Comic Book Location

New York: I agree with deletion request

2008-07-03T02:38:41.0006Z

Officially the article should be "New York" or perhaps "The City of New York" but not New York, New York

New York: The Official Name Is...

2008-06-20T17:13:59.0012Z

And Sting’s official name is Gordon Sumner.
We have discussed the notion of adding an “official name” or ”legal name” property to some topics, but for now, the display name of a topic should be its most commonly-used name. In particular, cities show up in address information frequently; no one addresses mail to The City of New York, NY 10021. I am changing it back and adding T.C.O.N.Y. as an alias.
Your point about verification is a good one. However, this open model seems to work acceptably for Wikipedia, and with our finer granularity of assertions and login requirement, we have better means for detecting and undoing abusive usage patterns. As with Wikipedia, I would encourage you to watch (subscribe to the RSS feed of) topics that particularly interest you.
Another approach used by some of our users is to perform QA on the topics of interest and note the last-known-good timestamp. Queries via the API can then be scoped to only return information older than the last QA check.
Thanks again for your many contributions.

New York: The Official Name Is...

2008-06-20T14:35:18.0006Z

The City Of New York not "New York." New York is an "aka." But I'm not going to change it back and forth every other day. This is the only thing I don't like about Freebase. Anyone can just come in here and change the information abd screw up the API.

I really think Freebase should look at verifying information or utilize editors to approve changes before they go live. I'd hate to see all my hard work replaced with bogus information.

New York: Don't merge with state of New York

2008-06-20T09:58:56.0000Z

Absolutely do not merge this topic with the state.

New York: Don't merge with state of New York

2008-06-20T03:42:20.0019Z

The state and the city should not be conflated.

Ethiopia: Somaliland

2008-05-07T22:57:43.0015Z

That raises an interesting question: does a place have to be recognized in order to border something? If we agree that it does have to be, then we cannot assert that Somiland borders anything (except possibly Puntland, which seems to be in a similarly unrecognized state), which seems sort of counter-intuitive to me. I'd suggest that Ethiopia borders both Somalia and Somaliland, even though the two might be mutually-exclusive constructs.

Ethiopia: Somaliland

2008-05-07T22:13:44.0008Z

I removed Somaliland from 'adjoins' in location because it's not fully internationally recognised.

New York: Merge

2008-01-09T20:22:36.0005Z

Duplicate instance with no data

New York: Merge, don’t delete

2007-10-30T00:04:39.0000Z

Yes, merge, not delete.

Chicago: “Chicago” versus “Chicago, Illinois”

2007-09-29T03:10:50.0007Z

the "name" property is defined and used as a "primary display name". so its
appropriate value is in fact driven by the available ui. the best display name for a topic
will vary by context so this will always be chosen by compromise, and including the state
in the display name does seem like the best compromise for almost all us cities. if you
want to argue that chicago is exceptional, i think you would have a good case - wikipedia
leaves off the "illinois" qualifier in the article name.

and i strongly agree that /location/citytown should have *some* property holding the city name
without any qualifiers. setting that up effectively will require a mass data operation.

Chicago: “Chicago” versus “Chicago, Illinois”

2007-09-20T01:49:02.0000Z

If I understand correctly, the difficulty of making a good user interface is leading to the deliberate corruption of data. Do I understand correctly?

Chicago: “Chicago” versus “Chicago, Illinois”

2007-09-17T17:35:18.0000Z

You'd be surprised what weird assertions get made because of topics with the same names, actually. Most, or at least very many, cities have state or country in the name because of the fact that, without them, it's hard to know which city is which (Manchester, England vs. Manchester, New Hampshire, for example -- someone actually flagged them for merge because they were confused as to which was which). Usually if you read the article or can see all the data, it's pretty clear, but if you're selecting from a list while filling in a property, there often isn't enough information to tell them apart otherwise. I'm not saying that this is ideal, or that we mightn't find ways to make this work better in the future, though.

Chicago: “Chicago” versus “Chicago, Illinois”

2007-09-17T17:31:34.0000Z

This is the convention we've used in Freebase for all US cities. This becomes more obviously useful when disambiguating between cities with the same name, for instance Rockville

Chicago: “Chicago” versus “Chicago, Illinois”

2007-09-16T15:58:57.0005Z

Why is the name currently “Chicago, Illinois” as opposed to just “Chicago”? Are users having trouble distinguishing the city from the band?

New York: Merge, don’t delete

2007-08-26T19:21:16.0012Z

This topic has properties associated with it and should be merged.

New York: I agree with deletion request

2007-08-26T16:08:00.0012Z

This should be deleted as there is already a New York, New York topic started by mw