Discussions on Domains and Types

That's a good point. Just because an event doesn't appear in Freebase doesn't mean you can assume that it didn't occur.

I would model this by co-typing the 1994 World Series topic with a Canceled Event type and then maybe add a property to say why it was canceled.

Hey, PMM. Thanks for the suggestion.

On the Domains & Types page, "Money" is just a label for the collection of domains listed under it. That is, the things labeled as domain categories (including money) aren't part of the data structure per se. Instead, they're navigational elements to help people find related data. So toward that end, we're going for broad labels.

I'd say that "Commerce" is too narrow for the domains and types collected there, but it's certainly possible that another term would better help people find the data.

Sarah

Speaking of changing it to commerce

what about a classified section? Or have I just missed it?

If there isn't one, there should be.

I added a Card Game type in my types... it it right to put it there?
It's supposed to be used for card games like poker and collectible card games...

When viewing a company... in this case Vodafone... the headquarters address type does not contain a country field. Could you please add this. Many thx. Iain

I'm quite new to freebase - trying to figure how to create the Mobile Country Code (MCC) & Mobile Network Code types for Mobile Network Operators... any help appreciated!

Totally new and somewhat bewildered - noticed that the Music domain does not contain 'music scores'. I want to eventually upload a bunch of info / links related to various music scores, specifically choral music scores held by our library. At this point, not at all sure how to accomplish this but a good start would be finding the correct topic. Many thanks for help in adding: music scores, choral music scores, musical scores or let me know where these are.

Infobuddha—Thanks for your comment. The music domain is still growing and evolving, and feedback is always helpful. In what sense is a score, for your purposes, different from compositions and arrangements? Do you specially need to describe attributes of the physical objects, or the publications of multiple (nearly-)identical physical objects, or the music described by the objects?

A good starting point would be to list the properties that you want a score to have, and a good way to do that is to prototype a type in your own domain. Let us know if you have any questions about that; the music domain would be a good place to continue the discussion.

Welcome!

infobuddha, It seems like the "Arrangement" type would work. I think the term "score" and "arrangement" could be used inter-changeably. Currently, "Arrangement" has only one property, "Arrangement of" which points to the composition (type "Composition"). I do think "Arrangement" could use some other properties: one comes to mind: "Arranged by", expected (new) type "Arranger" There are different kinds of arrangements. Rather than have that be a property, perhaps having additional types that impart the relevant properties of arrangements would make more sense: "Choral Arrangement" "Big Band Arrangement" "Orchestral Arrangement" As always, there are many ways to slice this pie. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this...

iain_herd, the country for headquarters is derived from the postal code and the city and doesn't need to be input manually from the address field. This isn't clear in the user interface though - we hope to fix this in an upcoming release.

Hi there - I'm missing a lot of abstract types. Such types that may be be used to classify a knowledge domain from a more abstract perspective. Types like: Idea, Process, Task, etc. and relationships like: Assigned_To, Interested_In, etc. In this way Freebase could also be used as a kind of project management tool. So firstly how about a project management domain? Later on this could be expanded to a more general process management domain (business, knowledge, whatever needs to be managed).

You're always welcome to create types of your own and if you think they'd be generally useful and suggest that they be promoted for public use.

We're still defining guidelines for what kinds of content will be most useful to store on Freebase - you should bear in mind that any data input will be visible to everyone, which could be a non-starter for certain kinds of project management activities. This isn't to say Freebase couldn't be used in that way, but there are definitely many other platforms that are designed more specifically for that kind of purpose.

Thanks.

Yeah and that was my next question. Does Freebase consider to make it possible to use Freebase for closed circuits with restricted access. This would be a key feature for commercial application of Freebase. Companies would the be able to control collaboration. I know it's kind of contradictory to the Freebase name but it's a shame to force commercial ontology development to proprietary systems (and a waste of ressources).

Concerning project management. Yes there are a lot of systems that handle this like there's a lot of systems handling CRM, finance, HRM, CMS, whatever. But all these systems could (and should) be handled within an ontology because they are all just specialized instances of a more general database.

We have considered the idea of restricted access content areas - and might provide that kind of functionality in the future, perhaps for a fee, perhaps on a related site, but that isn't our focus right now.

Feel free to try modeling a project management schema if you're interested. Might be instructive to see how that works.

I'm interested in a domain and set of types that focus specifically on the future. This goes beyond simply having dates that are at some point in the future. There is a broad range of types (trends, events, forecast, scenarios, etc.) that I need to work with as a professional futurist. About 6-7 years ago I identified a series of these types and their interrelationships as part of an effort to create an XML-based Futures Studies Markup Language. From the quick look that I've taken at Freebase, it appears that some of that old work may finally prove to be useful.

The challenge/opportunity with future-oriented data domains and types is that it can make use of much of the work done on basic types (people, locations, etc.). There is a significant amount of overlap in some areas with a history domain and associated types.

Hey, pvonstackleberg.

Types about the future sound interesting. If you want to take a shot at modeling some and you hit any snags, drop a line in the discussions to get some help.

