Freebase: Discussion about spatialed

Birds: AOU Type

2008-10-14T07:04:29.0000Z

I stick with my comments above for why your simple approach, while very desirable, is not appropriate.

I have tried to link to existing topics whenever possible but it is not always possible. I have also tried to provide documentation when links with existing topics are not appropriate (read above as well as the description and data for those topics). Jeff's reference to American Flamingo (the "here, here, here, and here") related topics is a great example. See this discussion on some of the historical merges and splits of this taxon/taxa with P. roseus in the 80's and 90's. How can this historical information be documented in the current schema? As an alias? That's not very useful. I'd like to see historical information summarized in Freebase rather than see Freebase turn into an encyclopedia limited to a single taxonomy at a single point in time with aliases that may or may not be appropriate depending on the date.

What about a hypothetical but possible example of taxa that were split, where one side of the split keeps the Latin name and the other doesn't but both get new English names?

What about a hypothetical but possible example of three taxonomic classification systems for plants, where one describes a taxon, the second splits it into two taxa, and the third splits it into two taxa but merges the second with a third that is not included in the first. Worse yet, each of these three classification systems may use the same English name for one of the taxa but different Latin names. Now what?

I agree that we should only have one topic for a concept but there are few universal taxonomic concepts, especially if considered since Linneaus.To model dynamic and sometimes conflicting taxonomic systems and relationships, I did exactly what jg suggested: "have one topic for one concept, and co-type as required for AOU or whatever other data we wish to capture for that concept." My approach may not be the best way to model these relationships but I don't make up data or relationships to fit a simple mold. It seems that's what you want to sometimes by funneling conflicts into aliases.

Disease or medical condition: Add medical sign property

2008-10-14T03:51:53.0018Z

There is currently a "symptom" property and type, but I suggest differentiating this into "symptom" (which is subjective) and "medical sign" which is objective (can be measured in one way or another). E.g. all kinds of pain is a symptom, whereas a skin miscoloring or an oedema is a medical sign.

What do you think?

Military: delegating location from event for military conflict

2008-10-14T02:00:44.0017Z

these two seem redundant. can we delegate the location property of event to military conflict and reconcile duplicates?

TV: Multiple air dates for first/final episodes???

2008-10-14T01:25:08.0012Z

Cool, thanks for looking into this.

Birds: AOU Type

2008-10-14T01:20:27.0012Z

+1, we should have one topic for one concept, and co-type as required for AOU or whatever other data we wish to capture for that concept.

What are the examples of AOU and ITIS taxonomy (not just names) conflicting? It could be that we just have not added taxa aliases yet...

Birds: AOU Type

2008-10-13T23:57:26.0012Z

I agree with Jeff. I think that the AOU Latin and common names should be text properties of an AOU Taxon type, which would be used only as a co-type to existing topics. I'll take a crack at this sometime this week.

Dog Breed: Organism classification

2008-10-13T23:55:07.0012Z

I don't know that Freebase only credits ITIS -- we also have NCBI keys, which collect some organisms not in ITIS, but I can't really speak to that. But if there is a taxonomy out there that classifies breeds, then you're right that it would make sense as a co-type. I just didn't think there were any, but it's not really my area of expertise.

Birds: AOU Type

2008-10-13T23:32:31.0012Z

I don't pretend to know much about the ins and outs of differing biological taxonomies, but I'm more than a bit concerned about having multiple topics for different classifications of the same organism, for example here, here, here, and here. These are all the same bird, as far as I can tell, and two of them are even the same name. Users who want to link to this species -- Christine's checklist, say, or as the subject of a paper, will have to arbitrarily choose one, and anyone looking for a list of things about flamingoes will have to query against an unknown number of topics to get any kind of useful list.

Dog Breed: Organism classification

2008-10-13T22:22:54.0061Z

Depends on your taxonomy. I don't personally have a problem with it because IMO "Organism classification" should be a generic type that is co-typed with a particular taxonomy type. However, Freebase currently seems to only give credence to ITIS. According to the ITIS documentation:

"Ranks in the animal kingdom below subspecies will not be included in ITIS regardless of their occasional inclusion in datasets, as these ranks are not allowed under the zoological code. The botanical code allows the ranks variety, subvariety, forma, and subforma."

