Wikidata talk:WikiProject Organizations

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Since properties nowadays are suggested and listed at other pages, I cleaned this page up from property suggestions. Ok? Please revert or move the suggestions to other pages if needed. Mange01 (talk) 22:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I think this is the proper page where to list the properties we need, as identified by a map with external schemes such as infoboxes. The list of current properties is Wikidata:Property proposal/Organization. Nemo 18:43, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

new tabs

I've added a new tab menu to add multiple pages to this project. I use the responsive template, already used on Wikidata:WikiProject France. --PAC2 (talk) 06:05, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

New template for item documentation

I've been developing {{TP organization}} and I propose to include this new model in {{Item documentation}}. See Template_talk:Item_documentation#Proposal_to_add_subtemplate_for_organization for the discussion.

Suggestions to improve {{TP organization}} are welcome. PAC2 (talk) 19:39, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Organizations founded and dissolved

Hi! I'm working on a small upload of organizations. Some of them were started, then dissolved, then started again. How do I best cover this in Wikidata? Tanzania (talk) 14:41, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

@Tanzania is this too late to answer? Only see this now :-)

I would threat them separately if they were only active when registered as active (so as state would recognize them as different entities), exception would be if they are mostly informal and only sometimes register, but even then I would create one main and others as sub-ordinate as legal entities. Curious to know what you did and how. --Zblace (talk) 09:49, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Defunct organization

I am working on a historic project with organizations, informal groups and venues that were once notable, but no longer in operation. How to best model the fact that an organization is no longer operational, especially in case the date of dissolution is not known. I see two options, both are used in wikidata, I am not sure which one is better. One would be to make the item's instance of (P31) to former entity (Q15893266) or one of its subclasses, the other to set dissolved, abolished or demolished date (P576) to unknown value. Which one is preferred? Any other solutions? Tdombos (talk) 13:30, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Multiple locations over time

I am working on a historic project with venues that moved their location several times, so their coordinate location (P625), street address (P6375), located on street (P669), house number (P670) changed. This info could be added either directly under these properties with the relevant start time (P580) and end time (P582), or added under location (P276) as qualifier. The second option has the benefit that the start time (P580) and end time (P582) have to be set only once, and the changes appear together neatly one after the other. But in this case the data is recorded differntly for current and old locations, which is counterintuitive. Which is the preferred method? Any other solutions? Tdombos (talk) 13:51, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

@Tdombos: Many organizations (businesses at least) use headquarters location (P159) with qualifiers as their main location statement, so it seems fine to me to do what you propose as the second option here, and the present location could be entered similarly - that is, if this isn't already covered by headquarters location (P159) approach. ArthurPSmith (talk) 22:04, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Request comment on Wikimedia Foundation as a financial model and test case

• Talk:Q180#Wikimedia_Foundation_as_model_for_nonprofit_finances

Bluerasberry (talk) 19:20, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Implementing the W3C Organization Ontology in Wikidata

At the Data Modelling Days 2023, there was a fascinating discussion entitled "Wikidata Challenges in the semantic web community". Over the course of this session, the organization ontology was brought up and I cited the W3C Organization Ontology as a good reference ontology for modelling the relationships between different parts of an organization. This idea seemed attractive to @ArthurPSmith and a few others. I do not have the bandwidth to facilitate this discussion at present, but I wanted to keep a record of this online discussion here. You may find more information in the etherpad notes. Fjjulien (talk) 17:28, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I think the biggest impact of adopting this would mean treating organizations more like the way we treat humans. All organizations becomes instances of one (or a very small number) of classes, rather than huge variety of organization classes we have now. Then the for-profit, nonprofit, incorporated, governmental, educational etc. nature of an organization are handled via properties, similar to the way we have properties to describe gender, citizenship, occupation etc. for people. I think some of these properties already exist, but some new ones will likely be needed too. ArthurPSmith (talk) 15:27, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm looking forward to the Video recording of this session. But everything that helps to handle the chaos of different classes for Organizations and the double entries of class and legal form would be very welcome. Newt713 (talk) 11:53, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I watched the videos and tried to read through the W3C Ontology. To be honest, the ontology was too much for my non-programmer/scientist brain.

But I really see the point of radically reducing the complexity of instance of (P31). For organizations, I would propose to reduce it to business (Q4830453), nonprofit organization (Q163740) and government organization (Q2659904) (as used i.e. by the UN classification system). Perhaps there is the need for a fourth class informal organization (Q646293) for something like Mafia-Groups or non-formal social movements. Of course it could be done with just organization (Q43229), but I think that would not be intuitive when creating new properties. Unlike the concept of "humans", most people don't have a concept of organization in their mind.

Everything else should be done with industry (P452), legal form (P1454), stock exchange (P414)...

Some examples:

• Apple (Q312) -> public company (Q891723): It would be enough to have business (Q4830453) and stock exchange (P414) -> Nasdaq (Q82059), since every business listed on a stock exchange is a public company.
• World Wide Fund for Nature (Q117892) -> environmental organization (Q1785733): It would be enough to have nonprofit organization (Q163740) and industry (P452) -> environmental protection (Q832237), since every nonprofit in the "environmental protection" "industry" is a environmental organization
• The Coca-Cola Company (Q3295867) -> food manufacturer (Q1252971): It would be enough to have business (Q4830453) and industry (P452) -> food industry (Q540912)

...

