[Data-modeling] State of the commons - summary/conclusions

[Iain Sproat]

I've created a fairly simple Freebase
task<http://www.freebase.com/type/schema/base/todolists/freebase_task>type
in the To do lists base.  My idea is to get a more structured approach
to community tasks, similar to what bugs.freebase.com (JIRA) does for staff
tasks.
Iain

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 11:31 AM, Iain Sproat <iainsproat at gmail.com> wrote:

> Also a wiki could be a good way to record improvements that the community
>> can make
>
>
> I copied and pasted Kirrily's summary into a topic in the Todo list base.
> http://www.freebase.com/edit/topic/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000c5c6ebf
>
> <http://www.freebase.com/edit/topic/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000c5c6ebf>You
> can edit the description wiki style, with the wysiwyg editor.  General chat
> would still be best on this list, but it's a good way of recording the
> summaries and conclusions.
>
> Iain
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:23 AM, Paul Mackay <pauljmackay at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm still fairly new to Freebase so I'd like to ask a couple of fairly
>> basic questions:
>>
>> Is there an existing wiki for Freebase or have there been any thoughts of
>> creating one? It seems like this overview of the current state of the
>> commons would be good information to record in a more permanent place. Also
>> a wiki could be a good way to record improvements that the community can
>> make. I'm thinking very much of the Wikipedia model here. Maybe the answer
>> is to use Freebase itself, but its not clear that is appropriate.
>>
>> Also could some additional docs be added that describe how people in the
>> community can better contribute towards improving content and schemas, as
>> well as creating new Bases and schemas? It would be helpful to explain
>> different ways JIRA is used, how migrations are done when an existing schema
>> with related data needs changing and so on.
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> paul
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Kirrily Robert <kirrily at metaweb.com>wrote:
>>
>>> So, having gone right through all the commonseses from A to V, here's
>>> what I noticed as patterns:
>>>
>>> 1) A great many domains have unresponsive admins, or just haven't seen
>>> love in ages.  We need people to step up and take on schema modeling,
>>> responding to user questions/requests, and generally keeping the
>>> commons alive and interesting.   Anyone can do this, provided they
>>> have some schema experience and knows the subject area.  See
>>> http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000b75f213
>>>  to learn what it means to be a commons admin.
>>>
>>> I think it would be particularly great if we could find new admins for
>>> the following moribund commons domains:
>>>
>>> American football, anime/manga, aviation, baseball, basketball,
>>> bicycles, biology, broadcast, celebrities, comics, conferences,
>>> cricket, games, geology, ice hockey, influence, martial arts, radio,
>>> tennis.
>>>
>>> That said, if you are interested in any other area, do put your hand
>>> up!  Here's a list of all the Commons and which ones have admins from
>>> outside of Metaweb staff:
>>> http://experthub.freebaseapps.com/commons_admins
>>>
>>> 2) Responsiveness and follow-through.  I saw a lot of domains where
>>> admins weren't responding, or weren't seeing a discussion through to
>>> its conclusion, or weren't acting on the conclusions if they were
>>> reached.  We need to get better at this.
>>>
>>> I imagine that the notification emails are going to help a lot in
>>> saving threads from just dying.  If you want to revive any thread, you
>>> can post a message now and say "Hey, did we ever do this?" and it'll
>>> be emailed to the domain admins.  We are continuing to improve the
>>> notifications so that they're more useful.  For instance, we're hoping
>>> to start including quoted text to show what's being replied to, so you
>>> have more context.
>>>
>>> If something needs action by me, Jeff, or Bryan Cheung, and can't be
>>> done on the spot but actually needs to be managed a bit more, we
>>> usually log them in Jira under "Freebase Commons and Schema" and note
>>> the task in the discussion thread so you can follow it there.  Please
>>> feel free to log these tickets if you want, or to prompt us.  We can
>>> also assign Jira tickets to anyone who has an account there, and that
>>> includes many/most of the Freebase Experts, regular contributors, etc,
>>> since most of them have reported a bug at some point :)  So I'm
>>> wondering, should we start assigning tasks in Jira to non-staff who
>>> are commons admins?
>>>
>>> 3) Big picture: schema suffers bit-rot.  Badly.  We're trying to do
>>> something here that nobody's really done before.  I don't know any
>>> organisation anywhere that has schemas for *everything*, and that
>>> allows them to adapt and change over time.  We're learning really
>>> fast.  I remember when I started, people talked about Rail like it was
>>> "too hard".  When I got around to doing it recently, it took me an
>>> afternoon.  So now we look at Boats or Aircraft and realise how much
>>> better it could be.  It's not really the fault of the people who did
>>> the original model, because we didn't have the skills/techniques/
>>> mental models back then.  However, it *is* a problem that people are
>>> designing schemas and then letting them gather dust.  We need to keep
>>> up with current best practice, and this means having admins who are
>>> engaged and active.  See point 1 :)
>>>
>>> K.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Kirrily Robert
>>> Freebase Community Director
>>> kirrily at metaweb.com
>>> http://freebase.com/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Data-modeling mailing list
>>> Data-modeling at freebase.com
>>> http://lists.freebase.com/mailman/listinfo/data-modeling
>>>
>>
>>
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>
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