Also worth noting on that page is that:

"ITIS does not intend to serve as a forum for cutting-edge taxonomic classifications. Rather, ITIS is meant to serve as a standard to enable the comparison of biodiversity datasets, and therefore aims to incorporate classifications that have gained broad acceptance in the taxonomic literature and by professionals who work with the taxa concerned."

Therefore, it is useful for taxonomic classifications to be crosswalked to ITIS but there is also reason to maintain other taxonomies. Whether or not this includes dog breeds should be up to the user. Perhaps "Organism classification" should be renamed "ITIS organism classification"?

Dog Breed: Organism classification

2008-10-13T21:35:54.0006Z

I'm not sure that having "organism classification" as an included type for Dog Breed makes sense -- I don't think that dog breeds are considered to be taxonimically distinct from one another.

TV: Multiple air dates for first/final episodes???

2008-10-13T21:20:07.0020Z

Turns out that there are several hundred instances with more than one of either first or final air date, so this will take some time. I've opened up a ticket for this (and videogames).

TV: Multiple air dates for first/final episodes???

2008-10-13T19:47:30.0012Z

well, sadly the reason I even noticed this was that the app I'm building stumbled upon one. The new Battlestar Galactica show (can't remember if it's miniseries or regular series) has two dates for first episode. I haven't found any others yet, but who knows. Coincidentally, the value for "release_date" on video games also allows multiple values. I've figured a way around this in my program, but I still don't know how you would sort the results by air date as long as they allow multiples...

Birdwatching: Data Projects for the Birdwatching Domain

2008-10-13T17:44:59.0012Z

Which one of the AOU lists?

Birdwatching: DoD Installation Checklists

2008-10-13T17:33:53.0017Z

Checklists of birds on Department of Defense installations can be found here.

TV: Multiple air dates for first/final episodes???

2008-10-13T17:27:58.0012Z

Good catch. I see that "number of episodes" is also non-unique. If there are no topics with multiple dates, this should be a quick fix; if there are some with multiple dates, it will take a bit longer.

Baseball Manager: Addition to schema

2008-10-13T17:04:44.0000Z

Alright - I've gone ahead and added this. See Sparky Anderson.

There's still much to do in this domain - we will want to model other coaching roles too and obviously still need to produce schema for player and team stats as well.

Bug / Feature Request: API Bug?

2008-10-13T15:58:27.0012Z

There are two separate problems you are running into here.

First, I do not see a topic for blood cancer. A search turns up a few results about leukemia, which have the words “blood” and “cancer” in their Wikipedia articles, but there does not appear to be a topic with that actual name.

The reason your query is not working for skin cancer is that you are requiring the topics to have articles and images. The skin cancer topic has no images, so the query fails.

When you want a query to return results even if some of the interesting properties are not present, use the optional constraint:

"/common/topic/image":[{"id":null,"optional":true}]

Bug / Feature Request: API Bug?

2008-10-13T15:58:27.0012Z

There are two separate problems you are running into here.

The reason your query is not working for skin cancer is that you are requiring the topics to have articles and images. The skin cancer topic has no images, so the query fails.

When you want a query to return results even if some of the interesting properties are not present, use the optional constraint:

"/common/topic/image":[{"id":null,"optional":true}]

Help Center: How to get started

2008-10-13T15:29:48.0012Z

In addition to Ed’s suggestion… The API is HTTP-based, so any language with TCP capabilities can be used, which is to say, pretty much any language. You will find it easiest to use a language with libraries for HTTP connections and JSON serialization and parsing, but those are also thick upon the ground.

When you write information with the API, it is indeed the same as if the write had been done through the Freebase.com Web site. However, the Web client has some knowledge of the Freebase data model and generally keeps things clean; making direct writes via the API, it is possible to create broken shapes, so testing on the sandbox server is strongly encouraged.

If you are looking to load a lot of data, please contact us first; we have some internal prototype tools that can ease the process, and we can also help you test your code before unleashing it on the main server.

I would also strongly recommend joining the developers e-mail list, as well.

Freebase Applications: Metaweb Perl Module

2008-10-13T07:52:51.0012Z

you svn address also dosen't work, would you create free repository in one of these websites like github.com, www.assembla.com, google code or sourceforge?

