New Version of AltBase Released

submitted by AltBaseGuy[M] from (self.AltBase)

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[–]AltBaseGuy[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think maybe explaining how the data will work might help you visualize.

Basically, "Instutions", "Individuals", and "Lists" are their own tables, and there will be different fields within those tables (e.g., the Individuals table will have fields like "name", "birth date", "death date", "ethnicity", etc.) Same thing with the Institutions table - "institution-type" (e.g., "Corporation", "Foundation", "NGO", etc.)

The Institutions, Individuals, and Lists tables will all have corresponding tables that "link" them to the others - e.g. 'individuals-institutions', 'individuals-individuals', 'individuals-lists', and 'institutions-lists'. Within each of these linking tables there will be a column or two that specifies what the relationship is. For instance, in the 'individuals-individuals' table, there will be a field like "relationship" in which you would tie Individual "Les Wexner" to Individual "Jeffrey Epstein" and say "Funder". That same field between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush would be populated with "Father" or "Son". In the 'individuals-institutions' table, you would tie "Andrew Jassy" to institution "Amazon" and the "title" field would be "CEO". There might also be a "year_start" and "year_end" field in that table. Some fields would also be optional, depending on the table. For instance, in the table 'individuals-lists' Individual "Les Wexner" would be assigned to the List-item "Zionists" - and there probably doesnt need to be a lot of other fields or substantiating information for that. But there could be more, if we wanted them. Individuals, Institutions, and Lists will each have their own dedicated "view" (like ClaimView and ImageView works now) and the relationships to those things will appear like #tags do now - except ones that you can click on and navigate, so you can get more info on that person/institution/list (depending on which view you're in).

Actually, I'm not sure how helpful that is lol. Basically, I intend to satisfy the desired requirements you lay out here. The database tables might seem complicated, but they aren't actually, and, as a normal user, this won't be apparent in a (hopefully intuitive) UI. I don't know exactly how the pages will work yet, but, to start, individual items probably won't have their own dedicated pages (unique URLs). Instead, they would need to be searched for in the database (just as images and claims do not have thier own "page" right now.) That is to say, there will not be a static url for each entry (contrast to wikipedia, that does have a URL for each entry). I recognize that is a drawback, but I am not sure what else to do in lieu of not creating literally thousands of individual pages for the entries I am adding.

As usual, this has turned out to be a lot more work than I originally expected. Van Der Reijden has so many different formats and ways of referring to the same person. Some duplicates and misspellings, too. For instance, Zbigniew Brzezinski has like five different ways he is referred to - e.g. "Zbignieuw Brzezinski", "Zbig B.", "Zbig", etc. Also VDR will inconsistently put a title in front of a name (e.g. "Dr.", "Baron", "General"), and sometimes not. This isn't really an issue for people that "I know" but there are literally thousands of people in his list I have never heard of. So its very hard to parse through the list in a programmatic way, which means a lot of manual work (and don't even get me started on the wikipedia scraping).

Anyways, once I have a good list of discrete individuals, then I will have a super-solid starting dataset. I'm looking forward to getting there and also having a useful web UI to show all of it.

[–]SamiAlHayid 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I think I can follow this, though I haven't looked at a SQL database in years and will have to look at and re-use most of what I did in the past when I do some web design stuff in future.

If I had the time, I was thinking of drawing UML diagrams to figure out how I'd attempt such a task myself. But, for starters, I cannot even find a non-commercial program that does this.

Institutions, Individuals and Lists definitely seem like they should be separate tables within the database.

I think what you mean by 'field' is what I know as 'column'. Yes, each individual, institution and list would be one row. The first column would be a primary key (int), and then the rest of the columns would mostly be varchar. Of course, varchar seems like the lazy option and is more 'abusable'. It might, for example, make sense to make birth date/death date three ints ('day' would have a drop down box from 1-31, 'month' would have a drop down box from 1-12, 'year' would have a drop down box, rather than one varchar, since it lowers the chance of incorrect entries). No one can add an obviously unwanted/incorrect date like '99 99 9999' into the database that way.

