Freebase: Discussion about sprocketonline

Nelson B. McCormick: Split

2009-11-14T20:10:49.0000Z

Thanks for catching this. I've moved the TV Director properties over to the proper topic, but the problem could easily reoccur, I think, because Wikipedia has a redirect from Nelson McCormick to to Nelson B. McCormick, causing all references to the director to get merged with the politician.

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

Nelson B. McCormick: Split

2009-11-14T06:29:03.0018Z

The politician and director are different people. Topic should be split, and the resulting director can be merged with this topic: /en/nelson_mccormick

Rock music: ROCK & ROLL

2009-11-14T04:22:17.0000Z

ROCK & ROLL IS NOT THE SAME AS ROCK MUSIC AND IT AS AS DISTINCT AND DIFFERENT AS JAZZ, RYTHYM & BLUES (WHICH IS NOT R&B AS WHAT YOUNG PEOPLE MISTAKENLY CALL OTHER PABLUM), OPERA, FOLK AND CLASSICAL MUSIC AS A START!! I HAVE BEEN IN ROCK & ROLL AS WELL AS TEACHING MUSIC AND PLEASE DO NOT DELETE AGAIN OR MERGE TO ROCK MUSIC!!! THANK YOU FOR THE FORUM TO MAKE CLEAR THAT ROCK & ROLL IS PURE AND NOT DILUTED OR CONTAMINAED BY WEAKER GENRE ROCK MUSIC!! IT HAS A SOUL!!

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.

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. :)

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?

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.

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?

Battery: Schema comments

2009-11-13T21:03:49.0000Z

I agree with you about not using a brand as a manufactured component category. A "line" type is possible, although it would cross paths with "Product Line" fairly often, I would imagine.

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

Dam: Dam, something is wrong with the property for purpose of dam

2009-11-12T22:23:31.0008Z

Not a valid typename, may need to delete it and recreate?

{ "/api/status/error/mql/parse" : [ { "code" : "/api/status/error/mql/parse", "info" : { "id" : "/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000999ea71", "key" : "type", "tid" : "cache;cache01.p01.sjc1:8101;2009-11-12T22:17:47Z;0019;-5" }, "message" : "not a valid typename", "path" : "/base/engineering/dam/purpose_of_dam", "query" : { "/base/engineering/dam/purpose_of_dam" : [ { "error_inside" : ".", "guid" : null, "id" : null, "index" : null, "limit" : 1001, "name" : null, "optional" : true, "sort" : "index", "type" : "/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000999ea71" } ], "id" : "/en/itaipu" } } ] }

Architecture: Structural height

2009-11-12T19:28:31.0053Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Tall_Buildings_and_Urban_Habitat & http://www.ctbuh.org/HighRiseInfo/TallestDatabase/Criteria/tabid/446/language/en-US/Default.aspx

From this page, yes, I guess it is a bit esoteric, most would simply do measurements from roof and spire heights and argue from there.

"The CTBUH ranks the height of buildings using four different methods:

Height to architectural top of the building. This is the main criterion under which the CTBUH ranks the height of buildings. Height measurements begin at sidewalk and run to the top of the building, inclusive of spires but excluding items such as flag poles or antennas.
To highest occupied floor: Height to the floor of the highest occupied floor of the building.
To top of roof: Height to the top of the roof.
To tip of spire/antenna: Height to the tip of spire, pinnacle, antenna, mast or flag pole. [edit] Tallest database The CTBUH maintains an extensive database of the tallest buildings in the world, organized by various categories. Buildings under construction are also included, although not ranked until completion."

Architecture: Structural height

2009-11-12T18:21:55.0038Z

I guess we could use the emporis standards: http://standards.emporis.com/?nav=realestate&lng=3&esn=81731 I'm just not sure this level of detail is necessary. Wikipedia articles don't seem to dwell on this particular detail. The emporis standard seems to mirror what sprocketonline is asserting: a maintenance/plant floor doesn't count. I guess this is interesting from the financial point of view, I'm not sure how it fits in to the pissing match aspect of all of this: asserting who is the tallest. Show me the data! Do you have oodles of data for this that is just waiting for a slot in the schema?

Organization: Dated Headquarter

2009-11-12T16:03:24.0039Z

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

Battery: Schema comments

2009-11-12T08:29:42.0013Z

I've removed the included types. I'd argue that manufactured component category shouldn't be used for branded things - the category is electric car battery instead of Toyota Prius battery, or Vacuum cleaner instead of Hoover or Dyson. I'm considering having a new "manufactured component line" type for branded things like Toyota Prius Battery.

