Collaboratively maintained knowledge graphs like Wikidata rely on property constraints to detect data inconsistencies.

This paper systematically formalizes potential repairs for Wikidata constraint violations, presenting a comprehensive taxonomy of repair strategies encompassing both instance-level (A-box) and terminological-level (T-box) changes. T-box repairs, which alter constraint definitions or Wikidata’s class hierarchy, can simultaneously address multiple violations and, to the best of our knowledge, have not been investigated in detail before.

We observe repairs over time and evaluate how specific patterns within our taxonomy are applied in practice.

Our analysis of historical data reveals insights into the prevalence of repair patterns in Wikidata’s collaborative environment.

The results indicate that T-box repairs are particularly relevant for certain constraint types and the overall consolidation of Wikidata, where modifying constraint definitions can reduce the number of recurring violations.

N. Ferranti, D. Guimarães, J.F. de Souza, A. Polleres, Formalizing Repairs for Wikidata Constraint Violations: A Taxonomy and Empirical Analysis, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 16140() (2025) 369-387.