alexander

alexander: Hey let me know what you think about my assertion modeling kit

2008-09-05T19:00:42.0017Z

http://www.freebase.com/view/user/avic/assertion_modeling_kit

alexander: Arguments and argument mapping

2008-09-03T20:51:40.0012Z

I think the best way to procede with argument mapping would be to develop some basic types for predicates, sentential connectives, quantifiers and so on any then let them be nested to build up bigger propositions. The problem with this is that I don't know if the views in Freebase allow one to show nested links all on the same page.

Business: Company type

2008-08-29T16:22:47.0012Z

Well, I guess it depends on what we want to use it for. Do we want to use generic terms for multiple legal types, or do we want to be more specific.

For example, PLC is Public Limited Company. "Public limited company" could be used to cover all those types in various countries, or it could be for the specific Plc used in UK.

But unless you are intimately aware of what SA (Societe Anonyme) is, or use the Wiki page to see what approximate equiv is, then chances are no one is going to use this field (at least for "harder" ones). I deal with company names all the time, so I'm familiar with Oyj, AG, KgaA, etc, but I don't know what they translate to.

Either way we're missing values. If we keep the "generic" route, then we (I) should comb through the wiki page and identify the big ones we're missing, like "Limited Partnership with Shares" (for SCA & KgaA, for example). Though I'm not sure if all can be mapped (like KK, which is common in Japan, though I think it is usually seen as Co Ltd).

So I think we need to figure out what direction we want to take, generic or country specific, and I don't think either is an easy answer (either you have a long list of specifics or a hard to determine list of generics).

Business: Company type

2008-08-29T15:20:31.0012Z

Enumerated types like Company Type aren’t locked, they’re just a little harder to add to, in order to discourage accidental proliferation. Additions must be made through the query editor or some other way that isn’t the client. We do encourage you to discuss the proposed additions with the community first, though, to avoid edit wars on high-profile types. What specific instances do you think are conspicuously missing?

Business: Company type

2008-08-29T14:00:35.0017Z

Why is Company Type locked? There are many legal structures of companies, and even state-owned enterprises. But very few are listed here. Is there a particular reason for this? If so, it would be good to have that documented so those of us filling in company information know how ot complete this field. Thanks

Medicine: suggested properties

2008-08-26T00:10:44.0028Z

mechanism of action

adult dosing

child dosing

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2008-08-02T03:21:05.0000Z

After further investigation, it transpires that the NAICS and SIC classifications were added to /business/industry some time ago. So we plan to deprecate industry_classification. All the same info is available in the other type. I have moved the few current uses of specific industry classifications over to their corresponding industry and plan to retire the type altogether since its no longer in use.

Business: Divisions & Brands?

2008-08-01T19:20:15.0012Z

ooh, I think that works! I like how you have the options of indicating whether or not it was acquired, etc (which happens a lot). Thanks, Jeff

Business: Divisions & Brands?

2008-08-01T18:24:18.0012Z

Take a peek over on sandbox: I just posted a proposed modification to the company schema to handle divisions on sandbox. See https://sandbox.freebase.com/view/en/remington_rand for an example (example expires Monday!).

Business: Divisions & Brands?

2008-08-01T15:42:35.0017Z

Seeing the Calvin Klein Underwear topic with the type of Company attached to it, made me wonder how we want to handle divisions and brands.

I believe the intent for the Company schema is to flag legal companies, like Calvin Klein Inc or General Dynamics Corp. So parent companies and their subsidiaries. If correct, then divisions and brands would not be assigned to the Company type.

If so, then we may need a way to flag topics as a division (or perhaps we do this somehow in the Company schema). Same with brands, which are not always separated from the parent company.

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2008-08-01T06:49:59.0000Z

I think this is correct, that the generic product is not represented well by the NAICS codes. For example the closest you get to 'Petroleum' in the NAICS tree is:

Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing   324
    Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing   3241
        Petroleum Refineries
        Asphalt Paving, Roofing, and Saturated Materials Manufacturing
        Other Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing
             ... all the way down to
                   Petroleum Refineries 324110

Which is clearly not what you want. I do think though that the classification of companies is going to have to come in two flavours, the topic based /business/company/industry and a different property linking to the NAICS (and hence SIC and other codes that map to that same classification).

It would be very hard to merge the industry tree with the NAICS tree without creating new things that had no NAICS codes.

On the topic of NACE, SIC equivalences etc, the plan would be to load them all.

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2008-07-31T22:11:28.0012Z

Import/export actually expects "industry", which is more general than "industrial classification". Instances of the industry include things like Computers, Consumer electronics, and Petroleum, which are values I would expect to see as imports and exports. I think this is the advantage of keeping the two types separate -- they have slightly different semantics which are useful in different contexts.

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2008-07-31T16:25:26.0012Z

I'm not sure where to begin on this one.

It is not odd to have more than just NAICS, which is North America specific. NACE is used in the EU, and some countries even have their own classification (like France, the NAF).

