Domains and Types

Domains and Types: Don't see a domain or type you're expecting? Suggest it here.

2008-07-08T05:53:56.0012Z

Barry, have you looked at Robert's "Congress" domain (http://www.freebase.com/view/user/robert/us_congress)? Is that the sort of thing you're looking for? I believe he got his data from the Campaign for Responsible Politics (I think that's the acronym expansion for CRP) which tracks who donates how much to which politicians.

Domains and Types: Don't see a domain or type you're expecting? Suggest it here.

2008-07-08T00:23:05.0012Z

I'm getting ready to build a database of political contributions for a community: office, candidate, year, contributor, etc. This would be for multiple boards and the idea would be to make some connections about who's supporting whom.

Is freebase a suitable tool, and has anyone done anything like this yet? I can find anything.

Domains and Types: Don't see a domain or type you're expecting? Suggest it here.

2008-07-04T17:25:52.0005Z

I would like to see a Commercial Real Estate domain/type on here. By the way this is a great site!

Domains and Types: Geography of.....

2008-07-03T21:43:49.0012Z

Sorry - I've developed an aversion to discussion posts as they tend to crash my browser. :)

"Assassination of JFK" is a historic event, and I wouldn't want to merge it with the topic for "JFK", for all the books, movies, experts, and other events associated with it. "Reactions to the assassination of JFK", however, is probably split in WP only because of article length restriction, and I wouldn't mind merging it with "assassination of JFK".

In addition to being book subject, film subject, career specialty, academic field/focus, etc., I don't think it's out of the question that someone might want to create a data model that could use topics like this. I could easily create an "Assassination" type, with properties for "assassin", "target", "motivation", "outcome", etc.

Perhaps I was too conservative with my "keep if cannot re-pro with a query" policy, and on second thought, topics like "geography of ..." or "economy of ..." are probably of low value to Freebase. On the other hand, "assassination of .." or "death of ..." and similar topics I'd like to keep around. We have already established that lists should be deleted, when it comes to non-list content though, it seems that sometimes the best policy is one of flexibility.

Domains and Types: Geography of.....

2008-07-01T18:23:01.0002Z

(Typelibrarian is me; I try not to use it for discussions because it gets confusing, but I forgot I who I was logged in as.)

Merging "reactions to the assassination of JFK" into the "assassination of JFK" topic is certainly an option (just as merging "Economics of Angola" into "Angola" is an option). I favor deletion for these sorts of topics, but merging would work, too (the only functional difference, since these are largely un-typed topics, is that merging adds the Wikipedia keys of the "reaction" and "economics" topics to the main topics), and I don't feel especially strongly about it. In either case, the topic is gone, for all intents and purposes (that do not involve keys, anyway).

I don't see any point in keeping them around if the purpose is merely to extract the data onto other topics; the articles exist in Wikipedia, and the data can always be gotten from there.

I still don't understand Faye's argument that these topics have lots of potential; Faye, can you expand on that?

Domains and Types: Geography of.....

2008-07-01T07:55:54.0000Z

typelibrarian - that article describes events which are in reaction to another event (the assasination). The data in the article can most likely be split across these many related events, or incorporated into the main assasination topic.

I came across a topic, 'characters in atlas shrugged' - http://www.freebase.com/view/en/characters_in_atlas_shrugged.
At the time no query could reproduce it, but with a bit of work I divided it into the 100 or so individual topics for each of the individual characters. Once all the information was transferred I flagged it for deletion, as I believe the original article can now be recreated using MQL.

Domains and Types: Geography of.....

2008-06-30T17:39:58.0000Z

I like skud's criticism of the "subject" argument as well; her method is a lot cleaner than using these articles, too.

I don't think I understand the argument for "If topic's content is original that no query can re-pro - save", however. Freebase is a database, not an encyclopedia, and the value of the data is in the type and property assertions, not in the descriptions. Keeping them around tends to clutter up the search and autocomplete results, if nothing else.

Domains and Types: Geography of.....

2008-06-28T11:40:07.0000Z

I agree with skud - if uniqueness is not taken into account the vast majority of topics would be a type of "Book/film subject", as they are all the subject of wikipedia articles.

Therefore, to expand on faye's criterion:
- If topic's content is but a shortcut for results from a MQL query - delete.
- If topic's content is original (that no query can re-pro) and unique - save.
- If topic's content is original but non-unique - Split/merge

Comments?

