Firstly, I am fairly new to freebase so may make stupid assumptions.<br><br>I see references to "co-typing" from time to time, I assume this means the "include type" functionality. What I can see, this is a "hint" and we are free to remove any types from the "parent", but the link is still there in the form of
<a href="http://www.freebase.com/tools/explore/freebase/type_hints/included_types">/freebase/type_hints/included_types</a>. This is all fine, because the structure is still there to be machine-parsable, although this has to be viewed as quite weaker than a more "normal" hierarchy, because, say, the substitution principle will not hold for "subclasses". <br>
<br>On the other hand I also see properties with the name "Specialization of", see /people/profession for an example. This "isa" has absolutely (as far as I can see) no semantics attached to it, and for a application to be able to use this information we would need to manually add these properties to a list of "is-a" equivalents. Shouldn't co-typing (somehow) be used here instead?<br>
<br>I am guessing this a ease-of-use thing, but I at the same time think this will severely lower the value of the data that freebase produces. I really just think (quite possibly because I am a developer) that subsumption should have a much more high-profile status in Freebase.<br>
<br>-- <br>John Bäckstrand