Freebase: Discussion about evening

Location: Split US centric properties off Location type?

2009-12-22T11:01:59.0018Z

What do you think of splitting the properties

off the Location type to one or more new types? If I understood the property descriptions correctly, these properties are US centric in one way or another and if every local name/id authority in the world was added to the Location type, it would be bloated.

Location: UN/LOCODE and NUTS

2009-12-22T10:56:43.0000Z

Is there any location type that holds information about the UN/LOCODE and/or the NUTS information of a location?

Football League Season: Include Sports League Season

2009-12-22T10:45:42.0013Z

I did the same for Handball League Season which I basically modelled after Football League Season a few months ago. Did not regret my choice so far: The type does not have a lot of properties itself, but it allowed me to add Sports Team Season Records to some handball teams. :)

Sports Association: Team/League association not dated

2009-12-22T10:39:10.0006Z

I don't get why the Sports Association type suggests that a sports team is a member of a league and that does not change. If it would change, all historical data of a league participation would be gone once the Freebase topic is brought up-to-date, and I don't think that's a good idea. :)

The way the Football League Participation and Football League Season are modeled makes much more sense - to me - which is why I originally modelled Handball League Season and Handball League Participation after those types.

Even though these custom built types for each sport seem to work relatively well right now, it seems to me that it our data would be better for a lot of things if there was a generic "Sports League Participation" type in the commons and if the Sports League Season refered to the sports league and the participating teams somehow.

I would really like to see the sports commons a bit more flexible than they ae right now. The sports leagues that I know of have some relegation and promotion to higher leagues etc., so a team's place in a league is not ever set in stone. :)

Computer Emulator: Add emulated peripherals?

2009-12-22T04:32:18.0005Z

Column: Unsyndicated columns?

2009-12-22T02:31:23.0000Z

Wait. Back up. The whole "collection of columns" idea was in response to your first reply to this thread, wherein you resisted the notion of creating topics for each individual column, and instead just "start with the column topic, give it a year range, and link that CVT to the collection", as you put it. My thought was that we could use one model for that approach, which would allow people to connect columns to collections without needing to go ahead and create topics for each individual instance of the column; we could still use the existing publication model alongside that to enable people who want to link individual columns. Yes? Or did I completely misunderstand your previous post?

Column: Unsyndicated columns?

2009-12-22T01:02:26.0009Z

Publication can be used to model a collection of columns where each column article is a published work. For columns that don't have individual titles, I'm guessing the topic name would follow TV talk show episodic name format -- like "January 10, 1996". After all, usually it's not the column in its entirety that's collected, but individual pieces, sometimes within a date range, sometimes grouped by subject matter.

Can you elaborate on how exactly "collection of columns" would link the collection to its content? It's not clear to me what the alternative would be.

Celebrity: Promote /popstr/celebrity to Commons?

2009-12-22T00:56:58.0009Z

There is an app currently used as a demo that depends on some specific schema, www.popstra.com. There are no developer resources to make changes to the app at this time.

So backward compatibility is still important for the owner of popstra and he doesn't want the sww_base properties (heat...) to be public. The plan was for those properties to be locked.

The provenance issue was a core requirement. Unfortunately the schema development was based on a non-freebase repository and time did not permit creating new schema when the switch was made to freebase.

It seems like the real issue is whether anyone plans to add lots of new data. The Popstra base has not been actively tended to for months. Does someone want to give it the love it deserves? If so, I'm sure the original creator of popstra would accommodate.

Celebrity: Promote /popstr/celebrity to Commons?

2009-12-22T00:56:09.0021Z

There is an app currently used as a demo that depends on some specific schema, www.popstra.com. There are no developer resources to make changes to the app at this time.

So backward compatibility is still important for the owner of popstra and he doesn't want the sww_base properties (heat...) to be public. The plan was for those properties to be locked.

Celebrity: Promote /popstr/celebrity to Commons?

2009-12-22T00:55:47.0025Z

There is an app currently used as a demo that depends on some specific schema, www.popstra.com. There are no developer resources to make changes to the app at this time.

So backward compatibility is still important for the owner of popstra and he doesn't want the sww_base properties (heat...) to be public. The plan was for those properties to be locked.

Music: Thematic catalogs

2009-12-21T22:38:15.0012Z

The changes under consideration are discussed on our wiki, here. I'm not sure how much of what you're considering would affect or be affected by them (although certainly just creating a schema for thematic catalogs shouldn't affect anything).

Music: Thematic catalogs

2009-12-21T22:14:34.0023Z

A further thought: if big changes to the music structures are planned for the next few months should I hold off doing this?

Music: Thematic catalogs

2009-12-21T22:13:27.0002Z

I think anyone who creates a thematic catalog is almost certainly, in fact, a musicologist but most musicologists do not create catalogs, so I'll change 'musicologist' in the schema to 'thematic catalog creator'.

