Re: [Wikidata-l] Number of planets in the solar system
Hoi, It strikes me as another example of a search for perfection where we do not even cater for what is good. Our priorities should be with what is common and present it well not with a game of trivia that upset showing what is good and common. Thanks, GerardM On 30 April 2015 at 18:33, Paul Houle ontolo...@gmail.com wrote: @Thomas is close to the right answer. Nothing about Pluto changed, it was the definition of Planet that is changed so you need two different definitions of Planets, but note that the definitions of themselves are somewhat timeless, so you are really pointing to some specific definition of a planet in either case. There is no reason why this is not practical. It is just a matter of putting in another type, and maintenance is not a tough problem since there are fewer than 10 of them. There could be some need for vocabulary to describe the attributes of the definitions, but simply a link to a defining document is good enough from the viewpoint of grounding. On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 12:20 PM, Thomas Douillard thomas.douill...@gmail.com wrote: It may not be practical, but it is still possible ;) classes like ''astronomic corp that was thought to be a planet in 1850'' are an option :) 2015-04-30 13:51 GMT+02:00 Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk: On 30 April 2015 at 12:37, Thomas Douillard thomas.douill...@gmail.com wrote: Infovarius even complicated the problem, he put the number of known planets at some time with a qualifier for validity :) Just to throw a real spanner in the works: for a lot of the nineteenth century the number varied widely. The eighth planet was discovered in 1801, and is what we'd now think of as the asteroid or dwarf planet Ceres; the real eighth planet, Neptune, wasn't discovered until 1851. Newly discovered asteroids were thought of as 'planets' for some time (I have an 1843 schoolbook somewhere that confidently tells children there were eleven planets...) until by about 1850, it became clear that having twenty or so very small planets with more discovered every year was confusing, and the meaning of the word shifted. There was no formal agreement (as was the case in 2006) so no specific end date. The moral of this story is probably that trying to express complex things in Wikidata is not always practical :-) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l -- Paul Houle *Applying Schemas for Natural Language Processing, Distributed Systems, Classification and Text Mining and Data Lakes* (607) 539 6254paul.houle on Skype ontolo...@gmail.com https://legalentityidentifier.info/lei/lookup http://legalentityidentifier.info/lei/lookup ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
Re: [Wikidata-l] Number of planets in the solar system
On 30 April 2015 at 12:37, Thomas Douillard thomas.douill...@gmail.com wrote: Infovarius even complicated the problem, he put the number of known planets at some time with a qualifier for validity :) Just to throw a real spanner in the works: for a lot of the nineteenth century the number varied widely. The eighth planet was discovered in 1801, and is what we'd now think of as the asteroid or dwarf planet Ceres; the real eighth planet, Neptune, wasn't discovered until 1851. Newly discovered asteroids were thought of as 'planets' for some time (I have an 1843 schoolbook somewhere that confidently tells children there were eleven planets...) until by about 1850, it became clear that having twenty or so very small planets with more discovered every year was confusing, and the meaning of the word shifted. There was no formal agreement (as was the case in 2006) so no specific end date. The moral of this story is probably that trying to express complex things in Wikidata is not always practical :-) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
Re: [Wikidata-l] Number of planets in the solar system
@Thomas is close to the right answer. Nothing about Pluto changed, it was the definition of Planet that is changed so you need two different definitions of Planets, but note that the definitions of themselves are somewhat timeless, so you are really pointing to some specific definition of a planet in either case. There is no reason why this is not practical. It is just a matter of putting in another type, and maintenance is not a tough problem since there are fewer than 10 of them. There could be some need for vocabulary to describe the attributes of the definitions, but simply a link to a defining document is good enough from the viewpoint of grounding. On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 12:20 PM, Thomas Douillard thomas.douill...@gmail.com wrote: It may not be practical, but it is still possible ;) classes like ''astronomic corp that was thought to be a planet in 1850'' are an option :) 2015-04-30 13:51 GMT+02:00 Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk: On 30 April 2015 at 12:37, Thomas Douillard thomas.douill...