Talk:Freebase (database)

Organisation and terminology
Not sure what this means: Subjects (which usually correspond to a Wikipedia article) are called topics and the data stored about them depend on their 'type', how they are classified. Can someone clarify? Sam Dutton (talk) 10:13, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Notability and spam
I'm a staff member at Freebase and so I hope it's OK for me to be editing this page. Please let me know if my edits overstep the bounds of appropriate editing by someone associated with the topic at hand, and I'll back off. I've clarified the section on notability under "Challenges" and will provide links to the Freebase docs. The website linked as a reference for the assertion that "people have raised concerns about spam on Freebase" does not mention Freebase, and so I have removed that link. --Skud (talk) 18:45, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * err, and I'm having trouble with the markup for citations, if someone could help out here. --Skud (talk) 18:50, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * You are not completely prohibited from editing the Freebase article, but you should take note of wikipedia policy on conflicts of interest, stated at wp:coi. Your declaring your affiliation with Freebase and your being willing to back off if your involvement conflicts with non-involved editors are important aspects of complying with that policy. doncram (talk) 20:07, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Freebase just grabbed 20,000 NRHP articles from wikipedia
This was bound to happen, that someone would grab the NRHP article set. A Freebase contact just posted at wt:NRHP, calling attention to the fact Freebase has in fact uploaded all 20,000 or so wikipedia articles on NRHP historic sites. Interesting. I assume this is legal somehow, but I don't see on the Freebase site how the GFDL licensing for wikipedia material is reflected. Can anyone else comment? doncram (talk) 03:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi domcram, I'm on staff at Freebase and I hope I can help you out here. We extract structured data (mostly from categories and infoboxes), articles, and images under the terms of the GFDL (and other licenses as appropriate, for images).   We present snippets of the articles on our topic pages with a link back to Wikipedia.  However, we don't allow people to edit the Wikipedia articles there, as that would cause us license trouble (we use CC-BY for our own data, not GFDL); instead, we allow our contributors to *replace* the WP article if they wish, with a specialised one for Freebase.  On any page which contains  Wikipedia article text, like this one, we have an attribution notice at the bottom of the page which links back to the Wikipedia article in question and to the GFDL.  Some other links and things that might be of interest to you, wrt Freebase and Wikipedia: 1) a presentation by one of our developers about how we extract structured data from Wikipedia: Mining Wikipedia; 2) Our WEX (Wikipedia Extract) download, which is a semi-structured representation of the Wikipedia dumps, which we provide to the developer community: WEX; and 3) our attribution guidelines for external developers using article text or images that originally came from Wikipedia: articles, images.  Hope that helps.  If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to get in touch. --Skud (talk) 17:55, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I see also Skud's response at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places. Thank you for your responses.
 * About the specific example you put forward, for the Freebase "topic" on Richmond Power Station, Victoria, in Australia, which copies wikipedia article Richmond Power Station, Victoria, I note the Freebase version displays the same photo, but gives no credit for the photographer. The photo on Wikipedia is licensed under GFDL which requires carrying over credit for any other uses.  It appears to me that the photo is by wikipedia User:Andypasto who uploaded it.  It may be that the photo was not uploaded with strictly properly stated restrictions, so Freebase's use of it without attribution to the photographer may be technically legal, but it appears to take advantage of a technical error in the uploading by Andypasto.  I wonder if this is widespread and I reserve judgment on whether Freebase does comply strictly with GFDL.  I haven't digested all you offer here; it will take me some time to browse further. doncram (talk) 20:03, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, doncram. You're right that the image detail page here doesn't mention Andypasto.  This is something we're working on remedying.  Previously, we had a field for the owner/creator of the image, but had trouble extracting the appropriate string from the textual data on the Wikipedia page.  Recently we added a field, "Rights holder (text attribution)", which will allow us to just paste in the whole attribution text from WP, so that even if we don't manage to extract the name in a meaningful way, the information is still there.  Our data team, who manage our Wikipedia pipeline, are working on this; I'll go bug them and make sure they're aware of the concerns expressed here. --Skud (talk) 20:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * See, one of the big problems is that no-one can comply strictly with the GFDL, including Wikipedia. Read the license text if you don't believe me. So it's not that useful a phrase to use. The practical impossibility of compliance with the GFDL, even for good-faith reusers who try to comply such as in the present example, is one of the big incentives for a move to CC-by-sa - David Gerard (talk) 21:15, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, GFDL is what the license for wikipedia text is, and is the license on many photos. Looking at the Freebase photo of Nantucket lightship which corresponds to this National Historic Landmark ship photo by Dmadeo, I note that the Freebase version does not give Dmadeo credit.  Dmadeo put the photo up without the apparent uploading error of the other example discussed above.  There are blanks for "Rights holder (user/topic)", "Creation date", "Rights holder (text attribution)" and other fields.  There is in fact a small "Additional information is available" note which provides a link over to the commons website version, where the credit is given.  I am not a lawyer, but this doesn't seem adequate. doncram (talk) 00:17, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

