alecf

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-19T22:46:27.0012Z

I started filling in cast lists from the 2008 end and working backwards, so perhaps we'll meet somewhere in about 1975 :) So far I've left character as an empty field in places where the character is unnamed - that at least means the information can satisfy actor queries. But you're right, adding scenery characters does allow extra facts to be added and other connections to be made that are not otherwise possible.

I've already run (several times) into an issue with Freebase with "common" topic names - you can't link to the right one - which makes me want to avoid them if I can, but if the right bit of juicy data comes up, I'll be sure to do so :)

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2008-08-19T21:51:12.0012Z

A lot of things are sequential, but I think an abstract type ("sequential thing"?) for all of them would be more trouble than it's worth. The pattern is just a variation of the parent/child pattern, which appears all over the place in Freebase, without an abstract type collecting them all. That said, I can't think of any reason that TV episode shouldn't have previous/next properties. If no one objects, I'll add them later this week.

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-19T18:38:20.0012Z

First, thanks for doing this. I’ve recently begun attempting to watch all the Doctor Who episodes from the beginning, which is entertaining.

Secondly, please note that no value in Freebase is actually required. You don’t have to give the character.

That said, I don’t really see a problem with having a character for “Man in bar” as long as “Man in bar” from twentieth-season Doctor Who is not the same as “Man in bar” from Beverly Hills Cop, who is not the same as “Man in bar” from Babylon 5: The Gathering. Even those anonymous characters have gender and organizational affiliations, and for science fiction, species. I had a lot of fun fully populating the cast for the B5 pilot, though I haven’t gotten back to doing it for all the episodes.

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-19T17:15:04.0017Z

I ran into something of an annoyance when I started my freebase time filling out some Doctor Who cast lists. The "TV episode performance" requires a "TV Character". That's a bit much. There's always going to be credits entries like "Man In bar" or "Soldier #2". These aren't items that will need an entire "TV Character/Fictional Character/etc..." ontology - those entries require just a text string.

It seems to me there are two kinds of cast list entry - an actor performing a particular recurring character (TV Character Performance?) and performing an unnamed character (TV Extra Performance?). However the collection to formulate the cast list must order those in credits order - not as two separate lists, and must support reciprocal entries in either case (for instance, to support queries like "Which episodes of show X has actor Y appeared in?" (irrelevant whether the as a character or an extra).

Seems like this is an approach to handle the issue with "regular" appearances as well. There's one TV Character Performance node that says actor X has, at some time, portrayed character Y. All episodes where that's true, refer to that node. The reciprocal property on the TV Character Performance will enumerate all the episodes where that actor appears as that character.

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2008-08-19T16:54:22.0012Z

To get the hang of things here I messed around with a type extending "TV Episode" and added "preceded by" reciprocating as "followed by". Agreed, it helps navigate, and it's also common on the wikipedia source articles as well.

However my guess is there should be a much grander type involved here for anything that can be ordered in a sequence, not just TV shows. Items may probably appear in more than one sequence as well (for example, story chronology isn't the same as release chronology - Star Wars movies are the cliche example).

TV: Watch Online

2008-08-11T16:26:26.0012Z

I think Web links are appropriate for now. My paranoid worry is that leaving a blank spot for online viewing to fill in would be perceived by some parties as inviting users to fill in unauthorized distribution channels, and we really don’t need that legal hassle.

TV: Watch Online

2008-08-09T22:22:48.0018Z

I just added web links to the Monk topic to point to locations on the web (USA Network and Hulu) where the show can be watched online. Should this be a new property of TV Program or just keep adding them as web links?

Film: Movie Subtitles

2008-07-07T23:37:16.0012Z

Hi Ian --

Subtitles would be covered by copyright protection, so you would only be allowed to add them from films from the public domain or with an open license (such as CC-BY).

Copyright law, however, does allow small fragments from copyrighted works to be cited. I don't know what the limits are, but I imagine that many short subtitle snippets would be allowed per movie, perhaps from key scenes.

