jeff

Stephen Colbert: Stephen Colbert for President

2008-07-25T19:06:10.0000Z

flippity floo!

Scott Peterson: Split

2008-07-25T18:57:13.0017Z

I don't think this particular Scott Peterson is a TV Writer.

Special Agent Dale Cooper: same character

2008-07-25T18:50:29.0017Z

different topics were created for the same character that appeared in the TV show and the film - these should be merged

A Darkness at Sethanon: A Darkness at Sethanon

2008-07-25T09:38:41.0017Z

Plz remove this: A Darkness at Sethanon . because it is aaready created with full detail.

William M. Daley: merge

2008-07-25T06:13:48.0017Z

Sorry, I searched under Daly so didn't catch that it was a duplicate until I realized my error. Please merge.

Publishing: Possible revision for Journal Articles

2008-07-24T23:20:13.0005Z

Spurred on by an aside that spatialed made in some discussion post awhile back (I can't locate the post), I'm considering revising the way that we model journal issues. Currently, each issue has its own topic, which links to both the journal and the articles contained in that issue. (See
http://www.freebase.com/type/schema/book/journal_issue) The main problems with this format are that it is cumbersome to enter data, and also that most bibliographic sources are concerned primarily with the article and the journal, relegating the issue to a series of strings (volume, issue, date). This latter issue might make integration with standard bibliographic schemas a bit cumbersome, although it wouldn't be insurmountable.

As an experiment, though, I thought I'd try to see what a model that eliminated the issue type entirely looked like. Here are the results:
http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000008cd1edd.

I've replaced the issue type with a CVT that connects the article and the journal, and includes the standard bibliographic data of Volume, issue, date, issue date extra, and pages ("issue date extra" is something I had to make up for journals that aren't published on a schedule that translates into mm/dd/yyyy). Journal articles have both Scholarly Work and Written Work as included types, although a journal article can also be a review, editorial, letter or other type of writing.

The only real disadvantage that I see to this is that constructing the contents of a given issue will be harder -- users will have to query on a combination of several fields (volume, issue, etc.) to find what they're looking for.

I'd love to hear what people think about this. If it seems to work, I might do the same thing for newspaper issues.

This is also being discussed on the data-modelers mailing list: http://lists.freebase.com/pipermail/data-modeling/2008-July/000989.html

International Affairs: Split

2008-07-24T22:49:16.0010Z

The field of study should be split from the journal.

Government: Linking Politicians to Parties

2008-07-24T18:35:59.0012Z

Alright, well thanks. I just figured I'd ask because the party pages are pretty sparse despite the fact that many politicians are identified as members of the parties.

Government: Linking Politicians to Parties

2008-07-24T17:54:54.0000Z

To answer the more general question implied here: There isn't any way to auto-fill properties based the contents of other properties.

Government: Linking Politicians to Parties

2008-07-24T17:08:48.0012Z

It’s kind of a fuzzy question. In some states, anyone registered with a party can run as a candidate with that party, even if they aren’t properly a member or even completely misunderstand the party’s position (such as Ken Hamidi, a Libertarian candidate in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall, who registered Libertarian believing that to be a socialist party). In other states and in many countries, the party as a group chooses its candidates, and so they are necessarily affiliated. Cross-nomination also makes things weird; very few candidates of the Liberal or Conservative parties in New York state are members of those parties, for instance.

Yale University: yale college and yale university?

2008-07-24T14:54:09.0000Z

Wikipedia tends to classify by the broadest institution, so there are a lot of actors associated with Yale University instead of the drama school. I think it's fine that we start with the lower-precision classification and as data becomes available, replace it with the more specific.

Government: Linking Politicians to Parties

2008-07-24T14:50:33.0017Z

Is there any way, besides manually adding each politician to a party's "members" properties, to link a politician to a party? For instance, I have added a lot of campaigns. It should stand to reason that if a candidate runs as a Republican, that person has at some point been a Republican.

Apple Inc.: What will be the next bullet of Apple Inc.

2008-07-24T14:32:34.0012Z

this is the interesting questions, I also wondering what would be the next bullet of Apple

Azriel Graeber: speaking tour

2008-07-24T14:06:36.0017Z

Has anyone heard anything about Graeber's public speaking tour. A friend of mine told me he was producing tapes teaching people how to be as successful as he is, and that they were being taped live. thanks

Apple Inc.: What will be the next bullet of Apple Inc.