@gmail.com wrote: Infovarius even complicated the problem, he put the number of known planets at some time with a qualifier for validity :) Just to throw a real spanner in the works: for a lot of the nineteenth century the number varied widely. The eighth planet was discovered in 1801, and is what we'd now think of as the asteroid or dwarf planet Ceres; the real eighth planet, Neptune, wasn't discovered until 1851. Newly discovered asteroids were thought of as 'planets' for some time (I have an 1843 schoolbook somewhere that confidently tells children there were eleven planets...) until by about 1850, it became clear that having twenty or so very small planets with more discovered every year was confusing, and the meaning of the word shifted. There was no formal agreement (as was the case in 2006) so no specific end date. The moral of this story is probably that trying to express complex things in Wikidata is not always practical :-) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l -- Paul Houle *Applying Schemas for Natural Language Processing, Distributed Systems, Classification and Text Mining and Data Lakes* (607) 539 6254paul.houle on Skype ontolo...@gmail.com https://legalentityidentifier.info/lei/lookup http://legalentityidentifier.info/lei/lookup ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
Re: [Wikidata-l] Number of planets in the solar system
It may not be practical, but it is still possible ;) classes like ''astronomic corp that was thought to be a planet in 1850'' are an option :) 2015-04-30 13:51 GMT+02:00 Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk: On 30 April 2015 at 12:37, Thomas Douillard thomas.douill...@gmail.com wrote: Infovarius even complicated the problem, he put the number of known planets at some time with a qualifier for validity :) Just to throw a real spanner in the works: for a lot of the nineteenth century the number varied widely. The eighth planet was discovered in 1801, and is what we'd now think of as the asteroid or dwarf planet Ceres; the real eighth planet, Neptune, wasn't discovered until 1851. Newly discovered asteroids were thought of as 'planets' for some time (I have an 1843 schoolbook somewhere that confidently tells children there were eleven planets...) until by about 1850, it became clear that having twenty or so very small planets with more discovered every year was confusing, and the meaning of the word shifted. There was no formal agreement (as was the case in 2006) so no specific end date. The moral of this story is probably that trying to express complex things in Wikidata is not always practical :-) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
Re: [Wikidata-l] Number of planets in the solar system
Ok, sounds reasonable. In all of these cases I do wonder though why we need to store the number at all. We can just count the instances, can we not? Queries allow for this (and will be an official feature in due course). And in cases where not all instances are supposed to be on Wikidata, there are usually better ways to store the number, e.g., population of Earth is better than number of instances of living person (besides the fact that we don't have living person). Regards, Markus On 29.04.2015 20:29, Thomas Douillard wrote: Actually, like it is, there is no /number of planets/ property, there is a class of planet (solar system planet) together with a /number of instances/ property. This might save us : we can have two item : * solar system planet (old style definition) and * solar system planet (new style definition) This might just put the problem in another place though :) although this might not change the correctness of statements like /solar system/ has part /solar system planet/ (old style) :) Pluto can still be an old style definition planet, and maybe solar system planet is a subclass of /solar system planet/ (old style) Thinking about it, classes are naturally a good way to deal with definitions. 2015-04-29 19:35 GMT+02:00 Markus Krötzsch mar...@semantic-mediawiki.org mailto:mar...@semantic-mediawiki.org: Hi, General case first: Many statements depend on time and have an end date (e.g., population numbers). The general approach there is to (1) have a qualifier that clarifies the restricted temporal validity and (2) make the current statement preferred. So your idea with the ranks was a good starting point, but it should be normal and preferred instead of deprecated and normal. And infovarius was also right in this sense to use a temporal quantifier. Note that more than one statement can be preferred if more than one is current (this could be relevant, e.g., for the classes that Pluto is/was an instance of). However, this answer is only about the general pattern of dealing with things that changed over time, and the intended use of ranks in this case. Things might be different here. It's a special case in that it was not so much the world that changed but the definition, so the real question is what our property number of planets really means: (1) Number of planets at a given time (given as a qualifier), based on the definition of planet adopted at this time (2) Number of planets according to the definition that was used when the property was introduced (3) Number of planets according to the definition that is current right now (3) is problematic since it means that the meaning of the property would change over time, and statements that were true will become false. I would strongly discourage this. But both (1) and (2) are possible. If one wants to use (1) then *every* statement