[DL] Wikidata ontology course

Peter F. Patel-Schneider pfpschneider at gmail.com
Fri Apr 4 17:05:32 CEST 2025


We, Peter Patel-Schneider and Ege Doğan, will be running a course on the 
Wikidata ontology starting in late April or early May.  The goal of the course 
is to expand knowledge of the Wikidata ontology among the Wikidata community 
and those interested in Wikidata.

The course will last for seven weeks and have a mixture of lectures, 
exercises, and group project work.  There will be six weeks of two-hour 
lectures.  The timing of the lectures will be determined in mid April with 
input from those who have expressed interest in the course by then.  Each week 
there will be office hours where participants can ask questions related to the 
course and their project.  Extra office hours can be scheduled to discuss 
specific projects.

Participants are expected to have a working knowledge of Wikidata, or a 
knowledge of Semantic Web languages and tools.  If the latter only, 
participants are expected to create a Wikidata account and familiarize 
themselves with browsing and editing Wikidata.  Participants are expected 
attend the lectures, perform the exercises, and be part of a group project. 
Exercises are expected to take about one hour per week to complete.  The 
amount of time taken for the project is up to the project participants.

Potential topics and scope of group projects will be discussed at the 
beginning of the course. Just about any project related to the Wikidata 
ontology is permissible.  Projects do not have to finish by the end of the 
course. We will be available to assist with projects that continue after the 
end of the course.

Due to the level of interaction involved, the number of full participants will 
be limited. For more information and to express interest in the course, see 
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Ontology/Ontology_Course


Course Outline:

* Recap of Wikidata, emphasizing ontology aspects
* Basics of ontologies
* Basic notions in the Wikidata ontology
* Editing the Wikidata ontology
* Querying the Wikidata ontology with SPARQL
* Explicit and non-explicit parts of the Wikidata ontology and the role of 
inference.
* How Wikidata constraints interact with the Wikidata ontology.
* Examples of domains implemented in the Wikidata ontology.
* Expanding the Wikidata ontology into a new domain
* Advanced concepts in the Wikidata ontology, including disjointness and class 
order.
* Problems in the Wikidata ontology
* Guest presentation by Rosario Uceda-Sosa on industrial use of Wikidata
* Presentation of group projects
* Evaluation of group projects



Peter F. Patel-Schneider



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