Peter F. Patel-Schneider

Welcome to Wikidata, Peter F. Patel-Schneider!

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Best regards! --Tobias1984 (talk) 15:54, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Further reading

You might also be interested in some of the RfCs (both commenting on new ones and reading the old ones): Wikidata:Requests_for_comment. --Tobias1984 (talk) 15:51, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

@Tobias1984: Thanks. I have been reading them and have already made some comments.

I just noticed and was reading some of them. It seems you already have a lot of background knowledge and will transition quickly into this ecosystem. Did you also look at the Wikidata:Property proposal subpages? There are always some good discussions about modelling going on there. --Tobias1984 (talk) 18:50, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Ships and boats

Hi Peter, last week you did several changes to ship-related items like inland waterway vessel (Q863970) and museum ship (Q575727). In the result, now the inland cargo vessels like c:File:Hannover binnenschiff leer 02.jpg now are derived from boat instead of ship (Q11446). In German, inland waterway vessel (Q863970) refers to "Binnenschiff" which means "inland vessel" so I think the former subclass of ship are better than from boat. Should we create a new class of "Invalnd vessel" or should we use inland waterway vessel (Q863970) with a broader english description of "inland vessel" (like the other languages) or ... ? -- Gerd Fahrenhorst (talk) 10:07, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi Peter, you now created a new class inland waterway vessel (Q121365935) and modified Europaship (Q1375735). This is not good solution because now all the interwiki links to river ships (=inland vessels) remain on inland waterway vessel (Q863970) and it is uncertain what the difference to inland waterway vessel (Q121365935) is. Please let us discuss a proper solution before continuing! Gerd Fahrenhorst (talk) 12:37, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

The problem with inland waterway vessel (Q863970) (which used to be called riverboat) was that it was a subclass of ship (Q11446) but it appeared that most of its subclasses were actually classes of boat (Q35872). So, as part of improving the ship/boat situation in general, it was changed to be a subclass of boat (Q35872). See the discussion in https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:WikiProject_Ships#problems_with_ship_types and subsequent topics. An alternative way to go would be to generalize the class to a watercraft type (inland waterway vessel) and create new subclasses for river boats and river ships. But creating a class that is a subclass of both boat and ship isn't a workable solution, as the two classes are mostly disjoint. @Vicarage Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 16:42, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Works for me Vicarage (talk) 17:06, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

metaclasses documentation

Hello, Peter. My English is not native so I have some difficulties in understanding. Can you please elaborate what do you mean by "These implicit instance of (P31) statements are not all observable in Wikidata."? Infovarius (talk) 19:10, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

@Infovarius It's similar to the implicit instance of (P31) relationships that come from subclass of (P279) links, e.g., Douglas Adams (Q42) is implicitly an instance of mammal (Q110551885) even though the relationship is not (directly) observable in Wikidata. The difference is that the instance of (P31) relationships between, for example, human (Q5) and class (Q16889133) can't even be found by following links that exist in Wikidata so they are in some sense less observable. Nonetheless the relationship follows from the meanings of human (Q5) and class (Q16889133). Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 19:22, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Sulfoxides

Could you elaborate this edit? You did not add any reason for deprecated rank (P2241) qualifier and AFAIK only compounds with sulfinyl group substituted with two organyl groups are considered sulfoxides, while compounds with other groups are classified in different classes. Wostr (talk) 23:58, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

@Wostr I was working from octasulfur monoxide (Q73246974) which, as far as I can see, is not organic. This causes a disjointness violation between organic compound and inorganic compound. See chemical compound for the disjointness.

As well, the English description of sulfinyl (Q1747806) is "chemical compound containing the sulfinyl group" and sufinyl is "functional group consisting of sulfur double-bonded to oxygen". So carbon is not mentioned at all.

So, two indications that the relationship is incorrect. I suppose I should have just deleted it, but I decided to only deprecate it.

If the description is incorrect then it needs to be changed and the incorrect subclasses need to be fixed up.

