[Data-modeling] Are Influence Nodes necessarily persons?

[Jeff Prucher]

I think the phylogeny pattern fits this type of data better than a two-type
system. Because influence is a chain (X influence Y who influenced Z), a
phylogeny is a lot cleaner; otherwise Y needs to be both an influencee and
an influencer, which seems unnecessarily complicated.  Influence node also
has the Peers property, which would presumably have to be handled by another
type (Peer?), if we get rid of the Influence Node type.

As regards person vs. other influencable thing, I don't have a strong
opinion, but I do want to note that there are applications that use this
model which may be affected by changing the usage.

Jeff

> -----Original Message-----
> From: data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com 
> [mailto:data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com] On Behalf Of Faye Harris
> Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 4:59 PM
> To: Freebase data modeling mailing list
> Subject: Re: [Data-modeling] Are Influence Nodes necessarily persons?
> 
> 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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> >   
> 
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