Author

Ki Longfellow: "Unique" as a religion

2008-09-27T01:29:08.0012Z

I'm sorry. Just got here. Didn't realize these answers created a page. As I don't know Longfellow's beliefs other than from her latest book, I will delete the word unique. Will this delete the useless page?

Ki Longfellow: "Unique" as a religion

2008-09-25T16:29:57.0012Z

Oops, cross-posting to simonesimone's user profile.

Simone, I should also say, if you have any questions or comments about Freebase, please let us know! You can leave a discussion post anywhere on the site and we'll read it.

Ki Longfellow: "Unique" as a religion

2008-09-25T16:28:30.0017Z

Hi simonesimone, and welcome to Freebase. Thanks for all your contributions so far! I see you added "Unique" as a religion to Ki Longfellow. This created a page called "Unique" which had the type "Religion" which as you can imagine isn't really right. If Ms. Longfellow's religion can't be described in any way that would result in the linked page being an actual religion, then perhaps we should leave it blank. But in my experience, one can usually come up with some kind of term for a religion, even if the name is long and complicated (eg. "Neo-techno-shamanism").

Pervez Musharraf: President Musharraf

2008-08-29T04:36:25.0012Z

Hi Shaki, and welcome to Freebase. Freebase is a structured database of information about people, places, and other things like that. It's not a political forum. If you'd like to contribute structured information about President Musharraf, such as his political offices held, places lived, etc etc, that would be very welcome. However, if you want a political debate, you'll probably want to go somewhere else for it.

Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania: Deletion Arguments

2008-08-21T01:33:12.0012Z

I would. But I have, er, temporarily misplaced the /how/ without having to step through the whole voting list again to find it :<

Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania: Deletion Arguments

2008-08-20T17:15:53.0018Z

I think the deletion was superseded by the request for merge with the fuller name of the organization. Vote against delete, for merge.

Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania: Deletion Arguments

2008-08-20T17:10:35.0045Z

Whoever suggested this be deleted, please state reasoning. Not obvious :)

Tiger Woods: Championships

2008-08-19T15:47:42.0032Z

I added his Masters Tournament wins in here. As a result, he was typed as a sports team. Is there a better way to enter in individual sports championships?

Pervez Musharraf: President Musharraf

2008-08-16T10:49:17.0005Z

I would like all of the readers to please contribute in your comments whether President Musharraf should resign or should he be punished for his deeds and acts and thrown away from his position.

Please comment what and why ???

Azriel Graeber: Re: A. Graeber

2008-07-31T02:30:55.0012Z

He IS a renaissance man.

Stephen Colbert: Stephen Colbert for President

2008-07-25T19:06:10.0000Z

flippity floo!

Azriel Graeber: speaking tour

2008-07-24T14:06:36.0017Z

Has anyone heard anything about Graeber's public speaking tour. A friend of mine told me he was producing tapes teaching people how to be as successful as he is, and that they were being taped live. thanks

Azriel Graeber: Re: A. Graeber

2008-07-22T19:09:27.0007Z

well when its someone like A.Graeber, you dont have to wonder too hard. He's feats are pretty pretty pretty impressive.i mean milk machine, PhD, published writer, all around renaissance man, all-around renaissance man.

Azriel Graeber: Re: A. Graeber

2008-07-22T04:59:01.0007Z

It's the same Azriel Graeber who invented the milking machine that has a PhD in Genealogy?

It kind of makes you wonder how one person can accomplish so much?

Stephen King: Richard Bachman is a pseudonym for Stephen King

2008-07-16T01:26:07.0013Z

The books are all by Stephen King.

Azriel Graeber: Re: A. Graeber

2008-07-16T00:10:10.0007Z

i cant think of the name either,but no i think this is the Azriel Graeber that has a PhD in Genealogy and Cemeterial Studies. i hear he's coming out with a book on methods of research, should be fantastic

Azriel Graeber: Re: A. Graeber

2008-07-15T22:38:35.0005Z

Is this Azriel Graeber the same person of that name who invented that machine to facilitate the milking of cows? I forgot what it's called.

