Field Of Study

Software Engineering: Why delete?

2008-03-26T14:59:39.0012Z

Unsure of why this is marked for delete, but if someone has a reason, please post it.

Geographic Information System: GIS as profession?

2008-03-26T14:01:14.0000Z

I agree.

Maybe it could renamed to something like 'profession area'

Software Engineering: Delete this topic?

2008-03-18T21:37:04.0005Z

Merge, don't delete.

Drama: Migrate and delete?

2008-03-10T20:57:58.0007Z

The other topic is actually even more generic -- "drama" as opposed to dance or music, rather than "drama" as opposed to comedy, so I don't think these should be merged, either. Nor do I think any data should be migrated to it.

Drama: Migrate and delete?

2008-03-07T15:09:56.0012Z

The source of this instance is the WP page for drama - film. The other instance came from the WP page about the general topic drama. I'm in favor of moving the data over to the other instance and then deleting this instance.

Geographic Information System: GIS as profession?

2007-12-14T20:12:20.0012Z

Can a profession really be a system? Wouldn't GIS analyst and GIS programmer and GIS developer be better profession names?

Business Administration: Merge, don't delete

2007-11-26T19:54:30.0012Z

There are incoming properties on this topic, so it should be merged.

Astrology: Planets

2007-11-26T19:35:31.0007Z

I think an "Astrological archetype" type is the best way to do this, for now. If a need for other archetypal types arises, we can see whether it simply needs to be expanded or generalized or whether there should be a generic type that specific types can use as an included type.

I agree with Miquael about assigning the type of "astrology" to the topics for planets. Assigning a type to a topic asserts an "is a" relationship -- it's a way of saying that the topic is an instance of the type. In this case, it would be saying that "Mercury" is an "astrology", which it isn't. Using types to simply collect things that are related to that type isn't semantically useful; it's much more useful to create types and properties that allow you to say in what way they're related.

In terms of an astrology domain, I continue to encourage you (and anyone else who's interested) to create a structure for astrological information in your private domain(s). Creating structure that doesn't exist elsewhere in the system is one of the main uses for private domains.

Astrology: Planets

2007-11-26T01:07:34.0000Z

This would actually be resolved if we had an Astrology domain which could then be structured. As far as I can find, no such domain exists. If it is unnecessary to create an Astrology domain, or if it is judged that the subject does not warrant a domain of it's own, then a "Belief", "Practice", or "Tradition" domain of some kind should be created that could include it, as none of the present ones accurately describe it.

Astrology: Planets

2007-11-25T20:51:01.0007Z

Would you suggest, then, Jeff that Astrological Archetype Type be created as a time and modeled, and later integrate that into a more inclusive Archetype Type?

While I agree with you, miquael, that planets in astrology are best understood as archetypes, the positions of the planets in Signs and Houses and the Aspects they form to other Planets, Angles, and points also has a lot to do with their interpretation and relative meaning, which is why I think the concept of Astrology should be linked to the Freebase Planet entries. I believe discussions like this help clarify the exact kind of relationship necessary, and in the meantime "Astrology" can serve as a placeholder so that all the relevant articles can be viewed in one place before there structural qualities are clarified, modeled, and digitized. I mean, the whole point of digitizing data is that it takes out of a static and makes it dynamic, isn't it?

Astrology: "Practice of" should only contain religions

2007-11-25T20:40:14.0007Z

It does make sense but I think there are some cultures where astrology IS the religion, or is otherwise inextricable from the culture's religion. The ancient Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations are prime examples of this. In Babylonia, the priests WERE astrologers, as only people highly knowledgeable in both spiritual and astral matters were trusted to interpret the wills of the Gods (who were literally believed to be what we now know are the planets). The Mayan civilization and culture are founded upon their interpretation of time and their incredibly sophisticated and complex calendar system. But for them, the astrological meanings were as much a part of their worldview and daily life as any other part of their culture, especially in what amounts to their religious beliefs and practices. In these cultures, which are only two of the clearest examples, astrology and religion are one and the same. And if you look at the religious beliefs of most cultures, there is a Solar Myth at their core, about the Man-God who is born, dies to save the world and is resurrected 3 days later, a mythological and religious explanation of the Sun's apparent travel across the sky culminating in the Winter Solstice.

