Religion

None: Absence of information vs. information of absence

2008-10-03T19:43:18.0012Z

This topic may be poor substitutition for indicating the absense of something, but the fact that it's extremely well-used in so many situations by so many different users suggests that it serves a real purpose.

Freebase, after all, is an open data community, and the community has found a need for a "None" topic. Unless or until a better alternative is provided, this well-used topic is simply too relevant to be removed from the system.

Please keep.

None: Absence of information vs. information of absence

2008-10-03T17:33:40.0012Z

On another note... even if we deleted "None", it would keep popping up again and again as people kept trying to use it.

None: Absence of information vs. information of absence

2008-10-03T17:23:39.0012Z

I disagree with Daniel that absence of information is sufficient. However, I agree that this peculiarly polymathic poymorphic None is a poor way to indicate it. As a concrete example, on my Person topic, I have no value for the Spouse or Children properties. In one case, it is because of privacy for the other party or parties involved, and in the other, it is because of a positive lack of value. A way to concretely indicate known, negative value would definitely be useful.

None: Absence of information vs. information of absence

2008-10-03T13:51:37.0012Z

This page should be marked for deletion. It serves very little purpose. The absence of information is a sufficiant indicator that a property is empty or invalid.

Chavagnes International College: Looking great!

2008-09-23T17:33:52.0017Z

Thanks, chavagnes, this is looking great! I see you've already found our "Religion" domain, as you've added "Religious organization" to your school. I'd love to get more information about places of worship in France, if you're able to add any. We had a data mob on this topic a while ago, but it was hard to find information about smaller churches, so local knowledge will be vital for that!

Chavagnes International College: A boarding school for Christian gentlemen

2008-09-19T20:35:07.0017Z

We have just begun our seventh year at Chavagnes International College,
a boys' boarding school that is committed to authentic Christian
education in the classical tradition.

With six years of hard work behind us, we are now in a position to take stock: there is still much work to do, but great progress has been made in those six years.

We started with 10, but now have 24 pupils and a band of a dozen highly dedicated staff, many with Masters degrees or doctorates from Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and other leading universities, all committed to a vision of Catholic education that is rooted in prayer and fidelity to the teaching of the Church. This year we have the joy of welcoming back as a teacher, one of our own old boys who left us in 2005 and has just graduated from Lampeter College, University of Wales, with a first-class degree!

Other past pupils have gone on to Thomas Aquinas College in the USA, Oriel College Oxford, the American Business School of Paris and a number of other prestigious destinations.

Each day at Chavagnes International College includes the celebration of Holy Mass for all pupils and staff. All boys are present at daily Mass and they quickly come to appreciate the rhythm of prayer that this gives to their lives. Mass, Benediction, Compline and Vespers all have a part in the school week, celebrated in an
authentic liturgical spirit that gives pride of place to Latin and Gregorian chant.

The school day includes the study of all the usual secondary school subjects, with boys achieving especially good results in Latin and the modern languages. Every class begins with a prayer, and work stops at midday for the Angelus, which booms out from several nearby steeples.

After a morning of hard academic work, and the afternoon given over to sport and manual tasks about the school, boys settle down to study, dinner, play and finally a fervorino before their night prayer and bed.

What is a fervorino? Apparently, according to those who knew St John Bosco it was an extremely efficacious means to save souls: every night for three or four minutes, the priest gives all the boys a spiritual talk, exhorting them to live the virtues and fight the vices. I can testify that it does work wonders.

The fact also that the teachers pray hard for their pupils means that the school is a place where the Faith is lived with real joy and deep conviction. We also appeal to a boy’s natural sense of heroism, and exhort him to live according to the knightly virtues. The traditional mix of sport, clubs, the house system, frequent confession, daily Mass and dedicated teachers makes for a school - and an expression of the Catholic faith – that inspires a strong sense of belonging. So much so, that although we have admitted sevarl non-Catholic pupils in our six years of existence, most have all asked for baptism or reception into the Church within their first month at Chavagnes.

