Freebase: Discussion about colin

Long Island Press: Long and storied history

2009-12-16T05:16:41.0005Z

I created a placeholder for the other newspaper, Long Island Press and added a link to the Library of Congress' description(s). I'm not sure that Wikipedia's description (cribbed from the current LI Press?) is all that accurate, so you might want to research it a bit more when fleshing things out.

Long Island Press: Long and storied history

2009-12-16T04:58:13.0000Z

So the first thing that's obvious here is that there are two different Long Island Presses. Although Wikipedia distinguishes things mainly by name (thus two separate newspapers covered in the same article), Freebase has no problem with having two different newspapers of the same name, one ending a long run in 1977 and the other adopting the name in the last few years. Conversely, I'd add the various names of the original newspaper as aliases, as long as it was nominally the same paper in continuous existence. There will always be grey areas, so just use your best judgement as to whether something is the same thing with a different name or two different things.

Star Wars: Games "based on" existing works (e.g. films)

2009-12-15T23:09:07.0000Z

I thought about using the Adaptation type too...it would require an uncommon if not unusual interpretation of the word "adaptation". The Lego Star Wars games do follow the films' plot line closely, so I suppose it would make sense. Definitely will cotype with Work of Fiction.

Newspaper: Writers; Are writers also employees?

2009-12-15T20:58:40.0005Z

Using the "columnist" type from krsalis's base is a good way to separate columnists from other writers. Any writer (columnist or otherwise) employed by a newspaper can additionally use the Employer relationship.

Newspaper Issue: Newspaper Columnist

2009-12-15T20:38:27.0027Z

That's a nice base -- I hadn't seen that before. It definitely fills a void in the publishing commons.

Newspaper Issue: Newspaper Columnist

2009-12-15T19:52:29.0013Z

Hi Daniel,

The current publishing domain does not have a newspaper column type; however, I've started a Columns base, which may be what you're looking for. It will allow you to type a person as a columnist and then link the columnist to the name of his/her column. You may then link the column name to a syndication / wire service (Hearst Syndication?). Take a look at the Columns base at: http://www.freebase.com/view/user/krsalis/columns .You should go ahead and add New York Cavalcade as a new column and link that to Louis Sobol, the columnist. Please post a note if you have any further questions / suggestions. Thanks.

Chris

Dublin Mid West: Politicial district not Governmental Jurisdiction?

2009-12-15T10:28:54.0013Z

I thought so.

I can fix these, but it looks like there's a whole lot of Teachta Dala constituencies which have been similarly mistyped ...

Newspaper Issue: Newspaper Columnist

2009-12-15T08:21:30.0018Z

Louis Sobol was a newspaper columnist, Quoting from his New York Times obituary of February 10, 1986:

Louis Sobol, a Broadway columnist for Hearst newspapers for four decades, died yesterday at Roosevelt Hospital after a long illness. He was 90 years old and lived in Manhattan.
Mr. Sobol wrote ''New York Cavalcade,'' a column that was a chronicle of show business in an era when Broadway still was the center of that industry.

It seems to my (very inexperienced) eyes that the Author type hasn't been created with newspaper columnists in mind.

Is there an alternative type that should be used for Newspaper Columnists or should we Author be adjusted to accommodate newspaper columnists?

Star Wars: Games "based on" existing works (e.g. films)

2009-12-15T08:15:39.0013Z

I'd use adaptation: this game is an adaptation of Episodes I-III while this one is an adaptation of Episodes IV - VI, and they're both works of fiction set in the Star Wars Universe (without personally caring "which" Star Wars universe that is, but I appreciate other people might).

I'm not sure that the LEGO theme and the video game series should be the same topic.

Long Island Press: Long and storied history

2009-12-15T07:50:44.0018Z

The Long Island Press has a long and storied history that is missing here.

Any suggestions on how to record it?

Quoting the current wikipedia article: The Long Island Press was the name of a daily newspaper that lasted for 156 years. It was originally known as the Long Island Farmer which was founded in the 1840's. The paper changed its name to the The Long Island Daily Press in the 1920s, and then became simply Long Island Press in 1967. The Sunday edition bore the name Long Island Sunday Press. Both editions used a broadsheet format. It became known as the only New York paper to report on local government scandals until an extended strike by the Printing Pressmen's union forced the paper to go out of business on March 25, 1977[2]. Regular columnists included Walter Kaner.

How should this history, which includes multiple first issues be entered?

Newspaper: Writers; Are writers also employees?

2009-12-15T07:31:44.0018Z

Is there a standard way to add writers to a Newspaper Type?

Should I follow the instructions for Editors?

Should we also follow this methodology for columnists as well?

If I am correct when I say that a writer is someone who from time to time has articles published under their name, while a columnist is employed by the newspaper to produce a regular product, then should we make a distinction with another type?

O Jong Ae: Split Person from Olympic Event

2009-12-15T06:40:25.0018Z

Somehow a person and an Olympic event got merged. They need to be split back out.

