[Developers] type checking?

[Arthur van Hoff]

There should be no confirmation necessary when the type of the selected
object matches the type of the property. It is only when you add a new
type to an object that a confirmation step can help to avoid mistakes.
Here are some improvements that can be made in the UI:

 

-       Improve the relevance matching:

o    List objects of the appropriate types first.

o    List objects that have "compatible" types second. (i.e.
/music/actor is compatible with /film/actor since they both include
/people/person).

-       Add a confirmation step when a new "incompatible" type is added
to an object.

-       Provide an easier mechanism to undo changes (i.e. undo
everything I did today, undo that last thing I just did, etc..)  

 

I'm not suggesting that we make it harder to enter data, just that we
make it harder to make mistakes when entering data.

 


From: developers-bounces at freebase.com
[mailto:developers-bounces at freebase.com] On Behalf Of Dan Milbrath
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 2:54 PM
To: For discussions about MQL,Freebase API and apps built on Freebase
Subject: Re: [Developers] type checking?

 

This suggestion is a good one and would probably help.  This, along with
Robert's idea for cleanup, are enhancements that we will definitely
consider for an upcoming release.

 

In general I'd like to avoid adding a confirmation step into the flow.
We want to make it as easy as possible for people to contribute data and
add types to topics in the system. I think this thread has highlighted
the need for better tools to correct mistakes, but I don't think the
general input case should be made more complex. If 9 out of 10 people
are applying types correctly using the current UI, I'd rather not have
everyone have to click a confirmation button after each edit to prevent
that 10% case (the error rate is almost certainly much lower). With
respect to the case referenced earlier this thread, its certainly
possible that zip codes can be typed as people, but as with Wikipedia we
hope that the community will quickly find and correct obvious data
errors like this. 

 

 

 

 

On Dec 3, 2007, at 12:43 PM, Daniel Renfer wrote:





How about (if possible) making it blatantly obvious that the Topic being
selected has already been typed the appropriate type and de-emphasizing
the other Topics that match the search, but have not yet been given the
expected type. Even just moving that type to the beginning of the list
of types and bolding it would help. 

 

 

Robert Cook wrote:

> This is my philosophy as well: Default to very open input in the 

> spirit of Wikipedia rather than that of a strict database.

> 

> Regarding the particular problem that was frustrating Arthur, I think

> there might be a simple solution we could incorporate into the 

> Freebase application.  If a user removes a property value and he had

> created that property himself and the referenced topic (the topic on

> the other side of the link) was typed at the same time, then detype 

> that referenced topic.

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