License/distribution of software itself
Do the license the software to anyone? What sort of license? Is it notable that they do not have a free license, unlike wikipedia? 88.159.72.240 (talk) 00:32, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Do not redirect
Please do NOT redirect this page to the Free base article (as was done before I fixed it). That is a wholly different topic. Tom Cloyd (talk) 06:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Is Freebase metadata??
It appears to me that the vast majority of the information in Freebase is data, not metadata. I have adjusted the first sentence of the article accordingly. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 00:20, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Google collects dossier on users based on topics they research
Sadly, the Freebase privacy policy has been 'upgraded' to the Google 'privacy' policy, which states Google will collect and sell information about individual users including what they research.

Article should reflect this lack of privacy.

What will happen to Freebase assertions
Earlier versions stated that Freebase content will be migrated to Wikidata. This can't happen in general right now because, and as acknowledged in the announcement, some Freebase content does not meet the requirements for inclusion in Wikidata. Google is not promising to make Freebase content suitable for inclusion in Wikidata, just to provide tools to help users add Freebase content to Wikidata. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pfps (talk • contribs) 18:08, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Freebase - large content donation from Google
Hello! In 2007 Freebase was established as a project like Wikidata. In 2010 that project was acquired by Google. This month Google announced that Freebase was closing, and they would like to make all of its data available for integration into Wikidata. In six months that website is closing completely.

In my opinion, this is a large content donation and much of it would be useful to integrate into Wikidata. A lot of investment went into this, and a lot of benefit could come to Wikidata to capture this donation.

I personally have little ability to understand what Freebase is offering, but just because of the Google brand name, I am interested in doing something to respond to this offer. If anyone has comments or thoughts on this project, please go to d:Wikidata:WikiProject Freebase and comment, watch the page, or sign on as a participant of the project. I presume that in the coming months there will be discussion about what to take from Freebase and how to keep it in Wikidata. Thanks!  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  16:36, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Gone?
Or is that just me? April 20, 2016, I'm not getting www.freebase.com Google has a cached copy, April 19,2016. Back up again. Now showing: Warning, The Freebase API will be completely shut-down on Aug 31 2016. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.162.148 (talk) 01:58, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20100713021232/http%3A//wiki.freebase.com/wiki/Main_Page to http://wiki.freebase.com/

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Suspect typo
from Correct typos in one click graphd->graphs? context:

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Uziel302 (talk • contribs) 17:35, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 25 March 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved.  Number   5  7  21:09, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Freebase → Freebase (database) – The chemical term has the primary, long term significance of this term, the small differences are not sufficient to differentiate between these articles because the space-less chemical term is extremely common.

Indeed the chemical article was originally placed here under "Freebase", then moved to Freebase (chemistry), then Free base after five space-less years.

"Freebase" is the headword listed in dictionaries (nothing with spaces), referring to cocaine freebasing. Freebase cocaine is called "freebase" by itself.

I doubt that the majority of this article's readers are looking for the defunct website. – Thjarkur (talk) 01:36, 25 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose - I think WP:SMALLDETAILS and the hatnote are enough to differentiate. -- Netoholic @ 21:13, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Strong support, WP:SMALLDETAILS is unhelpful here because both popular meanings are able to be spelled the same way. Between them, the chemistry term is likely primary, if there is a primary topic at all, but I would disambiguate the title. BD2412  T 04:15, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. No way is the defunct web project the primary topic of freebase. Andrewa (talk) 10:00, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. Mikus (talk) 19:26, 6 April 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.