Architecture: Structural height

2009-11-12T08:10:07.0008Z

I assume occupied height is measured to the floor level of the occupied space? (and not to the ceiling/roof above it)

If to the floor level, for any building with an inaccessible roof (i.e. no roof top terrace, and ignoring access for maintenance and cleaning), the occupied height of a building will be different from the building height (measure to the top of the superstructure , excluding antennae and spires). As most tall buildings have an unoccupied plant room on the topmost level, the difference can be significant.

In theory occupied height belongs on building, although in practice it's probably only recorded for skyscrapers.

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?

Manufactured Component: Relationship with Business commons types?

2009-11-11T20:06:59.0030Z

Re iPod: The choice of at what level of the consumer product/product line hierarchy to put the manufactured component type is probably an important one. The semantics of the Manufactured Component type would seem to drive this toward a lower level in the hierarchy -- either to Consumer Product itself, or to a lower-level Product Line. Material Composition by Mass is the most obvious in this regard, but even properties like Total Production and End of Production are arguably more interesting at the lower levels (e.g. iPod Nano 4th Generation or whatever).

Manufactured Component: Relationship with Business commons types?

2009-11-11T19:15:38.0030Z

Manufactured component should be the set of all consumer products, and also government produced items and B2B items etc..

I've entered data to illustrate the Apple, Foxconn (aka Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.) & iPod relationship http://www.freebase.com/view/en/ipod/-/base/engineeringdraft

In this case the manufactured_component site with the product_line and not the consumer_product type, but given the phylogeny pattern I think this is suitable. (or do we need a manufactured_component line??)

@Tom, so long as we get a high-level relationship that a manufacturer had something to do with the creation of a component I think that should be sufficient. We don't really need the fine-grain detail of individual part instances and their serial numbers at this time, but I see your point of how the differences that make a component distinct from other components is very minute.

@Jeff, wrt Manufacturing Plant - I think you are correct. The operations of a manufacturer in a plant are HAS-A location, not IS-A, so including /business/business_location seems best. I've emphasised this relationship by renaming manufacturing_plant as manufacturing_location. Also removed the CVT between a manufacturing location and the operating manufacturer.

In addition I had a couple of suggestions for improvement of /business/business_location see:

Architecture: Structural height

2009-11-11T17:26:30.0052Z

There is "Structural Height" on structure and "Height with Antenna" on skyscraper. There is note on the former saying "For Skyscrapers this should not include antennae or spires." So I guess I'm implying that the former means occupied height. Maybe it would make more sense to have it be the other way around, but I think the bottom line is: people only care about this distinction with skyscrapers and I've given them the slots to describe it so good enough? I could add occupied height to skyscraper, but then what should they put in for "Structural Height" ?

Manufactured Component: Relationship with Business commons types?

2009-11-11T07:18:44.0029Z

The thing that a consumer sees as a single product is an elaborately choreographed dance behind the scenes. I'd guess that that is what the Manufactured Component vs Consumer product split is supposed to indicate. There's a lot more variability to an Apple 8 GB iPod Nano than just the casing color. In the manufacturing/design workflows that I'm familiar with, the whole thing is driven by BOMs (bills of materials), part numbers, variants, and revs with all changes under change order control.

A change as small as a newly edited "Thank you for buying me" letter or a different firmware load for an EPROM will cause new part numbers/revs to be assigned. Any part could be multi-sourced, so they could be using Foxconn and Benchmark or Foxconn could be using both Samsung and IBM flash memory or there could be multiple printing vendors qualifier for manuals or -- well, you get the idea.

Two otherwise identical parts from different vendors get different part numbers, because that's how all these changes get tracked. Whether or not a component change results in a different part number for the higher level assembly gets decided by the design engineer and/or product manager, but at a minimum, a change will create a new rev.

Once Apple sells the product on, they become the "manufacturer" for the next level vendor (say I'm doing an iPod + hoodie + earbuds bundle) and Foxconn vs Benchmark becomes invisible.

I'm not sure tracking things at this level has any use outside of the manufacturer/designer, but that's how it's done in my experience and it does support having different views of who the manufacturer is internally and externally.

Architecture: Structural height

2009-11-10T23:39:06.0038Z

A missing property that seems of interest amongst the height-loving skyscraper-o-philes is Occupied floor height.

Highest possible terrestrial-structure-based human viewing spot is the Occupied floor height.

Could be placed within /Structure or /Skyscraper (former makes the most sense as it already has the related roof height).

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.