2008-07-24T07:38:50.0017Z

Apple have bring 3G iphone to the market, any idea about what's the next bullet of Apple

Location: Contains/Contained By

2008-07-23T15:44:01.0000Z

Can you put a limit on this? I always see more than one level on these items and its frustrating. Can you guys just cap that field at 1?

Umpire: Film character and fictional character should be split off

2008-07-23T15:25:33.0012Z

These refer to a specific instance of "Umpire" as a character in a film and should be moved to a distinct topic.

Publishing: "Genre" as properties of "Book" and "Short Story"

2008-07-22T18:35:33.0007Z

I think that about covers it.

Publishing: "Genre" as properties of "Book" and "Short Story"

2008-07-21T19:57:15.0007Z

It does seem silly that some short stories have "short story" as a genre. Feel free to delete those assertions. Poems have genres, but those are pretty much already handled by the "verse form" propety. Plays have their own genre type. What other types of written works do you think have genres (that aren't already covered by an existing type)?

Employer in fiction: Related question

2008-07-21T17:57:51.0000Z

Why not just use the fictional employer type?

Publishing: "Genre" as properties of "Book" and "Short Story"

2008-07-17T01:04:29.0012Z

I'm curious why "Genre" is not a property of the type "Written Work" but exists separately under both "Book" and "Short Story" (though not "Poem").

It seems silly that some short stories have the genre of "Short Story", which would make more sense if tagged on the more generic "Written Work" instead.

River: Mouth & Source should be geolocations

2008-07-14T11:50:43.0000Z

This is on my to-do list and should be complete late today.

River: Mouth & Source should be geolocations

2008-07-14T05:18:54.0012Z

Geolocations now include elevation, so mouth/origin elevation could be merged into the mouth/origin geolocations.

Military: Conflicts Vs Wars Vs Battles Vs Skirmishes

2008-07-12T06:35:29.0000Z

sorry jeff
had a tough time at work... so couldn't reply earlier...
basically we can have battle has a seperate type... and conflicts or wars as a seperate type...
wars having battles as a property.....
its my view..
what do u think ?

Distilled Spirits: Spirit brands

2008-07-11T14:36:48.0012Z

In attempting to migrate instances of the now-obsolete Whisky type to distilled and blended spirits, I am running into a frequent problem. Some of the so-called whiskies were actually distilleries or blenders, and those are easily handled. However, many of them, particularly bourbons, but also blended Scotches, are actually imprints or brands; they are not single spirits, but neither are they distillers, bottlers, or blenders. How important are brands to represent? What model is appropriate?

Location: City Parks/Golf Courses

2008-07-09T20:35:32.0000Z

Cool, thanks for the update.

Location: City Parks/Golf Courses

2008-07-09T18:37:54.0015Z

It looks like the general consensus was in favor of not denormalizing the data, but instead having a synthetic property that could represent current data from the historical data. However, this suggestion is currently not something that is possible, and would require development work. I'll check around to see if there are open tasks for this and update you.

Employer in fiction: Related question

2008-07-09T18:14:30.0012Z

Sure - I'll put it in our queue.

Location: City Parks/Golf Courses

2008-07-09T15:41:51.0000Z

Did we ever come to a conclusion about this? It seems to have died without an answer in the Data Modeling discussions.

Employer in fiction: Related question

2008-07-09T12:53:03.0000Z

Thank you! Could you add a property for staff/faculty/teachers?

Fictional Character: Education?

2008-07-08T23:49:00.0000Z

I've done this, but without separating the fictional topics from the real-world topics: http://www.freebase.com/tools/schema/fictional_universe/school_in_fiction.

Employer in fiction: Related question

2008-07-08T23:48:21.0005Z

Here you go: http://www.freebase.com/tools/schema/fictional_universe/school_in_fiction

Employer in fiction: Related question

2008-07-07T20:10:05.0000Z

Thank you, jeff!

Employer in fiction: Related question

2008-07-07T18:52:38.0000Z

This is the second request for this in something like a week. There isn't currently a type for this, but I'll add a task for it to my list of things to do!

Employer in fiction: Related question

2008-07-05T16:33:26.0005Z

Is there anything like this for modelling fictional students of real schools/universities? e.g. Tom Brown went to Rugby and Oxford.

Military: Conflicts Vs Wars Vs Battles Vs Skirmishes

2008-07-02T18:14:57.0005Z

It is intentionally a broad term, since a lot of the data is the same. Splitting wars and battles is something that's come up before (although I can't find a reference to it anywhere, so maybe it was just a conversation I had). How do you envision the split? What properties would each have that makes them unique from each other?

