[Data-modeling] Adoptive and other relationships

[Jeff Prucher]

Following up on a thread from while I was out (now also known as <https://bugs.freebase.com/browse/DA-694>), I've put up a model for mediating parent/child relationships, including a relationship type property to the sibling relationship, on sandbox.

Schema: <https://www.sandbox-freebase.com/type/schema/people/person>
The properties to note are "parents 2", "children 2", and "siblings".

And what could be better for sample data than the British royal family?  Camilla's biological children are a particularly nice test case -- they each have 1 biological sibling, 2 step siblings (Charles' sons), and 1 half sibling* (from their father's second marriage).  They also have 2 biological and 1 step-parent.  See <https://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/en/laura_lopes> for an example.

The relationship types are enumerated lists; more values can be added if needed -- I just populated them with what I thought were likely values.

And just to reiterate Robert's earlier comment, if we do do this, it will totally break any application that uses the parent/child relationship, of which there are probably many. Not necessarily a reason not to do this, but just to keep that in mind.

Jeff

*Note: technically they have three half siblings, but hey, it's only a model.