tim

Fictional Character: Education?

2008-07-08T23:49:00.0000Z

I've done this, but without separating the fictional topics from the real-world topics: http://www.freebase.com/tools/schema/fictional_universe/school_in_fiction.

Fictional Character: Education?

2008-07-01T05:36:32.0000Z

I would prefer that the fictional topic be seperate from the real-world topic. i.e. University of Cambridge in the James Bond Universe be a seperate topic from the real University of Cambridge.
Perhaps 'educational institution in fiction' could have a 'based upon' property to link the fictional and real-world topics?

Fictional Character: Education?

2008-06-30T19:42:21.0012Z

An "educational institution in fiction" type could work -- we've used that locution a few times for types that can have both fictional and real-world instances.

Fictional Character: Education?

2008-06-28T13:47:06.0005Z

Could we have some way of linking in the educational background of a character? i.e. an education property.

My first thought was that we would need a 'Fictional Educational Institution' type, but that would not cover characters who were educated at real world institutions. e.g. James Bond at the University of Cambridge.

I think we therefore need an 'educational institution for fictional characters' type for the property.

Computers: Protocol Providers provide

2008-06-27T22:27:30.0012Z

Hi, shouldn't the type Protocol Provider have a property for the protocol(s) the provider provides?

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2008-04-29T23:55:30.0000Z

Well there is somthing like that by user duck1123

Should it be a topic-based property or simply a text-based propert (there are some topics existing for some of the more well-known alter-IDs).

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2008-04-29T23:19:45.0007Z

How about an alter-ego property? This would come in handy for superheroes. Seems that this is being stuck on as an alias right now, but there are enough superheroes that it might as well be a property, right?

Computers: "File" type

2008-04-08T18:07:17.0007Z

Thanks for the reply. In order, then:

The cryptographic hash can be useful for a number of reasons. The first example that comes to mind is that it would allow for an application to be built which would hash a file and then query Freebase to see if it was catalogued, and in this way the user could get info about a file. So the hashes are more for the sake of identification than verifying integrity, though of course they serve that purpose as well. Too, many files that are released on the internet, including software,videos, and such, have an MD5 or CRC32 hash (or both, or more) listed with them, so it's the sort of information that is typically associated with files. Since hashes can be generated for all files, it seemed more appropriate to have it on the generic File type rather than more specific ones.

Regarding Contained Work, yes, the idea was definitely to allow anything to be contained in a file (indeed, there's no particular reason why the container must be a file). I demonstrated this by having pandp12.zip contain pandp12.txt which contains Pride and Prejudice. Actually, the text file probably should contain a particular edition of the book, now that I think of it. I'm not at all in love with the name, but it was the only thing I could think of at the time. I'll try to come up with something else.

I'd like to create a type for video files as well before I decalre File to be finished, to help me see if I've missed anything vital, but I feel like what I have is pretty stable.

Thanks again for the reply. If you've got any suggestions, or further questions, I'd be happy to hear them.

Computers: "File" type

2008-04-08T16:21:17.0007Z

Hi Tracy.

Great work. I have a couple of questions/comments about the type schemas you have created.

From my point of view, not all files need a crypto hash. It definitely makes sense for files that will modify the system properties i.e. installers, os isos etc. and thus need to be verified as to their original content, however I am not quite sure I see the utility of having this information for, say plain text or pdf files. My guess would be that there are more 'pure content' (for lack of a better phrase) documents in the wild than installable softwares and programs for which the users need to be sure of the integrity of the content. Since you do plan on adding more specific filetypes, I would recommed adding the property for filetypes that generally have hashes released with them or for those filetypes that one can justify having associated hashes. If however you find that it is more convenient and useful to simply have the property in (in my experience it has been a bit hard to tell in the design phase) feel free to leave it in.

Also I was wondering as to the rationale behind having the contained work as another type? Wouldnt having a multi-valued property in the document itself (that pointed to the original work) work.If the rationale was to have an overarching type that allows you to embed any 'work' in an electronic 'container' it definitely makes sense. The name appears to be a bit ambiguous as the nature of containment and the container itself. Unfortunately I do not seem to have an alternate name for you, but that is something you might consider.