Domains and Types: Geography of.....

2008-06-28T01:29:03.0012Z

Looking at the "Economy of Angola" example, could you not say that the book's subject was "Angola" and "Economics"? It's a non-unique property after all.

Domains and Types: Geography of.....

2008-06-27T22:01:08.0012Z

To play Devil's advocate: By your criteria, a topic like "Reaction to the assassination of John F. Kennedy" (http://freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000000471826) should be kept. What sorts of assertions (type or property) do you think might accrue to a topic like this?

Domains and Types: Geography of.....

2008-06-27T00:30:09.0005Z

I would vote for these topics to stay. While Wikipedia import of things like "List of books by author x" clearly offers no extra value (since it's trivial to find out that in Freebase), these focused topics have a lot of potential in addition to being Book-Subject- and Film-Subject-compatible.

My criterion for determining if something should be deleted:
- If topic's content is but a shortcut for results from a MQL query - delete.
- If topic's content is original that no query can re-pro - save.

Domains and Types: Geography of.....

2008-06-26T22:15:42.0012Z

This is a recurring debate, with some people in favor of merging "Economy of Angola" into "Angola" and others in favor of deleting the "X of" topics. I generally favor outright deletion, but neither choice is probably actually wrong. There is a third school of thought that maintains that these topics are potentially useful as instances of types like Book Subject or Film Subject, roughly equivalent to the Library of Congress subjects "Angola -- Economic policy" and "Angola -- Economic conditions", I suppose. I don't think any formal policy has ever been arrived at.

Domains and Types: Geography of.....

2008-06-26T13:26:08.0005Z

There are a number of Wikipedia articles entitled 'Geography of' or 'Economics of' related to locations e.g. 'Geography of Angola'

What are your opinions on the best way of dealing with these sorts of articles?

As I see it, 'Geography of' topic should be deleted, as all the data within actually belongs in the location's topic. e.g. all the data within 'Geography of Angola' belongs in the 'Angola' topic, most likely in the location type instance.

Domains and Types: Type method

2008-06-11T21:08:43.0009Z

How about a type "method" with the attribute "purpose"?

It is pretty abstract and can be used for different stuff like sewing is a method to make clothes but also the Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm is a method to search or 454 one to sequence DNA.

A problem is that most of the Topics are nouns and methods normaly verbs. Any suggestions?

Domains and Types: Government Agency

2008-06-09T16:52:59.0000Z

I think I understand the governmental bodies bit. I think at the federal level it would be the country's congress or equiv. It is not an agency (yes it may have employees but I still think it is a "body"), and I think it is a valid distinction. Yes, it is limited in use, but still a distinction. (most govt entities will be an agency)

Domains and Types: Government Agency

2008-06-08T17:34:02.0007Z

Thanks, crism:

Sorry about being slow getting back to you. I am a little anxious about saying anything as a big old newbie, but I don't think the disctinction between "governmental body" and "government agency" is valid, either legally or practically except in limited circumstances.

First, practically, many government agencies that have employees also have boatloads of politicians who are elected or appointed to leadership or managerial roles in that agency: the FCC, for example.

Second, virtually all government agencies have employees, whether there are political types elected or appointed to work with or direct the agency.

Thirdly, There are virtually no "government bodies" that are composed of politicians only. Courts, many city councils, legislatures all have employees, even though the people calling the shots in those entities were elected or appointed through the political process. They all have employees / flunkies to carry out the directives of the decision-makers.

The division between government "body" and government "agency" does not take into account the realities of modern government sufficiently.

Just my thoughts, but I really believe the distinction is artificial.

Thanks for your help! Dennis

Domains and Types: Government Agency

2008-06-03T19:08:27.0000Z

Hi, and thanks for your work on Masschusetts government.

Government Agency is a type, and this discussion should probably move over there if you want to continue it.

I think what you are saying is that agencies are not distinguishable from bodies in any meaningful sense. I submit that there is a qualitative difference: the difference between politicians and bureaucrats. A Governmental Body is composed of politicians; one must be elected or appointed to it. A Government Agency has employees. (So the FCC proper, the commission itself, is a Governmental Body, but the FCC as an organization is a Government Agency.) Other entities like the USPS or Amtrak might be co-typed as both Government Agency and Company, depending on their organizational details and history.

