Hello all,

Wikidata consists of millions of single data items, which is great. In order to facilitate modeling the interactions between the single items, we hereby suggest using OWL based ontologies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Ontology_Language).

We think that using ontologies brings several advantages:

-Looking at an ontology (could collaboratively be generated e.g. on webprotege.stanford.edu) gives a very clear overview of how data is interconnected. This would allow for modeling of even very large and/or complex interactions.

-Layouting a data integration project in an ontology first, before really integrating data into WD facilitates property proposal, as a ontology with its properties could first be designed and then the ontology with all its properties and classes could be generated as a whole.

-Data could be queried/exported from WD based on an ontology by simply selecting the whole or parts of an ontology.

This approach has been suggested and discussed by Benjamin Good, Elvira Mitraka, Andra Wagmeester, Andrew Su and me. As an example, we put together draft properties for gene disease interactions, which allows for WD community discussion of this apporach. A preliminary version can be found here: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:ProteinBoxBot/GeneDiseaseIteraction_Discussion

Best regards,

Sebastian

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