Once you are done with the schema development, please post back here and I will promote it to the main domain.

Thanks.

Computers: "File" type

2008-04-05T02:00:25.0012Z

I've published seven types in my domain which are to be used for files. I described my aim in some detail here, but in short I want to be able to create topics for widely-distributed files.

To that end, I've created the File type, as well as Document File and Compressed File types which include it, and added a topic to each of the latter two to demonstrate their use (pandp12.txt and pandp12.zip, respectively). The several additional types I've created are used in those as well.

Other types will need to be created for e.g. video files or audio files, but it will take me a bit more research before I feel like I can adequately model those. I'd like a little preliminary feedback on the types I've created so far. In particular, did I include too many or too few properties, and did I model them correctly? Are my types Cryptographic Hash and Contained Work appropriate?

Computers: Application programming interface as a Type for the Computers Domain?

2008-02-08T02:43:53.0000Z

Thanks Aseem, I will work on modeling an API Type for Computers in my personal domain and let you know when it's done so you can review it.

Computers: Application programming interface as a Type for the Computers Domain?

2008-02-07T18:36:58.0007Z

Hi.

Certainly sounds like a good idea. I think that the properties for an API in a non-web services context might be bit different. I would encourage you to go ahead and model it in your domain and if it works I will be more than glad to promote it up.

Thanks.

Computers: Open Source Software Projects

2008-02-07T18:26:53.0007Z

In that scenario, I would recommend creating a CVT called source-access which would have two properties: the URI and the protocol (you can additionally add the source control as a property too). That could then be linked back to the software and would provide the level of expression you want.

HTH

Computers: Open Source Software Projects

2008-02-07T15:27:52.0007Z

Aseem,

The Software Repository type is a join model that connects a project to a type of revision control system and adds some additional properties like where to get the code. I'm not sure how to model that without an additional type. Also some software projects (like mine) expose more than one repository and synchronize them, however this is not the norm and only one of them serves as the canonical repository...

-chris

Computers: Application programming interface as a Type for the Computers Domain?

2008-02-07T04:26:04.0012Z

While making some additions to the API Type in the Internet Domain, I noticed that not all the API Topics I was adding were ones specific to the Internet. What about mirroring the API Type with the same and additional properties if necessary in the Computer Domain? The definition, in fact, for the API Type in the Internet Domain reads "An application programming interface (API) is a source code interface that a computer system or program library provides in order to support requests for services to be made of it by a computer program." No mention of the Internet at all.

Computers: Open Source Software Projects

2008-02-05T17:47:45.0000Z

Hi Chris.

OSS and repository appear to be very useful types. I would like to add that it may make more sense to add the software repository type to the software type itself. Other than that it looks great.

Computers: Open Source Software Projects

2008-02-05T07:05:02.0012Z

I've published three types in my domain for describing open source software projects. They are:

open source software - cotype of software, adds information about project homepage, bug tracker, and software repository
software repository - where code is published for a software project and how to get it.
revision control system - the software used to manage the source control for a project

Do you think these are generally useful?

Computers: Reciprocating Software/Developer

2007-08-23T16:21:15.0000Z

>> Another way to handle this might be to distinguish between "Primary Developer"
>> (the individual or organization acknowledged as developing the product) and "Contributors"
>> (any number of individuals or organizations that have made substantial contributions to the project).
>> Primary Developers do change over time, though, so there's a tricky time-dependent element there.

I think that for this kind of scenario the concept of software teams would be better, especially if the software team could have employer or something similar as an included type or a property thus allowing us to bring in the whole tenure/dated employment model into it and not having to deal with bounded set membership modelling stickiness.

Computers: Reciprocating Software/Developer

2007-08-23T02:37:15.0000Z

Good point, just not obvious.

