[Data-modeling] Types for subjects

[Jeff Prucher]

Delegating the existing properties to a new type would be the least breaky
way to implement this -- there would be no actual change to the schemas, so
nothing would break, but all subject types would still be kept together.
(Delegating the other direction would be a much larger task, since we'd have
to re-write all the existing properties. It would allow the piecemeal
deletion of types, but I think that we either want separate subject types or
we don't -- I don't know what there would be about one subject type that
wouldn't also be true of another, in terms of wanting to keep it around.)
 
Jeff


  _____  

From: data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com
[mailto:data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com] On Behalf Of Ed Laurent
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 12:54 PM
To: Freebase data modeling mailing list
Subject: Re: [Data-modeling] Types for subjects


I like the idea of having a single "Media subject" type. Another option
might be to keep all the existing types and have them include or delegate
from the new generalized type. Then the existing subject types could be
evaluated on a case by case basis by base members to see if they should be
deleted or merged.

-Ed



On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 3:51 PM, Faye Harris <faye at metaweb.com> wrote:


+1. Way too many "foo subjects" types. And the expected type of
something with a media subject would be a generic media type...
Something that would resolve DA-445, perhaps?

-- Faye



Jeff Prucher wrote:
> <http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000b912218>
>
> This is a thread in which it is proposed that we collapse all the various
> media subject types (book subject, film subject, etc.) into one big (new)
> Media Subject type.  Functionally, this would result in one type with many
> properties, rather than many types with one property each.
>
> The main advantage I can see to this is that users wouldn't have to add
new
> types if they wanted to indicate that a topic was a subject of a type it
> didn't already have (that is, if you wanted to say that a particular radio
> program had a subject of, say, "Porcupines", but the Porcupine topic was
> only the subject of a book currently, you wouldn't have to add the type
> "Radio Subject" -- you could just fill in the property).
>
> A minor advantage _might_ be that people creating types in bases would
have
> a type they could all reference if they had a new type that needed a
subject
> property. Although this also has the disadvantage that these properties
> would not be reciprocated, whereas if the user created a new "foo subject"
> type, it would be.
>
> This would also be a fairly major change, since we'd be nuking a lot of
> types, which would potentially break all kinds of things (we could keep
the
> old property keys, but I'm not sure about the type keys). It also has
> implications for other places where similar patterns exist (media genres
and
> ficitional characters are two that come to mind).
>
> What do you think about this?
>
> Jeff
>
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