Freebase: Discussion about namesbc

Organization: Dated Headquarter

2009-11-14T19:34:35.0013Z

Yes, indeed. Most of the organizations, I would like to add, do not exist anymore. Most of them, like the World Zionist Organization (which still exists) (http://www.freebase.com/view/en/world_zionist_organization), changed their headquarters a few times.

I think (also for future editing) it is much better to have the possibility to add dates to such properties ( another example is person_places_lived), in general. Because otherwise you have to delete data (which might be important for many people) erverytime when e.g. headquaters will change. What do you think?

best regards,

Frank

General Support: Bulk download of images

2009-11-14T03:56:52.0014Z

Is this something you plan to do on an ongoing basis? Our daily API calls limit is 100K.

Please remember to attribute back: http://www.freebase.com/policies/

Could you provide some more info about your site/project?

Thanks for using Freebase!

Film: Production credit, Executive versus the rest

2009-11-14T00:48:43.0005Z

Added Casting, Production Design, Art Direction to the sandbox /film/film type for your perusal.

If no-one is objecting I could make these live on production late Monday, Nov 16 2009.

Census Designated Place (CDP) != City/Town: Old Orchard Beach, Maine

2009-11-14T00:33:46.0000Z

Here's a list of the census places (towns, cities, and CDPs) in Maine.
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/BasicFactsTable?_lang=en&_vt_name=DEC_2000_PL_U_GCTPL_ST7&_geo_id=04000US23

Interestingly, Old Orchard Beach town and Old Orchard Beach CDP have identical populations, so the land which is not in the CDP must be entirely unpopulated. If you look at some of the other CDPs though, you'll see that this is not the case. I'll have to see if I can dig up a map of the town vs CDP areas...

Census Designated Place (CDP) != City/Town: Old Orchard Beach, Maine

2009-11-14T00:22:13.0013Z

The disjunction CDP != administrative area is correct. Unfortunately, CDPs are a huge source of confusion (and error) in Freebase. Usually it's Freebase's fault, but in this case Wikipedia is wrong. The U.S. Census Bureau (who defines CDPs) calls the two places "Old Orchard Beach town" and "Old Orchard Beach CDP."

Here's a little background. Census Designated Places (CDPs) are only created when there's a place that the Census Bureau wants to enumerate, but which does not align with an administrative boundary. There are different reasons why this might be, but around here (near where Old Orchard Beach is), the typical reason is that there's a large land area which is administratively part of the town, but there's a piece which is much different (usually higher) density such as the village/town center that is interesting to have separate stats for.

Census Bureau rules are that CDPs may not have the same name as the administrative area that contains them or a nearby area that they could be confused with, so you'll never have a town and a CDP both called "Old Orchard Beach." The way they usually solve this is by just appending "CDP" to the name. Unfortunately, Wikipedia typically will title the article "Old Orchard Beach (CDP)" and the Freebase importer drops all parenthetical expressions, causing us to end up with two articles with the same name, which usually then get merged, creating a mess. In this case the merger happened a little further upstream in the pipe. :-)

You can also have have CDPs with entirely different names. If there's a town Jonestown that has a separate section called Brownville that they want to count, they can just call the CDP "Brownville." It's a CDP by nature of the fact that it's got no formal administration or government separate from the town of Jonestown.

That's all a long winded way of saying, yes, Old Orchard Beach should be split. There will be separate population and area figures for both the town and CDP (the town will be bigger in both cases). The GNIS id should stay with the town.

Developer Support: Sandbox has been down since last night; is there an ETA on availability?

2009-11-13T22:34:09.0013Z

Now :-)

Piston configuration: Documentation?

2009-11-13T22:11:51.0018Z

I think some words are missing from the type documentation. :)

Reaction engine: Specific Fuel Consumption

2009-11-13T22:01:39.0018Z

Do we need a new dimension for specific fuel consumption for this type?

Engine: Date/time s/b unique

2009-11-13T21:55:39.0006Z

This type looks pretty good; I'd make "first ran" unique, though.

Measurement Unit: Measuring instruments?

2009-11-13T21:44:46.0013Z

A phylogeny pattern might be useful, but I'm not sure I agree with your example. Barometers and sphygmomanometers both measure pressure, but I don't think need to be connected in a way other than through their shared dimension. On the other hand, an aneroid barometer is a sub-class of barometer, and could usefully be linked through a phylogeny.

Battery size: Would this be the expected type?

2009-11-13T21:31:28.0006Z

Thinking more about batteries: Say I had a type for "personal electronics", and I wanted a property to hold information about what sort of batteries a device used. Would this be the appropriate expected type? It would obviously be so for old-school types like AA Battery, but would it work for the tiny little watch-sized batteries, too? I don't know if they're standardized for size.

Organization: Dated Headquarter

2009-11-13T21:10:13.0006Z

We could do it, although it would be a major change which would break any apps using this data. Both the Company and Organization types assume "current headquarters" currently -- do you have a strong need for historical headquarters data?

