Talk:Q43229

This item is suggested as allowed value for property P107. Discuss at Property talk:P107. Mange01 (talk) 17:35, 15 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The use of this class does not relate well to its classification. It is used as the superclass of both business and restaurant, for example, but neither are correct instances of social group, the superclass of this class. Something needs to be done to fix this issue, but it is not immediately apparent what. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 19:28, 5 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Hannolans

There are many subclases of organization (Q43229). Making organization (Q43229) a subclass of group of humans (Q16334295) means that instances of each of these are groups of humans.

So how is an instance of shopping center (Q11315) a group of humans? How about city of the Philippines (Q104157)? archive (Q166118)? herbarium (Q181916)? consortium (Q194166)? public–private partnership (Q221096)? community health center (Q569500)?

Either the subclass link to group of humans (Q16334295) needs to be removed or any of these subclasses whose instances are not groups of humans need to not be subclasses of organization (Q43229), along with any other subclasses of organization (Q43229) whose instances are not all groups of humans. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 20:15, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted this because many constraint warnings arose. For example the property 'Works in collection' are created by human or 'group of people', including organisations, companies etc. I am aware that in Wikidata people and locations are mixed (we have the city as a geograhic location, but also as an organisation). If you have suggestions to improve the situation that would be great, but at the moment there are several properties relying on the constraint check people/group of people. --Hannolans (talk) 20:26, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, one obvious solution is to fix the constraints. If works in a collection are created by organizations, and not just by groups of humans, then the constraint is wrong. Fixing up wrong modelling by adding other wrong modelling is not a solution. One change that might go a long way to fixing up the situation is to change the subject type constraint for has works in the collection (P6379) to directly allow instances of organization (Q43229) (and maybe not include group of humans (Q16334295)).

In the end, there are lots of organizations that are not groups of humans in any sense and lots more that are only groups of humans if considered in very weird ways. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 20:38, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Hannolans, CV213: The definition of an organization is:

• English: An organization or organisation (, is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose.
• Nederlands: Een organisatie is een doelgerichte samenbundeling van kennis, vaardigheden en kracht tussen enkele (meestal drie of meer) personen die primair middelen en activiteiten aanwendt om te voorzien in de behoefte aan producten en/of diensten in haar omgeving.
• Français : Une organisation est en sciences sociales un groupe social formé d'individus en interaction, ayant un but collectif, mais dont les préférences, les informations, les intérêts et les connaissances peuvent diverger : une entreprise, une administration publique, un syndicat, un parti politique, une association, etc.

So it's defined of being a group of humans. Restored. Multichill (talk) 18:25, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Multichill, Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Hannolans:

1. https://schema.org/Organization "An organization such as a school, NGO, corporation, club, etc."
2. http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/OBI_0000245
   1. "An entity that can bear roles, has members, and has a set of organization rules. Members of organizations are either organizations themselves or individual people. Members can bear specific organization member roles that are determined in the organization rules. The organization rules also determine how decisions are made on behalf of the organization by the organization members."
   2. "editor note: BP: The definition summarizes long email discussions on the OBI developer, roles, biomaterial and denrie branches. It leaves open if an organization is a material entity or a dependent continuant, as no consensus was reached on that. The current placement as material is therefore temporary, in order to move forward with development. Here is the entire email summary, on which the definition is based: 1) there are organization_member_roles (president, treasurer, branch editor), with individual persons as bearers 2) there are organization_roles (employer, owner, vendor, patent holder) 3) an organization has a charter / rules / bylaws, which specify what roles there are, how they should be realized, and how to modify the charter/rules/bylaws themselves. It is debatable what the organization itself is (some kind of dependent continuant or an aggregate of people). This also determines who/what the bearer of organization_roles' are. My personal favorite is still to define organization as a kind of 'legal entity', but thinking it through leads to all kinds of questions that are clearly outside the scope of OBI. Interestingly enough, it does not seem to matter much where we place organization itself, as long as we can subclass it (University, Corporation, Government Agency, Hospital), instantiate it (Affymetrix, NCBI, NIH, ISO, W3C, University of Oklahoma), and have it play roles. This leads to my proposal: We define organization through the statements 1 - 3 above, but without an 'is a' statement for now. We can leave it in its current place in the is_a hierarchy (material entity) or move it up to 'continuant'. We leave further clarifications to BFO, and close this issue for now."

So, what is certain, it is a continuant. There is no indication that it is a subclass of an object aggregate (group of humans). Humans can be members of an organization, but that doesn't mean an organization is a subclassOf group of humans. CV213 (talk) 19:04, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. It appears that the reason to make this a subclass of group of humans is so that some constraints don't complain. That that's backward. Instead of doing something wrong to this class to quiet the constraints, the constraints should be fixed. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 22:56, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Support I work a lot with organization items in Wikidata, and I don't think organization needs to subclass group of humans, the arguments above seem convincing to me. ArthurPSmith (talk) 21:42, 13 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Multichill, Hannolans: It looks as if the problem may be that there are two views of this class. One view is that it is only for social groups, and thus correctly a subclass of group of humans. The other view is that it is for any kind of organized entity, so not necessarily a group of humans. Evidence for the latter includes the direct subclasses shopping center (Q11315), transmission system operator (Q112046), archive (Q166118), exchange (Q179076), herbarium (Q181916), consortium (Q194166), corporate group (Q197952), public–private partnership (Q221096), public institution (Q294163), alternative trading system (Q438711), regional Internet registry (Q463080), nation (Q597897), financial institution (Q650241), photographic studio (Q672070), summer camp program (Q876852), computer manufacturer (Q1055701), credit bureau (Q1187145), railway division (Q1311569), bicycle-sharing system (Q1358919), and many more that are not groups of humans. Note particularly that company (Q783794) is a subclass of this class. So something needs to be done. Given the prevalence of direct subclasses that are not groups of humans it appears to me that the best approach is to break the link to groups of humans for this class and then use a different class where the link to group of humans is appropriate. As far as I can tell association (Q15911314) is available for this use. I'll do the first part of this in the very near future. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 13:04, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Only groups of humans organize, not buildings or other things. You're trying to make something black and white that isn't. It's not appropriate to break this link at all. Multichill (talk) 16:28, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How is a company a group of humans? How is a corporate group a group of humans? How is a computer manufacturer a group of humans? These are all currently subclasses of organization. So there is very strong evidence that organization should not be a subclass of group of humans. Maybe at one time it was the intent of organization (Q43229) that it be restricted to groups of humans but this intent has been lost.

And it is definitely not the case that only groups of humans organize. Animals and even plants organize, animals into packs, for example. Even inanimate object organize, into crystals, for example. And even if these were not examples of organizing, the result of an organization process, for example to create the United Nations or to create General Motors, is not the group and thus in no way needs to be a subclass of group of humans. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 19:16, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that most of the examples of subclasses are wrong. shopping center (Q11315) is definitely not a subclass of organization (and by the way, neither a subclass of building). It's a physical object defined by its use, and should be a subclass of facility, which can in turn be operated by an organization. Arpyia (talk) 19:41, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

shopping center (Q11315) is problematic, I agree, but what about company (Q783794) and the others that are definitely organizations but not groups of humans? Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 20:50, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

shopping center (Q11315) is also an organisation. They create promotion materials and building plans for example. I connect creators of museum collections to Wikidata with posters, postcards etc. Or we should split place and organisation. --Hannolans (talk) 12:52, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]