Freebase Applications: Metaweb Perl Module

2008-10-13T07:44:54.0012Z

hi hds,

I'm interested too, actually there is two other module in cpan and none of them working becasue of latest version of JSON and JSON::XS module.

if you need someone to contribute let me know.

Bug / Feature Request: API Bug?

2008-10-13T06:47:27.0018Z

I wrote a perl script to fetch article and image from freebase but seems API has some bug:

my query is :

http://www.freebase.com/tools/queryeditor?q=%5B%7B%22/common/topic/article%22:%5B%7B%22id%22:null%7D%5D,%22/common/topic/image%22:%5B%7B%22id%22:null%7D%5D,%22guid%22:null,%22name%22:%22blood%20cancer%22,%22type%22:%22/medicine/disease%22%7D%5D&read=1

to retrive result for 'blood cancer' but the result is nothing

same query works for 'cervical cancer' but dosn't work for 'skin cancer' too

both of 'cervical cancer' and 'blood cancer' articles and content exist when is search in website

what's wrong?

actual query :

[
{
    "/common/topic/article" : [
      {
        "id" : null
      }
    ],
    "/common/topic/image" : [
      {
        "id" : null
      }
    ],
    "guid" : null,
    "name" : "blood cancer",
    "type" : "/medicine/disease"
}
]

Bug / Feature Request: API Bug?

2008-10-13T06:47:27.0018Z

I wrote a perl script to fetch article and image from freebase but seems API has some bug:

my query is :

to retrive result for 'blood cancer' but the result is nothing

same query works for 'cervical cancer' but dosn't work for 'skin cancer' too

both of 'cervical cancer' and 'blood cancer' articles and content exist when is search in website

what's wrong?

actual query :

Baseball Manager: Addition to schema

2008-10-11T16:33:16.0012Z

yes would like to use this too.

Thanks

TV: Multiple air dates for first/final episodes???

2008-10-11T15:02:48.0017Z

So why is this the case? It's making life difficult when trying to sort search results for TV programs by air dates. Compare to Film, which has only one value for initial release date. Why is TV different?

Help Center: How to get started

2008-10-11T07:57:43.0012Z

Did you check out the Help page? In the bottom right is a screencast of API & sample apps. The links under "Developing Applications" should also be helpful.

Help Center: How to get started

2008-10-11T05:38:17.0017Z

Hello. I'm a senior Computer Science major and I'd like to use Freebase in my senior project. However, I've never worked with an API like this before and I'm finding it difficult to find examples for basic programs. How do I call the Freebase service in my code? Which languages can I use? What kind of format does the data have to be in before I can upload it, and does uploading it mean it appears on the Metaweb servers as if someone had added something through the website? It doesn't seem well-organized for the novice programmer, and I could really use some help.

Birds: AOU Type

2008-10-10T17:26:31.0012Z

I've filled in a bit of data from the 49th supplement. The AOU Latin name and AOU English name types seem to be holding up well, including list imports. The supplement contains a lot of name and taxonomy changes that conflict with the ITIS data so it was a good test for how well those differences can be documented. I also added a couple text properties to document reasons for changes in nomenclature and taxonomy. This might become an enumerated list down the road.

Bug / Feature Request: Urgent Require - Fetching Content - http://www.freebase.com/api/trans/raw is not working.

2008-10-10T17:14:08.0012Z

Hi Hemang.

A recent data update seems to have caused the problem. We are working on resolving that as soon as possible. In the meanwhile if you are running this specific query for wikipedia articles only (i.e. not in a generic library or something of that sort), you can get the same content by using the /api/tran/blurb service with a very hign number for maxlength like so:

http://www.freebase.com/api/trans/blurb/%239202a8c04000641f8000000000acd66c?maxlength=3000

This will only work for wikipedia based topics. The reason being that we do not maintain the complete wikipedia article on our backend. However we do allow /api/trans/raw requests for wikipedia based topics, it simply returns the same content as the blurbs without truncating the content.

HTH

Bug / Feature Request: Urgent Require - Fetching Content - http://www.freebase.com/api/trans/raw is not working.

