Visual Art Medium

Visual Art Medium: metal,stone as media

2008-02-26T18:55:13.0007Z

Unfortunately, there isn't an easy way of displaying art media data in a hierarchical way without chaning the schema to support data hierarchy. All of the metadata about data that drives the display is queried from the data model.

Luckily, from the perspective of usability, the amount of data or the length of the list shouldn't matter for data entry. Filling out the media used in a sculpture, you only need to type in "copper" and autocomplete will pull up the top ten matches for copper and more likely than not, present the topic "copper" at the top. It's not necessary to browse the entire list, no need to type in "metal" first to navigate a second list. Just like there are tens of thousands of cities in Freebase. Instead of having to choose a country from a list first, then browse for a city in that country from a long list, the use pattern is simply to type in Chicago, or London, or Cairo directly and autocomplete will find it. I'm hoping that's consistent with your experience?

Visual Art Medium: metal,stone as media

2008-02-26T08:17:41.0000Z

It seemed to me that a heirarchical structure at this level might be quicker. In the first list I find stone then in a drop down I find amathyst. the first level can be hundreds of items shorter. this is an initial reaction I have perhaps I am not aware of all the ramafications.

Visual Art Medium: metal,stone as media

2008-02-25T18:54:30.0015Z

May I ask why? I understand the desire for hierarchy, but at the same time, keeping the schema flat, simple, and precise has quite a few advantages. For example, if I were interested in artists who work with copper and marble, I can query it now quite easily. On the other hand, if artists have higher level media specified, only as nonspecific as "metal" and "stone", I lose the ability to differentiate between artists who use copper and marble and artists who use silver and amathyst. That would be an undesirable loss of data precision.

Visual Art Medium: metal,stone as media

2008-02-24T20:13:51.0005Z

is it possible to list as a media "metal" rather than, bronze,copper,lead,zinc,shakudo,etc.as individual media? then sublist each metal under the heading of metal. the same argument applies to "stone" rather than.marble,granite,alabaster,jade,quartz,amathyst,shist,soapstone,etc.