Our apostolate is only possible because our teachers are men and women of faith who are prepared to dedicate themselves to this work in spite of difficult conditions and very low salaries. They know that, with God’s grace, our pupils will be the priests, fathers and lay apostles of tomorrow’s Church in Britain and further afield. Our aim is to give them the strong Catholic formation they need to fight for Christ in the difficult circumstances of modern life. Because of the universally low rates of lapsation, plummeting vocations and the challenges of secularism, this task is essential at this point in the history of the Church in Europe.

So far, the sacrifices to help launch and operate the College have been made mainly by the staff, a handful of parents and friends, and by my own family. We are in our seventh year of operation, with 24 pupils on the roll. We need to double our numbers in order to cover all our costs and plan for a secure future.

However, for the moment, the shortfall has to be made up by the generosity of those who acknowledge the importance of our work. This generosity is vital to ensure that Chavagnes International College succeeds in its mission.
I urge you, as I humbly ask Our Lady of Perpetual Help to bless my appeal with her prayers, please consider helping us to form the next generation of Catholic leaders in a spirit of heroism and fidelity to the Church. Any donation to this cause will surely be a source of blessings not only for you but for the many people who will be touched by the work we are doing here at Chavagnes. We also pray for our benefactors daily as a College, which gives those who help us a special spiritual relationship to our work.

Why not consider making a monthly donation of £10 or £20? (We can accept donations in Euros or in sterling).

Perhaps you are even in a position to make a one-off gift today of
£500 or £1,000, or more. You can give by credit or debit card by
visiting our donation page:
http://www.chavagnes.org/help/donate.shtml

Please think about my request very carefully, and if you are able to
make some small sacrifices for our pupils, then consider today whether
you can help us in this way.

We also need your fervent prayers for the flourishing of our enterprise. Four hundred years ago, many of the flower of Catholic youth in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales came to France for their education, later to return to their native shores, “in spite of dungeon, fire and sword”. We ask you to join us in invoking our
Blessed Lady and the Saints and Martyrs of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland with this heartfelt prayer: Floreat Chavagnes! - may Chavagnes flourish – for the sake of the most noble cause we can ever serve: the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls.

God bless you!

Ferdi McDermott, Principal

Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania: Deletion Arguments

2008-08-21T01:33:12.0012Z

I would. But I have, er, temporarily misplaced the /how/ without having to step through the whole voting list again to find it :<

Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania: Deletion Arguments

2008-08-20T17:15:53.0018Z

I think the deletion was superseded by the request for merge with the fuller name of the organization. Vote against delete, for merge.

Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania: Deletion Arguments

2008-08-20T17:10:35.0045Z

Whoever suggested this be deleted, please state reasoning. Not obvious :)

Lakshmi: Mis-typed

2008-08-13T20:13:58.0012Z

Because Wikipedia said so. d-: Apparently there’s an actor named Laxmi, and someone edited a bunch of Wikipedia articles in a careless way, which suggested the deity was the star of those movies. Thanks for catching this. (But also remember that Freebase is community-edited—that means you can help fix problems like this, too!)

Lakshmi: Mis-typed

2008-08-13T18:06:24.0005Z

Why is this entry typed film actor and diety?

Religion: Making "Organization" a disambiguator

2008-07-21T19:12:16.0007Z

Done!

Religion: Making "Organization" a disambiguator

2008-07-15T16:10:46.0005Z

Currently if you're looking at a page for a religious leader, the organization they're a leader of isn't showing up.. turns out "Organization" isn't marked a disambiguator of the Religious Leadership CVT.. any chance that could be added?

Agnosticism: Not a religion

2008-06-28T18:05:57.0005Z

While not strictly a religion, it is a religious view. Unless there is a better type for this topic, the religion type is (ironically) the best suited.