I think the 'linking' tables sounds correct, because entries like 'Funder', 'Father', etc. would often be blank if they were to be added to the main Individuals table. So I think there would be a lot of NULL entries and it would also clutter the page for the addition of these to the database with various text boxes, etc. that will in most cases be unused. For example, if one was to add 'Noel Ignatiev', whoever his father was is likely of no consequence, will have no AltBase article, and may not even be public knowledge. Therefore, one would leave it empty and the database would have plenty of these empty cells in there. And this is probably the case for the vast majority of individuals. The linkages really need to be on a separate table, and the linkages added separately to the individuals themselves. Then, the database will not have as many empty cells in there.

I don't have any remarks on the rest, but it sounds to me like you are on the right track.

[–]AltBaseGuy[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I mostly agree with what you say, but I think this discussion is a bit overly-technical. For most fields ("columns", yes). I just used varchar for most of them and might amend them later or add more columns. For now, it's just a test/sandbox data set. The immediate goal is just to get a starting data set for these three dimensions (person/institution/list) and then flesh out what we really need from there. Things like birth or death date don't practically matter for how we want to use the data.

The starting data set is basically done, which I'm relieved to say, since it took me a lot longer than expected. Fun facts: There are no more than 7,376 individuals in VDR's list (some of which are duplicates or nicknames and need to be reviewed) and there are 23,258 discrete individual-institution relationships. The average person appears three times, and the person with the most appearances is Henry Kissinger, at 112 (plus more, once we count the "Henry K." s discretely, as these could also refer to Henry Kravis or Henry Kaufman, who appear 20 and 2 times, respectfully) I already counted all Jews with an appearance over 2 times, imperfectly, but I estimate that Jews account for about 22% of the overall representation of the 23,258. Researching some of these individuals has led to some interesting discoveries - for instance, did you know that Sumner Shapiro, Rear Admiral in the US Navy (a rare case, Jews almost never appear in US military positions), was instrumental in getting Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard's security clearance? Although he later stated

"We work so hard to establish ourselves and to get where we are, and to have somebody screw it up... and then to have Jewish organizations line up behind this guy and try to make him out a hero of the Jewish people, it bothers the hell out of me".

Really interesting stuff. Wish I could catalog everything at once

There are a few glaring shortcomings of VDR's list. The first is that there is an almost complete lack of interest in the media industry, which you think would be of paramount importance in assessing who is behind manufacturing the false and obviously biased narratives we see every day, and consequently why the population behaves like it does. Especially if your focus is on "conspiracy research" and bias against things about elites getting exposed, journalists assassinated, etc. Ofc, the basic answer to "who owns the media" is "Jews" (60-80%), and VDR has a very ant-anti-semitic slant so this aligns to his complete disavowal of "holocaust denial" and his very bad justifications (practically dogwhistling) for not investigating it:

Ever met a Nazi or Holocaust denier in real life? Most haven't, but online, they're everywhere. Ignore the many discussions about concentration camp Auschwitz. Instead, read about Babi Yar and the eastern European extermination camps of the Nazis and the Ustasa, or look up the visual evidence. You'll get the point.

Jew-hating - in its "deniable" form or not - is super-effective at pushing ordinary people out of any conspiracy discussions and at forcing censorship measures. Thus, like an ever-spreading virus, it remains

I half-ways agree with the sentiment, but ultimately the truth just is what it is. I think VDR is on-the-level and not a Jewish shill, but sometimes he begs the question.

As of now, most all of the data is in the database and I'm trying to figure out how to present and expose it. I'm going to add more people that aren't just in VDR's list, notably from CoC, Dissident-Right circles, and the media. To start, I'll probably create new pages that have no links to them in the existing UI, but expose them here. This way, interested people who come here will have the link can check them out and give feedback, but they wouldn't otherwise be accessible to casual lurkers.

Much more I could write about a lot of stuff, but I wanted to give a general update. Very much appreciate your interest.