[Data-modeling] Date-mediating Website/Website Owner types

[Jeff Prucher]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com 
> [mailto:data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com] On Behalf Of Tom Morris
> Sent: Monday, July 13, 2009 11:23 AM
> To: Freebase data modeling mailing list
> Subject: Re: [Data-modeling] Date-mediating Website/Website 
> Owner types
> 
> On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 2:09 PM, Jeff Prucher<jeff at metaweb.com> wrote:
> > There's been a request to add a way to store "From" and 
> "To" dates for 
> > Websites and Website Owners.  This will involve breaking the link 
> > between the properties /internet/website/owner and 
> > /internet/website_owner/websites_owned.  Any thoughts? Code 
> in danger 
> > of breakage?
> >
> > Discussion thread is here:
> > http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000c7b4f55
> 
> This seems like it should be hoisted up the type hierarchy to 
> something like "Media Property owner."  There are lots of 
> publishing/broadcasting media that this applies to.

This brings up a couple issues. One is the standard lumping vs. splitting
debate: is it better to lump all the similar "owner types" (there are for
sure newspaper, tv station, and radio station owner types in addition to
website; there may be more) into a "Media Property Owner" type, and cotype
all the related types as Media Properties (the only purpose of which type
that I can see would be to hold the ownership property), or keep the types
split into more specific ones?

The next issue is whether, if we decide that lumping is the better option,
is it better still to go whole hog and just use the Asset type
(/business/asset) instead?

The third issue is that, if we want to keep them split, we need to
date-mediate the other ownership relationships.

Jeff