[Data-modeling] Are Influence Nodes necessarily persons?

[Faye Harris]

I've actually given this some thought recently, hence the relatively 
quick response. :)

As data models go, "Influence Node" is sort of an odd ball. It doesn't 
tell you immediately if an instance is an "influencer" or "influencee" 
(pardon the coinage), just that it has data related to influence. 
Normally, types in Freebase model an "Is-A" relationship. San Francisco 
"Is-A" location, and we apply the "Location" type to the topic for San 
Francisco to represent that relationship.

So a comparable schema for influence would ideally have separate 
"Influencer" and "Influencee" (or "Influenced", or whatever name) types, 
applied to topics where... well, applicable. As a generalized concept 
the included type of "Person" is rather unnecessary. Influence may be 
between two things of the same type, or any type, or between things of 
different types. A film can influence an author, a philosophy can 
influence an art movement, etc.

If asked between 1) remodeling the current "Influence Node" type to two 
separate types without "Person" as an included type, and 2) creating a 
new pair of types to duplicate the same influence relationship without 
"Person" as an included type, I'd choose the former. It'd take a little 
reshuffling, but I think it'd be a lot less confusing in the long run, 
than having two sets of similar types, one a subset of the other.

-- Faye


Tadhg O'Higgins wrote:
> Would Influence Node be more useful/interesting if it didn't assume 
> personhood for its instances? Books, Films, Games, and Musical Groups 
> are all examples of things that seem like Influence Nodes but are not 
> persons.
>
> We should consider removing the /people/person included type from 
> Influence Node for that reason. The alternatives I can see are to a) 
> create an "Influence <thing>" in each domain that might support one, or 
> b) create an "Influence Thing" type that's just like Influence Node but 
> doesn't include personhood. Neither of those seem as good a solution as 
> widening the scope of Influence Node.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Tadhg
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