gromul

Comic Books: Annuals: Stand-Alone Series or Special Issue

2008-07-07T11:41:41.0005Z

Should Annuals (Like Superman/Batman Annual or Sensational Spider-Man Annual) be listed as separate series or under the corresponding series with a special issue number?

Comic Books: Variant Covers

2008-07-06T17:19:29.0005Z

Is there a means of cataloging variant covers in the current system?

Comic Books: Multiple Cover Prices

2008-07-06T14:52:45.0005Z

Would it be possibly to allow more than one cover price on the Comic Book Issue type? I'm looking at my collection of The Spirit and they all have separate US and Canadian prices.

Film: Add Box Office property to the Film type?

2008-07-03T08:32:15.0012Z

Yeah, that makes sense. So, Worldwide Box Office, and Local Box Office.

Film: Add Box Office property to the Film type?

2008-06-30T14:26:31.0012Z

How about adding box office for the country of ORIGIN and world wide? For example, a german movie doesn't often even get to US theatres, their box office would therefor not be very interesting while the german would...

Film: Extra feature for "Performances"?

2008-06-30T14:23:54.0012Z

Yes, I know I can specify the occupation there. But this doesn't completely answer my idea.

1. It would be nice to have the occupation on the moviesite too, next to the characters name as sometimes this is needed for knowing who this character is. Like finding out that Star X played the doc in the movie as "Mr Y" might not help you that easy.

2.t would be useful to view any titles of the person in a seperat column. Else the Characters ar created as "Dr. Jed Hill" instead of "Jed Hill" with "Dr." in another viewed column.

Film: Extra feature for "Performances"?

2008-06-05T16:29:19.0000Z

Johann, characters definitely do have occupations and you can certainly fill them out. There’s just a limit to how much information about the character is visible from the actor or film, especially since the same character may be played by multiple actors and appear in multiple works of fiction across multiple media. Just fill out the character’s name from the performance, then go visit it and flesh it out with occupation, gender, place of birth, and anything else you want to add.

Film: Extra feature for "Performances"?

2008-06-05T13:52:58.0005Z

I think it would be useful to have the possibility to not only be able to write the actor and its character, but also it's charakters occupation. See http://freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f80000000006dce3e for an example:

One shouldn't remove the "attorney" or "nurse", as it is necessary (or at least helpful) information tofind the character in the movie - but itwould be nicer to only have the name for the role's site.

Sorry for being so unclear, I'm not good at english... let me try once more:

If I click on the character of Alex Baldwin this will lead me to the article "Dr. Jed Hill", better would be do have the doctor (or attorney for others) in an extra box and the link therefor linking to "Jed Hill" (or "Dennis Riley" instead of "Attorney Dennis Riley" - "Attorney" would then be linked to the occupation "Attorney)

I hope at least someone could follow me ;-)

Film: Exporting

2008-06-02T22:21:17.0000Z

Here's a starter query to get all the film titles currently in the system:

[
{
    "limit" : 40000,
    "name" : null,
    "type" : "/film/film"
}
]

Film: Exporting

2008-06-02T19:39:39.0007Z

We currently don't support exporting a large set of data (approximately around a 1000) via the export to csv feature. You either must use our data dump as mikelove discovered above, or write your own MQL query.

You can see what our filter view page uses by hitting F8 key to get the debug bar and clicking on the 'View transaction log' (its the client MQL query event you want).

You can use that as a starting point (hint, modify the limit or eliminate it entirely).

Film: Exporting

2008-06-02T02:45:10.0000Z

so it's been about a month now - still no solution to the export problem?

Comic Books: New type: Graphic Novel

2008-05-31T03:33:34.0029Z

Concerning the story continuation across different media (i.e. comic book series continued in a graphic novel), what about bigger media jumps, i.e. Firefly TV show -> Serenity: Those Left Behind comic book mini series -> Serenity movie -> Serenity: Better Days comic book mini series?

As it's unlikely something like this can be precisely modeled, I think the best we can do is to have an encompassing type that would facilitate finding story incarnations across different media.