What reason for deprecated rank could be used for situations like this? Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 00:12, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for quick response and this explanation, I'll check it later with the sources, but right now: (1) I believe that octasulfur monoxide (Q73246974)subclass of (P279)sulfoxide (Q408395) is not correct; maybe there is some class that would better describe such an entity, but I can't come up with it quickly; (2) all sulfoxides have sulfinyl (Q1747806), but not all compounds with this group are sulfoxides; usually inorganic compounds with this group are called 'thionyl compounds', like thionyl chloride (Q409171); however, after this edit, we have 'thionyl compounds' as an alias of 'sulfoxides', while in the same time we have this separately (cf. Q8852386) in some Wikimedia projects; (3) I believe that sulfoxides are exclusively organosulfur compounds and that deprecated statement had a correct 'normal' rank, but I won't revert this now, I'll check if there are any other problems with subclasses of sulfoxide (Q408395) and try to fix this later; (4) I didn't know what was the reason for your edit and this deprecation, so I couldn't propose any reason for deprecated rank (P2241) value for this situation; given your explanation I'd say that possibly invalid entry requiring further references (Q35779580) or does not always apply (Q90177495) could be okay here (probably with an explanation on a discussion page) – but as I said, I will check this later and try to fix this issue as it can be a problem with many more items. Wostr (talk) 00:41, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in the WQT UI requirements elicitation online workshop

Dear Peter_F._Patel-Schneider,

I hope you are doing well,

We are a group of researchers from King’s College London working on developing WQT (Wikidata Quality Toolkit), which will support a diverse set of editors in curating and validating Wikidata content.

We are inviting you to participate in an online workshop aimed at understanding the requirements for designing effective and easy-to-use user interfaces (UI) for three tools within WQT that can support the daily activities of Wikidata editors: recommending items to edit based on their personal preferences, finding items that need better references, and generating entity schemas automatically for better item quality.

The main activity during this workshop will be UI mockup sketching. To facilitate this, we encourage you to attend the workshop using a tablet or laptop with PowerPoint installed or any other drawing tools you prefer. This will allow for a more interactive and productive session as we delve into the UI mockup sketching activities.

Participation is completely voluntary. You should only take part if you want to and choosing not to take part will not disadvantage you in any way. However, your cooperation will be valuable for the WQT design. Please note that all data and responses collected during the workshop will be used solely for the purpose of improving the WQT and understanding editor requirements. We will analyze the results in an anonymized form, ensuring your privacy is protected. Personal information will be kept confidential and will be deleted once it has served its purpose in this research.

The online workshop, which will be held on April 5th, should take no more than 3 hours.

If you agree to participate in this workshop, please either contact me at [email protected] or use this form to register your interest https://forms.office.com/e/9mrE8rXZVg Then, I will contact you with all the instructions for the workshop.

For more information about my project, please read this page: https://king-s-knowledge-graph-lab.github.io/WikidataQualityToolkit/

If you have further questions or require more information, don't hesitate to contact me at the email address mentioned above.

Thank you for considering taking part in this project.

Regards Kholoudsaa (talk) 17:00, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Community Wishlist is back open...

And I've submitted this wish that you endorsed on the old wishes sandbox. Your support may help, although I don't really know what to expect from the new "Focus Area" system. Thanks! Swpb (talk) 18:40, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do to endorse the new wish. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 21:18, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Modeling of object and agent relations

Hey Peter - I'm coming around to your position that selectional restrictions and roles should be handled separately for objects and agents, and I have a not-yet-public proposal I'd like your reaction to (here please) before I post it to the proposals list. That can serve as a model for agents.

Now as far as we handle agents, I don't think splitting selectional restrictions from roles forces us to split instances from classes; I can see one property that takes either particular agents or classes to which those agents must belong, and another, "agents of action have role" for roles. But, I recognize that a few people's sentiments go the other way, so I'm ok with a three-way division if it gets us over the finish line. If "objects of action have role" succeeds, I will put together a corresponding three-property proposal for agents: "agent of action"/"agent class of action"/"agents of action have role", and suggest that Lectrician1 withdraw Wikidata:Property proposal/agent of action, which seems to be heading down anyway.