Star Wars: Games "based on" existing works (e.g. films)

2009-12-15T00:45:51.0005Z

Hi,

How should I use to link a video game that either exists within the realm of or extends that of an existing work, such as a film? For example, I would like to say that the Lego Star Wars game series is derived from the Star Wars films, and is a part of the Star Wars franchise. There are several Franchise types but none pertains to video games. There's also Consumer Product with property Product Line that can probably be used to link books and films and games and toys of the same theme together.

Another possibility is to use Fictional Universe to indicate that a game is defined within a fictional universe. However, some fandoms are quite sensitive about Canon vs. Expanded Universe. Video games can be problematic when it comes to continuity.

Suggestions?

Dublin Mid West: Politicial district not Governmental Jurisdiction?

2009-12-14T19:29:47.0013Z

Yes, that's correct -- districts aren't usually going to be jurisdictions, and definitely not in this case. Unfortunately, we can't set up an automatic rule to detect this sort of thing because some "districts" are also jurisdictions -- US states function as the "district" for US senators, for example.

Country: Incorrect ID

2009-12-14T15:11:19.0013Z

Thanks for the clear explanation!

I understand that each URI is really just a GUID of sorts, and the data works fine when requested by that name. It just looked erroneous to be using that one as the primary ID when I queried for http://rdf.freebase.com/rdf/music.genre . It was an odd one out. I was a bit concerned that something with a UserID in the path may be sandbox data rather than canonic. Is there a way to promote http://www.freebase.com/view/en/country_music to being the 'preferred' or primary ID? ... Or not ... I see that is actually meaning a specific album name :-( . Dang.

FYI, the issue is: I'm testing a facility to import and reference shared vocabularies, and was planning to use the supplied URI/GUIDs as a primary key in an internal RDF triplestore. (Maybe I shouldn't do that, and just internalize the sameAs relations)

The given URI will still work (thanks for clearing that up) but just looked out of place in the diagnostic logs I was seeing. Partially (my fault) because my code is using the key found at the end of an URL as a temporary name for placeholder topics that haven't been individually fully retrieved yet. This is an ugly short-cut, but was returning sane results most of the time. My data queue listed : [ ... pop_music, trance_music, 00b3-10cd, breakbeat, black_metal ... ] ... I'll eventually be able to resolve that as I get the preferred name I guess. Just something to know! Thanks again. I think I'll be able to work with this..

Country: Incorrect ID

2009-12-14T14:08:44.0013Z

This is entirely expected. Each entity in Freebase can be referred to either by its GUID, or by an arbitrary number (possibly zero) of other IDs; there's then an algorithm which chooses the "primary" ID for each topic. Put simply, this algorithm chooses the shortest ID from the ones available, or uses the GUID if none exist.

In this case, the topic had not been assigned another ID (note that both /en/country and /en/country_music are used elsewhere), so when it was given an ID in Arthur's personal namespace, it started using that as its primary ID. However, nothing has changed here: you can still refer to this topic by its GUID or even by a number of Wikipedia keys, or even by its Wikipedia numeric article ID if you want. (The /wikipedia keys are never allowed to become the primary ID for a topic, which is why you weren't seeing those before). In the same way, you'll see raw GUIDs for any topics which don't have any other ID set.

Is this change of primary ID causing you a problem?

Country: Incorrect ID

2009-12-14T13:07:16.0014Z

Something has happened to this topic (Country Music). When the ID /user/avh/ellerdale.00b3-10cd was added to it, it seems to have taken over the identity of this resource. Now listings that include the concept of 'Country Music" Now instead include the concept of this odd User-defined Id

eg http://rdf.freebase.com/rdf/music.genre http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/type.type.instance [ http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.pop_music. http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.trance_music. http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/user.avh.ellerdale.00b3-10cd. http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.breakbeat. http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.black_metal ]

I can see when the erroneous ID was added http://www.freebase.com/history/view/user/avh/ellerdale/00b3-10cd But I can't see how to undo it.

I'm spotting a few other oddities (raw GUDs) in instances under music.genre as well.

Dublin Mid West: Politicial district not Governmental Jurisdiction?

2009-12-14T10:19:16.0019Z

Shouldn't Dublin Mid West be just a political district rather than a governmental jurisdiction? For example, Joanna Tuffy should have "Dublin Mid West" as her political district if (as I assume) she was elected in this constituency; to have this topic as her jurisdiction implies that she can only pass laws applying to Dublin Mid West.

Court Martial: Episodes

2009-12-13T18:51:24.0013Z

Wikipedia and CrazyAboutTV.com list the episodes in different order. I've added the episodes according to CrazyAboutTV.com because those have dates and Wiki only lists titles.

Before the City: Award Winning Collection

2009-12-13T08:56:06.0000Z

Freebase discussion areas are for users wanting to improve the data on Freebase; using them to advertise your book is against the Freebase Terms of Service and liable to get deleted (and your account locked) if you continue.