Also, aside from the contents of the subtitles themselves, what kind of metadata would you imagine having for subtitles? Freebase could store that information without restrictions.

R

Film: Movie Subtitles

2008-07-07T23:35:30.0000Z

It's great that you are finding a good use of our service! Thanks!

Our goal is to provide linkages between sets of data, not really to be a repository for data in of itself...

Thus we provide an excerpt of the associated wikipedia article as a blurb (but not recreate the entire article, that's what the linkages (and keys) back to Wikipedia are for. We allow for weblinks to sites that have specific and useful information about the topic but is of a restrictive licensed nature (IMDb for example).

Our database is not set up for large amounts of text. We encourage the use of text for specific notation about a specific property but not for than about almost a thousand characters.

Secondly, legality.

Your subtitles are a form of film script and would most likely be considered as property of the creators/owner of the film. At best they would be a grey area of legality to be made available in text form outside of the film, video tape or disc.

If it was a film you wrote and owned outright, and was published with an CC license, the providing the subtitles externally from the film would most likely be legal in that case ;)

What you could do is create your own type in your own private domain (default one or a more specifically named 'Film Subtitles' domain). The type could designed to contain what subtitles in what editions of the film (Theatrical Release/DVD/TV Broadcast) in what languages...Check out how the Film Regional Release Date is designed, though it may need not be a Compound Value Type.

http://www.freebase.com/tools/schema/film/film_regional_release_date

Film: Movie Subtitles

2008-07-07T07:50:45.0012Z

Hi all,

I have been using Freebase for a little while now to index my movie collection (where film information exist in Freebase) and, eventually, upload film information back to Freebase. I have subtitles for the majority of my films and think they would make a valuable addition to the Freebase Film schema (imagine querying for who said a particular line and in which films).

How would I go about adding a Subtitles schema to Freebase and linking it to the Films/TV schema?

Alternatively, if this schema already exists, could somebody point me at it? I searched but couldn't find it.

Cheers,

Ian

TV: TV filming location

2008-07-02T18:39:23.0012Z

I think we should have a type, "TV filming location", for things like "Survivor: Vanuatu" which was filmed in Vanuatu. Thoughts?

TV: Suggested changes to TV character

2008-06-19T19:16:52.0012Z

tough one... my inclination would be to lead with the regular appearances, however, so it looks good to me.

TV: Suggested changes to TV character

2008-06-19T17:09:03.0012Z

Good idea. Take a look now. It looks to me like it's only defaulting to the first property, which is now "Programs in which character appeared as a regular" (or something like that). Is this the best property, or would "Episodes appeared in" be better? I mention this because only some characters will have data for the "Programs" property, while all characters could have data for Episodes.

TV: Suggested changes to TV character

2008-06-19T16:16:31.0012Z

What would you guys say to moving actor and series up ahead of year of 1st and final appearance? The filter page defaults to the first 3 properties and these make for much more interesting filter criteria.

Time: Chronon and time

2008-06-04T06:24:33.0007Z

Oops, there is Time Interval, but it is in the measurement units domain, not the time domain.

Time: Chronon and time

2008-06-04T06:21:26.0001Z

According to wikipedia, chronon is not an interval, but a quantum, and as you say you have a set of chronons there, but the set itself isnt a chronon.

Anyway, that is besides my point. The thing with freebase is ease-of-use, and I don't think this teminology helps at all.

What I am missing though is an time interval type? Iow, a tuple of start and end date/time.

Time: Year type?

2008-04-17T17:07:01.0000Z

I'm not sure what you mean -- what are you trying to browse?

Time: Year type?

2008-04-17T04:14:04.0000Z

I can't seem to browse by Year. Am I missing something?

TV: TV Series "seasons" and other naming

2008-04-07T20:41:55.0007Z

Thanks -- that's a very interesting document. I like that they've modeled it as deeply as "episode versions". I doubt Freebase is likely to go that deep any time soon, but it's a useful concept in a lot of ways.

Superficially, it looks like the brand/series/episode model is very similar to our series/season/episode model, which is encouraging, and means that it should be fairly simple to create mappings between Freebase and applications using the Programmes Ontology.