Computers: Need "Software Release"

2007-08-14T18:22:17.0007Z

Yes, JDK 1.4.2 and JDK 1.5 are very different and should be different topics. But my concern is that "Sun JDK 1.4.2" and "Sun JDK" are very different kinds of things. The latter is a software product that has many releases over time; the former is a particular release of that software product. I would like to type "Sun JDK" as a "Software Product" (with properties for who developed it, for instance), and "Sun JDK 1.4.2" as a "Software Release" (with properties such as "date of release", "version", "product", "standards implemented", etc.).

One tricky issue arises with products that are owned/developed by different groups over time, especially if those are different types of organizations (e.g., a closed-source product developed by a corporation that's open-sourced and continues to be developed by an informal group of independent developers).

Computers: Reciprocating Software/Developer

2007-08-14T18:22:13.0007Z

I don't see any reason why "Software Developer" could not be used for both an individual and for a group.

In some cases, it's most appropriate to model a software as being developed by a company or other identifiable group ("Apache Project", for instance), but there are many smaller projects that are more straightforward to model as being worked on by one or more individuals (most of sourceforge, for instance).

Another way to handle this might be to distinguish between "Primary Developer" (the individual or organization acknowledged as developing the product) and "Contributors" (any number of individuals or organizations that have made substantial contributions to the project). Primary Developers do change over time, though, so there's a tricky time-dependent element there.

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2007-08-09T22:06:35.0007Z

(Sorry, meant to link to the other thread on historical persons.)

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2007-08-09T22:05:30.0007Z

In this thread, they even have the same problem for real historical persons: "Take "Person": where their dates of birth and death are not known, the dates in which a person flourished is standardly used to disambiguate them." They want to specify the birth date as "Qing Dynasty". This will probably be solved by splitting out a separate type (like Living Thing) that defines Birth Date and which the Person type includes. (Then you could mix in a different type that defines the different kind of birth date that you need.) The relevance to "contextual assertions" still applies. If you have a type for real Living Thing (with a birth date), will a user be afraid to use it on a fictional character? Right now, they should be afaid because it implies the character is real like all the other topics with the property. But the problem is solved if the character uses the same type as real things, but asserts the birth date in the context of the fictional universe (so it doesn't come up ono searches for "real people born on this date").

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2007-08-09T21:39:13.0007Z

I don't think this example would actually be solved by assertions, since regardless of whether we implement assertions or not, we still need a type to hold the data, and we currently lack a type that could be used for both real dates and dates in fictional calendar systems. It does seem like people want to enter this data for fictional characters, so it's worth trying to model a type we can use. A compound-value type with two properties might suffice -- one of type "datetime" for fictional characters in universes using the Gregorian calendar (AND who are born within the range 10,000 BCE - AD 9999), and one or two for all others. I have a bazillion things on my plate right now, but if I have time, I'll play around with it.

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2007-08-09T20:10:11.0000Z

This came up on a couple Fictional Character topics where someone wanted to give a birth date so they had to make the character a Person too, which is a no-no. To beat the same drum again: This problem is solved by allowing users to use the existing types for Person, Education, Politician, Author, etc. etc. on a fictional character - just put the assertion for the bithdate or "term of office as president" in the context of the fictional universe. In everyday life, people put properties, not only on topics, but on assertions. Quotation: "President Bush says there are WMDs but the French prime minister says there are not". Citation: "According to the US Census, the population is 100,000". Fictional assertions about real things "In the universe the 'Independence Day' movie, the Empire State Building is destroyed on July 2, 1996". (Wouldn't it be great to put this assertion on the real Empire State Building topic without having to create a separate type for 'Fictional Building' when we have to make a separate topic?)

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2007-08-09T18:50:51.0007Z

The problem here is that lots of fictional characters exist in universes that don't use the Gregorian calendar, so we'd need to find a way to capture Gregorian dates, Stardates, Middle-Earth dates, years A.F. (After Ford), etc.

Fictional Character: More on species

2007-08-09T04:52:30.0007Z

Would it be appropriate to remove cartoon characters like Dogbert, Snoopy, Satchel Pooch, etc. from the real Dog species topic?

