Re: FictionalThing proposal added to Web Schemas wiki

I agree with Martin about "fictional" being a pretty slippery slope.
But I am kind of curious about how people who are advocating for
FictionalThing anticipate it getting used.

//Ed

On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 9:19 AM, Richard Wallis <richard.wallis@oclc.org> wrote:
> 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 14:29:09 UTC