'Thematic Catalog creator' could then be usefully picked up by anyone who wants to build a base of musicologists.

Celebrity: Promote /popstr/celebrity to Commons?

2009-12-21T21:59:18.0009Z

I second both of Phil's concerns. The first is addressable by simply moving the properties we want to keep to the commons Celebrity type, and leaving the rest on the Popstra one; as long as we kept the old property keys, legacy queries should still work. The second is rather more problematic, since the properties in question are on CVTs. If backward-compatibility is needed with the original Popstra model, I'm not sure what to do with those properties.

There's also another issue that many of the properties denormalize properties on other types: religion (although the primary religion property [on the Person type] is not date-mediated) and endorsements for sure, and possibly some others. These would have to be migrated, but again, if backward-compatibility is important, it may be problematic.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Generalisation of Catalog DataBase

2009-12-21T21:25:20.0015Z

Hi Simon, I'm definitely interested in collaborating on catalogs of composers. I've not had any time to look at your work yet and I've been focused on studying the Bach catalogs -- I've been learning about the complexities around BWV, something that had seemed very simple to me. Over the vacation break, however, I hope to have more time to put into Bach + Freebase.

Column: Unsyndicated columns?

2009-12-21T21:25:08.0030Z

So your suggestion is that the instance of Column itself would be the Published Work? My issue with that is that a long-running column may generate multiple books. For atomic works (stories, essays, poems, etc.), all Publication instances containing that work represent publications of the same single work. However, with Columns, you can't make that assertion -- each Book publication is going to be a completely different subset of articles. It's similar to saying that a Literary Series should be a Published Work if part of the series is collected in book form.

Column: Unsyndicated columns?

2009-12-21T20:47:34.0006Z

Why would we need a new type for "collection of columns"? Publication is used to model collection of short stories today. I don't see why it wouldn't work for columns.

Column: Unsyndicated columns?

2009-12-21T20:12:55.0013Z

Great. Here's where I think we stand with promoting this schema to the commons:

Figure out how to model both syndicated and unsyndicated columns
Create a type for Collection of Columns
Document types and properties.

Did I miss anything?

Music: Thematic catalogs

2009-12-21T20:09:58.0006Z

I second Phil's comment about musicologist. Most musicologists haven't created a thematic catalog, so it would seem a bit odd to have a type for musicologists with only one property which didn't related to the majority of them. (There are lots of commons types with properties that only apply to some of the instances, but those properties aren't typically the only property of the type.) In general, though, I think this would be a useful schema to have in the commons.

Imports/exports by industry: Export Amount property for Industry

2009-12-21T19:07:22.0006Z

It's for a monetary value; I've updated the help text to reflect this.

Imports/exports by industry: Export Amount property for Industry

2009-12-21T18:29:38.0000Z

Is the AMOUNT property to be described as TPY ? Tons per Year ? (If so, can someone please add it ?)

In building more on the PORTS base, I'm increasingly coming across bits of statistics concerning imports and exports and would be willing to fill in the blanks for some of these as I find them. I'd like someone to clarify this property for me in advance.

Example : http://www.freebase.com/view/en/reydarfjordur (Aluminum statistic gathered from ALCOA publication)

Thanks! -THAD

Computer Emulator: Add emulated peripherals?

2009-12-21T12:26:26.0013Z

One thing it would be nice to be able to model for some work I'm doing is which peripherals are emulated by each emulator - any objections to adding "Peripherals emulated" and "Peripheral classes emulated" to this type, and probably the reverse properties as well?

Celebrity: Promote /popstr/celebrity to Commons?

2009-12-20T23:00:59.0006Z

-1 for promoting this in its current form. There's the basis of a good schema here, but this isn't it yet. I raised a number of issues in this mail, none of which seem to have been addressed. More generally:

There seem to be a mixture of application-specific properties ("heat", "interest") and general properties in the types - promoting the latter makes sense, but I think the former should stay out of the commons.
Do we want to go down the route of having every property being a CVT with source and date? I think everyone acknowledges data provenance is an issue, but I'm not convinced this is the right solution.

Music: Thematic catalogs

2009-12-20T22:40:29.0000Z

One more thought: is someone who creates a thematic catalog automatically a musicologist? (I have no opinion on this due to a complete lack of knowing what I'm talking about). If not, references to "musicologist" should probably become "thematic catalog creator".

Celebrity: Promote /popstr/celebrity to Commons?

2009-12-20T22:36:44.0013Z

I support it as well, as I originally created the commons celebrity type and acknowledge the clear superiority of the popstra ones.

Celebrity: Promote /popstr/celebrity to Commons?

