Abstract
The distinction between types and individuals is key to most conceptual modeling techniques. Despite that, there are a number of situations in which modelers navigate this distinction inadequately, leading to problematic models. We show evidence of a large number of modeling mistakes associated with the failure to employ this distinction in the Wikidata knowledge graph, which can be identified with the incorrect use of instantiation, which is a relation between an individual and a type, and specialization (or subtyping), which is a relation between two types.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Wikidata dump generated in 14 September 2020, https://zenodo.org/record/4046102.
- 2.
Further dump details and mirrors at https://wdumps.toolforge.org/dump/749.
- 3.
Available at https://atilioa.github.io/WikidataAntiPatternAnalyzer/.
References
Almeida, J.P.A., Fonseca, C.M., Carvalho, V.A.: A comprehensive formal theory for multi-level conceptual modeling. In: Mayr, H.C., Guizzardi, G., Ma, H., Pastor, O. (eds.) ER 2017. LNCS, vol. 10650, pp. 280–294. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69904-2_23
Brasileiro, F., Almeida, J.P.A., Carvalho, V.A., Guizzardi, G.: Applying a multi-level modeling theory to assess taxonomic hierarchies in Wikidata. In: Proceedings of 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web, pp. 975–980. WWW 2016 Companion (2016)
Carvalho, V.A., Almeida, J.P.A.: Toward a well-founded theory for multi-level conceptual modeling. Softw. Syst. Model. 17(1), 205–231 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-016-0538-9
Fonseca, C.M., Almeida, J.P.A., Guizzardi, G., Carvalho, V.A.: Multi-level conceptual modeling: theory, language and application. Data Knowl. Eng. 134, 101894 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.datak.2021.101894
Foxvog, D.: Instances of instances modeled via higher-order classes. In: Workshop on Foundational Aspects of Ontologies, 28th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 46–54 (2005)
Gangemi, A., Guarino, N., Masolo, C., Oltramari, A.: Sweetening WORDNET with DOLCE. AI Mag. 24(3), 13 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1609/aimag.v24i3.1715
Gangemi, A., Guarino, N., Oltramari, A.: Conceptual analysis of lexical taxonomies: the case of WordNet top-level. In: Proceedings of FOIS 2001, pp. 285–296 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1145/505168.505195
Guizzardi, G., Almeida, J.P.A., Guarino, N., Carvalho, V.A.: Towards an ontological analysis of powertypes. In: Proc. Joint Ontology Workshops 2015 Episode 1: The Argentine Winter of Ontology. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 1517. CEUR-WS.org (2015)
Paulheim, H., Gangemi, A.: Serving DBpedia with DOLCE – more than just adding a cherry on top. In: Arenas, M., et al. (eds.) ISWC 2015. LNCS, vol. 9366, pp. 180–196. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25007-6_11
Ravin, Y., Leacock, C.: Polysemy: Theoretical and Computational Approaches. OUP (2000)
Wetzel, L.: Types and Tokens: On Abstract Objects. MIT Press, Cambridge (2009)
Wikidata: Help:items – Wikidata (2021). https://web.archive.org/web/20210127110938/. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Items. Accessed 2 May 2021
Acknowledgments
This research is partly funded by Brazilian funding agencies CNPq (grants 313687/2020-0, 407235/2017-5) and CAPES (grant 23038.028816/2016-41). Claudenir M. Fonseca and Giancarlo Guizzardi are supported by the NeXON Project (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Dadalto, A.A., Almeida, J.P.A., Fonseca, C.M., Guizzardi, G. (2021). Type or Individual? Evidence of Large-Scale Conceptual Disarray in Wikidata. In: Ghose, A., Horkoff, J., Silva Souza, V.E., Parsons, J., Evermann, J. (eds) Conceptual Modeling. ER 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13011. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89022-3_29
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89022-3_29
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-89021-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-89022-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)