Film: Production credit, Executive versus the rest

2009-11-13T21:01:20.0006Z

Funkily enough, "executive produced" does seem to be a fairly standard usage, amongst industry media, anyway.

Developer Support: Sandbox has been down since last night; is there an ETA on availability?

2009-11-13T18:00:33.0000Z

Hey guys, the sandbox went down yesterday afternoon and hasn't been back up since; is there an ETA on having it back up again?

General Support: Bulk download of images

2009-11-13T14:49:22.0049Z

Hi Freebase,

First of all, thanks for an excellent service!

We are planning to perform a bulk download of images for thumbnailing purposes, using the trans api (typically by requesting http://www.freebase.com/api/trans/image_thumb/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000020b7a5?maxwidth=500&maxheight=500 etc.)

We are planning to decorate around 400 000 entities with images this way.

Are the images available some other way (via a dump for instance) or do we have to use the api to perform this? If the later, are there any limitations regarding requests from the api? We dont want to put too much load on freebase and/or block ourselves out..

Best regards, Kristofer

Census Designated Place (CDP) != City/Town: Old Orchard Beach, Maine

2009-11-12T21:03:10.0019Z

The Wikipedia article of Old Orchard Beach claims that "Old Orchard Beach is a town and census-designated place (CDP)[…]". According to this incompatible type definition this should not be possible.

Do we create separate topics here (one for town, one for CDP) or could the be a problem with this incompatible type? The Wikipedia text indicates that town and CDP are the same here …

Organization: Dated Headquarter

2009-11-12T16:03:24.0039Z

Is there a possibility to add a date (from until) to the headquarter property?

Film: Production credit, Executive versus the rest

2009-11-12T01:32:49.0025Z

I'd prefer the former, both pointing to film producer which would have films produced and films executive produced as a return linkages... Well that doesn't scan too well. Served as executive film producer on ... ?

Film: Production credit, Executive versus the rest

2009-11-11T21:52:01.0000Z

Well, that's pretty true. Thinking about it further, it does seem that an executive producer in film is a completely different sort of role than the other various types of producers (despite the similiarity of names), so creating a new property makes sense. Next question: should it expect the existing Film Producer type or a new Film Executive Producer type?

Film: Production credit, Executive versus the rest

2009-11-10T21:47:57.0038Z

I think the break would be pretty catastrophic given how many apps are built on Film now.

I would strongly prefer a new property over mediating the Producer relationship.

Film: Production credit, Executive versus the rest

2009-11-10T21:16:47.0058Z

I prefer inserting the mediator, although it's a breaky change. It would bring film into line with TV shows, though: TV Producer term

Film: Production credit, Executive versus the rest

2009-11-10T20:57:33.0026Z

I believe it may be advantageous to separate out the role of an Executive Producer from that of the Producer (and Assistant/Associated Producer).

We could do it simply with a new property for Executive produced by, example on sandbox, that points to Film producer. Regular production and associated/assistant production would remain with original property.

(Better might be inserting a mediator between Produced by and Film Producer, with enumerated topics for Executive, Associate, Assistant, and blank for the regular credit.)

Any objections? Improvements?

Measurement Unit: Measuring instruments?

2009-11-06T17:48:39.0013Z

+1 to having a measurement instrument type.

+1 to a link to dimension.

I think we need a phylogeny pattern on this new type, as a Barometer and Sphygmomanometers are more specific types of Pressure sensor.

There's likely to be quite a few strange dimensions e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_sensor if we don't get a handle on this, but I notice things like Unit of Alcohol already typed as a Dimension.

Just to point out that this new type should be for a category of instrument (watch, ruler) and not for an individual physical item e.g. one of the Vacheron Constantin Tour de l’Ile watches.

Measurement Unit: Measuring instruments?

2009-11-05T18:24:54.0005Z

I like the idea. Would it just link a tool topic to the dimension that it measures?

Measurement Unit: Measuring instruments?

2009-11-05T18:16:18.0013Z

Seems like a good idea. How would we want to model the relationship of the instrument to what it's measuring? The simplest solution would be just to link it to Dimension, so that you could say that a stopwatch measures time, a ruler measures length, etc. This works very well for a lot of instruments, but to say that a barometer measures pressure is missing some of the picture, since what it really measures is atmospheric pressure. And should this type allow for instruments like Sphygmomanometers (one of my all time favorite words)? "Blood pressure" is not really a subcategory of pressure in the way that atmospheric pressure is, but typing it as a Dimension would seem somewhat odd, I think.

Measurement Unit: Measuring instruments?

2009-11-05T15:02:17.0013Z

you are totally correct. Feel free to create such a type.

Measurement Unit: Measuring instruments?

2009-11-04T00:27:14.0013Z

We've got lots of units of measurements, but no measuring intruments, as far as I can tell. Am I missing something or do we need to define a type for the barometers, anemometers, rulers, stopwatches,etc of the world?