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2007-08-09T04:47:17.0004Z

Can you add a Date of Birth property (and maybe Date of Death too)?

Computers: Reciprocating Software/Developer

2007-08-05T12:52:49.0007Z

Sound like "Software Team" or "Software Project Member" might be a solution

Fictional Character: Rank vs title

2007-07-19T19:48:36.0007Z

Good suggestion. It can probably also be used for various other types of ranking systems that might exist in some fictional societies. I've updated the "what do I input" text to reflect this.

Fictional Character: Rank vs title

2007-07-19T18:43:17.0004Z

I thought the "what do I input" description for rank on fictional characters could do with being clarified to note that it is the place for titles of nobility as well. Although a separate property for titles might be another way of looking at it.

Fictional Character: More on species

2007-07-16T19:01:02.0007Z

I think that in universes where there is a species called "human" that is not the same as the real-world species of Homo sapiens, it's not unreasonable to have a separate type for that species (although it is a bit messy). But most universes that involve humans really do just imply the actual species, and therefore we shouldn't have separate types for each of those universes. The same would apply for dogs, cats, etc. The problem remains of preventing people from typing a character as the wrong type of human, and I'm not sure what the best way to do that is.

Fictional Character: More on species

2007-07-16T18:18:58.0011Z

I've noticed that when folks type a character as human, they seem to be frequently confused which Human topic to use. As an example, Trillian was typed as a human from the Star Wars universe...which, while not impossible is highly improbable. I'm guessing that many folks want to just be able to say "Trillian is a human", and not wade through a quickly growing list...only to find that Human - Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy isn't on the list, and they'll have to create a new topic for humans in that universe. I'm not sure what the solution is here - there are detailed articles about, for example, the qualities of humans in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, v. humans in the Babylon 5 universe. These seem like very appropriate topics...but there are many more universes where humans have not yet been described. Do we want a generic fictional character species 'human' that can be used when the universe doesn't need it's own article describing humans? (e.g. the 'West Wing universe IS different from the A-Team universe...but I'm not sure we'll ever need topics to describe humans in each of those universes). Conversely, if we DO want each of {West Wing, Diff'rent Strokes, A-Team, Days Of Our Lives, 24, Law & Order,...} to have it's own fictional universe, and we want a 1:1 ratio of fictional universes to Human topics, we'll need to find a better way for someone to wade through the hundreds or thousands of human topics - something like filters on autocomplete. What do folks think is the best solution here?

Computers: Reciprocating Software/Developer

2007-07-16T16:24:23.0007Z

The potential issue that I see with that is one of appearance of sole attribution. If we mark a software product as having being developed by a developer, it implies that the specified developer was the primary worker even though the product may have been developed by a team. I think a type to model development teams would be better as it could also represent a team's organizational position in a larger group/organization. That could then be linked back to a software product. If a piece of software has only on developer, that could then simply be a team of one.

Computers: Need "Software Release"

2007-07-16T16:18:33.0007Z

Do the latest version and latest release date properties of the software type satisfy this requirement? I am no sure that I understand the advantages of having another type to represent just the software release information. For e.g. clearly java 1.4.2 is a quite different beast as compared to java 1.5 and they ought to resolve to two different topics. I definitely see the need to be able group these into 'families' so to speak. Maybe we could go that route?

Computers: Reciprocating Software/Developer

2007-07-16T02:39:31.0011Z

A reverse link from Software/Developer should be created as Software Developer/Software Developed.

Computers: Need "Software Release"

2007-07-11T01:41:42.0011Z

In trying to enter some information about the FreeBSD Project and FreeBSD Operating System, I can't find any distinction between a "software product" and a particular release of that product. "Operating System," for example, is treated both as a product and a particular release, which is a bit peculiar. I see an untyped topic "Software Release" that could be changed into a type to fill this role. The folks working on Music topics might also have ideas, since they have similar issues around multiple releases of songs, etc.