mikeshwe

Way too early to go: Help with politicians

2008-07-25T17:37:47.0017Z

I need help in adding some politicians. I can hear all the wisecracks - it's never too early for a politician to go - but there must be more than I could get my cynical brain to recall.

britannia: Welcome!

2008-07-25T17:14:14.0017Z

Hi, and welcome to Freebase! That's a pretty nasty looking picture you've got there -- *wince*. Wow, sometimes I stun myself with my own social skills. Anyway! You showed up on my "most active contributors" report for all your edits over the last few days, so I just wanted to thank you. Please let me know if you need a hand with anything or have any questions/comments.

cimm: Heavy contributor

2008-07-25T17:11:35.0005Z

Hi! I just wanted to let you know that all your edits of the past few days have made you show up on my "heavy contributor" report. Thanks heaps for your contributions! I'd like to make you one of our featured contributors, shown on our homepage, but could you please add an image to your user profile first?

Sports: Sports Team - generalize City to Location

2008-07-25T00:43:05.0012Z

alright, this has been changed. See sports team

Person: Relationships

2008-07-25T00:25:57.0012Z

Another long delay - I need to remember to login in more than once a month (or figure out how to get RSS feeds set up).

I guess the real answer to whether the accuracy is needed depends on whether Freebase has aspirations to hold genealogical data. The current scheme isn't adequate for anything genealogical, including medical applications which need genealogical information.

I tend to lean towards the "if you're going to do it, you should do it right" camp, but I recognize that that often leads to over engineering. I don't know anything about how Freebase stores things internally, so it's difficult to evaluate where the "quadrupling" comes in and how big an impact it has in real world terms.

On the other hand, no one's addressed the sibling side of the argument. That could clearly be derived from traversing the parent-child graph as well, yet it seems to have been important enough to record separately (and redundantly).

That's enough lobbying for me though. If anyone ever decides to change the decision, ping me and I'll provide pointers to how things are modeled in the genealogical data world.

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.

Freebase Feature Ideas: What links here

2008-07-24T22:07:20.0012Z

I like it too -- there have been a many instances where a topic was flagged for deletion because it had no property values of its own, even though it was being linked to by other properties. Having an easy way to discover these links would be a boon to both flaggers and voters on flagged items.

Freebase Feature Ideas: What links here

2008-07-24T19:58:20.0012Z

I like this idea alot... let's give it some thought.

Hockey: Former team

2008-07-24T19:49:40.0005Z

Awesome! Thanks a lot!

ilive4music: Clear you HF Inbox!

2008-07-24T19:41:31.0017Z

I can't send you PM. Your HF inbox is full.

Hockey: Former team

2008-07-24T19:16:52.0012Z

No problem - its actually a property both on team and player - I was talking about the same link from the other direction. In any event, its there now. See Steve Yzerman.

Hockey: Former team

2008-07-24T18:37:10.0012Z

I was referring to a property of Hockey Player. There is a "current team" property, but not a "former team" property. Sorry, I should have been more clear.

Hockey: Former team

2008-07-24T18:04:10.0012Z

Do you mean a historical roster property on team?
Its just an oversight. I'll try to add that in the next couple of days.

Hockey: Former team

2008-07-24T15:10:56.0017Z

Other sports have a former team property, but hockey doesn't. Is this a function of there being little data to fill in, or is there another reason?

Cross: Color on model year

2008-07-24T04:37:23.0012Z

wow, /user/spatialed/motorcycle/motorcycle_paint_color is over the top. I'm gonna spend time on components and wheels, instead of color. having just text names for colors without the brand name is enough for me. thanks for pointing out the options, though.

Cross: Color on model year

2008-07-22T18:28:45.0000Z

How about inputting the colors as "<brand><color>", or if that doesn't disambiguate multiple colors from the same company enough, "<brand><model><color>"?

For example, the FCR2 model of Giant Fitness/FCR series comes in two colors: Brushed Silver and Brushed Purple. If every Giant bike of Brushed Silver is of the same color, I would name the color topic "Giant Brushed Silver" in Freebase.