Religion: Church => Place of worship

2008-06-20T22:44:28.0000Z

Sounds good, then someperson will add Temple...

Religion: Church => Place of worship

2008-06-20T21:59:47.0012Z

I'd like to rename "Church" to "Place of worship" and create a property on it for "Religion" and reverse property from "Religion" to "Places of worship". Thoughts?

Religious Leadership Role: This needs a reciprocal property "leaders"

2008-04-29T23:45:09.0012Z

... so that you can see the actual leaders who act as the given leadership role (and so you can easily import that kind of thing!)

Gerald Gardner: The founder of Wicca != the writer for the Monkeys

2008-03-31T18:17:39.0012Z

As much as I like the image, I think that mwcl_infobox was presumptuous to assert that the Gerald Gardner who wrote for the Monkeys was the same one who founded modern Wicca.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: A musical group?

2008-02-26T20:42:54.0007Z

No, a correct MusicBrainz import; the link at the bottom shows that MusicBrainz considers LDS an artist. The albums weren’t showing up because LDS had been de-typed as a Musical Artist, and so the “Albums” property wasn’t displaying; this is now fixed.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: A musical group?

2008-02-23T14:45:35.0012Z

Bad musicbrainz import? Also supposed to be the artist of Hymns (disc 9), but the link is non-existent (deletion doesn't show up in history either).

Hinduism: Hinduism and Hindu

2008-02-18T21:03:12.0000Z

Hinduism is the religion here, Hindu is not. I'll clean up the mistype.

Hinduism: Hinduism and Hindu

2008-02-15T22:12:22.0000Z

Thanks for catching this. It looks as though there are a few bad assertions made by individual users, but that most of the problem stems from Wikipedia not being careful about the distinction, and our inference engine carrying the problem forward. We should be able to clean this up; thanks.

Hinduism: Hinduism and Hindu

2008-02-15T20:34:32.0012Z

It is problematic to have these both designated as religion because for Hinduism the properties are well populated, while for Hindu there is nothing. It would be great if there was a way to do some kind of merging or automatic popluating of one when the other is changed.

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: 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: 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: 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).

Adherents: What's this?

2007-10-02T18:00:15.0000Z

Sounds to me like they're adjectives, but FB is really about nouns. If it were me, I'd merge "Islam" and "Muslim" and make an "also known as" note so that if someone types "Muslim" in the religion drop-down, they get "Islam" suggested to them.

Adherents: What's this?

2007-10-02T17:45:47.0000Z

Well, it's kind of long story... ;)

See the discussions here and here.

This is still an open topic in my mind. The central problem is how to type the wikipedia articles called, e.g. "Muslim" or "Hindu". I haven't looked at all of the examples in detail, but I'm starting to wonder if they're worth keeping, especially since it's not clear what the properties of such a type should be. Thoughts?

Adherents: What's this?

2007-10-02T01:18:58.0005Z

Just randomly browsing around and came across this "Adherents" type. I'm not sure I understand it, and was wondering if you could explain it to me a bit.

K.

None: Absence of information vs. information of absence

2007-09-17T01:04:49.0007Z

Ah, this page is no longer marked for deletion. Cool.

None: Absence of information vs. information of absence

2007-09-09T04:07:16.0012Z

Freebase generally conflates the absence of information with information of absence, a distinction that many other knowledge representation systems make. If there is a discussion of the logic behind this stance, this would be a good place to link to it.

Religion: Seeking feedback on Type "Adherents"

2007-08-08T20:47:32.0007Z

I may have spoken too soon. The parents property of Fictional Character is letting me specify the Fictional Universe in which it applies, as I thought. I'll still follow up in the fictional universe thread.

Religion: Seeking feedback on Type "Adherents"

2007-08-08T18:28:49.0007Z

Thanks Dan for the helpful reply. I notice something very important that I have missed in the fictional character type: some properties are qualified with the fictional universe in which they apply, which is exactly what I hoping you would start doing. For example, the parents property of Fictional Character has you specify the Fictional Universe in which it applies. I will follow up in the fictional universe thread.