Rembrandt: Rembrandt Author

2009-12-13T05:24:00.0013Z

It depends, and you will need to do this on a work-by-work basis. If the work consists of reproductions of works by an artist, the artist is usually listed as the author of the whole book (the compiler is merely an editor). In that case, what exactly is the subject? I would argue that the artworks are the subjects. If it is an art history book about a particular artist's works then the writer of the text is listed as the author and the artist is listed as the subject. For exhibition catalogues, list the curators as editors and the artists as subjects. Often times, the curators and artists (along with the gallery) are also listed as the agents of responsibility (authors).

Kirby Wright: Wright wins Post as Visiting Writer in Hong Kong

2009-12-13T01:35:09.0041Z

Kirby Wright has joined fellow US poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Snyder at the International Writers Conference in Hong Kong November thru December, 2009. Wright was selected as Hawaii's representative and will join a panel of 7 fellow Pacific Rim writers at the 5-week conference, which includes excursions into Mainland China where he will lecture at the campuses of United International College in Zhuhai and Shangdong University in Shangdong Province.

Wright's poems and short stories have appeared in over 100 literary reviews, including Hayden's Ferry Review, Artful Dodge, Blue Mesa Review, Maryland Review, Melic Review, Cortland Review, Hawai'i Review, Chaminade Literary Review, and Honolulu Magazine. He is the author of the companion novels PUNAHOU BLUES and MOLOKA'I NUI AHINA as well as the award-winning poetry collection BEFORE THE CITY.

Before the City: Award Winning Collection

2009-12-12T22:22:49.0043Z

There actually is a connection to Obama: the final poem is set on his high school campus and the speaker addresses the poem to all grads of the school, and Obama is a grad, thanks.

Before the City: Award Winning Collection

2009-12-12T19:49:37.0036Z

Welcome to Freebase. Since Freebase is all about structured data, the best way to represent the information that you're trying to include here would be to add the individual authors represented in the collection to its topic and then, for any who are missing that information, go and add the awards that they've won.

I've deleted the extensive cross-posting to random topics like UCSD and Barack Obama since there doesn't appear to be any connection between this discussion topic and them.

Before the City: Award Winning Collection

2009-12-12T15:42:04.0032Z

This collection includes the winners of the Ann Fields Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Award, the Browning Society Award for Dramatic Monologue, and the suite of poems that won the poet his Fellowship at Arts Council Silicon Valley. The collection helped Wright win a Visiting Writers Post at the 2009 International Writers Conference in Hong Kong, where he joined fellow US Poet Gary Snyder for a series of lectures and recitals.

Robert Andrews Millikan: Academic, Physicist, Nobel Laureate...which ONE?

2009-12-12T01:30:24.0000Z

humm...first question: What's the correct term for this..."most notable type"?

Is there no way to override this?

Better question: It would be interesting to write a query to display all Nobel laureates most notable types to assess this routine to say nothing of the exercise.

any pointers on where/how to start?

Robert Andrews Millikan: Academic, Physicist, Nobel Laureate...which ONE?

2009-12-12T01:18:42.0033Z

It's based on an algorithm which tries to guess the most notable type. I agree it's not always ideal.

Robert Andrews Millikan: Academic, Physicist, Nobel Laureate...which ONE?

2009-12-12T00:56:39.0025Z

Dr. Millikan was indeed an Academic, Physicist, Nobel Laureate...which ONE?

I am talking about what shows up (or drops down) from the search box when I type in ``Robert Andrews Millikan.''

I guarantee you that the Nobel was the first thing mentioned in his obituary, why is it that he comes up as an ``Academic''?

Is this set someplace or is this an automatic function of Freebase?

Publishing: co-type as a book?

2009-12-07T23:51:34.0020Z

You're making some good points, and I'm not quite sure how to best address them right now. But I think we might need to reconsider the relationship between books and translations (and therefore between translations and other kinds of works) now that we have so much more data and can see how it's being created and used.

Publishing: co-type as a book?

2009-12-07T19:13:12.0021Z

hmmm - if a user is using filtered views based on books that won awards (because they aren't a programmer and don't write queries - or don't know to use literature) they won't find it.

It also just seems counter-intuitive for a book award winning work to to not be a book.

What about the 60 or so other Beowulfs currently typed as books - are they all unique books or are many of them also translations?

Publishing: co-type as a book?

2009-12-07T18:59:20.0006Z

It should show up in queries for awards -- use the award category "subject or discipline" property, and filter for "literature". One of the main reasons translations aren't books is that a Book Edition can only be an edition of one book; if Translations are Books, then the edition has to be an edition of two Books -- the original book and the translation.

There might be a case for making Translations also be Written Works, and delegating "Translator" from "Author"; there was a reason I didn't do it that way, but it might not pertain any more -- I'll have to see if I can find my notes.

Publishing: co-type as a book?

2009-12-07T01:49:45.0017Z

I would be inclined to type this translation as a book but haven't yet as that seems contrary to the use of the translation type. However, this particular translation has won several book awards but won't show up in any book award queries or views that are book based without adding the book type.

Thoughts from publishing admins or others?