And I know D&B still widely uses SIC Code, even though it has been replaced.

I am not familiar with all the codes in the type, but we should research first before removing any, to make sure we're not making the fields North America specific, or if the codes are standard for some reason that is not readily obvious.

As for Industry vs Industrial Classification, I know when I was filling in the Export/Import information in countries, using the CIA World Factbook as a guide, it was difficult or impossible to fill certain values in. You can't export "Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing", instead you export the actual product. So not sure if that means the export/import fields need to be changed or we need another field/category for the industrial classification (less doable)? Or we just live with non-intuitive values in the import/export fields??

Business: New properties

2008-07-30T08:41:14.0005Z

the largest China Travel company offer china tour,travel information,travel route, hotel booking,airline ticket , car rental, chauffeur service, beijing,shanghai,guangzhou(canton),xian,shenzhen,dongguan,guilin,changsha,hangzhou, shantou, qingdao,hongkong,taiwan,macau destination guide,restaurants,cuisine,dining,weather,shopping guide and other services.for more information please visit http://english.51766.com

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2008-07-30T08:36:47.0012Z

agree above guys

from http://english.51766.com by lisa

Business: Joint Ventures

2008-07-18T16:31:52.0005Z

How do we want to do JVs? Technically the companies that "own" the JV would go under Major Shareholders, however there's no way to actually designate the JV as a JV (as opposed to a "regular" company that is public and has shareholders).

Perhaps it could be a Company Type?

Business: DUNS and ISIN identifer fields for company?

2008-07-18T00:11:56.0007Z

You have to pay to use D&B information, so I don't think we'd be able to use the DUNS # here.

Company: Shareholders are not necessarily Person

2008-07-02T18:08:54.0012Z

Yeah, I think that makes sense. I had made it person originally cause I was pulling out the individual's SEC filings. In addition to companies, funds and endowments can be shareholders.

Company: Shareholders are not necessarily Person

2008-06-30T12:36:21.0005Z

Another company can also be a major shareholder.

Could the type of 'Major Shareholder' be changed to a type of 'Shareholder', rather than 'Person'?

Business: DUNS and ISIN identifer fields for company?

2008-06-27T17:03:01.0005Z

I think it'll be a good idea if these two fields are included for the company type to identify companies...

The DUNS number is widely used and is required by the US government for grants and contracts.

www.dnb.com/US/duns_update

The ISIN seems to be gaining traction in europe and its a ISO standard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Securities_Identifying_Number

Business: New properties

2008-06-24T19:22:41.0012Z

A suggestion is to add an "End date" property to the Company_name_change type.

Business: New properties

2008-06-24T18:31:10.0012Z

Part of the idea behind topics in Freebase is that there should be only one topic for any given "thing". If a company just changes its name, it doesn't necessarily become a different entity, any more than when a person changes their name.

Business: New properties

2008-06-23T10:54:37.0000Z

I would rather that each different company name be a different topic.
The company type would have 'name changed from' and 'name changed to' properties.

alexander: Arguments and argument mapping

2008-06-22T00:47:15.0000Z

How are you two doing with arguments and argument mapping on Freebase? I'm also interested in argument mapping with Freebase and how it would compare to Debategraph (http://debategraph.org/)

Medicine: Thoughts on disease/treatment

2008-06-11T04:16:26.0012Z

(Here's a reposting from a recent modeling list post from Faye Li (to Dan Ruderman about disease-disease relationships)

Hi Dan,

I have a to-do item regarding anatomical structures affected by diseases
on my whiteboard but didn't get to it this time. The type "Anatomical
structure" exists today without any properties (see
http://www.freebase.com/tools/schema/medicine/anatomical_structure) and
the plan was to try to flesh out the schema there. Any properties you'd
suggest?

As for "Disease Cause" (which will be renamed etiology shortly, with the
original name saved as an alias), I was thinking about refactoring the
type. Each cause needs to be qualified with evidence level, something
along the lines of "evident, probable, possible". I was also considering
adding an enumeration property/new type for etiology category that would
list, "bacterial, viral, chemical, parasitic", etc. I would appreciate
your expertise if you have time to talk about this offline.

-- Faye

Dan Ruderman wrote:
>
> I like the way the medical schema is filling out. This is really
> looking useful.
>
> A more technical term for "disease cause" would be "etiology".
> It might be useful to have a property on disease for affected
> anatomical structure(s).
>
> For disease treatment with a compound (perhaps a more specific
> co-type of disease treatment) it might be nice to have properties
> for dosage, method of administration, and duration. Maybe these
> constitute a prescription type?
>
> Dan

Employment tenure: So if one does different jobs with same employer does one need to do additional entries?

2008-06-06T15:02:34.0000Z

This is a good idea. We need to work through a better model for company/organization locations. This will help us understand how to model it.

