Wikidata:Property proposal/agent of action

agent of action

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   Under discussion

Description	thing that does the action
Data type	Item
Domain	action (Q4026292)
Example 1	German December 16 suprise attack in the Battle of the Bulge (Q116504918)agent of actionArmy Group B (Q157572) Source
Example 2	Opening of Tokyo 2020 games (Q116504974)agent of actionNaruhito (Q217096) Source
Example 3	Johann Philipp Reis demonstration of the Reis telephone to the Physical Society of Frankfurt (Q116504999)agent of actionJohann Philipp Reis (Q77124) Source
See also	https://schema.org/agent

Motivation

I would like to create a data model to describe notable actions agents have made that are described in various Wikimedia articles. We should allow users to document actions so that they can be used to create timelines of events that can then be easily translated. They can also be used as a source to generate detailed Wikipedia article content for Abstract Wikipedia.

This property is the first to be proposed of the data model and follows the Schema.org data model for actions: https://schema.org/Action

participant (P710) exists, however that's usually used usually for events and not actions. It also requires that you use object has role (P3831) to specify the role of the participant. For a relationship as critical and common as an agent is to the action they perform, we should have a dedicated property and not be required to add object has role (P3831)agent (Q24229398) to every single agent statement. Lectrician1 (talk) 22:08, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

•  Support -wd-Ryan (Talk/Edits) 19:59, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

  Would this work? telephone call (Q2296401)agent of actioncaller (Q113293705). Also, an alias (or better label) could be "done by", more usable than practiced by (P3095) for non-professions. -wd-Ryan (Talk/Edits) 22:12, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

  I actually was considering using telephone call (Q2296401) as an example! However, I think the what that item is describing is the act of talking to someone over a telephone. Not the act of calling someone on a telephone. The agent of a telephone call (Q2296401) is just a normal human then.

  Good catch with the similarities to practiced by (P3095)! I almost thought for a second that we could maybe just broaden the scope and rename practiced by (P3095) to "done by" but then I realized that the domain of practiced by (P3095) includes "fields" which are not really actions. I think it's important to distinguish that this is meant for actions by maintaining "action" in the label. Lectrician1 (talk) 02:19, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

•  Comment See my concerns with the related property proposal “object of action”. The examples given here make is appear as if those concerns mightn’t apply here, but already users are considering more general use of this proposed property like telephone call (Q2296401)‘agent of action’ (Pxxx)caller (Q113293705) (see above), which would be subject to those same concerns. ―BlaueBlüte (talk) 04:20, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
•  Comment The examples can be converted to use participant (P710), and we have officially opened by (P542) too. Midleading (talk) 03:09, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  I wouldn't use those properties for classes, though. Not sure why the only examples are for instance values, class values look much more valuable here to me. -wd-Ryan (Talk/Edits) 03:51, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  Yeah, this property should be updated with class examples. But the problem with telephone call (Q2296401) is why the value is not Q5. We also have countless dailiy activities that every person can do. Perhaps the label should be "action performed by role" for telephone call (Q2296401). The significant overlap with practiced by (P3095) and participant (P710) is noted, and they have already used like this (crime (Q83267)→criminal (Q2159907), competition (Q841654)→contestant (Q5165152)) Midleading (talk) 08:26, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

•  Question Is this intended to contrast with/be complemented by a (potential future) property patient of action (Pyyy)? For example:
  Johann Philipp Reis demonstration of the Reis telephone to the Physical Society of Frankfurt (Q116504999)‘agent of action’ (Pxxx)Johann Philipp Reis (Q77124)
  Johann Philipp Reis demonstration of the Reis telephone to the Physical Society of Frankfurt (Q116504999)patient of action (Pyyy)Physikalischer Verein (Q2089433)
  (The ‘agent’ property would indicate who performs the action, the ‘patient’ property, to whom it happens.)―BlaueBlüte (talk) 03:15, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

  Isn't "patient of action" "object of action"? Lectrician1 (talk) 05:39, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

  Intuitively I’d have (in the telephone example) associated the telephone with ‘object’, but yes, ‘patient’ and ‘object’ are probably hard to keep apart in any consistent way. ―BlaueBlüte (talk) 08:43, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

•  Comment @Wd-Ryan, Midleading: Regarding the telephone-call example, note the close similarity with the dog-walking example in the proposal for a property “frame element” that attempts to capture actions from a frame-semantics angle. One might want to look into whether the frame-semantics approach is better-suited to statements over classes and the the approach proposed here, to statements over instances. At any rate, I think one and the same property should not be used for both class statements and instance statements. (A property like this here one but for class statements should have the distinctive interpretation of something like “instances have agents of type”.) Insofar I support the current choice of examples for this property proposal. ―BlaueBlüte (talk) 03:33, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
•  Support we need a generalized property to describe this kind of relationship, for example I suppose conjugation of gametes (Q11742512)→gamete (Q211050) and fertilization (Q14890574)→egg cell (Q1321695),sperm (Q17145). --Mzaki (talk) 01:25, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
•  Question How about broadening the use of perpetrator (P8031) instead, removing the (un)ethical assessment? One man's terrorist... Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 08:10, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

  @Maculosae tegmine lyncis Not a bad idea... I like it. @Arbnos @Wd-Ryan @Mzaki @BlaueBlüte @Midleading what do you think? Lectrician1 (talk) 00:28, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  I would strongly support this, I've been unable to add a group that performed an event without the implication that it was "immoral". It could be renamed to "done by". -wd-Ryan (Talk/Edits) 02:46, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  Having given this only a moderate amount of thought I’d say  no (to broadening perpetrator (P8031)), because the domain of perpetrator (P8031) includes (instances of) classes that are not subclasses of action (Q4026292) as proposed here, but for example of occurrence (Q1190554). And instances of occurrence (Q1190554) can have multiple agents, only some of which might be considered perpetrator (P8031) (say, versus ‘victim’), a distinction that users of perpetrator (P8031) probably rely on.
  But perpetrator (P8031) could perhaps be made a subproperty of this new property ‘agent of action’ (Pxxx) (although similar reservations might apply). ―BlaueBlüte (talk) 07:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

•  Support, an important property for the completeness of Wikidata.--Arbnos (talk) 22:44, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
•  Comment There is a more general method of indicating the participants of actions (including agents) proposed at Wikidata:WikiProject Events and Role Frames. Mahir256 (talk) 11:14, 7 March 2024 (UTC)