[Developers] Too Many Writes Error

[Scott Meyer]

Michael Jones wrote:

> It's only about 3-400 records, but I am testing an upload script, and 
> ran it about 15-20 times yesterday, refreshing exisitng objects.  It 
> doesn't seem like this should have triggered the limit, but it's 
> possible.  Is there a reason the limit is on total writes and not on 
> instance creations?

Because it is hard to make that distinction.  The concern is DOS,
either intentional or because of a broken script.

>      > External applications will often have need of grafting their own
>     types
>      > onto Freebase instances in order to flag them or add meta data that
>      > would not be of interest to the general public browsing Freebase.
> 
>     Currently, any user can create a type and use it to type existing
>     objects.  In fact, we would much rather you do that, than create
>     duplicate objects.  Is that what you want? 
> 
>  
> That is exactly what I want, and I am doing now for a Fantasy Football 
> Draft simulator I'm building.
>  
> I have grafted the type '/user/szaijan/fantasy_football/player' to all 
> of the instances of type '/american_football/football_player' that I 
> have data on.  I've also created types and instances for the objects 
> that will support the application (League, Owner, Team, et. al.)  In 
> addition, I have created Projection objects, which hold my estimate of a 
> player's performance and average fantasy draft position over the course 
> of a given season.  My app will essentially predict each selection of a 
> fantasy draft based on the point projections and average draft position, 
> then rank the teams.  A lot of meta data is used in the sorting, and 
> several enumerated types required near duplicates of types already in 
> the database.
>  
> Ideally, I'd like to make sure no one who isn't running my app can see, 
> change, or add to this data.

Unfortunately, pretty much everything in Freebase is always going to
be visible, that's sort of the point.  Data that isn't public or isn't
connected is of no use to a community.

The problem of publishing data that is, in essence, guaranteed by
the publisher, is one that we're aware of but you're the first person
to bring it up in this context.

Our permission system provides write protection on a per-instance basis
so in this case it might actually be better to create your own instances
of FantasyFootballPlayer and associate them with the actual football
player they represent.

As to the ultimate suitability of Freebase for your application, I think it
depends on the extent to which you can imagine other people eventually using
"your" types and instances.

Regards,

-Scott