Wikidata talk:WikiProject Ontology/Mereology Task Force

Applications for the Mereology Task Force

This page gathers applications. It’s not a competitive selection; it helps us match each contributor to the level where they’ll be most effective.

Roles

• Core Task Force: assumes substantial responsibility (leading tasks, drafting proposals, maintaining docs).
• Observers: may join meetings voluntarily and contribute; generally don’t set agenda items.

Please answer the prompts below by using "Add Topic". (My example application follows on this page.)

• Wikidata experience
  • Summarise your background or your interests in 2–5 sentences; add links to your user page, key projects, or tools. (No worries if you have little experience, this is just to get a broad idea about your background)
• Availability (Nov 2025–Jun 2026)
  • Weekly meeting likely on Tuesdays, ~60 minutes, within 14:00–18:00 UTC. Can you join most sessions? Include your time zone and any constraints.
• Time commitment
  • Average hours/week you intend to contribute. This helps us plan scope and milestones.
• Mereology projects
  • Ongoing work or project ideas you’d like to pursue with this group.
• Budget needs (if any)
  • For the second part, starting in January, we may include an item for your budgetary needs if you need it.
• Telegram contact
  • If you use Telegram, please either write your Telegram name here, or reach out to me (@Egezort)
• Anything else
  • (Optional)

Egezort (talk) 07:47, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Core Task Force Application: Egezort

• Wikidata experience
  • I am a Wikidata researcher. I have worked on Turkish Lexemes for some time. I co-led the Wikidata Ontology Course. I have completed the Open Refine course.
• Availability (Nov 2025–Jun 2026)
  • I will be available on Tuesdays almost all weeks, I will let the group know in exceptional cases.
• Time commitment
  • I intend to spend on average around 10 hours each week on this effort.
• Mereology projects
  • I want to work on separating class/individual relationships within the "has part(s)" property.
• Budget needs (if any)
  • I need 200 USD for illustrations of some parthood relationships, so that the distinctions are intuitively clear to other editors.
• Telegram contact
  • My Telegram handle is: @Egezort
• Anything else
  • I am in the BFO mailing list, and there are discussions about Mereology there. I can try to document them for our project, but I'm not commiting to it.

Egezort (talk) 08:39, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Core Task Force Application: KnowledgeGraphUser

• Wikidata experience
  • I am a Wikidata researcher. I have worked on the Wordnet-Wikidata mapping project and I have also done some research work on mereology in the context of Wordnets and how it can be applied to Wikidata.
• Availability (Nov 2025–Jun 2026)
  • I will be available on Tuesdays most weeks, after working hours (Central European Time).
• Time commitment
  • I intend to spend on time on this project, depending on my availability.
• Mereology projects
  • I want to work on ways that the existing mereology in Wordnets can be used to improve mereology in Wikidata.
• Budget needs (if any)
  • For ad hoc expenses that may arise due to the project. Nothing specific at the moment.
• Anything else
  • I also have a strong interest in BFO, and how it fits in with Wikidata and the concepts related to mereology.

KnowledgeGraphUser (talk) 20:16, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Core Task Force Application: kind data

Wikidata experience I am a librarian with over ten years of experience working with metadata in private, public, and research libraries. I have been editing Wikidata since 2020 and have over 11,500 edits. The bulk of my work in Wikidata has centered on taking open data sets and adding them to Wikidata in an effort to make the more useful. The open data sets I selected are related to K-12 education in New York City. More recently, I am experimenting with BIBFRAME and Wikidata interoperability within the bibliographic domain. User: kind_data

Availability (Nov 2025–Jun 2026) I work full-time and lead large, multi-institution collaborations, sitting on and chairing many committees related to open library data. Wikidata is both a hobby and related to my professional work, and I dedicate as much time as I am able.

Time commitment I can probably devote a few hours a week to this work, some weeks may have more availablity than others.