2008-10-10T16:56:36.0012Z

Thanks for bringing this up. The data format for blurbs changed, and a piece of the API was overlooked. It should be fixed soon; stay tuned for more information.

Bug / Feature Request: Deleting First Address

2008-10-10T15:40:34.0018Z

Sometimes a company in Freebase has two cities in the HQ address area when it really doesn't. If the second city is correct, and you delete the first address line, and then try to add information into the remaining line, the autofill fields won't work. You can type things in there, but the auto-suggest won't "open" and you can't link the field to an actual topic. You have to close out and then go back in.

In case that is confusing :) here's hopefully something that will help:

Company XYZ

Company/Headquarters "field"

Line 1 = Paris

Line 2 = London

Go in and delete Paris. Then try to fill in the other address fields for the London line. the fields that link to other topics won't work.

Bug / Feature Request: Urgent Require - Fetching Content - http://www.freebase.com/api/trans/raw is not working.

2008-10-10T11:21:13.0018Z

Hi,

Please any one help me on following issue.

It is unable to fetch content using following url:

Request:- http://www.freebase.com/api/trans/raw/%239202a8c04000641f8000000000acd66c

it give response like as shown below:

Response:-

{
  "status":"404 Not Found",
  "code":"/api/status/error/blobclient",
  "messages":[
    {
      "info":{
        "hostports":"blob03.p01.sjc1.metaweb.com:8120 blob01.p01.sjc1.metaweb.com:8120 blob02.p01.sjc1.metaweb.com:8120"
      },
      "message":"Could not find or replicate blob: static:mw-render/en/6c/9202a8c04000641f8000000000acd66c",
      "code":"/api/status/error/not_found"
    }
  ],
  "transaction_id":"cache;cache01.p01.sjc1:8101;2008-10-10T11:18:03Z;0011"
}

Thanks in advance...

Birds: AOU Type

2008-10-10T02:02:29.0012Z

Minor revision: Latin name could be used to describe a specific instance of a taxon description (e.g., the latest edition of the AOU checklist). This will allow you to resolve ITIS English names with AOU English names linked to a single instance of the Latin name. Additional Latin names can later be added to the English names to describe changes that were made in more recent supplements or to document previous Latin names in earlier editions and supplements.

Birds: AOU Type

2008-10-10T01:39:02.0012Z

Update: I have added properties for previous and revised English and Latin names. This is so far the best way I can figure out how to explictly make those connections.

Also note that the AOU Latin names can only be linked to 1 edition of the checklist/supplement whereas common names can be linked to multiple. My thinking is that the Latin name will be used to identify the first case in which the Latin-English combo were used (only the American Flamingo data currently represent this relationship). The common name on the other hand can hold all instances of association with Latin names, editions, and supplements.

Birds: AOU Type

2008-10-10T00:34:06.0012Z

So... after playing with the AOU taxonomy type for awhile I wasn't happy with it.

I decided to let the existing Freebase English bird names drive the links between common names (linked to ITIS codes) and AOU English names. Each English bird name is type as "AOU English name" type. This type contains an "AOU Latin name" property/type that has disambiguation for taxon rank (e.g., species) and source (i.e., an edition of the AOU checklist and possibly supplement). For each AOU English name, one or more AOU Latin names can be added to track changes. For each Latin name, only one English name can be added. This means that there could be duplicate Latin names if one was changed in say the 5th edition of the checklist and then changed back in the 7th edition. Disambiguation is used to distinguish the similar Latin names topics by edition/supplement.

So far this seems to work alright. The English names are simple to update. The Latin names are where the effort must be made to keep track of changes.

Because of the way this is structured, Latin names are automatically reciprocated back to the checklist editions and supplements, which is great. Common names, however, must be reciprocated through additional properties. This adds some denormalization but I can't figure out how to get around that yet.

Birds: AOU Type

2008-10-10T00:28:27.0012Z

Ugh.... I would really rather go with a co-type, and not try to duplicate the hierarchical relationships. I was envisioning a type that would only have AOU-specific properties. I realize there may be some differences in the relationships, but I think they can be modelled without having to duplicate all the info. Perhaps when I finish resolving the names, we can get some data on how hairy the conflicts are. I don't think there will be so many differences that mirroring the Organism Classification type will be warranted.