Religion: Seeking feedback on Type "Adherents"

2007-08-08T17:51:38.0007Z

The types within Freebase are, and will continue to be, a work in process. The lack of contextual assertions in this domain is primarily because we haven't previously found it necessary here. Your questions are good ones and perhaps we will need to add contextual assertions as you suggest. There are tradeoffs we've made in developing a general user interface and a general data model - sometimes specificity is sacrificed for simplicity as we are also interested in the model being easy to understand and contribute to for average users. This isn't to say this is the 'right' way to model these relationships in this case, but its been a guiding principle thus far. An example of another place where we have yet to fully embrace complexity: population data - do we require a user to assert an 'as of date', probably - do we require a user to assert a 'source', possibly - do we require require the user to assert the license under which that piece of data has been shared, possibly - but you can see how it will become more and more intimidating for an average user to assert any simple fact in the system.

That all said, we have, in fact, begun to tackle the contextual assertion idea in the fictional universe domain. It may be that we could use a similar approach here and allow for assertions to be made within the context of specific types, a 'religious perspective' domain for instance. These properties and values that these types confer on a topic may at times conflict with those from other types in the Freebase interface, but specialized applications could specialize their requests and return values from a particular point of view.

Thanks for your thoughtful comments and questions. I hope this answer was helpful.

Religion: Seeking feedback on Type "Adherents"

2007-08-07T20:53:18.0007Z

1. You said "Data within each religion is meant to be looked at from that religion's point of view, within that context". Freebase is attractive because of the type system that automatically separates out search results that have different meaning. This is the first thing mentioned in the Freebase introductory video to separate it from Google results where a human has to read and interpret the results to separate them out. So I'm surprised that you say you are not going to use the type system to separate out religious figures, but require users to read and interpret a long article text, or just "know" that the type 'Person' in the Religion domain is different than 'Person' in the other domains. If 'Person' can mean anything, then why isn't 'Harry Potter' typed as a 'Person': He has parents and a birth date too. There was a very good reason why 'Harry Potter' was not typed person, so that searches a bout people don't return hits on him. Isn't that what the type system is for, and why not use it here?

2. You said "If you have specific ideas, we'd love to hear them". In most knowledge representation systems, not only can you assign a topic to a type, you can assign an assertion to a context. So, in a certain fictional work, John F. Kennedy is killed by Fidel Castro. It is a "fact" that the fictional work asserts this, so you want this fact in the system, but you don't want to create a new topic for John F. Kennedy or Fidel Castro. The solution is to go ahead and use the John F. Kennedy topic, but put the assertion in the context of the fictional work. Every search is done in a context - usually the base context of consensus reality (where you would not see this assertion) but you can widen the search to include assertions in other contexts.

Qualifying the context of assertions is such a well-known need of expressive knowledge representation systems, is there a write-up somewhere that explains the Freebase approach to this - or why the Freebase designers decided it isn't necessary?

Religion: Seeking feedback on Type "Adherents"

2007-08-07T20:17:57.0000Z

Jeff, thanks for the feedback. I think you've realized by now that the Religion domain is somewhat different from most other domains in Freebase. Whereas data on the geocodes of cities and film award winners are cold hard verifiable data, religion is more about self-identification. Data within each religion is meant to be looked at from that religion's point of view, within that context; and if a non-believer, with respect and sensitivity.

Now, religious or not, some topics are controversial simply because of the limitations of our knowledge and in the ways we can find out about them. The birth and death dates of certain historical figures, debates on scientific theories, the origin of some of the nastiest diseases, attribution of celebrated creative works (some claim that Shakespeare was no more than a derivative plagiarizer)... The goal of any reputable data source would be to provide balanced coverage, perhaps highlighting the more accepted perspective (i.e. Shakespeare was one of the greatest poets/playwrights ever lived), but rounding the corners with alternative theories and views for completion. One way to cover different perspectives in Freebase has been the article where conflicting information and different views can be presented. The article on Jesus, for example, does a pretty good job of that. Another vehicle for debate is the Discussion pages.

