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

[brendan]

I want to address the "having great commons schema" part. I think we  
should :-) And I think it requires serious work; there should be a  
group of responsive people (Metawebbies or not) who do it.  I'm the  
"Architecture" admin and also the software QA manager at Metaweb. Not  
all the Metaweb employee/admins are as exemplary as Jeff. Mea Culpa, I  
think architecture domain is one that has had a healthy level of  
activity in schema proposals but not such an exemplary delivery of  
actual change. Some of the proposals are no brainers and *not* all of  
those have been executed, they should be. For example, I would like to  
reconcile the structure type with structure2 (a long standing issue  
for which I apologize)

I think the discussion boards for a type or domain is a good place to  
hash things out. Sometimes we may need to take it "offline" via email/ 
IM or, heck, even organize a conference call. I will review the data- 
modeling list and discussion posts and report back here with a  
proposal for some real progress in architecture.  I've started to  
create bug/tasks for these items. Since the JIRA system provides a  
voting process, perhaps that could serve as a way to quantify  
community need. I like the idea of tracking the usage of "competing"  
schema as an input that guides schema changes, as well. I just think  
having the community work toward having great schema moved into the  
commons and formally "blessing" it has a lot of value to those who  
want to use freebase. To put it another way, app developers want  
great, but stable schema.

Brendan

On Jun 30, 2009, at 8:40 AM, Philip Kendall wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 11:37:54AM -0300, Spencer Kelly wrote:
>> is metaweb ready to democratize control of what makes the browse  
>> page and
>> what doesn't?
>
> Let me phrase that question a different way: is the Freebase community
> ready to take on the responsibility of what makes commons / the browse
> page?
>
> Honestly, I don't think that it is. Look at any type-related  
> discussion
> on Freebase, either on this list or the site itself and, most of the
> time, the people that are actually giving critical reviews to a type
> are Metaweb staff, usually Jeff.
>
> While I'm in no way saying that the current mechanisms (or lack
> thereof) for getting a type into the commons are perfect, one of the
> most important things (IMO) with regards to Freebase's data is having
> high quality schemas, and that's not something I'd like to see us
> compromise on.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Phil
>
> -- 
>  Philip Kendall <philip at shadowmagic.org.uk>
>  http://www.shadowmagic.org.uk/
> _______________________________________________
> Data-modeling mailing list
> Data-modeling at freebase.com
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