City/Town

Paris: Merge, don't delete

2008-08-31T17:58:34.0012Z

Don't delete!

Munich: Don't delete!

2008-08-31T15:59:03.0012Z

No way, don't delete!

Napier: Art Deco City

2008-08-29T04:40:20.0012Z

Cool! If you're interested in promoting Napier's attractions, may I suggest filling in more of the data on the topic page, and perhaps adding some of its Art Deco buildings to the Architecture domain, under the Building type? Just go to that page, click "Add new Building", and start filling in whatever you know.

Granada Hills: Granada Hills

2008-08-25T12:17:41.0017Z

this was flagged by mistake,.,I meant to flag Granada Hills California

Washington: us_state?

2008-08-21T23:40:12.0012Z

Yeah, I hear you. I was thinking of just an empty topic for use only with addresses. Ugly, but so is having DC missing from addresses. Maybe we should have a poll for which is worse :)

Washington: us_state?

2008-08-21T21:39:28.0012Z

That's going to cause some bizarreness in terms of data, since some of the data (like the properties on statistical region) apply equally to both the city and the district. To find out information about Washington, DC, users would have to know to look in two places. But I do see your point about the addresses. I'm not sure what the best solution is right now.

Washington: us_state?

2008-08-21T14:12:23.0012Z

I think we need to split this topic so we have "DC" to put as the state of a US address. (I get that it isn't a state, but it does belong in that field, just like PR.) It is odd because they are one and the same (I think?), but not sure how else to fill in addreses properly.

Berlin: split candidate

2008-08-20T18:52:25.0022Z

This bit from the German embassy in Washington makes me think the topic shouldn't be split:

Berlin is both a city and one of Germany's 16 state, so its government must play two roles.

Berlin: split candidate

2008-08-20T18:50:44.0018Z

I don't know much more about Berlin than I just learned from reading the WP article, but from the article it sounds like the city and the state are the same entity, similar to the way Washington DC is both a city and federal district. If this is actually the case, they should continue to share the topic. If they are distinct (but coterminous) entities, spliting might make sense.

Berlin: split candidate

2008-08-19T23:37:41.0012Z

Is there any counter arguments here or should I do the split now? I'd like to add containedby values to the state, but not the city.

Napier: Art Deco City

2008-08-06T01:08:19.0006Z

Napier is an Art Deco city in Hawke's Bay wine country. The city is situated in the midst of New Zealand's oldest wine growing region.

A massive earthquake on 3rd February 1931 destroyed the city. It was rebuilt in the Art Deco, Spanish Mission and other styles of the 1930s.

Today it is a vibrant centre reflecting the vigor and optimism of the Art Deco style.

Coombe: How many Coombes?

2008-08-06T00:27:54.0032Z

How about that. I guess there's lots of "short, deep, generally bowl-shaped valleys" in Cornwall and Devonshire ...

Coombe: How many Coombes?

2008-08-05T22:07:33.0012Z

It sure looks like it. There are apparently three in Devonshire, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coombe_%28disambiguation%29.

Coombe: How many Coombes?

2008-08-05T07:06:08.0017Z

Are there really 6 different Coombes in Cornwall? They all have slightly different descriptions ...

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

Ocoee: Join the discussion

2008-07-01T16:26:31.0005Z

Can there be productive and intelligent conversation to better Ocoee? We will see.

City/Town: Newspapers?

2008-06-30T22:02:22.0005Z

I think a property for "areas covered locally" or something similar would be the best way to capture this. Of course, the trick is then getting the data.

City/Town: Newspapers?

2008-06-29T05:23:31.0012Z

Very specifically, I wanted to ask, "What are the websites of the newspapers in the 3 cities neighboring the Federation of Damanhur?"

Of your two options, if I had to pick one, I would ask, "What newspapers cover a specific city locally?"

For Turin, (for example,) according to Wikipedia, the newspapers are: La Stampa, Tuttosport, and the Turin Metro.

City/Town: Newspapers?

2008-06-25T00:51:47.0001Z

Do you have a specific use case in mind? I'm hesitant to add this property to City/Town, because a lot of cities don't have their own newspapers, and a lot of newspapers are regional (Contra Costa Times for Contra Costa County, CA, for example). Is the idea just to be able to see what newspapers cover a specific city locally? Or are you specifically wanting to know what newspapers are based in a given city?

City/Town: Newspapers?

2008-06-24T23:24:37.0012Z

City newspapers? A link to the city newspapers?

For example, Santa Cruz, CA -> Santa Cruz Sentinel.

For example, Seattle -> both Seattle Times & Seattle P-I.

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.

Washington: us_state?

2008-06-17T22:55:52.0000Z

counties are defined by the state (with alaska using boroughs and Louisiana parishs). And since this isn't in a state, calling it a county seems odd.

Washington: us_state?

2008-06-13T21:57:15.0007Z

It shouldn't be typed as a state; it should be typed with /location/us_federal_district instead, since that's what it is. It also seems to be typed with /location/us_county, but I don't know enough about the ins and outs of the district to know if this is accurate, so I'm leaving it there for now.

Washington: us_state?

2008-06-13T01:55:02.0000Z

This topic currently represents both the city of Washington and the federal District of Columbia. I am not sure that this is the correct representation, and perhaps they should be split, but D.C. is more like a state than not.

Washington: us_state?

2008-06-13T01:17:01.0005Z

Why is this co-typed with /location/us_state?

Paris: Merge, don't delete

2008-04-06T22:21:08.0000Z

I agree, this instance should be merged with "Paris" #9202a8c04000641f800000000002db30.

Munich: Don't delete!