TV: TV Series "seasons" and other naming

2008-04-03T21:59:15.0000Z

Only a year late... here's the BBC Programmes Ontology, built by Yves Raimond based on the BBC's internal data model:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/programmes/2008-02-28.shtml

You may also be interested in our programmes database, containing all programmes broadcast from about August 2007 onwards: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/

The idea is to release a machine-readable version of the /programmes site, marked up with the Programmes Ontology, some time soon.

Time: Chronon and time

2007-09-01T17:13:39.0012Z

My first post on freebase so I don't want to screw it up.

A chronon is an atomic time interval so it would be nice to have the ability to build time constructions based on chronons. For example, the sequence “March 12, 2002; March 13, 2002; March 14, 2002” is a contiguous
subsequence of chronons in a timeline. Contiguous sequences of chronons can be grouped into larger units
called granules, such as weeks, months, years, or decades.

I think the concept of chronon and granule should be part of the time type.

Time: Year type?

2007-07-31T02:58:49.0010Z

oops, my bad, didn't notice the option for varying degrees of accuracy. thanks!

Time: Year type?

2007-07-30T19:35:30.0007Z

You can just use the type "date/time", which allows for any degree of accuracy from year down to seconds.

Time: Year type?

2007-07-30T19:24:05.0011Z

I know I could use integer, but freebase outputs 2001 as 2,001 that way.

My own need for this is a type that has a release date that is only accurate to a month in a year (e.g. 2001/01).

alecf: Hello...

2007-06-29T00:05:30.0007Z

Hey -
I like the idea of incorporating web comics because I think they share a lot of characteristics of newspaper comic strips (they come out frequently, have recurring characters, are sometimes syndicated, etc)

it's probably best to start a conversation on the domain page for comic strips - http://www.freebase.com/view/domain?id=/comic_strips

alecf: Hello...

2007-06-07T02:30:20.0011Z

As my first toe-dipping into the freebase experience, I have created a "Webcomic" type and added it to those comic strips to which it obviously applies (Diesel Sweeties, xkcd, Penny Arcade). I do an almost-daily blog about comics on-line and off- at funnypaperless.com. My plans are to flesh out the Webcomic type with entries for my other hundred-or-so favorites. Should I also automatically add them all to "Comic Strips"? I intend to provide content to the Comic Strip type also. Just letting you know "Who IS this guy?"

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2007-05-29T06:11:30.0006Z

We have considered it, but we've not had a chance to actually implement it. Generally, we assume that 'higher functionality' like that would be the purview of an application developer that's focused on a particular subject area, in this case Television. The Freebase app is really the 80% solution, where dedicated developers can do something far more specific.

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2007-05-16T04:19:10.0006Z

I also would use it. I'm wondering though, could that not be generated automatically based on episode number? Have you (staff) considered adding the functionality for field that could be generated from a query?

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-15T17:40:19.0006Z

If the multi-part episode links to its constituent episodes, each of which has its own production code and episode number, I think it might be redundant to ask for the same data in the multipart episode type itself. The exception would be, of course, if the multipart episode has a code or something that refers to the whole work (which does seem to be the case with Doctor Who).

TV: TV Series "seasons" and other naming

2007-05-14T21:28:47.0006Z

Your assumed hierarchy is correct. You're also right in your guess that the inconsistent naming is because we recently changed the schema, and obviously we missed a bunch of the labels.

I'd love to see how the BBC handles the modeling of this type of information; there's been some discussion about our model's failure to handle Doctor Who serials, and it would be good to see what else we're missing.

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2007-05-14T16:26:12.0012Z

Hi, can we add "Previous Episode" and "Next Episode" properties to the TV series episode type? In addition to capturing the sequential data on TV episodes, that would also be a useful navigation tool for browsing.

