Freebase: Discussion about Metaweb

Music modelling: live music types

2008-11-17T18:17:20.0012Z

Hey Stephen,

I haven't had a chance to look at your updates yet, but the issues you've brought up also came up in the meeting I had on Thursday, so I'm going to make another stab at this later in the week and will check out your version then as well.

Dennis Dun: merge vs delete

2008-11-17T18:11:46.0012Z

There don't seem to be any "rules" posted, and there probably aren't any rules per se. But I would say that the best practice is to merge, rather than delete, if there are two equivalent topics. Even if there don't appear to be any properties on the topic, there could be keys that should be kept, or incoming data from unreciprocated properties, or data from an unpublished base type.

Twin Peaks North: inseperable

2008-11-17T18:05:59.0012Z

OK; do it however you like. (Don't neglect Google Books as a source of online data, though!)

Maisie: Character and movie combined

2008-11-17T18:00:39.0017Z

The name and blurb suggests this is a movie character, but the type and image suggest it is a film. It should be split in two.

Aeneas: Enea Vence a Turno

2008-11-17T15:51:50.0025Z

I am trying to find any art form depicting this rarely represented scene from the Aneid to study the evolution of it iconographical form, and so far have only found work by three artists:

Luca Giordano

Giovanni Francesco Romanelli

Carlo Cesio

If anybody is aware of any other representations and where I can find them I would very much appreciate it

Management Consultant: not a legit job title

2008-11-17T15:41:08.0012Z

Agree; the Wikipedia source for this topic now redirects to “Management consulting,” the industry and practice, definitely not a job title.

Virgin: Split

2008-11-17T06:41:53.0017Z

This topic is being confused with Virgin Records.

Management Consultant: not a legit job title

2008-11-17T06:40:02.0017Z

Management consultant is the catch all term to describe a profession but it is not a job title that these companies use. There are no people left in this topic. Please delete.

Woodbridge: Please don't merge

2008-11-17T04:07:36.0017Z

/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000009ae5ab3 appears that it should rightfully be merged with /guid/9202a8c04000641f80000000004aed62, as both are the Woodbridge in Ontario Canada.

But /guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000009ae5ab3 should not be merged with /guid/9202a8c04000641f80000000000ab532 (this topic), since this topic is about a Woodbridge in England.

Help Center: php query - include ANY match with criteria

2008-11-16T18:54:09.0012Z

great! thanks for your time.

Battle Arena: My mistake.

2008-11-16T12:48:19.0012Z

I actually did that before posting my above message. I just left the message so everyone understood why I hit the merge button in the first place. Thanks for explaining though.

Help Center: php query - include ANY match with criteria

2008-11-16T08:53:14.0012Z

I don't think its possible to do that all in one query. You'll have to build a seperate query for each term and merge the results in your application.

Luckily Freebase allows you to send multiple queries at once. An example of how this is done is shown on page 2 of the cheatsheet.

Battle Arena: My mistake.

2008-11-16T02:40:45.0012Z

You actually have to hit the little flag icon in the upper right of topic title header (to right of the rename button) and select the merge request for a topic to enter the merge queue.

Don't forget to correctly identify in the merge search field the topic you wish to have merged with this one.

Help Center: php query - include ANY match with criteria

2008-11-15T23:48:02.0012Z

awesome, thanks!

do you have any idea how to get this done, but with many different terms? the "|=" works to check for multiple terms, but it looks for an exact match, while the "~=" will only accept one parameter...

Help Center: php query - include ANY match with criteria

2008-11-15T22:55:49.0012Z

The MQL Cheatsheet covers this exact problem under Textual Comparisons.

In your case, I think you just need to add the following line:

"name~=" => "love",

Help Center: php query - include ANY match with criteria

2008-11-15T18:18:55.0017Z

Hi,I have a rather simple question about a query in php, I would just like my result to return (in this case) any album name which contains the word "love". For the moment, it just spits out all albums...I'm not sure how to get it to narrow down with this criteria

       "type" => "/music/album",
      "limit" => 200,
         "name" => array()));

Thanks!

Battle Arena: My mistake.

2008-11-15T15:41:09.0005Z

I didn't realize I had hit the "create new topic button" for an entry in my fictional characters, so it created this duplicate topic. Merge please! Thanks.

Twin Peaks North: inseperable

2008-11-15T07:05:18.0012Z

For Paul's base, his Hill type (and he - and I) want this to be one topic - which is fine. I've found middle ground by co-typing as a Mountain Range. :)

In any case, I rely mostly on on-line verification of facts. I can't find evidence of the designations you make above. Until I next visit and document, someone who knows better can edit Twin Peaks.

Dennis Dun: merge vs delete

2008-11-15T01:04:06.0017Z

when a topic has no properties filled in and there is a bonafide topic already with a number of properties, I'd be inclined to flag the "empty" one for deletion rather than merge. Is that not a proper procedure?

I flag for merge when there are two topics, each partially filled out with data that, between the two of them, makes a more complet topic.

What are the "rules"? Where are the "rules"? Maybe they should be handy to the vote on flagged items area? Or did I miss them?