Employment tenure: So if one does different jobs with same employer does one need to do additional entries?

2008-06-06T08:52:33.0007Z

How about adding location to this? I work for a company which has several offices, and I guess where I actually go to work might be interesting. (well, not in my case, but for more famous person ;)

alexander: tempattr3 and ZX Spectrum games

2008-04-28T19:53:21.0000Z

Hi Phil. The ZX Spectrum games I added were part of a broad set of data taken from Wikipedia Infoboxes. We'll be regularly loading this data as Wikipedia grows, so any expansion in ZX Spectrum game data there will be reflected here too. That said, I'm sure that Wikipedia is not as complete as worldofspectrum.org -- so it would be really great to load data from there too, assuming the license is compatible. Let me know if you need any help!

alexander: tempattr3 and ZX Spectrum games

2008-04-27T14:10:47.0005Z

Hiya.

Would I be correct in thinking the tempattr3 user is somehow related to you? If not, if you could point me in the right diretction that would be much appreciated, and apologies for the interruption.

I notice that tempattr3 has recently added a significant number of games as being published for the ZX Spectrum, and was just wondering if you had any long term plans in this direction; I have a hope/goal of using the World of Spectrum <http://www.worldofspectrum.org/> dataset as a basis of some data to upload to Freebase (although I'll freely admit this isn't progressing very fast at the moment :-( )

Cheers,

Phil

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2007-11-19T14:34:22.0000Z

-- sorry for the double post - but I also realized how odd it is to have all the NACE, ISIC, etc. properties when the only one truly in use (i.e. has at least one object that uses it) is NAICS. Why are they there? Are there plans to add this data sometime?

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2007-11-19T08:13:36.0007Z

This issue struck me as strange as well. I think a merge would contribute to both types, since right now both of them are pretty sparse, whereas combining them might reach a critical mass of data.

Business: New properties

2007-10-22T18:54:56.0007Z

"Previous name" might do.

Business: New properties

2007-10-22T15:29:11.0007Z

I can't use the descriptor "name" as it is reserved. What should I use instead?

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2007-10-22T12:37:05.0007Z

Glad you agree, jg -- do you think that a merge of Industry and Industrial Classification types might happen in the short- or longer-term?

Business: New properties

2007-10-18T20:43:02.0007Z

I think the property "new name" on the "company name change" type should just be "name". If you're entering previous names, the idea of entering a "new name" is somewhat confusing.

Business: New properties

2007-10-18T18:56:23.0005Z

I just added several new properties and helper types for Company:

Previous names -- holds previous names for companies with the dates they changed

Spin offs (Spun off from) --

Companies acquired (Acquired by)

Created from merger (Merged into) -- This one is a bit more complicated. Two or more companies merge on a particular date and can (but not always) create a new company

Assets sold (Assets acquired) -- A new type "Company asset" can be transferred between companies.

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2007-09-08T07:45:36.0007Z

I agree that the Industry type should be merged with the Industrial Classification type. I believe that Industry was derived from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Industries but Ill check on that....

Business: Industry parent/child vs. Industrial Classification parent/child

2007-09-06T21:15:41.0005Z

The two types, 'Industry' and 'Industrial Classification' each have (distinct) parent/child properties. Should they be merged?

I'm asking because I want to be able to query retail locations filtered by their geolocation (for instance a bounding box in South London defined by latitude and longitude values) and then tally the results by industrial classifications -- for instance, reporting on the total 'Taxi and Limousine Service' instances regardless of whether their finest grain of industrial classification is 'Taxi Service' or 'Limousine Service'. The 'Industrial Classification' type already has parent/child industries populated, but the 'Industry' type parent/child properties are less reliably populated. If they're the same, should they be merged? If not, how are they different?

Employment tenure: So if one does different jobs with same employer does one need to do additional entries?

2007-09-04T23:44:15.0003Z

I'd say multiple entries for each position is the best way to model it. "Job Title" is a unique value.

Employment tenure: So if one does different jobs with same employer does one need to do additional entries?

2007-09-03T02:21:47.0012Z

The employer page would have multiple employee entries for the same employee (say, Dirk Diggler) that worked (without a gap in employment) in the mail room, later promoted to call-support, then went on to end up in sales promotion...So there would be three entries for Dirk Diggler with different tenures and job titles. Is that the best way to model this? Or one entry under employees with multiple job titles and a single tenure time?

alexander: Arguments and argument mapping

2007-07-03T21:22:32.0045Z

Hi Alexander,

I see you have the Types 'Argument' and 'Debate'. You might be interested that I'm exploring the use of Freebase for argument mapping - setting out some area of debate as a series of assertions with connectives ('supports', conflicts with', etc) between them. Current context is the global warming debate. My modelling of this with Freebases Types and Topics is very fluid just now (I just started today!), but do let me know if you are interested in discussing this. See robertm's Types 'Assertion', 'Assertion link' and 'Link type'.

Cheers,
Robert