I’m not completely clear on which two modifications should think should be made. I encourage you to make a government agency type in your own personal domain, with the main Government Agency type as an included type, and add the properties you think are missing or should be modified.

P.S. Are you Dennis Desmarais? If so, you can use the Person-Topic About Me property on your user page to connect your user account with the Person.

Domains and Types: Government Agency

2008-05-31T09:31:35.0005Z

I am not sure if "Government Agency" is a type or domain, but its description does not accurately represent the legal status of many government agencies. The explanation of agency appears to distinguish agencies from "real" braches of government like ligislatures and courts.

Actually, most American states as well as the federal goverment traditionally feature three branches of government: the Executive (governor or president), the legislative (often an "upper" and a "lower" chamber of representatives), and the law courts.

First, most American states and the federal government feature many agencies which are as part of the government as the courts and the legislature. These agencies traditionally fall under the governor or president, the executive branch which is charged with executing and enforcing the laws.

In the modern state, administrative agencies are as fully part of the government as the legislature in that modern adminstrative law sees legislatures giving grants of legislative or rule-making authority to executive branch agencies which then develop and publish regulations. These regulations typically have the power of law, if they have been developed and promulgated according to the authority granted the executive branch by the legislalture.

Therefore, most agencies are, in fact, government entities which are part of and not distinguished from government. Most agencies fall in the executive branch of government, under the control of the governor or president. This identiy should be reflected in the category "agency."

Secondly, the category of "government agency" does not seem to encompass or acknowledge semi-independent "authorities" or "Services" such as the United States Postal Service or regional transportation authorities that perform traditional govermental functions like delivering the mail or keeping the trains running on time. These authorities operate under the color of government authority after creation by the passage of enabling legislation, and have the characteristics of government, like diminished legal liability for certain claims. However, they are usually not directly under the control of one of the three branches of government like governor's executive branch agencies.These authorities are "agencies" in that they take decisions and practical action that affect citizens' lives, but without referring those decisions to one of the three traditional branches of government.

Therefore, I think there are two modifications that should me made to the concept, "government agency."

Domains and Types: A New Type: File

2008-04-14T05:35:13.0000Z

This is a great idea. It would be nice to include license information as a property too.

Also, nobody's really taken advantage of this yet, but the freebase internal document store is indexed using the SHA256 hash of the content. So, if a file has been uploaded to freebase, you can find (and download) the freebase copy of it by looking up the /type/content object with the same hash value.

Domains and Types: "Food" and "Sex" types

2008-04-07T19:39:42.0012Z

I've created two user domains:

http://www.freebase.com/view/user/skud/food

http://www.freebase.com/view/user/skud/sex

Both these contain mostly "bucket" types that are largely propertyless but handy for typing things which are currently just plain old "Topics".

I'd like to look at getting these promoted -- the food ones into the existing /food domain, and the sex ones presumably to a new domain of their own.

Domains and Types: Exoplanetology and Exoplanets

2008-04-03T16:57:29.0005Z

Greetings! I would like to suggest that the domain I created: Exoplanetology be moved under Science or Astronomy or wherever it fits in. Also, the list i created: Exoplanets might be better on the Astronomy domain (?). Specially now that 10 new exoplanets have recently been discovered, it might serve well the public interest in the burgeoning new field of Exoplanetology - the study of Exoplanets and the search for life on other worlds.

Thank you for a Wonderful Platform. It makes learning about exoplanets fun! Soon I will build a freebased Widget App for Exoplanetology.

SIncerely,

- Metapsyche

http://exoplanetology.blogspot.com/

http://www.freebase.com/view/user/metapsyche/exoplanetology/exoplanet

Domains and Types: Is there a domain for Geographic or Spatial Data?

2008-04-01T16:42:10.0007Z

thanks Jeff, Jamie. I'll follow up by email as I find this all-on-one-pae forum style hard to use.

-matt

Domains and Types: A New Type: File

2008-03-31T19:13:32.0000Z

This sounds interesting, Tracy, and would probably be good for the Computers domain. I would encourage you to model this type in your own private domain, and then begin a discussion in the Computers domain and on the data-modeling mailing list, asking other people to use it and comment on it. If it proves useful, we can promote it for general use.