Twin Peaks North: inseperable

2008-11-13T19:04:44.0012Z

The north peak is named either Twin Peaks North or Eureka, the (taller) south peak is named either Twin Peaks South or Noe, depending on who you ask. I'm pretty sure the signage at the peaks themselves refers to them as TP North and South. Putting them together makes an elevation meaningless, I'd contend.

Twin Peaks North: inseperable

2008-11-13T16:17:34.0012Z

922 feet according to Wikipedia. I think what happened is whoever imported this list imported the wrong twins. The ones in SF were never called North andSouth as far as I can tell - but there is a pair inthe Canadian Rockies that these topics were pulled from.

I added the real Twin Peaks topic to the base and am much more comfortable now that they are reunited :)

Twin Peaks North: inseperable

2008-11-13T00:31:52.0012Z

I think they should be separate -- what would the elevation be if they were merged?

Twin Peaks North: inseperable

2008-11-12T22:19:02.0017Z

merge Twin Peaks North and South as one entity? They are always referred to together and there are no 1st page search results for either on their own.

Music modelling: live music types

2008-11-12T18:44:16.0012Z

hey phil, i'll get you some more detailed suggestions tonight, but the main limitations i'm seeing now are

1) robert's performance venue doesn't have any of the actual location information

2) i think the concert performance type seems too geared around the headliners and tours...perhaps a result of concentrating on the dead. i would prefer seeing it geared towards the concert being an aggregate of individual bands performing and a tour being an aggregate of those concerts. that would fit more naturally with the bulk of shows happening outside of tours. i think the headliner information could be cleanly denormalized into the tour type.

tour -- concert -- concert performance

tonight i'll give a shot at modifying the live music schema to show what i'm talking about. I'll also get some existing examples in there to give you a better idea of the issues i'm trying to address.

Music modelling: live music types

2008-11-12T00:17:28.0012Z

Okay, here's what I just sent to the guys here:

After several attempts that led to me bashing my head against my monitor, I think I've finally got at least a skeleton structure that fulfills both the information display requirements and our ability create some rich interlinking.

There are three types:

Concert Tour - http://www.freebase.com/view/user/philg/default_domain/concert_tour
This is the bucket type, if you will, that lets us enter specific information about the tour.

Concert Performances - http://www.freebase.com/view/user/philg/default_domain/concert_performance
Specific tour performances. In order to make this work we may have to enforce a naming convention like I've done with these sample shows, but we can also link into festivals or other concerts a band may have performed at during the tour (for example, the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert during the Use Your Illusion Tour). I've also added a property Band Members Performing to capture the specific line-up for that show.

Concert Set List - this is a CVT that currently has fields for Song (ECT Musical Composition) and Guest Artist.

What I like about this is that we can create a reciprocal link from Concert Tour to Musical Artist to generate a list of their tours, as well as another property on Musical Artist that reciprocates from Supporting Artist to distinguish between tours in which the artist was a headliner v. a supporting act.

Then, from Concert Performance we can create a reciprocal link back to the Musical Performance property in Performance Venue to generate a list of everyone who has performed there, the date, and the tour.

Music modelling: live music types

2008-11-11T22:52:47.0012Z

Meeting has been pushed off to Thursday, so I'll let you know what comes out of that (and it seems that multiple people, both internally and externally, are working on this particular problem).

I've got something I've been cooking up in my personal domain that I hope to have done today, I'll give you and other folks a pointer to it when it's done and we can take things from there.

Music modelling: live music types

2008-11-11T22:28:05.0000Z

hey phil, yeah i just added you as an admin on livemusic, that would be great to collaborate on this. The web service stuff is just there to support attaching flickr youtube etc. videos to songs in a set list in the app I'm working on. i'd be interested to hear what came out of the meeting you guys had about this.

Music modelling: live music types

2008-11-10T19:02:41.0012Z

Stephen, this looks pretty interesting, and is very close to what I've been working on. I was going to re-work my model today based on some ideas I had over the weekend, would you be interested in adding me as an admin on livemusic and we can collaborate on this type?

We're also having an internal meeting tomorrow to discuss live music modeling, based on the use cases we talked about on Saturday, so I will keep you posted on how that goes, and will use your type as a potential model as well if we decide to pursue separate development paths.

Music modelling: live music types

2008-11-09T08:05:55.0012Z

http://livemusic.freebase.com/

Music modelling: live music types

2008-11-09T08:05:25.0017Z

i added some live music types today, I haven't spent much time with schema design on here until now...I'd definitely be interested in some feedback

http://livemusic.freebase.com/

Legislative session: leg session <-->> legislation

2008-11-09T00:58:23.0018Z

I have views of the CA state legislative database. One can link many pieces of legislation to a legislative sesssion....

Eg:

CA Session 07-08:

AB 1, AB 2, SB 11, SB 100, SBX1_11, etc....

Location: Contains/Contained By

2008-11-07T23:10:47.0012Z

Our API users are also Freebase users. But yes, I get your point that you're talking about the presentation on the website.