2009-12-20T22:36:31.0000Z

I support it as well, as I originally created the commons celebrity type and acknowledge the clear superiority of the popstra ones.

Celebrity: Promote /popstr/celebrity to Commons?

2009-12-20T22:29:54.0014Z

+1 to this happening?

Column: Unsyndicated columns?

2009-12-19T13:19:37.0030Z

current column type does not specify type of publication; so magazine, newspaper, and newsletter columns would fit in current schema.

+1 to new type "collection of columns." Stephen Jay Gould's books that began as columns in Natural History come to mind.

Music: Thematic catalogs

2009-12-19T10:14:13.0018Z

If you haven't already, it's definitely worth reading the Commons page on the wiki. Generally, this looks good to me, but a few mostly nitpick comments:

Documentation: none of the properties of thematic catalog are documented. Musicologist isn't documented at all.
Documentation part 2: the type description for thematic catalog doesn't really tell me anything that the name of the type doesn't. What is this type for? What sort of things should be typed as this type?
Musicologist should probably include /people/person.
Are we sure there are no thematic catalogs which refer to more than one composer?
Consider if any of the properties should be disambiguators.
I don't really see the value in having the underscore in the musicologist_s key.

Hope this helps!

Music: Thematic catalogs

2009-12-19T05:57:26.0037Z

I've built a base of thematic catalogs (for classical composers) http://www.freebase.com/type/schema/user/simonhill/default_domain/thematic_catalog

Does this belong in music commons and/or should there a reciprical link to it for composers?

I'd like to get reference to the database showing up under each composers - without having to have separate (duplicative) composer topics in my db.

I'd be grateful for any help or ideas.

Simon

Johann Sebastian Bach: Generalisation of Catalog DataBase

2009-12-19T05:39:14.0018Z

Hi I've developed thematic catalogs base to hold high-level details of the thematic catalogs of composers - inc. BWV, of course.

I'm just figuring out how to link it into existing types (composer/musicologist/etc.) and considering how to extend it to allow bases of composers works. IS this something you would be interested in collaborating on? Maybe we could generalize the existing BWV base somehow, and them make it available hold works by any composer with appropriate opus and/or catalog numbers. A suitably filtered view could be available for any composer - or interestingly e.g. lyricist (i.e. which composers composed to words by xxx and when!)

I would like to link into it from a Songbird (open source music player) add-on to provide titling/info display functionality and, eventually, maybe some sort of data feed from Songbird tracks.

I'm new to freebase so just finding my feet. I'm finding the structural stuff OK but am not sure how to fit into existing material!

Grateful for any thoughts etc.

Simon

Column: Unsyndicated columns?

2009-12-18T00:23:45.0013Z

This would additionally require a new type "collection of columns" or the like, which would have an included type of Book.

Column: Unsyndicated columns?

2009-12-18T00:22:24.0013Z

A property on the Column type for "book collection" or "collected in" would answer your use case. Reifying individual columns using the current publication model would answer mine. I see no reason both couldn't exist side-by-side.

Column: Unsyndicated columns?

2009-12-17T22:08:07.0005Z

I was just pondering how to link columns to collection of columns published as books. Must topics for individual columns be created, or can I just start with the column topic, give it a year range, and link that CVT to the collection? I can't imagine entering individual columns for Herb Caen, for example, whose 50+ year career produced columns at a frequency of 5-6 days a week, even if I could find and correlate that data. Besides, his columns are not reprinted verbatim but heavily edited to omit anything too newsy and rearranged for flow. Technically the books don't really contain the original columns.

Column: Unsyndicated columns?

2009-12-17T19:55:55.0005Z

Capturing non-newspaper columns is a good idea. Some columns don't really have regular authors, just a regular periodical (the New Yorker has a slew of these: Talk of the Town, Onward & Upward with the Arts, Shouts & Murmurs, etc.), which we should keep in mind as a use case.

One additional thought I had is that if someone wanted to create topics for instances of a column, they could type the Column as a Literary Series. Not suggesting it be included as an included type, since it's definitely going to be the minority case (although I wish it weren't -- I could have once saved myself a lot of time if someone had entered each one of JB Priestley's "Thoughts in the Wilderness" columns individually somewhere, and further entered which ones were collected in the book of the same name. I'm just saying.).

Consumer product: Games "based on" existing works (e.g. films)

2009-12-15T23:09:07.0000Z

I thought about using the Adaptation type too...it would require an uncommon if not unusual interpretation of the word "adaptation". The Lego Star Wars games do follow the films' plot line closely, so I suppose it would make sense. Definitely will cotype with Work of Fiction.

Consumer product: Games "based on" existing works (e.g. films)

2009-12-15T08:15:39.0013Z

I'd use adaptation: this game is an adaptation of Episodes I-III while this one is an adaptation of Episodes IV - VI, and they're both works of fiction set in the Star Wars Universe (without personally caring "which" Star Wars universe that is, but I appreciate other people might).

