Re: Itemprop for person

Some thoughts below (does this make 4 pennies?):

On Nov 27, 2012, at 4:09 AM, Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl> wrote:

> Hmm, that's a discussion ;-)
> 
> Since someone asked for two pennies, here are mine...
> 
> The question whether a named entity is fictional or not may be minor. The fact that schema.org allows for fictional schema:Person without representing them explicitly is a good hint. When most people want stuff about Lassie, they won't care whether it existed or not. I'd expect most schema.org cases not to touch digital humanities and similar disciplines.
> 
> I believe the core of the problem is rather how to treat different aliases of persons (or other entities) in the existing library data. Because it can break user's expectations, if they don't find all the stuff they want in one search (e.g., if some crazy cataloguer actually distinguished the different Lassie's).
> 
> 
> 1. We can ask schema.org to treat info about (related) personas. Samuel Clemens is different from Mark Twain (but they could be related in the data of course). This may require adding extra classes *if* the current schema:person is not meant to represent such networks of personas. LD: In fact, the ISNI handles this quite nicely - it identifies "public entities" which may or may not be fictional (or organizations rather than people). So Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain get different ISNIs, but yes, are related in the data. 
> 
> 2. We can ask libraries to munch their various persona into "real" person records, before exporting the data using schema:person for representing real persons.
> 
> While 2 may first sound harsh on our community, I believe this we can name it "reasonable" when library data goes out and meets more general scenarios. Also, I believe that current initiatives (e.g., every project that seeks to align name authority with DBpedia) are working towards making this possible, even though it will be sometimes bumpy. LD: Yes - I've experienced this before. When I was at Barnes & Noble in the 1990s/early 00s, we did not have very good bibliographic data. So we licensed it from library sources - Bowker, Baker & Taylor. But because we were NOT a library, we had to spend years massaging/mapping the data to be consumer-facing. And I think we're looking at similar issues here. So much of data management depends on the audience - and our audience with Schema is search engines.
> 
> An important decision criterion would of course be the usage scenarios there are, and their accompanying information needs, either voiced by users or extrapolated by the search engines serving these users. In other words, what is the take of schema.org on the topic? And how leading commercial sites are treating personas? (I'm offline while writing this so can't check, alas).
> I suspect anything libraries come up on this issue will have little weight compared to what search patterns established by Amazon and the likes.
> 
> 
> Note that for other kind of entities like places I'm slighlty less sure. Maybe there are some applications that would benefit from not trying to geo-localize places that are not on this Earth. LD: We will need to address this when discussing science fiction. Bwahahaha!
> 
> Best,
> 
> Antoine
> 
> 
> 
>> I'd argue for Fictional Things.
>> 
>> On 14 Nov 2012, at 18:27, Kevin Ford wrote:
>> 
>>> we need to make a strong case for enabling the possibility of fictional medical studies or postal addresses, among other things.
>> 
>> Fictional place names certainly exist -- as in Winnie the Pooh:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:100acre.gif
>> 
>> Or even styled as (fictional) postal addresses:
>> 4 Privet Drive
>> 
>> For a Fictional Medical Study, the backstory of the games Portal and Portal2 come to mind. In fact, game backstories would often provide examples, e.g. the studies at locations such as these
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locations_of_Half-Life
>> 
>> Or I suppose this might do:
>> 
>> https://www.facebook.com/pages/QASE-fictional-BioMedical-Research-Facility/169647519762414
>> 
>> (maybe http://www.facebook.com/r.php?fbpage_id=169647519762414&r=111 <http://www.facebook.com/r.php?fbpage_id=169647519762414&r=111> but that gives a loginwall):
>> 
>> Pardon the excessive examples. It's the end of the day.
>> 
>> :) -Jodi
> 
>