Margaret C. Norton: Duplicate - delete

2008-05-27T08:08:30.0000Z

Fair enough. I'll have a t-shirt made that says, "Merge, don't delete." :)

Margaret C. Norton: Duplicate - delete

2008-05-26T20:25:37.0007Z

I think our policy should be to always merge equivalent topics, even if there is no additional data on the losing one. If an outsider was storing a link to this guid (an external database, or somebody's bookmarks), we want this node to have the replaced by hint, rather than a dead end.

Margaret C. Norton: Duplicate - delete

2008-05-16T09:14:30.0005Z

This is a duplicate of Margaret C. Norton. No wiki keys, no data that's not on the other instance. Delete please.

Ellery Queen: Split real from fictional

2008-05-16T08:44:56.0012Z

"[B]oth a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins"? Oh my. Split please.

Stephen Colbert: Stephen Colbert for President

2007-11-14T23:29:21.0007Z

I agree. Sadly it appears that he's stuck in South Carolina.

Stephen Colbert: Stephen Colbert for President

2007-11-14T19:56:07.0005Z

I think it would be great if Stephen Colbert became a serious contender in the presidential race to shake things up a bit. The famous French comedian made a run for the French presidency in 1980 was at one point had 16% of votes in the polls.

Author: Pseudonymous Authors

2007-07-09T22:04:38.0000Z

This is a good start. There are a number of issues to address before we can use this, though. One is that when pseudonymous authors are added to a book (story, etc.), they will be co-typed as a person because person is an included type of author, which they shouldn't be. Since many people don't know which authors are pseudonyms and which aren't, the data is going to become very messy. When the exclusive types feature is implemented, this will be less of a problem, one hopes.

Another problem is that pseudonymous books and stories are often re-published under the author's true name (or under a better-known pseudonym), which means that a work will be attributed to multiple authors, all of whom represent the same person, when what we mean to say is that different editions/publications of this work have been published under these different names. Ideally, we would be able to indicate which versions were published under which names, but we haven't worked that out yet.

House names and shared pseudonyms pose another bibliographic problem, which is attributing a specific work to the true author as well as the pseudonym. For example, a number of prominent writers wrote books under the house name "Ellery Queen", and it would be useful to show which were by Theodore Sturgeon, which by William Tenn, etc., rather than just asserting that it was used by those authors. Shared pseudonyms have the extra complexity that they were sometimes used by two authors, sometimes by one, and sometimes the other -- not all stories by "Lewis Padgett" were written by both spouses, for example. But this might be too complex for now, and we should probably focus on the main issues first.

This will also a concern for the other media domains, but it's probably of most interest in publishing.

I'm not sure what the best way to handle names like Mark Twain will be, since although most people know it's a pseudonym, and it's probably worth recording, most people also don't make a distinction between Twain and Clemens.

Author: link to library name authority files?

2007-07-08T00:55:36.0005Z

The Library of Congress maintains a name authority file of authors and individuals as subjects. E.g. the entry for Neal Stephenson is at http://errol.oclc.org/laf/n82-269163.html. Would it be worth providing links to this? I've matched (automatically but conservatively) wikipedia biographical pages to LC NAF, with tens of thousand of matches - and am happy to have the data uploaded (though I haven't had a go at JSON myself yet). E.g. WorldCat Identities provides a page for authors, e.g. http://orlabs.oclc.org/SRW/search/Identities?query=local.pnkey+exact+%22stephenson,%20neal%22 with links to wikipedia, the LC NAF and the authority file at the Deutsch Nationalbibliothek. (It should be noted that WorldCat Identities is generated automatically from the WorldCat union libraries, and sometimes merges authors spuriously - but this of course is exactly what the name authority files are designed not to do.)

Author: Pseudonymous Authors

2007-07-06T21:17:22.0012Z

I noticed a few pseudonyms typed as people. I created a new type Pseudonym in my (jfry) domain, and changed a few authors from Person to Pseudonym.

In some cases, I think a Pseudonym should have it's own topic page, since they are often used by more than one person (e.g. Lewis Padgett was a actually a husband/wife pair, while Franklin W. Dixon was a pseudonym owned by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, used by whoever they hired to write Hardy Boys novels.)

In other cases it's less clear. For example, Mark Twain is currently typed as a person, with an AKA property of Samuel Clemens. Should this be a split candidate, or is there not much one would say about Twain that one wouldn't also say about Clemens?

Thoughts?