Military: Conflicts Vs Wars Vs Battles Vs Skirmishes

2008-07-02T07:39:20.0005Z

Hi,

I have been wondering about the type "Military Conflicts". It is a very broad term presently.

Was wondering whether we should have seperate types for the wars, battles and skirmishes ?

Fictional Character: Education?

2008-07-01T05:36:32.0000Z

I would prefer that the fictional topic be seperate from the real-world topic. i.e. University of Cambridge in the James Bond Universe be a seperate topic from the real University of Cambridge.
Perhaps 'educational institution in fiction' could have a 'based upon' property to link the fictional and real-world topics?

Fictional Character: Education?

2008-06-30T19:42:21.0012Z

An "educational institution in fiction" type could work -- we've used that locution a few times for types that can have both fictional and real-world instances.

Fictional Character: Education?

2008-06-28T13:47:06.0005Z

Could we have some way of linking in the educational background of a character? i.e. an education property.

My first thought was that we would need a 'Fictional Educational Institution' type, but that would not cover characters who were educated at real world institutions. e.g. James Bond at the University of Cambridge.

I think we therefore need an 'educational institution for fictional characters' type for the property.

Location: City Parks/Golf Courses

2008-06-24T21:38:56.0012Z

No, no, you're not being obnoxious at all -- this is a persistent pattern. I'm guessing that you're looking for the current head of state of each country, as opposed to the office that the head of state holds. A property for "current head of state" on the country type seems reasonable, but I'm going to repost this to the data-modeling mailing list to get more input because I can see a lot of ways for this to snowball. (If you're not on the mailing list, you can join here: http://lists.freebase.com/mailman/listinfo/data-modeling, or just watch the outcome here: http://lists.freebase.com/pipermail/data-modeling/)

Location: City Parks/Golf Courses

2008-06-24T17:55:30.0012Z

Right, I had seen that type, but when trying to query against the database, it seems more helpful if heads of state were given their own type. For instance, if I wanted to see who the heads of state were in the UK and the US, I currently have to sift through the results to find "President of the United States" and "Prime Minister of the UK". If it were in a separate property, I could just ask for the heads of state of each country and receive only them.

Sorry, not trying to be obnoxious.

Location: City Parks/Golf Courses

2008-06-23T23:42:55.0012Z

Heads of state (and all other people who hold government offices) can be listed on the "governmental jurisdiction" type. Most countries should have this type already, but if they don't, feel free to add it. There's some documentation for entering data about government office-holders here: http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000739446b.

Location: City Parks/Golf Courses

2008-06-23T21:36:06.0012Z

Because Country is a type within Location, I figured I'd ask here: Would it be possible to add "current leader" or "head of state" as a property?

Location: Contains/Contained By

2008-06-20T19:33:14.0000Z

One level is sufficient, Tyler. One of our planned features is transitive property comprehension (like containment and organism classification hierarchy), so there is no need to denormalize the hierarchy completely.

Location: Contains/Contained By

2008-06-20T18:48:46.0005Z

How deep should I go? For instance, I'm working on the Empire State Building. Generally, it is contained by New York. If one clicks to see New York, they'll see that the city is contained the state, and the state by the country, then continent, then earth.

In this sense, should I list that the Emprie State Building is contained by: New York, New York, United States, North American, and Earth?

I haven't been doing this because I think its cleaner to just list the most immediate contained by and followed the path if needed. I guess I'm asking is my way correct or not?

Thanks!

Yale University: yale college and yale university?

2008-03-27T22:13:29.0017Z

Or, I suppose you could argue that everyone should be linked to the University itself, but I think that's less useful in the long run (if I'm interested in directors who went to the Yale School of Drama, I'd rather query that than to have to filter Yale Univ. grads by degree [MFA] and field of study [directing, drama, acting, etc.]).

Yale University: yale college and yale university?

2008-03-27T22:10:34.0022Z

It does complicate queries, it's true. Ideally everyone would be linked to the school they graduated from. That said, it's useful to be able to say that someone graduated from Yale University, even if you don't know which school they attended.

Yale University: yale college and yale university?

2008-03-27T21:26:57.0012Z

This is the case, although it complicates queries. Also, many alumni are linked to the university even though they attended Yale College.

Yale University: yale college and yale university?

2008-02-14T23:16:00.0007Z

As near as I can tell, Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University, and should therefore be made a constituent school of Yale, along with Yale Law School, Yale School of Drama, etc., which I've now done.