Location: Contains/Contained By

2008-11-07T20:57:59.0012Z

Im talking about freebase users not API users.

Location: Contains/Contained By

2008-11-07T17:49:51.0012Z

This is a very complex problem. Part of the issue is, as you mention, the fact that every county has a different "hierarchy" of administrative divisions. It's recomplicated by the fact that in many, many cases the so-called hierarchy isn't really hierarchical. In the US, for example, it's convenient to think of a three-tier system: state, county, city (ignoring for now territories, DC, and townships). But not all cities are contained by counties: some cities (San Francisco and I think Denver) are also counties; some cities (Baltimore) are not contained in counties at all; and some cities (New York) actually contain counties.

To address this, what we've done for a number of countries (but by no means all of them) is to create separate types for each administrative division type (so the US has the types US State, US County, US Federal District, US Territory, and US Indian Reservation) so that you can tell which type of division it is separately from the containment. Part of the problem in your Oaxaca example is that the state hadn't been typed with the Mexican State type (although it does have the administrative division type, which also indicates that it is farther up the local -> national scale of divisions than Oaxaca the city), which I've fixed.

Location: Contains/Contained By

2008-11-07T17:43:36.0000Z

When you say "a user" are you referring to users of our website, freebase.com, or to API users? API users can easily deal with this problem by limiting a query thus:

"/location/location/containedby" : { "id" : null, "type" : "/location/citytown" }

That would get only the cities contained by that thing.

Location: Contains/Contained By

2008-11-07T16:28:48.0000Z

Example of why this is an issue:

Oaxaca, Mexico

What am I talking about? The City? The State? Well lets just see what it is contained by. Bost Oaxaca the State and Oaxaca the City are contained by Mexico. Oaxaca the City is also contained by the State. A user can be very confused on what Oaxaca they are looking at because it does not say the relationship it has with the locations it is contained by.

Location: Contains/Contained By

2008-11-07T16:23:28.0000Z

This is the point:

Contained/contained by offers no description as to what the relationship is. There needs to be descriptive relationships within individual types if not within location. The reason this Contained/Contained by system does not work is because eachcountry has a different hierarchy of locations. If I want to pull information on a city, regardless of what country it is in, I should be able to easily find:

What country it sits within,

What State or Province it is in (if any at all)

What County/Parish it is in (if any at all)

The advantage freebase has over other sites is that it can leave information null if it does not apply.

Political party: Adminstrative division property

2008-11-06T23:11:15.0020Z

Looks good.

Political party: Adminstrative division property

2008-11-06T21:55:56.0012Z

I've made organization an included type of political party, and typed all existing political party topics as organizations as well.

Political party: Adminstrative division property

2008-11-06T06:55:10.0019Z

Making organization an included type of political parties would solve most of these issues. State political parties would be typed as organizations that would have a suborganization link to the national party and county parties would be suborganizations of state parties. I can't think of anycases where a political party would not also be considered an organization. From a quick glance, it seems to me that all of the organization properties are applicable to political parties.

I've changed my mind on changing the country link, based on Chris' arguments, and because it would make queries on politicians much harder. If we wanted all Democratic mayors of U.S. cities, we would have to construct a two step query instead of just querying against membership in a single political party.

Political party: Adminstrative division property

2008-11-06T03:58:31.0012Z

I somewhat agree with both of you. Why aren't political parties modeled as organizations and why must they be limited to country level administrative regions? I suggest dropping the country property and co-typing "Organization".

Political party: Adminstrative division property

2008-11-06T01:38:23.0092Z

Political parties may operate across multiple jurisdictions within a country, but do not operate between countries, so I think the country is still the right level of distinction. (Movements may have parties in multiple countries, and parties may coöperate, as the Green and Communist parties, for example, but that is not the same as having one party in multiple countries.)

The cases where local affiliates of national parties have differing names, such as DFL in Minnesota or the Constitution Party in California, are the exception rather than the rule, and I am not convinced that the few cases warrant changing the model. These local groups can and should be typed as Organizations to model their affiliations and geographical scope, but the national parties should be the primary topics of interest.

Political party: Adminstrative division property

2008-11-05T07:56:02.0019Z

Political parties are not always national. For an example, look at the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. I propose changing the country property to an adminstrative division property.

Also, the state and county parties are separate institutions from the national parties. Perhaps there could be a parent political party property to link from county parties to state parties to national parties (although this could be inferred from the administrative division property).

Location: Contains/Contained By

2008-11-04T19:59:21.0012Z

Hi, this example might help you. The general rule of thumb is that locations should have 2 levels of hierarchical containment.

Location: Contains/Contained By

2008-11-04T18:50:10.0012Z

I have a related question - given a citytown, is there a quick way to determine which country it is in? given that there might be a number of layers of containedby before you reach a "country" location.

Film: Featured Song property in Film/Film?

2008-11-04T06:49:53.0012Z

Example on Sandbox here on Featured film song type (added as a property to /film/film with performed by and included type of /music/song).

Worth it, adds interest, not so great, don't do it?