If it would be more appropriate to include Astrology as the practice of a Civilization or Culture, then a type should be created; anthropologists and sociologists should be consulted so as to provide the already existent structures that they use to view these civilizations. I know Freebase is still very Data Modeling oriented but now that it is open, I imagine more and more people who aren't in the data-modeling field will contribute and will add information in one field because there isn't another one that is closer to what they intend to say about the connection between the different kinds of information. I see Freebae as being somewhat organic: when a connection is mis-categorized in one field, a discussion like this starts to determine how that connection can best be expressed on the Freebase model. I also see Freebase as a collection of filters on information. You can look at the Moon from the scientific point or view, and then overlay that with the astrological model to see what similarites, and then view the moon and it's representations in arts and culutre, both modern and ancient. Freebase has the potential to create a true Semantic Web by showing us the different ways the same information or concepts are seen by different people so that we can understand how ideas that are the same can have a variety of meanings, such as the way words that are written the same way can have multiple meanings. At the end of the day, it's still the same word, and if those concepts exist in our languages, how can they not exist in the Semantic Web? The thing about the Semantic Web is that it will change the way we speak and think as much as it allows computers to understand how we do so. We really are becoming cybernetic beings with no "hardware installations" even necessary.

Astrology: Planets

2007-11-25T20:13:35.0000Z

I think Archetype should definitely be added, as it is through archetypes that the meanings of ancient religions cross-pollinate into the names of the Planets as we know them now (which itself has a lot to do with their astrological symbolism); you can't think "Jupiter" without remember all the cultural and historical significance of the Greek and Roman civilizations that created and named him. I think the Archetype Type should be seen as a sort of memeplex, and it's name already contains the word "type"!

Astrology: Astro Duplicates

2007-11-25T20:08:34.0000Z

If you open up your types, we can merge the redundant types to create a single type.

Astrology: "Practice of" should only contain religions

2007-10-25T17:59:59.0000Z

I wouldn't begin to suggest that astrology isn't practiced by a) many religions, both ancient and contemporary or b) many people and cultures, both ancient and contemporary, and I apologize if it seemed that I was saying that. My only concern was that topics which do not represent religions were getting typed as religions because they were entered in the "practice of" property. (This is inherent in the design of Freebase: every property has an expected type, and any topic added to that property gets that type applied to it.) It is of course accurate to say that astrology is practiced by many cultures, and if we had a model for "culture" that included a property for "practices" or something similar, astrology would naturally be a value of that property in very many instances. But it is not accurate to say that astrology is a practice of the "Celt" or "Maya civilization" religions, because "Celt" isn't a religion (it's actually a demonym, for what little that's worth, or perhaps a "people"), and "Maya civilization" is, well, a civilization, which surely includes a religion or religions, but is certainly not the same thing. To say, however, that astrology is a practice of the Celtic religion or Maya religion (or whatever the correct names for these are) would be more accurate. Does that make sense?

Astrology: Planets

2007-10-25T17:33:21.0007Z

If all the various disciplines that discuss archetypes would have similar properties for them, that's a reasonable approach. One thing I try to do, however, is to first try to solve the specific problem (in this case, how planets should fit into an astrological model) and worry about the general case (if there is one; in this case whether there will be additional need for an archetype type) later. Sometimes it turns out that there's no need for a generalized type; sometimes it turns out that there is, but the other models that use it require it to be entirely different than I originally thought.

Astrology: Astro Duplicates

2007-10-25T17:25:56.0007Z

To answer your second question first, an application developer would have to choose which set of types/properties they wanted to use. (It might be possible that they could use both, if they wanted to take the time to write the separate queries and concatenate them somehow, but I'm not a developer so I can't say whether or not that would be completely insane.) The best thing we can do about duplicate types/schemata in private domains is to encourage collaboration on a single set of types, and if it turns out to be a good model, eventually to promote it to a root level domain. Which is what I would encourage here.

Astrology: Astrology Chart

2007-10-25T07:25:24.0000Z

I can see how Freebase TYPES and PROPERTIES of types are indeed predicates between Subjects and Objects (Types to Topics, and Properties to Types).

Astrology: "Practice of" should only contain religions

2007-10-25T04:42:50.0000Z

I agree with radiusrs. Many ancient historians claim that astrology had a "Religious" status (being even an original religion), governing the spiritual culture of many ancient civilizations, predating even Christianity by thousands of years.

