"MQL (the query language on which freebase is built) is multilingual, so you can already store names..."
Welcome Alpha Users! Thanks for taking the time to have a look. We have a few key objectives for alpha:
- generate reactions to the Freebase concept
- get experience with the community contribution model
- work any kinks out of the system with respect to scaling, performance, etc...
- build a community of active users
Relevance-based search and auto-complete - this should mean better results for you when searching Freebase or auto-completing on existing terms. For instance, see the results of a search for 'New York'. Previously, the logic would have returned exact string matches first in all cases - whereas now the system does its best to figure out what you're really looking for based on a variety of characteristics. This should generally lead to better results. If you find you're seeing strange results, please let us know.
Updated Terms of Service - highlights of the changes include: A) should we need to, we reserve the right to support the site with advertising in the future (section 8); B) New prohibited uses of Freebase: Adding spam or encrypted data. See the legal language here.
Shorter, English URLs - we now support shorter, more easily guess-able Web URLs for over a million of our most commonly-referenced topics, such as: http://www.freebase.com/view/bob_dylan. All of our older URL formats are still supported as well, including GUID-based URLs such as:
http://www.freebase.com/view/%239202a8c04000641f80000000000094a0. Note that the string "?id=" that used to precede the GUID is now completely optional. We're planning to continue to work to shorten these URLs further in upcoming releases.
Updated user homepage and profile - we've streamlined these pages based on the functions that are used most. We added easy navigation to public domains as well as domains you administer. Items you've created or edited recently replace the old lists of 'favorite domains, topics and types'. On the user profile, we've removed some of the properties that were redundant with the person topic about you in an effort to make the relationship between these pages less confusing. Lists of favorite films and musical artists aren't being displayed either as we don't want to give the impression that Freebase is a social networking site.
Contribution guidelines and updated help - we're trying to provide clearer guidance for what belongs on Freebase, so please check out our contribution guidelines. We're also updating and improving the help area of the site. This should continue to get better over the next couple of weeks.