For this I created a Media Franchise/Media Property type. Spider-man would be an example that spans all media: movies, MTV animated series, the upcoming Broadway musical, movie novelizations, comic books (obviously), OGNs, computer games, and movie soundtracks.

Comic Books: New type: Graphic Novel

2008-05-31T02:44:11.0000Z

>If CBC doesn't include GN, how would the continues/continued by properties work for series where there are both collections and original graphic novels?

That's a good question and an argument for reusing the GN type. Is it possible to have a property that has more than one expected type?

>Does the property "stories collected" really belong?

I think so. Comic Book Story (CBS) type has no publishing implications. Just like a comic book issue consists of one or more comic book stories (some of which might not be original), an OGN also consists of one (in which case CBS can be left blank) or more CBSs. Some examples of latter are Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall -- of an OGN with multiple original stories by one writer but different artists, and anthologies like Flight with multiple original stories by various authors.

If a book has both previously published comic book issues and new original stories, I would classify it as a comic book [issue] collection. Some Hellboy volumes exemplify this.

Comic Books: New type Comic Book Collection

2008-05-31T02:17:11.0013Z

>typelibrarian

Thanks for the input. I agree about the CBC writer. As for the editor properties, I could go either way, but it never hurts it include more properties as someone might use them.

Comic Books: New type: Graphic Novel

2008-05-30T23:43:46.0008Z

I'm not sure I have any answers, but I have lots of questions. (O Joy.)

If CBC doesn't include GN, how would the continues/continued by properties work for series where there are both collections and original graphic novels? (I think both Gaiman's Sandman and Carla Speed McNeil's Finder fit this description.) On the other hand, I'm not crazy about using a boolean for something like that -- I prefer to use the type system if at all possible.

Other thoughts on the GN type:

Does the property "stories collected" really belong? If it's an original graphic novel, doesn't that imply all new material? Otherwise, isn't it just a collection?

Comic Books: New type Comic Book Collection

2008-05-30T23:30:27.0000Z

In terms of editor, I'd say that if the level of precision is valuable, then we should keep the CBC properties. But if we only care about the primary editor, or don't mind lumping all editors together, we could use the property from Written Work.

For writers, I guess the advantage to the denormalization is that "comic book collections written" is more specific than the "works written" property on Author. Chances are, CBCs will end up with values in both properties, which would not be wrong, and is not necessarily bad.

Comic Books: New type: Graphic Novel

2008-05-30T07:12:30.0000Z

If graphic novel (GN) type was included in the CBC type, the GN could have a property 'Original' which would be true for original graphic novels (OGNs) and false for comic book collections. This would work with freebase API, but the keyword search would still be a problem: if you just want to browse the OGNs, the CBCs which are more numerous would pollute the search results.

Comic Books: New type Comic Book Collection

2008-05-30T06:59:18.0009Z

I guess the Book type Editor property might be reused too, depending on how precise we want to be at the collection level. Some comics credit Editor, Assistant Editor, Senior Editor, and Editor in Chief, but it's not that precise at a comic book issue level either.

Comic Books: New type Comic Book Collection

2008-05-30T06:51:02.0007Z

I removed the CBC publisher, and also removed the collection cover artist, as different editions might have covers done by different artists. I still think the CBC writer might be good to keep, especially if the comic book writer had a 'Comic Book Collections written' property which would be automatically linked to collections.

Comic Books: New type Comic Book Collection

2008-05-30T00:16:39.0007Z

I definitely think that publisher should be removed, since it's properly a property of book editions, not books (Jeff Smith's Bone collections, for example, have been published by at least three different publishers). I'm not 100% sure about writer and cover artist. I'm starting to think that these properties are not that different for comic collections than for other types of books. For example, visual artists will probably be listed as authors of monographs; newspaper comic collections will have the writer as author and illustrator as cover artist. I could be convinced the other way, though. (I'll take a look at Graphic Novel tomorrow.)

