3 ms·

Hmm. For a machine-centric view there's the intriguing DBPedia[0]. One of the 'chunking' methods that Wikipedia uses is categories (you undoubtedly knew that)

Hmm. For a machine-centric view there's the intriguing DBPedia[0]. One of the 'chunking' methods that Wikipedia uses is categories (you undoubtedly knew that) and here is the page that deals with that[1]. Indeed, there's entire category on Wikipedia Categorization[2]. There's the Category Tree page, dead useful, here's one for `semiotics' by way of example[3] I'd be tickled pink if others could drop more pointers here! Without doubt, as Wikipedia continues to self-organize it is going reveal structural truths about the knowledge humanity is creating. --- [0] http://wiki.dbpedia.org/ http://wiki.dbpedia.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Category https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Category [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_categorization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_categorizat... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ACategoryTree&target=semiotics&mode=categories&namespaces= https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ACategor...

emw 11y ago
The Wikidata taxonomy is basically the successor to Wikipedia's category tree. It not only irons out language-based differences (e.g. the category tree being different among Chinese, Spanish, English, etc. Wikipedias), but also captures the idea of generalization through a more semantically meaningful relation. This Wikidata concept tree is constructed with "subclass of" (P279) [1], a property that expresses the proposition "all instances of these items are also instances of those items". The goal is to have a subsumption hierarchy that classifies all human knowledge. There's an RDF/OWL export of the Wikidata taxonomy available at [2] as wikidata-taxonomy.nt.gz, which can be explored with Semantic Web browsers like Protege [3]. Another fundamental relation -- "part of" (P361) [4] -- expresses mereological relationships. For (oversimplified) example: "iris part of eye", "eye part of head", "head part of body", etc. Both "subclass of" and "part of" are transitive. A separate comment of mine in this discussion [5] describes how to traverse the "subclass of" tree in the Wikidata UI and a third-party tool called Wikidata Generic Tree. The same principle applies to the "part of" tree. The latter gets less attention, but is also quite interesting. --- 1. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P279 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P279 2. http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-exports/rdf/index.php?content=dump_download.php&dump=20151012 http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-exports/rdf/index.php?cont... 3. http://protege.stanford.edu/ http://protege.stanford.edu/ 4. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P361 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P361 5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10448573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10448573
- igravious 11y ago
  Superb response. Deeply informative. I am very excited about the potential knowledge engineering possibilities opened up by this large structured datasets. I believe that at the very least we're going to have within a generation a machine-generated ontology to rival Kant and Aristotle. Then we'll have to figure out if this tells us more about how we've digitally organized the knowledge we have or whether it does in fact reveal something about reality and being. Besides 'subclass of' and 'part of' are there any other taxonomic ways for concepts to relate to other concepts? There are parallels here of course with object-oriented-programming. It's funny, I only within the last year or so started reading up on mereology[0] but as soon as one starts thinking about concepts and there relationships one ends up there eventually. 'part of' is like encapsulation. 'subclass of' is like inheritance. Is there more? [0] (from the Greek μερος, ‘part’) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/
  - emw 11y ago
    Yes, there's also 'instance of' (P31) [1]. Together, 'instance of', 'subclass of' and 'part of' comprise Wikidata's basic membership properties [2]. 'Instance of' and 'subclass of' provide Wikidata with a way to express the basic philosophical notion of type-token distinction [3]. For things that are a subclass of something like 'material entity', all instances are physical objects that have a unique location in space and time. Not all instances are spatiotemporal particulars, though. For example, one might say "Homo sapiens instance of taxon", where taxon is a metaclass, i.e. a class in which the instances are classes. (Here 'taxon' would not be a subclass of 'material entity' -- i.e. taxa are information artifacts, not physical objects.) Support for this kind of "punning" via metamodeling is a major feature of OWL 2 DL [4]. If this sort of thing interests you, definitely take a look into Wikidata [5]. The project will be a sea change for several key features in Wikipedia (e.g. infoboxes), and will likely be a main hub of the Semantic Web. --- 1. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P31 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P31 2. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Basic_membership_properties https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Basic_membership_properti... 3. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/ 4. http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-primer/ http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-primer/ 5. https://www.wikidata.org https://www.wikidata.org

emw 11y ago

The Wikidata taxonomy is basically the successor to Wikipedia's category tree. It not only irons out language-based differences (e.g. the category tree being different among Chinese, Spanish, English, etc. Wikipedias), but also captures the idea of generalization through a more semantically meaningful relation. This Wikidata concept tree is constructed with "subclass of" (P279) [1], a property that expresses the proposition "all instances of these items are also instances of those items". The goal is to have a subsumption hierarchy that classifies all human knowledge. There's an RDF/OWL export of the Wikidata taxonomy available at [2] as wikidata-taxonomy.nt.gz, which can be explored with Semantic Web browsers like Protege [3]. Another fundamental relation -- "part of" (P361) [4] -- expresses mereological relationships. For (oversimplified) example: "iris part of eye", "eye part of head", "head part of body", etc. Both "subclass of" and "part of" are transitive. A separate comment of mine in this discussion [5] describes how to traverse the "subclass of" tree in the Wikidata UI and a third-party tool called Wikidata Generic Tree. The same principle applies to the "part of" tree. The latter gets less attention, but is also quite interesting. --- 1. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P279 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P279 2. http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-exports/rdf/index.php?content=dump_download.php&dump=20151012 http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-exports/rdf/index.php?cont... 3. http://protege.stanford.edu/ http://protege.stanford.edu/ 4. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P361 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P361 5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10448573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10448573

igravious 11y ago
Superb response. Deeply informative. I am very excited about the potential knowledge engineering possibilities opened up by this large structured datasets. I believe that at the very least we're going to have within a generation a machine-generated ontology to rival Kant and Aristotle. Then we'll have to figure out if this tells us more about how we've digitally organized the knowledge we have or whether it does in fact reveal something about reality and being. Besides 'subclass of' and 'part of' are there any other taxonomic ways for concepts to relate to other concepts? There are parallels here of course with object-oriented-programming. It's funny, I only within the last year or so started reading up on mereology[0] but as soon as one starts thinking about concepts and there relationships one ends up there eventually. 'part of' is like encapsulation. 'subclass of' is like inheritance. Is there more? [0] (from the Greek μερος, ‘part’) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/
- emw 11y ago
  Yes, there's also 'instance of' (P31) [1]. Together, 'instance of', 'subclass of' and 'part of' comprise Wikidata's basic membership properties [2]. 'Instance of' and 'subclass of' provide Wikidata with a way to express the basic philosophical notion of type-token distinction [3]. For things that are a subclass of something like 'material entity', all instances are physical objects that have a unique location in space and time. Not all instances are spatiotemporal particulars, though. For example, one might say "Homo sapiens instance of taxon", where taxon is a metaclass, i.e. a class in which the instances are classes. (Here 'taxon' would not be a subclass of 'material entity' -- i.e. taxa are information artifacts, not physical objects.) Support for this kind of "punning" via metamodeling is a major feature of OWL 2 DL [4]. If this sort of thing interests you, definitely take a look into Wikidata [5]. The project will be a sea change for several key features in Wikipedia (e.g. infoboxes), and will likely be a main hub of the Semantic Web. --- 1. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P31 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P31 2. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Basic_membership_properties https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Basic_membership_properti... 3. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/ 4. http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-primer/ http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-primer/ 5. https://www.wikidata.org https://www.wikidata.org