Best,
Sarah

Sarah

Thanks for the offer of help via the discussions. I've started experimenting with a few futures-related types (trend, forecast, event, etc.) and am working my way through documentation on Freebase to figure out what I'm doing. At some point I'd like to get feedback from some of you more experienced folks to ensure that I'm on the right track with what I'm doing.

Peter

Terrific! When you're ready for feedback, post a note with any questions, and we'll take a look.

Hi Sarah:

I've been mulling over the Trend, Event, and Forecast types I've created. I have a couple of questions and am wondering if you and some other folks can take a quick look at what I've got done.

1. Trends and Events are linked. A Trend can contain several Events, set up as either a Supporting Event or Countervailing Event. I want to make sure that users can move back and forth easily between the events and the trends.

2. Trends can be linked to other trends (Supporting Trend and Countervailing Trend). Again, I want users to be able to move back and forth easily so they can look at all trends that associated.

3. Events can contain other Events. For example, the Event "World War 2" has several other events (for example, individual battles) that are included within it. It is possible that these events will have further events embedded within them. Movement back and forth from these events is important.

Have I set up the properties, etc. correctly for these different types in order to have a structure that is easy to navigate up and down in?

Peter

Hi Peter. On a Person page such as Danny Hillis, under Education the entries are each events, similar to you Event type. For example, the event where Danny earns a PhD. This is very similar to your Event type. Have you thought about general support for events in Freebase?

Sorry, I screwed up the link. (Freebase does a pretty good job of trying to hid the raw events.) Here is the event for Danny earns a PhD.

I do think we need broad support on Freebase for an event type.

First, let me make a distinction between what I mean by "Event" and the thread a couple items down on organized events (for example, a rock concert, a party, etc.)

The kind of event I need for futures research purposes is much more akin to the "Historical Events" type that I think you refer to. I added my own "Event" type simply because the "Historical Events" type was not complete enough for my particular needs.

However, I think current and historical events will be a major element of any data collection. As such, it would make a lot of sense to have broad, general support for an "Event" type. Having a bunch of slightly different "Event" types would be a significant pain in the behind and ends up defeating the purpose of Freebase.

If you have any suggestions on how we can pull together a common "Event" type, I'm certainly willing to work with folks on it.

Peter

In response to Peter's questions to Sarah (above):

1. In the trend type, "countervailing event" and "supporting event" have expected types of topic. If you make the expected type event, you'll be able to link events and trends directly, if you also add a reverse property on event.

2. This looks good to me. I'd consider reordering the properties so the supporting/countervailing pair is nearer the supported/opposed pair, and possibly renaming "countervailing trend" to "opposing trend" to make the relationship between those two properties clearer, but these are just cosmetic suggestions.

3. The included/higher-level event properties also look good to me; you'll find exactly parallel structures throughout Freebase. If you look at the military domain, there's a parallel structure to this that's explicitly for military conflicts.

Thanks for your comments Jeff. I've gone in an attempted to implement all of them on the "Trend" and "Event" types. If you get a chance, I'd appreciate if someone might check what I've done actually accomplishes what was suggested. (I'm still having a little trouble with the concept and implementation of the reverse properties.)

Peter

Also, I have several questions about more detailed aspects of setting up types. Comments would be much appreciated.

1. I have a number of "Trend" properties (Trend Timing, Trend Scope, etc.) that have values set up as integers. These values are intended for use in calculating an overall Trend Impact value. Should I have a "Trend Impact" property that somehow calculates a value based on the other properties, or should I set up the "Trend Impact" using a calculation in a Javascript or other function when the data is displayed on a page. It is important to be able to search and sort trends based on their impact (for example, "Show me all trends with an impact greater than 20" or "Sort all the trends from highest to lowest impact." I'm assuming that this kind of search and sort points towards having a "Trend Impact" property. That then leads to the questions of how I would do such a calculation for that property.

2. Assume that I want to include the development of a new technology as part of an event (for example, the World War 2 event includes another subordinate event that is "The first operational use of a jet fighter." I want information on the Me-262 jet fighter developed and flown by Germany towards the end of WW2, and that information is available via the "Aircraft" type. When I link in that content, I get a name that says "Me-262". I need a name that is more appropriate for my Event type (i.e., "The first operational use of...") How can I use the Me-262 content from "Aircraft" and still get the name/title I need for my event without changing the name in the "Aircraft" type?

That looks good to me. Nicely done.

I've got another question for those who you have more expertize with Freebase than I do...

I've created the "Issue" type so emerging problems/challenges can be entered into the system. I have two properties -- Issue Opponent and Issue Proponent -- to identify those who say there is no issue and those who say there is one. The opponents and proponents can be either people or organizations. How do I set it up so that these properties can be either, instead of having a separate pair of properties for people and organizations.

The way to do this is to create a new type, something like (but with a better name than) "Issue Opinion-Haver" that would link to issue, and could be applied as a co-type to the person, organization, agency, raceho