[Developers] Ontological forum?

[Robert Cook]

Kirrily and Shawn --

Right now the best place to discuss new types that don't correspond  
to existing domains is in the discussion attached to the "Data" page  
in the top navbar.  There are already some lively debates here:

   http://www.freebase.com/view/discuss/% 
239202a8c04000641f8000000003c1b16b

Specifically for your question about state abbreviations, that would  
best be discussed in the Location domain:

   http://www.freebase.com/view/domain/location

or even the "Administrative division" type, which would be an  
included type of your Australian State type, and already includes the  
ISO and FIPS codes (which may satisfy your abbreviation requirement):

   http://www.freebase.com/view/schema/location/administrative_division

I actually think a "data modeler" mailing list is a good idea, but  
I'll have to check with Sarah and others to see if that fits longer  
term plans.  Generally, I think that there's not enough documentation  
on data modeling and having a more general question forum would be a  
good idea, either as a list or as a discussion area on the site.  One  
reasonable place would be the discussion attached to the "Data  
Modeling Guide" (if we made it more prominent):

   http://www.freebase.com/view/?id=%239202a8c04000641f80000000045637f3

Robert

On Sep 9, 2007, at 2:52 AM, Kirrily Robert wrote:

> Dammit, I meant to send this to the list.
>
> On 9/9/07, Kirrily Robert <skud at infotrope.net> wrote:
>> On 9/9/07, Shawn Simister <narphorium at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>  I agree that the discussion pages really limit the range and the  
>>> audience
>>> of such discussions but I haven't found anything else yet that  
>>> covers those
>>> sorts of topics.
>>>  I suppose a mailing list for information architects and domain  
>>> specialist
>>> would be useful.
>>
>> Yes please!
>>
>> Meanwhile, I'll ask my question here.  I found myself wondering about
>> abbreviations this evening.  Australian states (for which I have
>> created a user type,
>> http://www.freebase.com/view/filter/user/skud/default_domain/ 
>> australian_state)
>> have an official abbreviated form of their name.  For instance,
>> Victoria is VIC and New South Wales is NSW.  Currently these are just
>> listed in the "Also known as" field, but it seems to me that it would
>> also be useful to have a type "Abbreviation" in its own right.  Where
>> one abbreviation can mean multiple things, it could link to all those
>> terms.  But I'm sure there are complications to this that I haven't
>> foreseen, so I wanted to open up discussion on it.
>>
>> K.
>>
>> --
>> Kirrily Robert
>> skud at infotrope.net
>> http://infotrope.net
>>
>
>
> -- 
> Kirrily Robert
> skud at infotrope.net
> http://infotrope.net
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