Mereology projects I want to lend my knowledge of how parts work within the bibliographic domain to this work, and better improve what is happening in Wikidata (while also learning about the current status)

Budget needs (if any) N/A

Telegram contact My Telegram handle is: @kind_data

Anything else N/A

Kind data (talk) 14:45, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Observer Application: DutchTreat

• Wikidata experience
  • I am a Wikipedia editor and Wikimedia Commons contributor. I use Wikidata to support these projects. Over the last few years, I worked on a few small Wikidata projects using Open Refine.
• Availability (Nov 2025–Jun 2026)
  • Not available in December 2025 and April 2026.
• Time commitment
  • Limited.
• Mereology projects
  • None.
• Budget needs (if any)
  • None
• Telegram contact
  • ...sent privately..
• Anything else
  • Looking to learn. Want to better understand this domain for personal development.

DutchTreat (talk) 11:32, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Core Task Force Application: Moebeus

Wikidata experience I have worked on modelling and cleaning up Wikidata music items for some time, mainly focussing on recorded music. I run a dedicated WD music Telegram chat. I can be available on Tuesdays (European time) or any other day the task force settles on.

Time commitment I already live in Wikidata and intend to spend the time it takes on this effort.

Mereology projects Looking to work on standardizing musical group membership relationships, moving away from using the "has part(s)" / "part of" properties.

Budget needs (if any) None.

Telegram contact My Telegram handle is: @moebeus

Anything else I like the nightlife but I rarely boogie (P3113 = Q170406).

Moebeus (talk) 12:28, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Observer Application: RVA2869

• Wikidata experience
  • I mainly contribute to WD:GD and some other small things.
• Time commitment
  • If there are tasks that need to be completed, I will make sure they get done. But no strict time commitment.
• Mereology projects
  • Do has part(s) (P527) and part of (P361) still have a valid place in wikidata?
• Anything else
  • Don't overthink it. Just Do It (Q10854602)

RVA2869 (talk) 17:28, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Observer Application: Vmartyanov

• Wikidata experience 1,5 years of editing Wikidata. Main interest - history of science and industry in USSR
• Availability (Nov 2025–Jun 2026) not sure I can be on voice/video calls
• Time commitment 20-30 hours a week
• Mereology projects I need a way to add information about organization structure over time. For example, how faculties and academic departments inside a university are split, emerged, combined, disappeared and so on.
• Budget needs (if any) don't need
• Telegram contact @Bembidion

Vmartyanov (talk) 17:48, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Vmartyanov, thank you very much for your application!

When we talked through Telegram, I had suggested applying for the Observer position instead of the Core Task Force, since you were not available for the meetings. But seeing that you have made a commitment for a lot of hours per week, I would suggest this:

We can send you recordings of the meetings we do. (The regular meeting recordings will only be taken for this reason and will be destroyed after the project ends) And you can provide a written response to the things you find interesting, and therefore will have participated in the meeting, indirectly.

If this works for you, I would suggest the Core Task Force position for you. If it doesn't work, we can keep you as an observer. Please let me know of your decision. Egezort (talk) 14:02, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Observer Application: Mesteranna

Wikidata experience. ~ 1 year, I mostly edit Wikidata both manually and via Open Refine. I am a trained librarian and data steward, I am the ontology modeller of a small startup.

Time commitment: A few hours/week, my work is quite busy but this topic is very important for us

Mereology projects: We already have a way we handle merology but are open to discussion and improvement.

Telegram contact My Telegram handle is: @mesteranna Mesteranna (talk) 15:52, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Core Task Force Application: Peter F. Patel-Schneider

Wikidata experience I have been working on cleaning the Wikidata ontology for several years. I have been benchmarking the performance of SPARQL engines on Wikidata, to help in the changeover from Blazegraph.

Availability I can make meetings most times. I am in the North America East Coast timezone.

Time commitment This is a core part of what I want to do in Wikidata. I expect to devote several hours per week on the project.

Mereology projects My highest current interest is understanding and improving how Wikidata handles the difference between individuals and classes.

Budget needs (if any) None.

