Character Occupation

Web designer: Mistake!

2008-07-08T01:28:34.0005Z

Too bad there's no way to unflag a topic...

Writer: Types of writers

2008-06-17T00:53:17.0007Z

I guess a "genres written" property on the Author type could be useful for some users but is maybe more appropriate on a less general author type. For example, do scholarly articles have a genre other than scholarly article? If not, why do all users entering data into the Author type need to consider "genres written" add possibly add redundant/inconsistent data? Similar to subject, it seems to me like this information would be best pulled from written work or a special case co-type of written work rather than the author.

Writer: Types of writers

2008-06-16T23:50:49.0007Z

I think that regardless of whether there's a property on "author" for "genres" (I'm tending to agree that "subjects" is going to be less useful), people may still fill in "profession" with values like "spy fiction writer", and they should be allowed to do so (not that anybody could prevent them if they wanted to). So the question for me is not "should a 'genres' property on the Author type replace this use of the 'profession' property", which I think is what the original post suggests, but "is a 'genres' property on the Author type useful in and of itself?"

Writer: Types of writers

2008-06-16T18:57:45.0007Z

IMO "Spy fiction writer" depends on the definition employed by the user. Why should that defintion be set by a schema, unless a particular user or group of users has a specific need? In that case, a spy_fiction_writer schema sounds appropriate to me.

I agree about the two properties: subject and genre. One is about content the other is about style.

"Subjects written about" should probably be pulled from the written works, not the writer.

Writer: Types of writers

2008-06-16T18:41:14.0007Z

This sounds like two properties to me -- one for subject, and one for genre. I.e., John le Carre doesn't particularly write about spy fiction (he has, but only in short subjects) so much as he writes in the genre of spy fiction. Someone who's published books about, say, Cold War thrillers or the James Bond franchise, however, could be said to write about spy fiction. The question I have is: how valuable is this proposed property? It would be something of a denormalization of the genre/subject properties of the author's written works. I.e., there would be two ways to get a list of "spy fiction writers" -- from the proposed "genres" property on the Author type, and from the "genre" property on every work the author has written (and probably from the professions property as well, since somebody apparently thinks that's a useful way to describe this information as well). All of these would probably generate different results.

But then, I could see an argument that someone who's only written one spy novel, but a bunch of novels in other genres, wouldn't necessarily be considered a "spy fiction writer", any more than someone might consider Margaret Atwood to be a children's author, even though she's published at least one children's book.

Just throwing a bunch of thoughts out there, and seeing if anything sticks....

Writer: Types of writers

2008-06-15T06:30:46.0007Z

agree

Teacher: Courses taught?

2008-06-11T21:16:54.0015Z

Has anyone modeled a "Courses taught" or similar type? If not, how do you think it should be modeled? Properties could include Person(s), Course name, Website, Subject, Grade level, and Educational institution. Others?

On a separate topic, why are "Teacher" and "Professor" separated as subsets of "Educator"?

Programmer: Merge with Programmer

2008-04-10T02:15:40.0007Z

Hi jw,

Looks like you figured it out. Thanks for marking this topic for merge.

Programmer: Merge with Programmer

2008-04-09T21:00:12.0005Z

This should probably be merged with the topic 'Programmer', if that's possible. (I don't know how to do that, or whether that's possible at all.)

Mathematician: Mathematical Concepts and Mathematicians

2008-02-20T22:39:27.0007Z

Mathmetician is not a type, it's an instance of the types /people/profession and /fictional_universe/character_occupation . If mathmetician was a type, then we could then change the ECT of the property /user/tsegaran/mathematics/mathematical_concept/discoverer and reciprocate the relationship. Maybe you and user tsegaran can work together to create this new Mathmetician type and change the ECT of the property discoverer.

Mathematician: Mathematical Concepts and Mathematicians

2008-02-20T22:14:59.0012Z

Famous mathematicians are often discoverers of mathematical concepts. However, "discoverer" is a field in Mathematical Concepts and there doesn't seem to be a way to link that to a Mathematician. Any thoughts?

Philosopher: School of Philosophy

2008-02-16T02:23:44.0007Z

Good point, Mark. Right now, a Philosopher is just an instance of Profession, no different than Software Engineer or Fireman. For a class of topics to have properties in common, we need a type, like Profession itself. Please feel free to make a Philosopher type in your personal domain, play around with its properties, apply it to sample philosophers, and invite others to try it out too. If it works, we can promote it into the public domains.

Philosopher: School of Philosophy

2008-02-16T01:20:50.0012Z

I think that if a person is designated as a philosopher, you should be able to assign them to schools to which they belong.

Author: Author order

2007-12-14T09:25:40.0000Z

Would it be possible to add authors to the bottom of the list instead of the top? Because English speakers read from left to right, the authors are typically entered from first to last. Entering them this way requires that they alway be reordered. I've started entering them backwards but it's kind of a pain to keep track when there are a lot of authors.

Author: Author order

2007-12-11T01:48:09.0000Z

Sweet. Thanks!

Author: Author order

2007-12-10T23:30:16.0000Z

Spatialed, there is a way to do that. You can add the authors in any order, then click on the little thing beside "author" and choose the option to rearrange the order. See also this help topic: Reordering a list.

Author: Author order

2007-12-08T04:53:31.0012Z

There should be a way to keep track of the author order if a publication was authored by multiple people.

Character Occupation: Why Two?

2007-08-15T21:01:33.0011Z

What is the difference between "Character Occupation" and "Fictional Job Title"?
This seems to be a pretty fine distinction for the "Fictional Universe" types,
which are otherwise fairly broad. I wonder if these two should be merged.

Architect: Beyond construction industry

2007-08-04T09:48:51.0004Z

'Architect' as a job title is increasingly used outside the construction industry. For example computer software industry embraced this title whole heartedly. As the software systems are getting complex day after day, the role of architecture and architect is increasingly prominent. Most famous example of architect in software industry is none other than Mr. Bill Gates of Microsoft.

Programmer: Well then that settles it

2007-07-31T16:04:15.0007Z

Its more of a legal (and partly egotistical) distinction. The DOL and Cal EDD use these categories mainly to figure out average salaries, prevailing wages (for immigrant workers), unemployment benefits, etc. They are of no practical use whatsoever. I have seen a tendency among older users of the term to favour programmer and newer college-degree wielding users to favour the latter (no points for guessing why).

From an occupational perspective it will make no difference whatsoever, however if we ever import DOL data or salary statistics or number of people employed in a specific occupation in a geographical location (I could see a job search tool that points you to location where your expertise is scarce) it would be good to have a uniform standard regarding naming and description of occupations. And if it maps back to DOL data using their labelling system, even better.

Programmer: Well then that settles it

2007-07-31T06:55:17.0011Z

What does it mean to be categorized as both a Programmer and a Software Engineer?

Programmer: Merge with Programmer

2007-07-30T16:41:36.0007Z

The DOL disagrees :)

Computer Programmer
Computer Software Engineer, Applications
Computer Software Engineer, Systems

Programmer: Merge with Programmer

2007-07-29T00:38:55.0004Z

This topic should be merged with Programmer, which has more info and came from Wikipedia.

Writer: Types of writers

2007-06-15T20:28:39.0011Z

Why have separate types for professions like "Spy fiction writer" and "Science writer" (which have no interesting properties anyway). Wouldn't a "Subjects written about" property be better?