Astrology has only lost it's stature in the past 50+ years or so to modern science. Even today, astrology is a core component of "Paganism", and other types of "New Age" spiritualities. We can find astrology columns as prevalent in nearly ever new-paper and many magazines across the nation and around the world. Although it is my perspective that astrology stands on it's own as a type of "Spirituality" or "Religion" (or spiritual way of looking at the world), I think we can certainly agree that it is at least "Practise of" ...

Astrology: Planets

2007-10-25T04:28:00.0012Z

I think typing any of the planets with "Astrology" is not a correct designation. A planet is not a TYPE of astrology. If so, we might as well type planets with "Astronomy" also.

Planets are a categorical PART of astrology and astronomy (a different semantic predicate than TYPE).

I had, however, typed the planets (and the signs) as "Archetype", as this is how the planets are treated within the field of astrology--representative of multi-valent, numinous, archetypal signatures (the Plutonic archetype, etc). This approach is inclusive to the planets universal significance within all the more esoteric fields of traditional astrology, mythology, history, archetypal psychology (etc).

Astrology: Astro Duplicates

2007-10-25T03:53:14.0012Z

Okay, I need some clarification here on how duplicates are being handled in Freebase.

I had created the original types for "Astrology" and for "Astrological sign", and am intending to build them out more.

radiusrs has also created these types with variations in inclusive topics and properties.

1) How do we handle the ambiguation (some topics are now labeled with these types twice)?

2) How will these duplicates be handled when an application resources the data thru the Freebase API?

Astrology: Astrology Chart

2007-10-25T02:13:57.0007Z

I think "Astrology Chart" is certainly a type of "Chart", but not a type of "Astrology" (as Radiusrs added). Of course, types of "Astrology" are Babylonian, Vedic, Western, Chinese, etc. Although I can certainly see how "Astrology Chart" is associated to "Astrology", the semantic connection here is not quite right. And while I understand that ultimately, all the data of the web can be connected in these even more subtle ways, I do not see that capacity here in Freebase yet (no "types" of "types").

We can use RDF (Resource Description Framework) to make these type of subject-predicate-object distinctions. So in RDF we could say (subject ... predictate ... object):

"Astrology_chart" ... "is_a_type_of" ... "Chart"

"Astrology_chart" ... "is_part_of" ... "Astrology"

The difference is in the predicate.

But strictly speaking, until more description can be designated to TYPES, I see that "Astrology Chart" can only be properly designated as a true TYPE of chart.

I have changed my type "Chart" to "Astrology Chart" (which encompasses many various kinds of astrology charts). "Astrology Chart" also remains as a topic. Is this creating too much ambiguity to have both a type and a topic?

I have also added some new properties under the "Astrology Chart" type, such as the positions of the astrological elements (planets etc), as these would be essential properties to any Astrology Chart.

Astrology: Astrology Chart

2007-10-25T01:34:26.0007Z

Yes, I share very similar views (as Radiusrs) about astrology, Freebase, and the future of astrology and the web. I am currently co-developing actual software based on these insights, and so look forward to seeing how we can co-create the data structures for astrology in Freebase to be optimized for these potentials.

Astrology: Astrology Chart

2007-10-24T23:51:08.0007Z

Hi Radiusrs,
I went ahead and added some instances to the chart type in order to see how this would work. It seems a bit broad though..

Astrology: "Practice of" should only contain religions

2007-10-24T23:10:43.0000Z

Well Astrology was a religious practice of many cultures, including the original civilizations, the Babylonians and the Egyptians. Many people use it for religious practices and many cultures, including Judaism, Islam, and China, track the movement of the Moon in order to construct their calendars, and Western astrology, at least, is a sort of moving Calendar with the twelve signs corresponding to twelve months, but from a mathematical point of view, and the planetary movements as rhythms that apply to us such as the Earth's movement (the daily cycle), the Moon's movement (the monthly cycle), and the Earth's movement around the Sun (or the Sun's apparent "movement" around the Earth, the yearly cycle), which are all obviously related to all of us on many different levels. Astrology proposes that the movements of the Planets also correlate to other, more subtle cycles that we experience and by having that data connected in Freebase, we will be able to see more clearly the relationships between the scientific data concerning those planets and their cycles and how it applies to astrological theory as well as other Planet-related fields, such as Astronomy. I know that with Freebase, astrology might even be "proven", as it will present the mathematical model used in chart construction to the world where it can be tested and shown to be mathematically sound and based on measurable data that anyone can test.