Also, you really need a "Bicycle Paint Color" type that would have, in addition to the color name, the manufacturer color code, models the color is available in, etc. You may want to take a look at spatialed's Motorcycle Paint Color type.

Freebase Feature Ideas: What links here

2008-07-21T16:42:06.0012Z

Since it's not always appropriate to include all the suggested incoming properties in a schema, would it be possible to have a "What links here" page that shows the topics that link to this topic in one of their properties? It'd be useful for when you see an empty topic and wonder why it exists.

Cross: Color on model year

2008-07-18T16:05:54.0012Z

Is it ok to add fancy colors to the color type? I added some kind of fancy black for the bontrager crankset.

Cross: Color on model year

2008-07-17T05:30:33.0007Z

Yeah, I agree. If bikes have descriptive names like cars, then it makes sense to go back to text.

Cross: Color on model year

2008-07-17T05:14:33.0000Z

if we have color as text, then we can use more descriptive colors. I noticed that's what autos do. it's a tradeoff of normalizing colors versus have the fancier names.

Cross: Color on model year

2008-07-17T04:48:31.0005Z

Updated the ECT to the color type

Bug / Feature Request: Airport ICAO Code

2008-07-09T14:36:33.0000Z

Thanks for the info. I'll wait to add smaller airports until the codes come in -- it should make it a lot easier to keep track of (some airports(some have multiple names and it gets confusing!).

Freebase: Edit a Topic with Redirect Type?

2008-07-08T22:10:50.0030Z

I've removed the type /proficiency from the developers page. There really isn't a way to do this with the UI, so bringing it up here was a good choice.

Bug / Feature Request: Airport ICAO Code

2008-07-08T21:59:57.0044Z

Hi evening,

See http://www.freebase.com/discuss/threads/authority/icao/ESSX#/guid/9202a8c04000641f80000000089b3836 . The long and short of it is that we've updated the property to be an property enumeration with a more restrictive permission. We hope to be loading some more airport data soon, so stay tuned!

Bug / Feature Request: Airport ICAO Code

2008-07-08T20:49:35.0012Z

I can't enter a value for the ICAO field under Airports. When I try to save the value I get a message saying I don't have authorization. Is this a bug, or by design?

an example code is FMMI for Ivato Airport in Madagascar

Freebase: Edit a Topic with Redirect Type?

2008-07-08T20:47:50.0012Z

I accidentally assigned a co-type to the Freebase developers page, and not even on the sandbox :(

However, even trying to access the new instance result in a redirect, so I have no way of removing the type, at least through the GUI.

Freebase: Edit a Topic with Redirect Type?

2008-07-08T19:05:28.0044Z

What are you trying to do? The Redirect type (/freebase/redirect), like most types in the Freebase domain, is a special type, used in the UI, and its instances shouldn't be editable by most users. But there are only four instances of the type, and I assume that you're not trying to edit the home page, so I'm probably missing something.

Freebase: Edit a Topic with Redirect Type?

2008-07-08T02:45:09.0012Z

It doesn't seem like there's any way to edit a topic with the redirect co-type.

I'm guessing there may be some kind of URL param I can enter to avoid the redirect?

Sports: Sports Team - generalize City to Location

2008-07-06T21:51:58.0012Z

Either generalize the field or add more location fields for those types of teams.

Disease or medical condition: Connecting conditions to people?

2008-07-05T23:48:37.0005Z

Is there a way of connecting a particular medical condition to a fictional character who suffers from it? For example, Sheila Gallagher in Shameless suffers from agoraphobia.

Educational Institution: Field for founder?

2008-07-03T22:55:31.0005Z

We have a field for the date of foundation, but there isn't one for the founder. e.g. Sir George Downing for Downing College

Would this be a useful addition?

Unit Profile: Adding Unit Profile Topics

2008-06-25T17:16:17.0000Z

You shouldn’t need admin rights to add an instance of any type. If you had difficulty, please describe it specifically so we can fix it.
I wouldn’t start by adding a new instance of Unit Profile, though. I would either look at the Dimension you want new units for, or the type for units of that dimension. For example, for kilonewtons, I would add a new Unit of Force. That type includes Unit Profile automatically, and also has properties suitable to force units (such as Force in Newtons).
If the dimension you want to use isn’t there, we can add it, but since additional dimensions do clutter up the user interface space, we would want to know what properties you need to the dimension to measure.

