Dear all,
I thank you for your efforts. I have seen with a lot of interest the report of Dr. David
Abián about property constraints for Wikidata as shown at
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:2020_report_on_Property_constraints. The report
provides a significant overview of the usefulness and current status of Wikidata property
constraints to ameliorate the consistency of the Wikidata ontology. However, I think that
property constraints suffer from critical limitations that currently harm the quality of
linked data of Wikidata. That is why I propose a roadmap for adding support of ontological
reasoning to Wikidata. This proposal is inspired from the works about the use of ShEx for
ontology validation of Wikidata and from a work we sent for review to World Wide Web
Journal:
1. Link Shape Expressions to corresponding Wikidata classes and use them to validate
the use of properties in Wikidata. This is possible through the acceptance of
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Property_proposal/Shape_Expression_f….
2. Infer Shape Expressions for all major Wikidata classes. This is possible using
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tool:Wikidata_Shape_Expressions_Inferen….
3. Verify Shape Expressions for all Wikidata classes by hand
4. Propose two new Wikidata properties: Valid Subject Class and Valid Object Class.
These two properties will be used to define the accurate classes for the subject and
object of a Wikidata property. For example, The subject of a “Drug used for treatment”
relation should be a disease or a symptom and its object should be a drug or a chemical
substance.
5. Define practical guidelines of adding Inverse property (P1696) statements. This
property links between a property and its inverse. For example, “Drug used for treatment”
and “Medical condition treated” are two inverse properties. Where the relation is
symmetric, the inverse of a given property is the same property. For example,
“Significant drug interaction” is the inverse property of “Significant drug interaction”
6. Add Valid Subject Classes and Valid Object Classes for all Wikidata properties when
applicable. Wikidata Query Service can be used to automate the process. This is shown in
the paper that was sent for review to World Wide Web Journal.
7. Add Inverse properties to each Wikidata properties. “Valid Subject Class” and “Valid
Object Class” are used as constraints for Inverse property statements. In fact, a property
can have more than one inverse property and each inverse property is used according to
context. Wikidata Query Service can be used to automate the process. This is shown in the
paper that was sent for review to World Wide Web Journal.
8. Develop a tool that combines statements between WIkidata properties and Shape
Expressions of Wikidata properties to validate the use of Wikidata property and identify
deficient statements.
I ask about what you think about this detailed roadmap. I am currently convinced that this
method will help us solve the linked data quality matter for Wikidata. I can help in
applying this roadmap. Please reply me soon.
Yours Sincerely,
Houcemeddine Turki