I just wanted to throw in a few more thoughts after looking at the Commons and Meta pages about improving categories. Wikidata does have items that correspond to category pages. These store translations and we can use them to add any extra relations between categories that we need. http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7217075 I agree that Semantic MediaWiki seems most useful for smaller, specialized wikis with fewer anonymous users that don't have the need for synchronized updates across many pages that can't be handled by just templates. If I was going to play around with adding filters to categories I would want it to be something like a category filter template that can be added to category pages to show a dropdown box (with typing support) for a given property. I would automatically generate the initial set of filtered properties for a category by taking all of the properties that the items in the category don't have all the same value for and don't have all different values for (obviously we wouldn't want to filter a category of people by their main type because they are all people and we wouldn't want to filter by their parents because most all of them have different parents and they all have different LCCN and VIAF IDs). Then I would take the 5 most popular of those properties among the items to use as filters. Then we could add or remove them manually from there and we could start merging categories that are handled by the filters.

Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 14:45:05 -0400
From: emw.wiki@gmail.com
To: wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikidata-l] Question about wikipedia categories.

There's a related essay on Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Multichill/Next_generation_categories.

The Wikidata properties instance of (formerly "is a") and subclass of are likely relevant to folks interested in ontology building on Wikidata.  They're based on rdfs:type and rdfs:subClassOf from W3C recommendations, and allow for building a rooted DAG that places concepts into a hierarchy of knowledge.  They also allow for a degree of type-token distinction when classifying subjects, though how that applies to certain knowledge domains hasn't been fully sussed out.


On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Chris Maloney <voldrani@gmail.com> wrote:
Doug from WikiSource started a page over at meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Beyond_categories

I'll be trying to fill in some of my understanding of the problem and
the scope of a possible solution.  I recognize there's been a lot of
prior art on this issue, and a lot of existing overlapping tools and
infrastructure, and I'm pretty new around here, and apt to be
inaccurate and naive.  So I do hope others with more experience will
come and help sort it out.

