Website Category

Sport: Championships

2008-08-19T15:47:42.0032Z

I added his Masters Tournament wins in here. As a result, he was typed as a sports team. Is there a better way to enter in individual sports championships?

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

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

Search Engine Optimization: Hijacking the Database

2008-06-16T17:19:54.0005Z

X-Client-IP: 97.91.113.38

Let's not hijack freebase for seo purposes UTAH! No need to link your website in the description... just add it to the weblinks section. Freebase should look at banning the user who added their link to the description. Or perhaps you should consider not allowing html to b

Literature: Merge with the other "Literature" instance

2008-06-10T09:29:54.0012Z

Duplicate of Literature. Merge please.

Transport: Types of Transport

2008-06-04T02:25:26.0012Z

I suggest that types be added corresponding to the 'Aspects' of transport in the article, for example 'Transport Vehicle' which would include cars & bikes. 'Transport Infrastructure' would be a better name for the current 'Transportation' which is now all about roadways etc.

Hope this makes sense - I'm new here.

Harry Potter Universe: So I humbly suggest this be split into book series and fictional universe topics

2008-04-02T19:10:57.0012Z

That's what I think anyways, at this time.

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.

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: "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: "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: "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.