[Data-modeling] should names start with "The" or not?

[Christopher R. Maden]

Ray Kiddy <ray at ganymede.org> wrote:
> Why does it make sense for things to start with "The"? Looking at  
> countries, I thought that "Gambia" was missing. But there it is as  
> "The Gambia". So, it is sorted after things starting with "S" and  
> before "U"? Wny does this make sense? Yet there are times when  
> "Gambia, The" would be awkward as well. I am unsure.

Freebase does not currently have a feature for proper lexicographic sorting.  The nation called “The Gambia” should be called “The Gambia” in Freebase.  Proper sorting of insignificant fore-words is left as an exercise to the implementor. (-:

There is a good case to be made for an additional text-valued property called “sort key” or something like that.  This would be useful not only for things with articles, but also for people.  However, populating that data is kind of a large project, and no one has yet taken it on.  Might you be the one to do so?

~Chris
-- 
Christopher R. Maden
Data Architect
Freebase.com: <URL: http://www.freebase.com/ >
Metaweb Technologes, Inc. <URL: http://www.metaweb.com/ >