I'm not sure that the LEGO theme and the video game series should be the same topic.

Consumer product: Games "based on" existing works (e.g. films)

2009-12-15T00:45:51.0005Z

Hi,

How should I use to link a video game that either exists within the realm of or extends that of an existing work, such as a film? For example, I would like to say that the Lego Star Wars game series is derived from the Star Wars films, and is a part of the Star Wars franchise. There are several Franchise types but none pertains to video games. There's also Consumer Product with property Product Line that can probably be used to link books and films and games and toys of the same theme together.

Another possibility is to use Fictional Universe to indicate that a game is defined within a fictional universe. However, some fandoms are quite sensitive about Canon vs. Expanded Universe. Video games can be problematic when it comes to continuity.

Suggestions?

Employment tenure: Employment Tenure...variation of?

2009-12-12T12:02:58.0030Z

I'd really rather not end up with two properties to determine who worked where when: that's just going to make the life of anybody searching for data that much harder. I know it's not perfect, but how about just setting "start end" and "end date" to the year in question?

Employment tenure: Employment Tenure...variation of?

2009-12-12T00:00:05.0004Z

Well, here it is -- not so enlightening after all. The main issue, schema-wise, is that the same problem potentially exists for all types with a date range, and is related to the perennial "circa" problem with single dates.

Employment tenure: Employment Tenure...variation of?

2009-12-11T23:37:39.0047Z

But the admins are always open to suggestions for improvements! The best place to make the suggestion is on the discussion board for the type in question.

On the larger question of known good dates, I'm pretty sure this has come up before. Let me see if I can find the old discussions, in case they shed any light on the issue.

Board Member: Committee Membership

2009-12-11T23:34:15.0040Z

Is there any reason that committee membership is not a part of this type?

Employment tenure: Employment Tenure...variation of?

2009-12-11T22:47:29.0026Z

Spencer: I thought you were in Toronto? If so, I am in fact planning to be there in February and was going to talk to you about having a Freebase meetup while I'm there. It would probably be during the week starting Feb 8th.

Employment tenure: Employment Tenure...variation of?

2009-12-11T22:38:25.0029Z

welcome to freebase dan~ the pink stuff comes from the schema documentation, which in the case of /people/person is locked with admin permissions so its only possible to improve documentation for types that you've created yourself... frustrating i know, because schema builders don't always properly document things. @workshop - lucky! those guys never seem to travel up to northern Ontario....

Board Member: Company vs. Organization, Huh?

2009-12-11T22:27:23.0024Z

Last time I checked a company was an organization.

Why not make this: Entity (Company, Institution, Not-For-Profit, Group of People, etc....) Entity Type: (See above)

I'm guessing that for-profit, not-for-profit, religious, public, private, illegal, etc., are enumerated in another type, but as I am new to this there is a high probability that I am wrong.

Employment tenure: Employment Tenure...variation of?

2009-12-11T22:03:34.0009Z

...could also just name it During.

@ this point I am just getting my feet wet with FB (what's the preferred acronym that avoids confusion with Facebook?); Yesterday I attended the New York Freebase Workshop http://wiki.freebase.com/wiki/Freebase_Workshop_NYC_2009 where I met: Robert Cook, Jamie Taylor, and Will Moffat

Alas, I am currently doing my edits by hand and I am not a possessor of a large data-set with Freebase Potential...@ least not anything obvious, yet.

Here's a new question: Where can I suggest, or edit, the Help Text that displayed when you click on the (?) button...here's a link to a screengrab: http://aviary.com/artists/dme212/creations/freebase_helptext

--Dan

Employment tenure: Employment Tenure...variation of?

2009-12-11T21:34:49.0034Z

i like this idea. we could just hide the property. (cc-ing jeff) do you have much data?

Employment tenure: Employment Tenure...variation of?

2009-12-11T20:45:35.0031Z

Currently, Employment Tenure is defined by two dates that connote the start and end of the tenure. I would like to be able to add supporting data to what is an unknown tenure that would assist future contributors. I suggest that we add a field called KnownToBeInPositionDuring. In this manner I could add a year that I believe someone held a position, but was not necessarily the first, or last, year of their employment. Alternatively we could always resort to the handy-dandy multi-purpose field name that is suitable for just about every occasion: Notes.

Football League Season: Include Sports League Season

2009-12-10T12:10:29.0013Z

I would like to propose the Sports League Season type to be an included type of Football League Season. This should integrate the soccer commons a bit more with the sports commons, and ensure that all football seasons are added to the sports commons.

I believe this should be a non-breaking change, so I'll do it in the next couple of days if there are no objections.