[Data-modeling] Proposed changes to the/organization/organization type

[Jeff Prucher]

I think the idea behind the proposed "volunteers" property is for unpaid
staff/officers, rather than for people who show up to fold newsletters or
staff tables or whatnot, since we're talking about replacing the property
"key people". In my opinion, the fact that Joe sometimes volunteers for the
Sierra Club, in addition to the fact that he is a member is not that
interesting. But that he's the secretary of his local chapter, for which he
receives no pay, is of more interest.  
 
The question for me is, does the property "employees and other personnel"
(on the type "employer") sufficiently address unpaid staff
positions/officers? The correllary is whether the type "employer" makes
sense as a co-type on organizations that have no paid staff.
 
Jeff

  _____  

From: data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com
[mailto:data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com] On Behalf Of Ed Laurent
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 11:04 AM
To: Freebase data modeling mailing list
Subject: Re: [Data-modeling] Proposed changes to
the/organization/organization type


My two cents is to have 3 properties: members, employees and volunteers. 

For example, Joe Smith might be an employee of The Nature Conservancy, a
paying member of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Sierra Club, and he
volunteers sometimes for Sierra Club activities. The 3 properties would
permit the storage of all this data in a simple way. 

"Key person" is more of a subjective call depending on the purpose for using
the data. Some users might think volunteers are key people when looking for
future volunteers. Other users might think employees and members are key
people because they involve money going in and out of the organization.

A reciprocating "Volunteer" property added to the "Person" type sounds like
a good thing to me.

-Ed



On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 1:51 PM, Bryan Cheung <bryan.cheung at metaweb.com>
wrote:


> 2. One of the designers of the organization type originally created
> the property key_people, and later decided this was a bad idea and hid
> the property.  This property has been hidden for quite some time, but
> there still exists some data that should be migrated.
>
> The existing data should be migrated to /business/employer/employee
> (employer is an included type) and the hidden property should be
> deleted.



I'd like to to solicit feedback from the data-modeling gurus out there
about this migration.  Organizations can have paid employees,
volunteers or a combination of both.  While I believe the reasoning
for getting rid of the ambiguous property "key person" is still valid,
do people think the property  "employees and other personnel" on the
employer type is sufficient in capturing a "key person" who is a
volunteer?  An alternative  would be to have a volunteer property (on
employer or organization type); however, this might be complicating
because the reciprocating property would either have to be on the type
person or a new type like "volunteer".

Suggestions?

Thanks,
Bryan



On Mar 5, 2008, at 11:36 AM, Bryan Cheung wrote:

> A couple of changes have been proposed for the /organization/
> organization type:
>
> 1. A user has requested that we add time span as a disambiguated
> property on organization member.
>
>
http://www.freebase.com/view/discuss/organization/organization_member#%2Fgui
d%2F9202a8c04000641f8000000006fe1430
>
> I think it's a good idea to know when people were members of an
> organization; however, the relationship between an organization member
> and an organization is a simple one, and we would have to insert a CVT
> to represent the timespan-member relationship.
>
> 2. One of the designers of the organization type originally created
> the property key_people, and later decided this was a bad idea and hid
> the property.  This property has been hidden for quite some time, but
> there still exists some data that should be migrated.
>
> The existing data should be migrated to /business/employer/employee
> (employer is an included type) and the hidden property should be
> deleted.
>
> Does anyone disagree with this changes?  Are the applications being
> developed that will break due to these changes?
>
> Thanks,
> Bryan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Data-modeling mailing list
> Data-modeling at freebase.com
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