Chris

On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 11:06 AM, Michael Hale <hale.michael.jr@live.com> wrote:
> As far as checking the import progress of Wikidata, the category American
> women writers has 1479 articles. 651 of them currently have a main type
> (GND), 328 have a sex, 162 have an occupation, 111 have a country of
> citizenship, 49 have a sexual orientation, 39 have a place of birth, etc.
>
>> From: jc@sahnwaldt.de
>> Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 16:28:14 +0200
>
>> To: wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Subject: Re: [Wikidata-l] Question about wikipedia categories.
>>
>> Hi Pat,
>>
>> I've been involved with DBpedia for several years, so these are
>> interesting thoughts.
>>
>> On 5 May 2013 01:25, Patrick Cassidy <pat@micra.com> wrote:
>> > If one is interested in a functional “category” system, it would be very
>> > helpful to have a good logic-based ontology as the backbone.
>> >
>> > I haven’t looked recently, but when I inquired about the ontology used
>> > by
>> > DBpedia a year ago, I was referred to “dbpedia-ontology.owl”, an
>> > ontology in
>> > the format of the “semantic web” ontology format OWL. The OWL format is
>> > excellent for simple purposes, but the dbpedia-ontology.owl (at that
>> > time)
>> > was not well-structured (being very polite).
>>
>> Do you mean just the file dbpedia-ontology.owl or the DBpedia ontology
>> in general? We still use OWL as our main format for publishing the
>> ontology. The file is generated automatically. Maybe the generation
>> process could be improved.
>>
>> > I did inquire as to who was
>> > maintaining the ontology, and had a hard time figuring out how to help
>> > bring
>> > it up to professional standards. But it was like punching jello, nothing
>> > to
>> > grasp onto. I gave up, having other useful things to do with my time.
>>
>> The ontology is maintained by a community that everyone can join at
>> http://mappings.dbpedia.org/ . An overview of the current class
>> hierarchy is here:
>> http://mappings.dbpedia.org/server/ontology/classes/ . You're more
>> than welcome to help! I think talk pages are not used enough on the
>> mappings wiki, so if you have ideas, misgivings or questions about the
>> DBpedia ontology, the place to go is probably the mailing list:
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dbpedia-discussion
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Christopher
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Perhaps it is time now, with more experience in hand, to rethink the
>> > category system starting with basics. This is not as hard as it sounds.
>> > It may require some changes where there is ambiguity or logical
>> > inconsistency, but mostly it only necessary to link the Wikipedia
>> > categories
>> > to an ontology based on a well-structured and logically sound foundation
>> > ontology (also referred to as an “upper ontology”), that supplies the
>> > basic
>> > categories and relations. Such an ontology can provide the basic
>> > concepts,
>> > whose labels can be translated into any terminology that any local user
>> > wants to use. There are several well-structured foundation ontologies,
>> > based on over twenty years of research, but the one I suggest is the one
>> > I
>> > am most familiar with (which I created over the past seven years),
>> > called
>> > COSMO. The files at http://micra.com/COSMO will provide the ontology
>> > itself
>> > (“COSMO.owl”, in OWL) and papers describing the basic principles. COSMO
>> > is structured to be a “primitives-based foundation ontology”, containing
>> > all
>> > of the “semantic primitives” needed to describe anything one wants to
>> > talk
>> > about. All other categories are structured as logical combinations of
>> > the
>> > basic elements. Its inventory of primitives is probably incomplete, but
>> > is
>> > able to describe everything I have been concerned with for years (7000
>> > categories and 800 relations thus far) can always be supplemented as
>> > required for new fields. With an OWL ontology, queries can be executed
>> > by
>> > any of several logic-based utilities. Making the query system easy for
>> > those who prefer not to build SPARQL queries (including myself) would
>> > require some programming, but that is a miniscule effort compared to
>> > what
>> > has already been put into the DBPedia database. Tools such as “Protégé”
>> > make it easy to work with an OWL ontology, and there is a web site where
>> > an
>> > OWL ontology can be developed collaboratively.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > I will be willing to put some effort into this and assist anyone who
>> > wants
>> > to used the COSMO ontology for this project. If those who are in charge
>> > of
>> > maintaining the ontology (is anyone?) would like to discuss this at
>> > greater
>> > length, send me an email or telephone me. All those who are interested
>> > in
>> > this topic may also feel free to contact me, or to discuss this thread
>> > on
>> > the list. I suggest the thread title “Foundation Ontology”.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Pat
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Patrick Cassidy
>> >
>> > MICRA Inc.
>> >
>> > cassidy@micra.com
>> >
>> > 908-561-3416
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > From: wikidata-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > [mailto:wikidata-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Michael
>> > Hale
>> > Sent: Saturday, May 04, 2013 2:57 AM
>> > To: Discussion list for the Wikidata project.
>> >
>> >
>> > Subject: Re: [Wikidata-l] Question about wikipedia categories.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > I think it's important to consider the distinction between a category
>> > system
>> > and semantic queries. I think it's very likely that DBpedia and Wikidata
>> > will converge over time and develop a simple enough query interface that
>> > causes fewer people to use the category system because we will be able
>> > to
>> > automatically generate relevant queries related to a given article.
>> > DBpedia
>> > currently has a lot more data, but Wikidata is important for many
>> > editing
>> > scenarios. Also, in the future I think there will be a lot of content
>> > scenarios where it is natural to start by putting data into Wikidata and
>> > then including it in articles instead of just extracting information
>> > from
>> > articles. If you are familiar with query languages you can get
>> > comfortable
>> > with the DBpedia SPARQL examples in a few minutes, but for a typical
>> > reader
>> > that just wants to go from an article about a person to a list of
>> > similar
>> > people it is hard to beat scrolling down and just clicking on a
>> > category. I
>> > did a test query on DBpedia to plot all sports cars by their engine
>> > sizes,
>> > and I think for the types of things it enables you to do it is totally
>> > worth
>> > the learning curve. That being said, I think the category system has a
>> > lot
>> > of potential for better browsing scenarios as opposed to queries. I've
>> > been
>> > making a tool that mixes the article view data with the category system.
>> > You
>> > can see a video of the basic idea here and a screenshot of football
>> > league
>> > popularity split by language.
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wakebrdkid/Popular_category_browsing
>> > I'm
>> > currently multiplying the Chinese traffic by 30 to try and account for
>> > Baidu
>> > Baike.
>> >
>> >> Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 08:14:54 +0200
>> >> From: jane023@gmail.com
>> >> To: wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> >> Subject: Re: [Wikidata-l] Question about wikipedia categories.
>> >>
>> >> Wondering exactly the same thing - my frustrations with categories
>> >> began about three years ago and it seems I am surprised monthly by
>> >> severe limitations to this outdated apparatus. I am a heavy category
>> >> user, but I would love to be able to kick it out the door in favour of
>> >> a more structured method. As far as I can tell, there is very little
>> >> synchronisation among language Wikipedias of category trees, and being
>> >> able to apply a central structure to all Wikipedias through Wikidata
>> >> sounds like a great idea, and one which would not disturb the current
>> >> category trees we already have, but supplement them. As I see it, some
>> >> category structures are OK, but when categories get big, people split
>> >> them in non-standard ways, causing problems like this recent
>> >> media-hype regarding female novellists. I think that it's great this
>> >> is in the news in this way, because I am sure that most Wikipedia
>> >> readers never knew we had categories, and this is a great introduction
>> >> to them, as well as an invitation to edit Wikipedia.
>> >>
>> >> 2013/5/4, Chris Maloney <voldrani@gmail.com>:
>> >> > I am just curious if there has ever been discussion about the
>> >> > potential for reimplementing / replacing the category system in
>> >> > Wikipedia with semantic tagging in WikiData. It seem to me that the
>> >> > recent kerfuffle with regards to "American women writers" would not
>> >> > have happened if the pages were tagged with simple RDF assertions
>> >> > instead of these convoluted categories. I know, of course, that it
>> >> > would be a huge undertaking, but I just don't see how the category
>> >> > system can continue to scale (I'm amazed it has scaled as well as it
>> >> > has already, of course).
>> >> >
>> >> > I am trying to learn more about wikidata, and have perused the
>> >> > various
>> >> > infos and FAQs for the last two hours, and can't find any discussion
>> >> > of this particular issue.
>> >> >
>> >> > -- Chris
>> >> >
>> >> > _______________________________________________
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>> >> > Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>> >> >
>> >>
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