Re: FictionalThing proposal added to Web Schemas wiki

In pure data terms I partly agree with you - there is no difference between
the description of a real or fictional thing.  Except one of them has the
attribute of being fictional.

In describing an identity, especially from the world of creative works,
there is an obvious difference between real and fictional things - which we
humans are interested in and need to describe.

For example the first line from Sir John Falstaff's Wikipedia entry reads:
"Sir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in ...."

It is fine for him to have an ISNI, something that could link to a
description that indicates that he is fictional.

The fact that James White, used the same string of characters as a pseudonym
is an attribute of the descriptions of each of them - not an attribute of
the name itself.

This proposal came out of need to describe characters, or other fictional
things, in film/tv metadata.   A need that I believe is more generic than
that focussed requirement.

~Richard.




On 19/02/2013 13:32, "Michael Hopwood" <michael@editeur.org> wrote:

> Hmmm. I've followed this fascinating thread at a distance but I thought it's a
> reasonable point to chime in; it's not so much the edge cases, it's that in
> this context, everything is an edge case.
> 
> In all the relevant ontologies and schemas I've dealt with, there simply is no
> fundamental difference; for example, Sir John Falstaff has an ISNI, although
> he's fictional; he's also a literary pseudonym of James White...
> 
> The reason for this is that in data, you don't describe actual people (maybe
> FOAF or VCARD are exceptions), you describe public identities. You can only
> tell the real ones from the fictional from their relationships; their
> properties are the same.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dawson, Laura [mailto:Laura.Dawson@bowker.com]
> Sent: 19 February 2013 12:50
> To: Martin Hepp
> Cc: Thad Guidry; Richard Wallis; Web Schemas TF; Gregg Kellogg
> Subject: Re: FictionalThing proposal added to Web Schemas wiki
> 
> There are many edge cases, but I think there are enough straightforward cases
> to warrant the attempt.
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 19 February 2013 14:19:58 UTC