We have also been thinking of ways to present ambiguous or debated data. If you have specific ideas, we'd love to hear them.

Religion: Seeking feedback on Type "Adherents"

2007-08-07T02:27:15.0007Z

Faye, I saw your post "Characters in parallel/overlapping universes" in Fictional Universes talking about needing separate types. You even wondered whether "the ever-longer list of character types doesn't represent a failure in the data model approach we've taken to represent a fictional existence"

What is the plan to solve this same problem in the views of different religions. Only in the context of Christianity does Jesus have God as a parent. In another religion this assertion is not true. Even in mainstream Christian theology, it is doubted that Jesus's place of birth is Bethlehem. This is not just an issue of resolving controversy. It's an issue of representing the real world where there are different assertions.

Do you plan to create a separate types to make Jesus a "Christian Person" (so his parent can be God), "Muslim Person" (so Jesus' parent is just a human), "Skeptic Person" (where Jesus is not a real historical perseon), etc. How else to get all the separate properties for Parents and Place of Birth? Otherwise the same problem applies: Search results for different universes get all mixed together and the user has the same problem as with Google with too many hits and having to guess at how to sort it out.

Religious Organization: Should Organization be an included type of Religious Organization

2007-07-20T18:34:27.0007Z

This was discussed at one point, and the feeling was that we should, for now, keep them separate. The "Organization" type is still in a bit of flux, as I understand it, and until it's clear which way it's going to go, we can't be sure if it will be a useful co-type or not.

Religious Organization: Should Organization be an included type of Religious Organization

2007-07-19T22:24:53.0011Z

There is some overlap (e.g Headquarters v. Building, Parent Organization v. Is Member Of, etc.) and some properties on Organization that Religious Organization lacks (e.g. Number of Members, Key People). Seems like maybe we should eliminate some of the properties on Religious Org and then give it Org as an included type.

Religion: Seeking feedback on Type "Adherents"

2007-07-03T23:37:53.0019Z

I would also tend to think that the Adherents type doesn't need to exist at all right now. It only has semantic value in a linguistics context. It's just "what you call" a person of some religion. Once we have a good way to deal with words, these topics can be related to their religions that way.

Religion: Seeking feedback on Type "Adherents"

2007-07-03T23:15:46.0031Z

So here's the scoop on "Adherent" as a type. It was created as an afterthought and only because articles like "Muslim" and "Hindu" were mistyped as "Religion" and Darin and I wanted to give those articles some type instead of /common/topic. Since it wasn't born out of a need to capture data via properties, it doesn't have any. Hmm. Perhaps the type is doing more harm than good. We anticipated controversy in the Religion domain, but "Adherent" was the least expected place for it. I agree that the upcoming property hint feature could solve the problem of a clear, instructive name.

Religion: Seeking feedback on Type "Adherents"

2007-06-28T20:04:39.0015Z

It's an odd property, semantically. The "Adherent" type doesn't have any interesting properties anyhow. The things you might attach to "Hindu" like "Practices" are attached to the Religion. Do we think there would be multiple Adherents for a given Religion?

I vote for "Adherent" and "Religion" as properties for the opposite types. It's simple and the coming property hint feature will make it clear what the user should enter for that property.

The question of what properties the "Adherent" type should get is another topic.

Religion: Seeking feedback on Type "Adherents"

2007-06-27T00:06:08.0007Z

I have no problem with that. But I think the reason we're looking for a new name, if I may summarize what I think is crism's point in the original post, is not objection to the word "collective", but the word "term" or "name" or anything that suggests a label for adherents rather than the group the name represents. That means "Term for Adherent" will fail to meet that criterion as well.