Hi Thad,

Thanks for asking the questions, and thanks Tobi for the pointers. Man, what a lengthy post it was.

I understand that the post answered most of your questions. I think that it is entirely possible to layer a prototype semantics over Wikidata, just as the DL semantics have been layered over it. I don't remember if such work has been done before.

Regarding ISO 5964, I think I probably have looked through it at some point, but I don't remember it anymore. SKOS has certainly been a stronger influence, and obviously OWL.

I hope that helps with the historical deep dive :) Lydia and I really should write that book!

Cheers,
Denny



On Sat, Jul 10, 2021 at 3:00 PM Thad Guidry <thadguidry@gmail.com> wrote:
Tobi - That blog post 3 is very helpful.  It shows that Denny and I think alike and agree on everything. :-)  His dislike for strong classification.
Which is part of my basis, to allow weak relations much more.  And use them.  But how to allow them, and I think the only way is through properties based on the Data Model currently.
There are many ways, and SKOS is one way to allow expressing weak relations and we already have some good support with existing properties like P4390 mapping relation type and a host of others.

Denny and I also fear the same things, like not having a flexible enough system to describe our complex world that doesn't always fit into strict rules.  Which is kinda why I've always liked
https://www.w3.org/TR/skos-primer/#secassociative
because of it's non-transitivity which allows much flexibility and as he and I would say... avoid "Barbara". :-)
Which is pretty much summarized in https://www.w3.org/TR/skos-primer/#secadvanced

Sorry for all the SKOS links but semantic relations helps to describe human knowledge.  How a system represents or portrays semantic relations is where choices are made or have been made.  And I think the right choices were definitely made.
Overlaying SKOS and the Wikidata properties that sprinkle it into the data model is useful, but I've always been kind of reluctant to do that...probably for the same reasons Denny might give?  Choices between allowing "semantic accuracy" versus "semantic flexibility".  But I think systems like SKOS provide both.  Perhaps it could be argued that OWL provides much less. :-)  Still all KOSs provide great use when they fit well.  How they can fit over Wikidata, as I said, is probably only through properties at this late stage of design and that's fine with me!

Still, my main focus is and always will be trying to add human knowledge about concept relations into Wikidata to help machines, to help us.  (the "edges" that humans quickly can deduce in seconds, but still to this day can sometimes take machines days or weeks to figure out).

My usage and help to Abstract Wikipedia and Wikidata later on will primarily be around the mapping of relations ... where a lot of the possibilities have already been described years and years ago at the very bottom of this long page:
inter-KOS mapping relationships  <-- very last row, 3rd column
https://www.w3.org/TR/skos-primer/#seccorrespondencesISO


Denny -  were you part of or lightly influenced by ISO 5964 through Germany ISO DIN or not .. that also would be good to know.



On Sat, Jul 10, 2021 at 3:17 PM Tobi Gritschacher <tobias.gritschacher@wikimedia.de> wrote:
Hi, 

It would be nice to have a place to look with a link to a page in the Community portal that says "History of Wikidata's design and early collected meetings, notes, design documents, recordings"

Might not answer your concrete question, but here are some (very) early blog posts by Denny. They are still a nice read. :) 

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