Spaceflight: Launch/landing locations

2008-10-09T22:24:06.0012Z

That makes sense to me. The only issue I see is for missions to space stations which are not currently modeled as celestial objects, but maybe they should be...

In regard to more specific destinations, I was thinking it would be cool to make a visualization of lunar and mars landings using whatever coordinates are standard. But maybe the coordinate systems are significantly different on each planet in which case maybe it makes sense to have a 'Lunar Landing' type and a 'Mars Landing' type, etc.

Birds: AOU Type

2008-10-09T21:30:06.0012Z

Sorry. This is the updated link. The previous one will probably be recycled as the bucket for the taxonomy type, codes, and anything else AOU related.

Spaceflight: Split spacecraft and missions

2008-10-09T19:22:57.0012Z

I'd rather get it right from the beginning, and pick one type for topic imported from WP, and create new topics as needed. I mean, do this if you're adding types by hand. If someone (or a bot) has already added both (or all three!) types, flagging it for split seems sufficient.

Spaceflight: Split spacecraft and missions

2008-10-09T18:32:10.0017Z

In email yesterday, evening asked me about what to do when a spacecraft is conflated with a mission. This sometimes also happens with space programs, eg. see International Space Station.

Usually this comes from Wikipedia having conflated the two. I say we type the topic as both things and mark it for split.

Thoughts?

Spaceflight: Launch/landing locations

2008-10-09T18:30:04.0012Z

Well, I see two properties here:

1) Destination (expected: celestial object) -- for missions that go to another planet or whatever, whether they return or not

2) Landing site (expected: geolocation) -- for missions that land back on earth

The description/help for each of these would help distinguish them.

Birdwatching: Data Projects for the Birdwatching Domain

2008-10-09T05:19:07.0005Z

just added links from all birds on the AOU list to type /biology/organism_classification, and added the AOU common name as an alias if the topic name differed. there were 66 birds on the AOU list which my script was not able to resolve, and which i will have to resolve manually. next, jg gave me a list of ITIS ids for birds, and will be adding those soon.

Spaceflight: Launch/landing locations

2008-10-09T00:09:21.0001Z

What about space missions that land on celestial objects such as comets or other planets? Clearly a landing location can't be a geolocation in this case. Perhaps another property (or property of a type that includes the space mission type) with an ECT of /astronomy/celestial_object would be appropriate. This of course begs the question of how to specify the specific location on the celestial object. For spherical objects (such as the moon), there must be an analogue of long/lat. Maybe someone else can weigh in on this issue.

Freebase: data mob start and end

2008-10-08T22:57:25.0012Z

Good idea, thanks! I can add those properties.

Spaceflight: Launch/landing locations

2008-10-08T20:12:47.0017Z

I notice that some space missions are co-typed as locations because mw_coord_bot picked up their lat/long from infoboxes on wikipedia. This is obviously incorrect, but recording launch and landing locations could be useful and interesting. Could we put these as properties on space mission? I suspect the launch location should just be type /location/location (or else some kind of type that includes that, like "Space mission launchsite" in this domain), but landing location should probably be a geolocation since so many of them are at sea, in the middle of nowhere, etc.

Freebase: data mob start and end

2008-10-08T20:02:06.0005Z

Would it be useful to have a data mob start/end date? It would be cool to plot data mobs like MDOs:

http://instanceplots.vtalwar.user.dev.freebaseapps.com/index

Birdwatching: Data Projects for the Birdwatching Domain

2008-10-07T15:35:21.0017Z

This discussion started in the "Checklist Abundance" topic, but the actual data projects got lost in a discussion about sampling techniques, so starting this new thread.

Things that would be useful:

For each /biology/organism_classification object that is a checklist_bird/species, add a link to the /biology/organism_classification object that is its genus, and link genera to families / subfamilies, and families to orders.

Here's a list of birds & their scientific_names & freebase ids that have no genus specified:

http://sfbaybirds.xtine.user.dev.freebaseapps.com/birds_without_genus

Add more bird checklists. Checklists with abundance data by month or season is more useful than checklists without abundance data. I am currently not adding checklists that do not have abundance data.
Suggest new types -- Birdwatching Festivals, Tour Operators might be good types to develop.