with this property must have some time qualifier -- otherwise it will not make any sense since one would not know which definition is meant. In case (2), the number of planets of our solar system is 8, and nothing else. It has never been 9 *according to the definition of planet used by this property*. So if this interpretation is adopted, then the statement with value 9 should really at best be there in a deprecated form, not in a temporal form. It could make sense to keep a deprecated form to warn other users that this should not be reintroduced. One could also add more options, e.g., one could have a qualifier that specifies the definition of planet that is used. This would be a bit like (1) but instead of time one would now always need to specify a definition, and the statements would not be temporal at all (the number would always remain 9 according to the old definition). One could still use preferred to mark the statement that is based on the most common definition. The world is beautifully complicated, isn't it? I'll leave it to you experts to discuss what makes sense here here :-) Best regards, Markus On 29.04.2015 18:05, Thomas Douillard wrote: Hi, a small question about qualifiers and ranks. It is well known that the number of planets changed in 2006. Or did it ? Of course, Pluto is still here, it's just its status that changed. The definition of planets changed in 2006. This imply that (imho), the statement the number of planets in the solar system in 9 should be deprecated. But infovarius did not agree with me and changed the rank of the claim back to normal and put an end date. I still think it should be deprecated, but it raise me a question: How are we supposed (if we are) to express an information about a deprecation ? Should we include something about the
Re: [Wikidata-l] Number of planets in the solar system
Hi, General case first: Many statements depend on time and have an end date (e.g., population numbers). The general approach there is to (1) have a qualifier that clarifies the restricted temporal validity and (2) make the current statement preferred. So your idea with the ranks was a good starting point, but it should be normal and preferred instead of deprecated and normal. And infovarius was also right in this sense to use a temporal quantifier. Note that more than one statement can be preferred if more than one is current (this could be relevant, e.g., for the classes that Pluto is/was an instance of). However, this answer is only about the general pattern of dealing with things that changed over time, and the intended use of ranks in this case. Things might be different here. It's a special case in that it was not so much the world that changed but the definition, so the real question is what our property number of planets really means: (1) Number of planets at a given time (given as a qualifier), based on the definition of planet adopted at this time (2) Number of planets according to the definition that was used when the property was introduced (3) Number of planets according to the definition that is current right now (3) is problematic since it means that the meaning of the property would change over time, and statements that were true will become false. I would strongly discourage this. But both (1) and (2) are possible. If one wants to use (1) then *every* statement with this property must have some time qualifier -- otherwise it will not make any sense since one would not know which definition is meant. In case (2), the number of planets of our solar system is 8, and nothing else. It has never been 9 *according to the definition of planet used by this property*. So if this interpretation is adopted, then the statement with value 9 should really at best be there in a deprecated form, not in a temporal form. It could make sense to keep a deprecated form to warn other users that this should not be reintroduced. One could also add more options, e.g., one could have a qualifier that specifies the definition of planet that is used. This would be a bit like (1) but instead of time one would now always need to specify a definition, and the statements would not be temporal at all (the number would always remain 9 according to the old definition). One could still use preferred to mark the statement that is based on the most common definition. The world is beautifully complicated, isn't it? I'll leave it to you experts to discuss what makes sense here here :-) Best regards, Markus On 29.04.2015 18:05, Thomas Douillard wrote: Hi, a small question about qualifiers and ranks. It is well known that the number of planets changed in 2006. Or did it ? Of course, Pluto is still here, it's just its status that changed. The definition of planets changed in 2006. This imply that (imho), the statement the number of planets in the solar system in 9 should be deprecated. But infovarius did not agree with me and changed the rank of the claim back to normal and put an end date. I still think it should be deprecated, but it raise me a question: How are we supposed (if we are) to express an information about a deprecation ? Should we include something about the deprecation in the sources ? Should we have a qualifier ''deprecation date'' ? https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17362350 ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