Telegram contact My Telegram handle is: @Oeter Patel-Schneider

Anything else

Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 14:26, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Core Task Force Application: Acrion-dev

Wikidata experience I am the developer of zelph, an open-source semantic network system optimized for Wikidata integration, inference, and contradiction detection in knowledge graphs. I've been working on this for years, including processing the full Wikidata dump (1.4 TB JSON) and identifying mereological inconsistencies like part-whole relations. My work aligns with Wikidata's ontology, and I've participated in the Ontology Cleaning Task Force meetings. Key project: https://github.com/acrion/zelph, with Wikidata scripts like wikidata.zph for mereology rules.

Availability (Nov 2025–Jun 2026) I'm based in Switzerland (UTC+1 from late October). I can join most Tuesday sessions. From 14:25 to 14:45 UTC I am not available due to family commitments (to be precise: 15:25 to 15:45 Swiss time, so the corresponding UTC time changes based on daylight saving zones).

Time commitment I can commit 5-10 hours/week on average, depending on my other projects, including the Wikimedia Rapid Fund for zelph starting in November. This includes using zelph for systematic mereology analysis.

Mereology projects I'd like to apply zelph to detect and resolve contradictions in Wikidata's part-whole modeling, building on my inference rules for transitivity, opposites, and facets. My idea is to integrate zelph as a tool for the task force to scan Wikidata for mereological issues.

Budget needs (if any) None.

Telegram contact My Telegram handle is: @acrion_dev

Anything else I'm excited about using zelph as infrastructure for the task force—it's already capable of finding logical connections and contradictions in Wikidata's mereology.

Acrion-dev (talk) 15:17, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Core Task Force Application: Adaniel

• Wikidata experience
  • I am a data engineer, and I build professional Wikibase instances with harmonised ontologies to library, archive, musuem, and music ontologies. I have one of the oldest accounts on the Hungarian Wikidata, and I have experience with Wikidata, Lexeme, and Commons.
• Availability (Nov 2025–Jun 2026)
  • I will be available on most Tuesdays.
• Time commitment
  • It is difficult to say without an established work plan. This task force appears to be aligned with some of our internal research and then I can use valuable time parallel. I run a small company that is providing Wikibase instances to the cultural sector among others. Until know I used to have an R&D grant that allowed me to participate in open source or open knowledge projects, but it will run out in January 2026 and then I can only participate in work that we can also utilise in our small company together with Anna.
• Mereology projects
  • I am particularly interested in developing suitable subproperties of part of relations that are suitable for curated collections, and various aspects of immaterial objects like books, sheet music, albums, photographs. I can offer testing on our well-maintained but small and fast Wikibase instances before scaling up to Wikidata.
• Budget needs (if any)
  • Until the work co-incides with our internal development efforts, not. Mereology is important for supporting various GLAM users to stay connected to the Wikidata universe. If there would be a significant time commitment on a not yet defined task, it may need some reimbursement. Also, I think it would be good to publish results of this working group and have budget for publication fees (but that is not my individual concern.)
• Telegram contact
  • My Telegram handle is: @antaldaniel

Adaniel 15:01, 22 November 2025 (UTC) [I applied earlier via Telegram]

ingredients

There are a bunch of recipes on Wikibooks (Q367), which can help to 'part out' the ingredients for the dishes described therein. Similarly, s:category:herbals may be fruitful. Arlo Barnes (talk) 04:27, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Hello, thank you very much for your interest! (Feel free to apply to the task force if you want to be a part of it)

Things like has listed ingredient (P4543) are definitely relevant. I think it's mostly a Class-Class relationship (unless we have something like "the winning plate in Masterchef 2010 had these ingredients", making it an Instance-Class relationship.

There can also be a separate discussion on whether a recipe counts as a proper "has part(s)"/"part of" relationship. These are certainly interesting, so thank you for bringing them up. Feel free to write your thoughts about these here, and we may address them in our meetings. Egezort (talk) 15:15, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Characters, probably not a single issue

See Wikidata_talk:WikiProject_Ontology#Letters_composition_mess, "part of/has part" used both for characters with different meanings, one correct, one incorrect.

Probably multiple instances of that problem. author  TomT0m / talk page 22:32, 15 December 2025 (UTC)