Domains and Types: A New Type: File

2008-03-31T11:12:17.0005Z

One type which it seems to me would be useful is File, i.e. computer files. Of course, the vast majority of computer files are not worth cataloguing, but some files would probably be useful to catalogue. For example:

Archives/Installers for software
Database dumps from sites like Wikipedia or Freebase
(Popularly circulated) Television episodes/movies
Other popularly circulated video files
Popularly circulated documents (e.g. Project Gutenberg e-books)
ROM images of video games

The main criterion I used is that the files should be widely distributed in a fixed form.

Of course, the distribution of many of these files would infringe on others' copyrights, but information about the files carries no such problems. In the case of Project Gutenberg e-books or program archives, there is obviously no issue.

The sort of information that I would collect for files is identifying information:

File size
Various file hashes
(Possibly) Release date of the file, if applicable
File format
Original filename/filenames
Name of the original distributor of the file (e.g. release group for television episodes, software maker for installers)

Specific types of files (e.g. video files) would want more specific data to be collected (e.g. runtime, resolution), naturally.

It would clearly be a huge undertaking to catalogue even the most useful (FSVO useful) files; having participated in some projects to catalogue particular types of files in the past, I speak from experience. The files which might be worth cataloguing would probably number in the hundreds of thousands or millions.

So, what do you think? Is such a thing within the scope of Freebase? Would it be worth doing?

Domains and Types: Is there a domain for Geographic or Spatial Data?

2008-03-26T23:52:57.0000Z

Matt -

I demo'ed the handy work of /user/jonathanlowe (http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f80000000059498a3) at the last Freebase user meeting. Jonathan is currently working with the Metaweb Graph Team to make spatial indexing a part of the Freebase infrastructure. We would love to hear more about your interest/data/usecases. Feel free to drop me a note directly I can put you in touch with the people who are working on this capability.

Jamie /a/ metaweb.com

Domains and Types: Is there a domain for Geographic or Spatial Data?

2008-03-26T20:56:21.0007Z

You're right that Freebase only has properties for lat/long right now, but some ideas for ways to handle more complex mappings are in development. I'm not sure what the status of these projects are, but the "location" domain will probably be where the data is modeled.

Jamie Taylor gave a demo at the last community meeting; you can see some screenshots of what he was able to do here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirrilyrobert/2249338228/in/photostream/

Domains and Types: Is there a domain for Geographic or Spatial Data?

2008-03-26T19:46:41.0012Z

Is there already a domain for geographic or spatial data (a.k.a. GIS data)?

I've seen the architectural freebase + google-maps mashup which indicates there is some sort of geography-awareness is present, but in my searching so far it appears pretty basic (latitude, longitude, description), only for points, not lines (rivers) or polygons (waterbodies) or rasters (satellite images).

There is a very large body, many terabytes, of public domain spatial data available, which is not already served up by the likes of Google Maps, Virtual Earth, Open Streetmaps, etc. Is this an area which Freebase is open to adding to it's store? If yes, where is the place to explore and discuss that?

thanks,

-matt

Domains and Types: Middle-ground for very specific domains?

2008-03-26T06:55:47.0007Z

Energy prices are impacting key economic indicators. Leading economists noted after the release of monthly economic reports in September that energy prices are rising much faster than wages and becoming “increasingly difficult for consumers to absorb,” which has resulted in lower consumer spending.

Domains and Types: Middle-ground for very specific domains?

2008-02-19T19:03:44.0007Z

This is not something that’s trivially exposed in the UI. If you use the Admin View link, you’ll see that the domain has an “owners” property which will take you to a user group; from there, you can add new users to the group.

Domains and Types: Middle-ground for very specific domains?

2008-02-19T09:43:48.0000Z

Community domains sound perfect.

I've already created a separate domain in my userspace for this project, but I can't see how to set permissions. How do I add other users as administrators?

Domains and Types: Middle-ground for very specific domains?

2008-02-18T23:23:02.0000Z

This sounds very cool, Nicholas. There is an upcoming feature of community domains, sort of topic-specific portals into Freebase, that sound ideal for this kind of project.

In the meantime, you can set up multiple domains in your own space; for instance, take a look at Spatial Ed’s motorcyle and bird domains. That would allow you to set permissions just on that domain, if you wanted to invite other people to help out, and to keep it contained apart from your general personal domain. It would also make it easier to migrate if and when you decide it’s done.

Domains and Types: Middle-ground for very specific domains?