Unit Profile: Adding Unit Profile Topics

2008-06-25T12:15:49.0007Z

I couldn't add topics (I guess one need's adminstrator rights).

Hopefully this is the correct place to raise this request. I would like to add Unit Profile's related to Engineering and material science. Could the following be added (if they aren't there already):

KiloNewtons (e.g. engineering weight for Unit Point Load);

KiloNewtons per meter squared (e.g. engineering pressure for Unit Area load);

KiloNewtons per meter cubed (e.g. Engineering density, for Unit Volume Load and also Specific Weight, Relative Density & Bulk Density);

KiloNewtons per millimeter squared (e.g. Modulus of Elasticity & Shear Modulus of Elasticity)

Newtons per millimeter squared (e.g. material yield stress

centimeter quadrupled (e.g. Second moment of area and Torsional constant)

decameter sextupled [a tenth of a meter raised to the power of 6!] (e.g. Warping constant)

Person: Relationships

2008-06-23T20:03:38.0012Z

It’s less a decision to obscure the facts as a lack of a compelling use case for a more complicated model. The current model is simple and handles 95% of the use cases. To complicate the parent-child relationship—quadrupling the amount of information needed to represent it, in even the simplest cases—really needs a compelling use case. The blurb can tell human consumers that Gerald Ford was adopted. Is there a need for API-based applications to be able to make that distinction?

Person: Relationships

2008-06-20T19:52:15.0001Z

I just discovered this reply after many months. Sorry for the delay!

In my opinion the privacy concerns are orthogonal and are a red herring here. The participants can believe whatever they want, but biological parents and adoptive parents are undeniably different relationships.

The decision to obscure the facts which our displayed for living people who aren't public personas shouldn't prevent getting the data accurate in the first place. That's not possible with the current schema.

Take a look a Gerry Ford http://freebase.com/view/en/gerald_ford?pid=%2Fpeople%2Fperson%2Fparents. Leaving aside the fact that his grandfather is also listed as a "parent" (apparently the work of mw_template_bot), how would you accurately model his family using the current schema? How would you tell his adoptive parents from his biological parents? How would you tell which female parent went with which male parent? Would all the half-brothers and half-sisters just get linked together in one big undifferentiated pile of "siblings?"

Bug / Feature Request: freebase suggest is not working anymore

2008-06-19T17:25:59.0000Z

Great,

this was fixed by Willi Moffat.

If you experience the same problem, bellow Willi's response on the question in the developer mailing list

Thanks a lot Willi

martin

----------
OK, the examples should be fixed now. http://code.google.com/p/freebase-suggest/
You can see the changes I made: http://code.google.com/p/freebase-suggest/source/detail?r=100

Basically this:
$('#example2').freebaseSuggest( {ac_param:{type: '/music/album',
category: "instance", get_all_types: "0", disamb: "1", limit: "10",
strict:1 };

Should be:
$('#example2').freebaseSuggest( {ac_param:{type:'/music/album'}} );

Most of the arguments have been depreciated and 'strict' no longer
takes 1. I've removed strict as well because the default behaviour
seems fine to me, if you want to experiment then see the search API
docs here:
http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000006ad84c9

Bug / Feature Request: freebase suggest is not working anymore

2008-06-19T07:42:41.0012Z

Good morning,

just discovered that he freebase suggest is not working anymore in some cases

For example

http://mqlx.com/~willmoffat/libs/freebase-suggest/examples/suggest_demo2.html

or also on my web site

http://goosebumps4all.net/goi/

Any quick fix highly appreciated

cheers

martin

Disease or medical condition: add Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to schema

2008-06-19T00:37:50.0012Z

Ah yes, property enumerations. I think that would be the right way to model all of the properties that are essentially foreign keys to big established biomedical databases. The disease type seems to have a lot of those. +1 from me in general.

I'm not an expert, but I think any changes on MeSH will not apply to disease IDs. That would make having an ID moot.