2008-04-04T19:34:26.0039Z

Don't delete!

City/Town: "Date founded" vs "Founded"

2008-03-27T17:16:34.0007Z

Good catch. The "founded" property on City/Town is an older property. "Date founded" is actually on a supporting type called "dated location", which we created to be used with many different types, including City/Town, Administrative division, and Country. But we forgot to get rid of the old property on City/Town. I'll open a bug to address this. Thanks!

Paris: Merge, don't delete

2008-03-27T16:55:28.0005Z

There are instances that are connected to this instance of Paris; it should be merged, not deleted.

City/Town: "Date founded" vs "Founded"

2008-03-27T05:18:05.0012Z

Both of these accept a Date/Time type, so they seem to be equivalent. Why are they both part of the schema?

City/Town: UN/LOCODE

2008-01-23T22:57:43.0007Z

We actually have a property on the location type for the US Geographic Names Service UFI code (the property is called "GEOnet Feature ID"), which would serve that purpose. The main problem with loading the data, besides its sheer volume (or because of its sheer volume -- I don't know how many records it is, but the download file is a 900MB txt file), is reconciling that data against our existing topics, which has kept us from taking this on yet. But we do agree that this would be valuable data to have in Freebase.

City/Town: UN/LOCODE

2008-01-23T16:05:31.0000Z

Hi,

It would be great if you could consider this carefully. I think the crucial thing is not that it necessarily be UN/LOCODE, but that there be some kind of identifier, since without it it's hard to use this information.

I'll watch this thread.

City/Town: UN/LOCODE

2008-01-14T18:17:13.0007Z

Hi larsga,

Thanks for the suggestion. We have discussed this data before; however, we have to go back and look at the licensing around it. Stay tuned!

City/Town: UN/LOCODE

2008-01-13T12:04:35.0012Z

The UN has defined ~55,000 codes for various locations around the world, mainly cities/towns/airports/ports. These are quite widely used to identify locations, and it would be great if Freebase had a "LOCODE" field to hold these identifiers. They're of the form "XX YYY" where XX is the ISO 3166 two-letter country code, and YYY is the actual locode.

This is really important because without unique and well-known identifiers for the city/towns in Freebase it's very hard to actually make use of the data anywhere else.

City/Town: Country field needed!

2007-11-21T05:44:32.0007Z

I hear you on usefulness... there are definitely trade-offs being made in this model. Hope we can get you an answer to your query question on the data modeling mailing list soon.

City/Town: Country field needed!

2007-11-20T12:13:06.0000Z

I still believe we need a "Country" field. A Location can be "contained by" many things - a region, an administrative division, a sub-urban area, county, province, a national park, a postal district. But one thing is common to all Towns - they all exist within a Country. There might be several levels of "contained within" between Country and Town - but "what country is this town in" is a regular question and it's a solid principle of database design to de-normalise the structure of the database intelligently away from the purely abstract and "perfectly non-redundant" model to allow for actual "USEFULNESS" (anyone heard of this concept?!) and performance of the data! Country field please!

City/Town: Founded By

2007-11-13T00:41:44.0012Z

Please consider adding a “Founded By” field which references a “Person” type. This historical information would be very useful to historians along with other individuals.

City/Town: Parks and Schools

2007-10-11T23:09:54.0000Z

For parks, you can enter the city in the "contained by" property. For schools, you have to fill in the address property. (If you don't know the full address, it's OK to just put in the city -- it's more information than we currently have, and someone else can always add more information later.)

City/Town: Parks and Schools

2007-10-11T20:29:44.0012Z

How can I link a City/Town to a Park or a School?

City/Town: Neighborhoods?

2007-09-05T17:31:17.0007Z

The contains property is pretty unconstrained -- anything that can be considered a location is fair game. So New York City can contain not only The Bronx and Harlem, but also Central Park and Todt Hill (the highest point in NYC). The "neighborhood" type already exists, although it's pretty empty right now.

City/Town: Neighborhoods?

2007-09-05T16:18:10.0005Z

Here's a question: how specific should the "Contains" box be? For instance, New York City contains borroughs as well as neighborhoods. Should we consider a separate type for neighborhoods, so they can be grouped and distinguised from jurisdictional boundaries?

City/Town: Postcode/zip property

2007-08-28T11:50:46.0000Z

totally agree

City/Town: Postcode/zip property

2007-08-26T21:51:20.0012Z

I think it would be good to add a postcode/zip to locations.
There are many free postcode date tables out there.
Cheers, Phil

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

City/Town: Should we allow multiple dated populations?

2007-08-22T17:11:10.0007Z

The same argument does indeed apply; thanks for catching it. All three population properties (on citytown, country, and administrative_division) now accept multiple values.

City/Town: Should we allow multiple dated populations?

2007-08-21T06:10:20.0007Z

You made City Population have multiple values to track changes over time. Why does not the same argument apply to Country Population which is still single valued?

City/Town: Adding a new property...

2007-07-27T20:53:48.0004Z

Hello, just starting out, so don't shoot me if it is a silly question. I have been on the Help but can't seem to figure this out...

bottom line, I think it would be helpful to have a property "surface" (square km, etc) for the location type. For cities, regions, countries etc it's interesting to know this kind of information...

again, sorry if I posted in the wrong place, let me know...

ciao

Luca

City/Town: Should we allow multiple dated populations?

2007-07-25T22:37:02.0008Z

I agree. I've made it so you can have multiple populations.

Berlin: split candidate

2007-07-12T21:11:40.0011Z

It seems to me Berlin as a city should be a separate topic from Berlin as a state, despite the conflation in the wikipedia article.