[Freebase-discuss] "Unofficial" Topics

[Paul Houle]

  On 11/10/2011 11:10 AM, hangy wrote:
> Hi Florian,
>
> there are no official or non-official topics in Freebase. The /en namespace is not being assigned new keys any more and in future versions of the Freebase client, the /m ids will probably be the preferred way of refering to a topic. (Unless you want to use some other authority namespace for some other reason, of course.)

       There's no doubt that some things in Freebase are more "real" 
than others -- the trouble is that people can't agree what "real" is.

       Our modern culture tends to believe that "real" things are things 
that can be "observed".  Back in the day,  with his cave analogy, Plato 
expressed the idea that abstract and spiritual concepts were more real 
than the illusions that we see with our eyes.

       At least 1/3 of the topics in Freebase come from Musicbrainz,  
and these aren't perfectly aligned with reality.  There are many music 
tracks which show up multiple times in Musicbrainz which should only 
show up once.  I can believe that 10% of /common/topic(s) in Freebase 
simply don't exist.

      But it's a slippery slope.  We've definitely got a better handle 
on objects from Wikipedia,  but Wikipedia is full of facts about 
fiction.  Is William Shatner more real than Captain Kirk?

      In the end,  a system has to make some decision about what it 
believes and doesn't believe.  You'd be in just as bad shape if you 
believed everything in Linked Data as if you believed everything L. Ron 
Hubbard says...  And your system certainly won't "pass",  even if you're 
making something like the simulacrum of Abraham Lincoln at Disneyland.