[Data-modeling] the commons / non distinction is a farce

[Robert Cook]

On Jun 29, 2009, at 2:46 PM, Tom Morris wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 2:39 PM, Kirrily Robert<kirrily at metaweb.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> The email notification system that just came
>> live is a help as it allows us to contact schema admins more easily.
>
> I wouldn't count on this necessarily helping.  I was quite surprised
> recently to discover that I wasn't subscribed to updates for a domain
> that I created, so   I just created
> https://bugs.freebase.com/browse/FREEBASE-834 suggesting that admins
> be forced to listen to updates on their domains.

I wasn't aware of this problem.  I just used the Jira voting feature  
to support this fix.  Being aware of discussions in a domain that you  
administer should be the minimum responsibility.

>
>> Acre
>> code search is likely to be increasingly useful for seeing just how
>> many people are using a certain schema in their apps (it won't catch
>> non-Acre apps, but as the number of apps grows, it will at least give
>> us *some* idea.)
>
> If this is to distinguish things that need non-breaking refactorings
> vs those that don't, I think you should assume that every piece of the
> schema is being used and refactor it in a non-breaking fashion, if at
> all possible.  If it's to determine "popularity" of particular
> domains/types/properties, I'd suggest that doing it by query count
> would be a) more realistic in terms of popularity and b) fairer to
> non-Acre apps.

Schema stability is a major factor when promoting private domains to  
the commons.  In practice, however, there are some pretty fundamental  
refactorings happening in the commons, albeit with a lot of warning  
and discussion.

I think the question is whether schemas that aren't stable enough to  
be in commons should be displayed on the "read-only" topic view.  They  
probably should be, but I'm not sure if it's worth introducing an  
extra level of complexity.  An algorithm of the sort you describe  
isn't transparently deterministic enough,  It might confuse people  
when information suddenly appears (or disappears) from topic pages.

I believe we should just be more proactive about moving bases into the  
commons.

R
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