spec 2.0. The old one can be found here: http://nlp2rdf.org/nif-1-0/ There are several EU projects that intend to use NIF. Furthermore, it is easier for everybody, if we standardize a Web annotation format together. Please give feedback of your use cases. All the best, Sebastian -- Dipl. Inf. Sebastian Hellmann Department of Computer Science, University of Leipzig Projects: http://nlp2rdf.org , http://dbpedia.org Homepage: http://bis.informatik.uni-**leipzig.de/SebastianHellmann<

_______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l -- Dipl. Inf. Sebastian Hellmann Department of Computer Science, University of Leipzig Projects: http://nlp2rdf.org , http://dbpedia.org Homepage: http://bis.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/SebastianHellmann Research Group: http://aksw.org

-- Project director Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985. _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l

-- Dipl. Inf. Sebastian Hellmann Department of Computer Science, University of Leipzig Projects: http://nlp2rdf.org , http://dbpedia.org Homepage: http://bis.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/SebastianHellmann Research Group: http://aksw.org