2008-02-18T13:58:46.0005Z

I'm currently building a domain that models the tech tree of an MMO game (A Tale In The Desert). It's of interest to many people, but compared to the overall audience of Freebase, it's very specific. It obviously doesn't warrant a top-level domain, but it would be good if it were possible to put it somewhere other than my personal namespace - a sort of middle ground.

Is there a way to do this, or will I simply have to create a role account? (If I have to create a role account, can I transfer everything from my personal domain to it?)

Domains and Types: Curriculum Domain

2008-01-22T21:34:15.0007Z

The schema should store item level information, which can be reused or refreshed. If a course becomes stale, then create a new id, which could co-exist with the old course

Domains and Types: Curriculum Domain

2008-01-18T17:24:40.0000Z

This sounds very interesting. Do you see this Domain as a nexus for finding and accessing online course content? Unlike published works, a lot of curriculum, especially those of online courses (including their learning objectives and presentations) evolve over time. A well defined topic today may therefore change tomorrow. How would you account for this issue in the schemas?

Domains and Types: Curriculum Domain

2008-01-18T14:16:35.0005Z

Anyone working on a Curriculum domain? I envision this including "courses", "learning objectives", "evaluations", "presentations", etc. There is a lot of activity and interest in schools open sourcing their courses in a variety of formats and I think that integrating such with freebase would be a big win.

Any thoughts? Anyone doing this? If not, is there enough interest for me to step up and get this going?

Domains and Types: Don't see a domain or type you're expecting? Suggest it here.

2007-09-13T00:50:48.0007Z

It looks like they've been moved. Apologies if you had to do it manually.

Domains and Types: Don't see a domain or type you're expecting? Suggest it here.

2007-09-06T03:05:18.0007Z

Would it be possible to get someone to move all of the types currently under my personal domain over to the "Futures Studies & Forecasting" domain, as doing it manually will involve a significant amount of work. I am also wondering if it would be possible to move the content associated with all of those types as well to avoid having to reenter all of it.

Domains and Types: Don't see a domain or type you're expecting? Suggest it here.

2007-09-05T18:58:10.0000Z

We don't currently have a feature for moving types between domains via the UI. If this is a big hardship for a specific case, let us know and we can probably assist.

Per your second question, there is nothing to prevent you from having even identical types within two different domains. Where conflicts happen is if two types have the same key in the same domain -- which, coming full circle here, is one reason why we don't yet have easy tools for moving types in the UI.

Domains and Types: Don't see a domain or type you're expecting? Suggest it here.

2007-09-05T03:58:31.0007Z

The ability to add domains is now available...cool! Now how do I copy all my types from my personal domain to another domain (Futures Studies & Forecasting) that I've created so that I don't have to re-do all of them.

Also, is it possible to have one variation of a type in the personal domain and a slightly different type in the other domain?

Domains and Types: Don't see a domain or type you're expecting? Suggest it here.

2007-08-22T18:13:16.0007Z

1) I would think that something like "Trend Impact" should be calculated from the other properties when its displayed (I'm assuming that you are talking about displaying it in an external application of some kind, since Freebase doesn't have this capability.)

2) I think you might need a property on event along the lines of "topics related to this event" which should have a new type as the expected property (I can't think of any good type names for this off-hand -- naming often turns out the be the hardest part of schema design!). Since the event "first operational use of a jet aircraft" is not the same thing as the "Me-252" (the aircraft topic covers a lot of things about the aircraft model, from its design to its final disposition, while the event topic is about a specific instance of its use), I don't think using the topic of the aircraft for the event makes sense.

Domains and Types: Don't see a domain or type you're expecting? Suggest it here.

2007-08-22T04:38:32.0007Z

Thanks for the pointers, Jeff. They were very helpful.

Do you have any suggestions for the questions I asked 4 items up?

Domains and Types: Don't see a domain or type you're expecting? Suggest it here.

2007-08-20T21:28:42.0007Z

The way to do this is to create a new type, something like (but with a better name than) "Issue Opinion-Haver" that would link to issue, and could be applied as a co-type to the person, organization, agency, racehorse, etc. that supports or opposes the issue. I made up "issue opinion-haver" because I think it makes more sense to have a single type for this with two properties (e.g., issues opposes; issues supports) rather than two types "Issue Opponent" and "Issue Proponent" with one property each.