Disease or medical condition: add Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to schema

2008-06-18T23:28:58.0012Z

Having "webpage" as an expected type is pretty clearly the wrong way to model this. It was an experiment in trying to model something that was a foreign key but also had a webpage associated with it. We have better ways to do this now -- namely namespace enumerations and URI templates. (Sorry abhay -- we seem to have devolved into technical jargon -- namespace enumerations are a way to store foreign keys that ensures uniqueness; URI templates are a way to automatically associate keys with a URL.)

An interesting thing about MeSH is that they do update it regularly; I don't know what sorts of things they change, so I don't know if we need to worry about versions in considering this sort of thing.

Disease or medical condition: add Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to schema

2008-06-18T22:28:43.0005Z

I haven't looked closely, but it seems like there a MeSH hierarchy that might be able to possibly model as property enumerations. What do you think?

Disease or medical condition: add Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to schema

2008-06-18T21:38:01.0000Z

Hi Abhay,

The idea is that you would add a weblink from the topic page. So for Autism, the MeSH URL would be added as I've done here (see the second weblink):

http://freebase.com/view/en/autism

And not from the page you were looking at, which is the topic page for the web page, and for for Autism. But I agree. Having machine-readable strings would be helpful here.

As a side note, you can keep track of discussions from your home page. If you're signed in, this page (http://freebase.com) will show you recent replies to you as well as posts in areas you're watching.

Disease or medical condition: add Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to schema

2008-06-18T02:37:23.0012Z

I guess I didn't find the MeSH ID property before on any of the disease pages. In fact finding this page (http://freebase.com/view/en/autism?pid=%2Fmedicine%2Fdisease%2Fmesh) was very difficult but I was able to get there eventually. I was unable to add any information there due to a 500 error (reported)

It would be pretty useful to have a machine readable string. It would be great to have some sort of database of the strings and references to the nlm (example: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/cgi/mesh/2008/MB_cgi?mode=&term=Autistic+Disorder&field=entry#TreeF03.550.325.125) and, in the case of MeSH ids and other similar strings, the ability to traverse the tree of ids.

P.S. Sorry about the late response. I haven't checked this thread recently.

Bug / Feature Request: F8 & Explore Command

2008-06-13T23:47:48.0007Z

Thanks.

I've missed some of these "advanced" topics. Is there a place where items like this are discussed in more detail?

Thanks,
biosopher

Bug / Feature Request: F8 & Explore Command

2008-06-13T17:01:30.0007Z

When you hit F8, a Dev Tools footer should appear on the bottom of the page. There are a number of links, with one of them being Explore. You can also get to it by http://www.freebase.com/tools/explore/fb_id where fb_id is the freebase id of a topic.

Bug / Feature Request: F8 & Explore Command

2008-06-13T15:59:57.0005Z

I've seen talk about an explore mode accessible by the F8 key I see hints about such an option when I do a google search on "freebase explore mode f8" but nothing shows up when I view the results.

It would appear the the Explore mode only accessible to certain people with special privileges. Any recommendations on accessing the Explore mode or what it is?

Thanks
biosopher.

Bug / Feature Request: PHP documentation

2008-06-13T01:24:39.0005Z

The example for the metaweb PHP class at

http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000544e139#metaweb.php

is cut off at the top as well as the top of albumlist.php in example 4.6.

I know it's not a bug, but I wasn't sure where else to put this.

Disease or medical condition: add Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to schema

2008-03-31T22:29:54.0005Z

Hi Abhay, we're considering changing the "MeSH ID" and other similar identifiers with expected type "Webpage" to machine-readable strings. Would it work for you?

Disease or medical condition: add Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to schema

2008-03-31T22:22:58.0005Z

Abhay, does the “MeSH ID” property do what you want? It currently expects an instance of Webpage, like the other disease index properties (“ICD-9,” “DiseasesDB,” etc.). If not, what should be changed about it?

Disease or medical condition: add Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to schema

2008-03-31T21:11:08.0030Z

It's a great controlled vocabulary that's used by professionals:

http://freebase.com/view/en/medical_subject_headings