Re: [Wikidata-l] Number of planets in the solar system
Actually, like it is, there is no *number of planets* property, there is a class of planet (solar system planet) together with a *number of instances* property. This might save us : we can have two item : * solar system planet (old style definition) and * solar system planet (new style definition) This might just put the problem in another place though :) although this might not change the correctness of statements like *solar system* has part *solar system planet* (old style) :) Pluto can still be an old style definition planet, and maybe solar system planet is a subclass of *solar system planet* (old style) Thinking about it, classes are naturally a good way to deal with definitions. 2015-04-29 19:35 GMT+02:00 Markus Krötzsch mar...@semantic-mediawiki.org: Hi, General case first: Many statements depend on time and have an end date (e.g., population numbers). The general approach there is to (1) have a qualifier that clarifies the restricted temporal validity and (2) make the current statement preferred. So your idea with the ranks was a good starting point, but it should be normal and preferred instead of deprecated and normal. And infovarius was also right in this sense to use a temporal quantifier. Note that more than one statement can be preferred if more than one is current (this could be relevant, e.g., for the classes that Pluto is/was an instance of). However, this answer is only about the general pattern of dealing with things that changed over time, and the intended use of ranks in this case. Things might be different here. It's a special case in that it was not so much the world that changed but the definition, so the real question is what our property number of planets really means: (1) Number of planets at a given time (given as a qualifier), based on the definition of planet adopted at this time (2) Number of planets according to the definition that was used when the property was introduced (3) Number of planets according to the definition that is current right now (3) is problematic since it means that the meaning of the property would change over time, and statements that were true will become false. I would strongly discourage this. But both (1) and (2) are possible. If one wants to use (1) then *every* statement with this property must have some time qualifier -- otherwise it will not make any sense since one would not know which definition is meant. In case (2), the number of planets of our solar system is 8, and nothing else. It has never been 9 *according to the definition of planet used by this property*. So if this interpretation is adopted, then the statement with value 9 should really at best be there in a deprecated form, not in a temporal form. It could make sense to keep a deprecated form to warn other users that this should not be reintroduced. One could also add more options, e.g., one could have a qualifier that specifies the definition of planet that is used. This would be a bit like (1) but instead of time one would now always need to specify a definition, and the statements would not be temporal at all (the number would always remain 9 according to the old definition). One could still use preferred to mark the statement that is based on the most common definition. The world is beautifully complicated, isn't it? I'll leave it to you experts to discuss what makes sense here here :-) Best regards, Markus On 29.04.2015 18:05, Thomas Douillard wrote: Hi, a small question about qualifiers and ranks. It is well known that the number of planets changed in 2006. Or did it ? Of course, Pluto is still here, it's just its status that changed. The definition of planets changed in 2006. This imply that (imho), the statement the number of planets in the solar system in 9 should be deprecated. But infovarius did not agree with me and changed the rank of the claim back to normal and put an end date. I still think it should be deprecated, but it raise me a question: How are we supposed (if we are) to express an information about a deprecation ? Should we include something about the deprecation in the sources ? Should we have a qualifier ''deprecation date'' ? https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17362350 ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
[Wikidata-l] Number of planets in the solar system
Hi, a small question about qualifiers and ranks. It is well known that the number of planets changed in 2006. Or did it ? Of course, Pluto is still here, it's just its status that changed. The definition of planets changed in 2006. This imply that (imho), the statement the number of planets in the solar system in 9 should be deprecated. But infovarius did not agree with me and changed the rank of the claim back to normal and put an end date. I still think it should be deprecated, but it raise me a question: How are we supposed (if we are) to express an information about a deprecation ? Should we include something about the deprecation in the sources ? Should we have a qualifier ''deprecation date'' ? https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17362350 ___ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