Now, I suppose this opens the door for such three-way splits of a lot of the other properties I mapped to semantic roles on Wikidata:Property proposal/has semantic role (2nd proposal), but I don't think I'm ready to jump into that prospect with both feet. E.g., I think if we were to split uses (P2283) into "uses specific item", "uses items of the class", and "objects used have role", we'd end up with so many erroneous statements by confused editors that we'd be worse off than now – and anyway, the latter can usually be handled by qualifying with object of statement has role (P3831). Swpb (talk) 18:11, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@Swpb I think that any property that is used in the same way as object of action (P12912) or "agent of action" will need the same treatment. So maybe the best approach is to use a qualifier, although that has the problem of repeating the property each time a different role is wanted. It might even be possible to use (abuse?) object of statement has role (P3831) for this purpose, although then semantic roles for which there is no thematic property might be clumsy. The point is to have a solution that does not require lots of properties but that can nicely specify all arguments of an action, the selectional preference for arguments, and the role of arguments. This is what the "has semantic role" proposal was driving towards as part of https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Events_and_Role_Frames.

I'm in favour of revising the agent of action proposal if that is reasonable and possible, instead of starting from scratch. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 19:07, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Re the current agent of action proposal, it seems Lectrician1 has made the question moot.

When you talk about "semantic roles for which there is no thematic property", I have to say again that I don't think there are any such semantic roles, at least major ones, except for agent and maybe experiencer. If you think there are other unmapped roles, please share them!

I understand what the intent of "has semantic role" was, but it doesn't solve the problem so much as turn it into a different, much bigger one: the classic problem I keep bringing up, but which no one wants to acknowledge, of generic properties being magnets for abuse and requiring constant cleanup. If you're serious about separately expressing action arguments, selection classes, and the (non-semantic) roles taken on by those arguments, I think the only way to do it right is with properties that are semantic-role-specific.

However, that brings us to object of statement has role (P3831) - using it to indicate the (non-semantic) role of an action argument (or of its selection class) would not be an abuse, it would be a sub-case of exactly what that qualifier was intended for – as long as the action argument is the object of a main statement and not a qualifier. That mostly* obviates the need for a bunch of separate properties for non-semantic roles of action arguments. *(Where the value of the main statement is the action itself, rather than an argument of that action, is where you could need properties like "objects of action have role" [see examples 4 & 5], but outside of the object and agent semantic roles, I'm not convinced there's much need for that kind of statement. Some SPARQL querying could shed light on that.)

Which leaves the instance vs. (selectional) class distinction. I'm ok (not thrilled, but that's fine) with separate properties for those when it comes to the object and agent roles. For other semantic roles, I think we'd need to consider each one, and whether there is more to be gained from such separation than will be lost to added complexity and editor confusion. I still think it's more or less always inferable whether the object is an instance or selection class. But that's a conversation that can continue another day; it shouldn't impede getting properties made for the agent role. Swpb (talk) 23:36, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Addendum: here is a SPARQL query of cases where object of statement has role (P3831) might be being misused to indicate the role of an action argument that is not the main statement value. No more than 15 such statements in all of Wikidata. More could be lurking using of (P642), which is much harder to query, but I suspect if there are, the vast majority will be expressing the roles of agents, or to a lesser extent undergoers, vs. any of the other major semantic roles. Swpb (talk) 16:58, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

@Swpb I think that query is missing a * for the P279. With the * it runs out of time in the WDQS but returns 6830 matches in the QLever Wikidata query service (with appropriate changes for labels). Most of them are due to errors in the Wikidata ontology but there are a bunch for conflict and some other properties that look relevant. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 14:17, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Ok, so more work needed to determine the need for role-of-action-argument properties for non-object/agent semantic roles. But are we in agreement on the three-way approach for objects and agents of actions? Swpb (talk) 14:23, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

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