Editing QAWiki:Guide/Mentions (section)

== Importance of mentions ==

What is a "mention"? Take the question "[[Item:Q19|''What is the capital of Ireland?'']]". We can identify two types of mentions in this case: (1) the phrase "''Ireland''" is an '''entity mention''' that refers to the Wikidata entity (aka item) [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27 Q27]; (2) the phrase "''capital''" is a '''property mention''' that refers to the Wikidata property [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P36 P36]. Adding mentions relates (sub)phrases of questions and question alises to elements of knowledge-bases such as Wikidata.

If you can add just a question, or a question and a query, then that's very welcome. However, adding mentions can be very useful for Question Answering systems in order to know which parts of the question address which entity or property on knowledge-bases such as Wikidata. This is a non-trivial task to do automatically, and in a highly precise and complete way. For example, it may not be immediately obvious if the phrase "''Ireland''" in a query refers to [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27 Q27], [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q22890 Q22890] or [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1140152 Q1140152] on Wikidata. Knowing how entities or properties are mentioned enable Question Answering systems to better generalise to answering similar questions that involve, for example, a different entity and property. Here we will provide guidelines on how to add mentions linking phrases of questions to specific entities and properties on Wikidata.