All this goes to show that Astrology is and has been a practice of many religions, cultures and individuals, such Johannes Kepler, whose theories of Planetary Movement set the stage for Isaac Newton, who was himself an Alchemist. This is provable data that is out there on the internet and in some of the more inclusive history books, and should not be ignored as the data speaks for itself. Unlike Wikipedia, I see Freebase as a place where ALL data on a subject is located, and it is up to the user to pick and choose which parts of it they need or want to take into consideration.

I agree that the intention of the "Practice of" is to be applied to religions but there should be a similar relationship for cultures, groups, and individuals. And some ancient religions practiced astrology so in their cases, it would apply, wouldn't it? And that means that the field of astrology in general is a Religious Practice for some cultures and religions, even today. Many Wiccan traditions will at least look at Moon signs and there are revivals of ancient Celtic and Mayan religious astrologies existant. I agree with changing the name if you have to but I would support an alternative being created, since that reflects Astrology as a practice, or else a suggestion on how I could do so, if that would help.

I think in the long run, Freebase will link a lot of things, like Second Life or the coming 3D Web. With Freebase, a program can easily query the database and determine where a place is and use the relevant data to display it's location in connection to other places. Someone with more programming knowledge than I could probably construct a zodiac based on the ecliptic and shows the signs and planetary positions in real time and put it into Google Sky or something, which would be enormously beneficial in showing and explaining to people what Astrology is all about, and how it can be useful when it is applied to daily life and general living. It is also a sort of Spiritual practice for many, as it connects us as individuals and as a whole to the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the planets, the Solar system, and even the Universe, though I agree it is not a belief (an astrology chart and it's symbolism are always there, whether a person believes that astrology works or not).

Astrology: Astrology Chart

2007-10-24T22:36:49.0000Z

I think a Chart is an essential part of many people's lives in many different ways, so it seems inevitable to me that it will become a type at some point. An astrological chart is an example of that because it uses math to create a graphic representation of the information it analyzes, regardless of whether one believes that celestial movements correspond to terrestrial events. The many different kinds of astrological charts necessitate a type of it's own, as there are other types of charts from other astrological traditions than those of Western Astrology that do not use Horoscopic astrology and have different characteristics and techniques applied in their construction.

I believe that part of the potential of Freebase is to connect all the information on a particular topic, have it all centralized in one place so that people will be able to access any piece(s) of information they want, relate it to any other piece(s) they want, and see what new information they can gleam from that connection or how they can put that connection to practical use. I see in Freebase the potential to revolutionize astrological theory by allowing the structure necessary to analyze it 3 dimensions, so to speak, as well as making this information more easily accessible to people as well as more understandable. I imagine at some point certain information in Freebase will "go live" and there will be feeds of data about real time events and conditions, such as the position and phases of the moon, that can be applied to all sorts of fields, not just astrology (I imagine a widget of sort that shows the present sign and phase of the moon, as well as any Astrological aspects between the moon and other planets).

I was wondering if there were a way to create the Chart type and have a movable field preceding the chart type (or any Basic type, for that matter), which could then be every kind of that such as Pie Chart, Astrological Chart, Graphic Chart, Maritime Chart, etc; they all use mathematics to display a visual 2-Dimensional representation of the information they employ. I'm already seeing that there are many Types that could be integrated with a more basic type, and this seems one way to do so. You could also put the basic type in Bold or a color to visually communicate that it is some sort of base type.

Astrology: "Practice of" should only contain religions

2007-10-24T20:56:08.0005Z

The property "practice of" is part of the religious practice type, and has an expected type of "religion". I've removed the non-religion topics from the list, and I'll see about changing the name of the field to make it more obvious what's intended.

Astrology: Astrology Chart

2007-10-24T20:52:36.0007Z

I don't think there's much need right now for a generic "chart" type that would encompass both the varieties of astrological charts miquael has typed and things like pie charts, etc. If we discover a need later, we can always create it and apply it to the instances of "astrological chart".

Astrology: Astrology Chart

2007-10-23T11:54:06.0003Z

I think it should have both Chart and Astrological Chart, as the beauty of Freebase is that it works as two kinds of types, a Chart and and astrological chart, which has it's own specific structure and qualities.