TV: TV Series "seasons" and other naming

2007-05-13T01:24:17.0006Z

I find the varying usage of the words "Program", "Series" and "Season" a bit confusing -- it appears that in many cases the word Series is used to mean the same as TV Program (eg "TV Series Season" could be called "TV Program Season", right? unless I'm misunderstanding your usage. Plus "TV Series Episode" has links to both "Series" and "Season" but nothing to "Program").

Is that right? Perhaps the type called "TV Program" was until recently called "TV Series" and so the UI labels haven't been changed in related types?

Or I could just be confusing myself because we generally use "Series" and "Season" interchangeably here in the UK.

Right now I'm assuming the hierarchy is supposed to be:

TV Program (aka Series) -> TV Series Seasons -> TV Series Episode

is that right?

I know how hard it can be to model the varying relationships between episodes, programmes, series, strands, etc etc, if you want to see a few of our data models we use at the BBC, just ask.

You might regret it though ;-)

Brendan.

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-10T19:27:17.0006Z

Thanks for observing that some multi-part programs span multiple seasons, Jeff.

Instead of being a special case, a two-part episode bridging one season's finale and the next season's premiere was the normal with some of the Star Trek series (Voyager in particular). In terms of production and episode numbering though, they were considered two episodes, as were two-hour specials (like series finales) aired back-to-back. Nobody would say a typical season contains 25.5 episodes. That means a "multi-part TV episode", though singular from the perspective of a story, should be allowed to have multiple values for properties such as "episode number" and "production code".

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-10T18:42:37.0000Z

I think your model is pretty close to what we need, if we change the name to something like "Mulit-part TV Episode". The only other things I would change would be to make the links from "multi-part tv episode" to "season" and "series" be one-way, so that they aren't listed on the main series and season pages. (My thinking for this is that, with the exception of Dr. Who, it's not especially useful, and perhaps a bit confusing to have separate lists for "episodes" and "multi-part" episodes.) The "season" property should also be non-unique, since the ST:TNG two-parter that Faye found actually bridges two seasons. Otherwise, I think it should work fine.

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-09T03:57:29.0006Z

If anyone would care to take a look at the type I created and tell me how to improve upon it for any multi-part episodes (it may already be...) I would be happy to make those adjustments so others can use it.

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-09T01:16:42.0006Z

This is a great idea, but it sounds like it may need to be expanded to include any multi-part episode?

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-08T19:39:22.0006Z

Star Trek also had serial stories containing multiple episodes, such as the following story below that was split into the third season finale and the first episode of the fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was not happy about it getting typed as a TV series episode when I added it as part of the series. I think a "TV series serial" type would be useful in this situation.

http://www.freebase.com/view?id=%239202a8c04000641f800000000022ec00

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-08T18:53:28.0006Z

No, I think you're doing the right thing. The typer was going off the Wikipedia infoboxes, which use the same template for Doctor Who episodes and serials, so the two were getting conflated. By separating them out, you're actually improving the data, so please! keep up the good work. If the "TV series serial" pattern is (or was) common, we should consider adding it to the public TV domain, but, at the moment anyway, I haven't been able to find any other shows that use it, so we'll hold off on that.

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-08T05:41:01.0012Z

It didn't help that I was confusing myself by creating unnecessary personal types and getting unnecessarily complicated, but I figured out that the Metaweb bot has been "correcting" things for me. I'm working on an extensive Doctor Who dataset. I created a type to use called "TV Series Serials" because the early Doctor Who had episodes contained within the serial stories. Unfortunately, there are Wikipeda entries for each of the serial stories, not each episode, and you Metaweb has been importing them (and un-correcting them after I correct them) as episodes, which they are not.

Can you fix this? Or am I doing it wrong and supposed to fall in line with what the bot is telling me?

TV: TV Series "seasons" and other naming

2007-03-02T03:53:11.0012Z

The type "TV Series seasons" is oddly plural - it makes for some strange UI such as "Create New TV Series seasons" - perhaps it could be plural

Also, I'm finding myself wanting to type "TV episode" but finding it frustrating that I have to type "TV Series episode" to get autocomplete to match. I think a few of the TV types could add aliases (also known as's) with the word 'series' dropped to aid autocomplete