I saw a note at SemanticWeb.com about Freebase offering a new interface. Went to see.
Looked under astronomy, which had far fewer sub-topics than I would have imagined and visited the entry for “star.”
“Star” reports:
A star is really meant to be a single stellar object, not just something that looks like a star from earth. However, in many cases, other objects, such as multi-star systems, were originally thought to be stars. Because people have historically believed these to be stars, they are type as such, but they are also typed as what we now know them to be.
I understand the need to preserve prior “types” but that is a question of scope, not simply adding more types.
Moreover, if “star” means a “single stellar object,” then were do I put different classes of stars? Do they have occurrences too? Does that mean their occurrences get listed under “star” as well?