Astrology: Astrology domain

2007-10-23T11:52:27.0000Z

I think the types of Astrology should be labeled a type "Tradition", as in the Wikipedia infobox (Western Tradition, Chinese Tradition, etc.) and the different kinds of astrology should be labeled as the type "Branches of Astrology" such as Natal Astrology (which would include natal charts, Progressions, Solar Returns, etc.) or Relationship astrology (which would include Composite charts and Synastry). It should be flexible enough since Progressions, planetary Returns, and Composites could also be applied to non-Natal charts like Mundane charts.

Astrology: Astrology domain

2007-10-08T21:28:20.0007Z

Sounds like its a good start.

There's an Astrology Portal on wikipedia that shows what many of the types could be attached to Astrology and how they structured it (in particular the categories): Wiki Astrology Portal

Always look for the simplest data model design, then get complicated only when needed later on.

Astrology: Astrology Chart

2007-10-08T21:17:34.0007Z

I personally think that an Astrological chart is unique enough that it would be its own type.

Astrology: Astrology Chart

2007-10-08T05:21:59.0005Z

I created a "Chart" type which could then encompass "Astrology Chart" and all of the variant types of astrology charts ("Natal chart", "Composite chart" etc).

Is this the right way to do it? Or would we make "Astrology chart" a type sub-set of the "Chart" type (which could also include many many other sorts of general charts, graphs, maps, etc)?

Astrology: Astrology domain

2007-10-08T05:18:45.0000Z

I am still absorbing a more comprehensive understanding of good data modeling here in FreeBase. I have glanced over the Data Modeling resource, and I will print it out and study it thoroughly before I go much further. Thanks!

Good point about the variants of astrology.

Perhaps the topics of "Western Astrology", "Chinese Astrology", "Vedic Astrology", "Babylonian Astrology", "Mayan Astrology", etc (as topics) would be categorized as types of "Astrology". I do not think these variants would need to be types in and of themselves.

Yet I can also see that the topic of "Astrology Chart" and "Natal Chart" etc could be classifies by the "types" of astrology systems available. I'll have to think on this ... there is definitely a lot there and much more to consider.

As far as the Date/Time: as I understanding it, each of these astrological systems all have in common the singular use of a time signature. The more ancient systems of astrology would only require Day:Month:Year. More modern types (Western, Vedic (Jyotish), perhaps Chinese, etc) could also use Hour:Minute(:Second), as wells as Latitude:Longitude to derive the most accurate natal or transit chart. With only those few time parameters, the fundamental of all astrological systems can be derived: the precise positions of the planets in orientation to the ecliptic path (which, in actuality, is more astronomical than astrological). Once these general ecliptic positions are derived, a translation can be made into the various delineations of astrological sign/constellation and house systems of various types of astrology.

I was not able to see clearly how to access the Date/Time type (perhaps I need advanced permissions). Yet as far as the limitations of the Date/Time type are currently modeled, Day:Month:Year is still enough to get ample astrological information to test an application on (we get the precise position of every astrological chart element--with the only exceptions being the exact position of the Moon, and the positions of the Ascendent/Descendent/Midheaven/IC, and their correspondent houses). With the positions of all the major "planetary" elements (Sun, Mercury, general Moon, Venus, Mars, etc) we can derive rich "archetypal information" just from the positions and the aspect angles between them. So this is actually sufficient enough to work with until the Date/Time become extended.

Also, "Birth Date" and "Date of Birth" are available (which expect "Date/Time"), and "Place of Birth" (which expects "Location") would be the primary properties of an "Astrology chart".

Astrology: Astrology domain

2007-10-07T07:28:06.0007Z

I see that you've started to model some in the Astrology Arena...But there seems to be many astrological systems current and past that need to be some how reconciled (Western, Asian, Babylonian, etc). Further, at the moment our date/time property only supports Day:Month:Year and is not in the immediate future going to be any more precise than day (UTC). I am merely guessing that for Astrological purposes that wouldn't be accurate enough?

If you need any assistance/hints be sure to check out the data modeling list on the Data page.

Astrology: Astrology domain

2007-10-06T09:50:35.0005Z

I would like to administer "astrology" as a domain and type (as is being done with "astronomy", "astrology" could use some extension and organization). I have professional and accredited educational credentials to show my expertise in this topic (available upon request), and would be open to collaborations.

Field Of Study: Broader / narrower?

2007-05-19T02:24:48.0021Z

Perhaps a "Broader field of study" and "Narrower fields of study" or "Subdisciplines" property would be useful in organizing these? (i.e. Business Administration is a subdiscipline of Business)