As @ArthurPSmith: states, there might be the need to create further properties (I just proposed Nonprofit Status) and more structure in concepts like "industry" (I proposed ICNPO for NPO-Classification). But it would be a great start for an easier to use wikidata. And I guess, sometimes it's okay to have a 2nd instance of (P31) i.e. for a hospital hospital (Q16917) in addition to business.

Question would be where to discuss this further (

Newt713 (talk) Bogger (talk) PantherStrix (talk) PKM (talk) Jklamo (talk) Nw520 (talk) Olyammon (talk) 03:46, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Notified participants of WikiProject Nonprofit Organizations,

Kopiersperre Jklamo ArthurPSmith S.K. Givegivetake fnielsen rjlabs ChristianKl Vladimir Alexiev Parikan User:Cardinha00 MB-one User:Simonmarch User:Jneubert Mathieudu68 User:Kippelboy User:Datawiki30 User:PKM User:RollTide882071 Andber08 Sidpark SilentSpike Susanna Ånäs (Susannaanas) User:Johanricher User:Celead User:Finnusertop cdo256 Mathieu Kappler RShigapov User:So9q User:1-Byte pmt Rtnf econterms Dollarsign8 User:Izolight maiki c960657 User:Automotom applsdev Bubalina Fordaemdur

Notified participants of WikiProject Companies) and how to implement parts of this. Best Newt713 (talk) 17:34, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

I really like the suggestions here and support this change.--So9q (talk) 18:12, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

I also support simplifications!

@Newt713:

• W3C Org is IMHO not complex. There is also RegOrg that adds a few details (legal name, legal status). We used both and further extended in the euBusinessGraph project, see thsi paper: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/content/eubusinessgraph-ontology-lightweight-ontology-harmonizing-basic-company-information-0
• But I think the organization landscape is not so simple. Consider temporary or shared orgs (joint ventures, collaborative research centers, projects); corporate offshoots (branches, subsidiaries), semi-informal but sometimes formal (musical bands, sports teams), regional orgs (schools, cities), government-owned companies (or private but government-controlled), etc etc
• Yes, in the normal case "stock exchange" implies "public company". But very often WD knows an org is a "public company" without knowing the "stock exchange". Or the stock listing may be inactive/historical
• The class hierarchy of Organization on schema.org https://schema.org/docs/full.html may provide insights

Vladimir Alexiev (talk) 12:47, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the complexity of real life organziations cannot be underestimated :) But I would be really happy to find a simpler way for 80/90 % of organizations. I think in most cases problems can be solved with more than one instance of (P31). Like my example of hospitals, a school could be a school and a nonprofit or a school and a governing body or just a school because it is not a formal legal organization in itself. Newt713 (talk) 14:46, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I think this proprosal has merit and I would support these changes. Can we address this via a task force under this project? - PKM (talk) 22:49, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

@PKM I'm not sure how task force are created or managed, but I would be happy to follow your lead. Fjjulien (talk) 03:45, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@ArthurPSmith I agree that the Wikidata ontology ascribes too much importance to the different classes of organizations. But my interest in the W3C Organization lies more particularly in the properties describing the relationships between organizations, regardless of their particular subclasses. Promoting the use of very generic organization properties may help Wikidata contributors understand that companies, non-profits and government organizations are all different flavours of the concept "organization". Here is what I observed about organization to organization and organization to organizational unit relationships in W3C vs Wikidata.

Organization to Organization relationships are fairly well implemented in Wikidata already:

• org:subOrganizationOf and the inverse property org:hasSubOrganization are already implemented quite closely in Wikidata with parent organization (P749) and the inverse property has subsidiary (P355):
  • The labels may not be exactly the same, but the definitions are fairly equivalent.
    • Note: Interestingly P355 used to be labelled "parent company" but the label was changed to encourage a less restricted use of the property.
  • The scope is similar : Wikidata property for items about organizations (Q18608993)
  • The domains/ranges are fairly aligned, but they would need some cleanup: some classes denoting activities and events are out of place (the relationship between a recurring event (Q15275719) and an organization can be expressed with organizer (P664)).

However, organization to unit relationship are neither accurately nor fully implemented in Wikidata:

• One the other hand, business division (P199) is not well aligned with org:hasUnit and org:unitOf is not implemented at all.
  • P199's description is conceptually almost the same as org:hasUnit, but...
  • P199's label, scope, and domain are narrower than org:hasUnit.

If the Wikidata community sees value in aligning the Wikidata ontology with the W3C ontology, there are two options to consider regarding Organization to Unit relationships:

1. Broaden business division (P199) to encourage its use for any kind of organization, not just companies/businesses.
2. Propose a new property that would be a close equivalent to org:hasUnit, and state P199 a subproperty of this new property.

In addition, in either scenario, we would need to introduce a new property equivalent to org:unitOf. Fjjulien (talk) 03:35, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

How to document membership statuses when uploading (and re-uploading) a membership organization's dataset to Wikidata

See Good practices for qualifying and and referencing “member of” statements in the context of a membership organization. Fjjulien (talk) 03:34, 1 March 2024 (UTC)