Battery: Schema comments

2009-11-10T21:43:00.0059Z

This is a tricky one, since Battery has its foot in two levels of the schema. Saying strictly that Battery is for the category would be esthetically pleasing, but would require the fairly silly state of having two "Toyota Prius Battery" topics -- one for the category and one for the manufactured component. I think the thing to do is not include either Manufactured Component or Manufactured Component Category, and just add them manually as necessary.
Sounds good.

Manufactured Component: Relationship with Business commons types?

2009-11-10T21:35:55.0014Z

I am wondering about the relationship of the Manufactured Component type to the Consumer product type, if any. Obviously, not all manufactured components need to be treated as consumer products, but some surely should be, which leaves us with a bit of a denormalization, I think, unless the expectation is that the properties "Manufacturer" (from the Manufactured Component type) and "Made by company" (from Consumer Product) are not necessarily the same thing. E.g., Apple is the correct value for "made by company" for an Ipod, but Foxconn is the manufacturer. Is that the idea?

Also, I think there might be a bit of collision between Manufacturing Plant (MP) and Business Location, since Business Location explicitly includes factories as one of the things it can represent. Although I see we already have this problem in the Automotive domain, with that manufacturing plant type. However, the fact that MP has a CVT for operation complicates this somewhat, since Business Location is not time-mediated. I don't have any proposals for resolving this at the moment, but I think it bears discussing.

Battery: Schema comments

2009-11-10T21:30:31.0006Z

I think they should. I''ve fixed this.
It depends. Battery has specific batteries, e.g. Toyota Prius Battery (a Manufactured Component); but it also works for more generic types of battery, e.g. Alkaline AA battery. (Manufactured Component Category). Should we assume that categories will be more prevalent than specific batteries?
Invention projects was what I was angling at, but on reflection it's unlikely that we'll have that much data on projects focusing on batteries (unlike construction projects for buildings) - so perhaps better if removed. If there is a project it can always be added manually.

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

Product designer: Schema comments

2009-11-10T21:09:41.0067Z

Good point. I've removed them.

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?

Product designer: Schema comments

2009-11-10T20:51:02.0038Z

I wonder whether Company and Employer should be included on this type -- it seems to me that a lot of products will have been designed by individuals.

Battery: Schema comments

2009-11-10T20:45:53.0037Z

Should the IEC and ANSI/NEDA properties be unique? I don't know anything about them, but this sort of data is often unique.
Instead of including Manufactured Component (which is for specific products), should Battery include Manufactured Component Category instead?
Does project focus make sense as an included type for Battery? I suppose it could, since each kind of battery must have been invented somehow.

To Do Lists: Sorted List

2009-11-07T07:28:01.0006Z

When I had a quick play with it, I was getting page timeouts, not query timeouts, which is why I suggested it would have to be some type of AJAXy type solution, so you could get the page returned before the timeout, but still updated it afterwards. Doubt it's worth the effort though.

To Do Lists: Sorted List

2009-11-06T20:20:40.0006Z

Yeah, I really wish that estimate-count degraded a little more gracefully. I've written other apps where I wrap the return:count in a try-catch and then run return:estimate-count if it times-out. But this app is already slow and I'm not sure how much further I can push it.

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.

To Do Lists: Sorted List

2009-11-06T17:37:49.0013Z

There's an even more egregious example than the one I noticed. #1 on the hit parade is Shawn's http://www.freebase.com/view/user/narphorium/default_domain/views/books_with_edition_in_their_name which is listed with 2.4 million entries, but is actually empty.

I had a quick look at the code and it looks like the root of the problem is the use of MQL's 'estimate-count.' It returns wildly inaccurate results, but using 'count' instead causes things to time out, so I'm not sure there is a good solution. I could envision a solution that used AJAX with a dynamically updated display that fell back from 'count' to 'estimate-count' when necessary, but that seems way too much work.

To Do Lists: Sorted List

2009-11-06T02:18:03.0013Z

Something is screwy with one of the lists. When I look at http://www.freebase.com/view/user/tfmorris/default_domain/views/people_with_with_in_their_names it lists 26 people, but on the sorted lists index it says 635. Not sure what the deal is...

To Do Lists: Sorted List

2009-11-05T20:34:08.0001Z

I've put together a quick Acre app to show all the To Do lists ordered by number of topics. I hope you find it useful as a way to monitor which tasks require the most attention. Views without any topics are not shown.

If you want to see a list of tasks created by a specific user you can use the following URL format http://todo.narphorium.user.dev.freebaseapps.com/user/sprocketonline

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?