Comic Books: New type: Graphic Novel

2008-05-29T08:08:05.0012Z

I'm creating a new type Graphic Novel. It will be very similar to the Comic Book Collection (CBC) type except it won't have the following properties:

Series Collected
Issues Collected
First Issue Collected
Last Issue Collected
Number of Issues
Collection Cover Artist

Should I leave the CBC type as stand-alone or include the graphic novel type and just add the additional properties listed above? If latter, how would a user search for graphic novels only and not get comic book collections too?

Comic Books: New type Comic Book Collection

2008-05-29T07:39:54.0007Z

I ended up including the Book type in the Comic Book Collection (CBC) type. Both TPBs and hard cover volumes can be modeled through its Editions property. This would also work better for data import: i.e. Amazon has Punisher War Journal Vol. 1: Civil War as hardcover and links to the TPB edition.

Do you agree that Comic Book Writer, Comic Book Cover Artist, and Comic Book Publisher should not be removed from the CBC type even hough they map to more general Writer, Illustrator, and Publisher properties? The users can add comic book specific data after data imports that prepopulate general properties.

Comic Books: New type Comic Book Collection

2008-05-23T17:40:38.0000Z

I think including the Book Edition type is probably the best solution. And I really think only a few properties don't apply to comic book collections. TPBs and graphic novels are, after all, published like books, and have ISBNs and Dewey classifications and all that stuff. Audio reader is obviously not applicable, and the cover artist and illustrator properties are less precise than we would want for comics; contributing author is about as wrong for comics as it is for everything else -- it's there only for when we don't know more specific data.

(You did, however, just give me a very scary thought. It would not be wrong to model comic book issues using an abstraction/instance model, although it would probably only apply to the cover art in most instances, since variant covers tend to come in and out of fashion. And every once in a while, single issues are reissued, like for Free Comics Day. Not that I really want to do this -- it just occured to me that it would be possible.)

Comic Books: New type Comic Book Collection

2008-05-22T07:17:20.0007Z

Comic Book Collection does resemble a book edition, but it's not really an instance of abstract written work. And it's definitely not an abstract book/written work.

After all, a comic book issue is a written work in some sense, but we don't have an abstract comic book issue and then an actual published comic book issue.

I think there's too many properties not directly applicable to comic books. But I see your point about importing book data, so maybe inherit the book edition and live with the differences?

Comic Books: New type Comic Book Collection

2008-05-21T23:49:23.0007Z

I think this is an interesting type, and it has some potential. I'm concerned about its overlap with the types book, book edition, and written work, though. I think it would be good to take out the properties that are duplicated from those types, and get them via including the other types. Before we could do this, though, we'd have to figure out whether comic book collections are books or book editions. The difference is that the topic with the types Book and Written work is for the abstract notion of the work, and contains information that is always true about the work, no matter how it's published -- author, copyright date, genre, etc. Book edition is used for specific publications of the book, and has properties for publisher, publication date, etc.

Comic book collection has properties that correspond to both the abstract and specific notions, so we'd need to figure out where they went.

I want to reconcile the two schemata because we're ultimately going to be getting a lot of book data from various sources, and comic collections/TPBs/graphic novels will almost certainly be included with some of that data, and I'd like to avoid duplication.

But I do like the specificity of contents and contributions that this provides, which is more specific than the contents model in the publishing domain. We could do issues and stories collected using that model, but the roles would have to be less specific (author, editor, interior illustrator, cover artist).

Comic Books: New type Comic Book Collection

2008-05-21T08:14:22.0005Z

I created a new type Comic Book Collection and populated all Fables TPBs data. Let me know what you think.

If the type is useful enough, what's the process of adding it to the official comics domain? If it gets added there, do I still have some control over it or do further changes need to go through review?

Thanks

Film: Add Box Office property to the Film type?

2008-05-21T04:34:50.0007Z

I think the box office is clearer than total gross earnings, because the latter could include DVD sales, rentals, TV rights, merchandising, etc. For example, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End domestically made almost as much in DVD sales as with ticket sales: $280 M compared to $310 M.

I guess the world box office would be good, or maybe US as it's the 40% of the world movie market, rest of the world, and world (US + rest of the world). I haven't yet come across a website that breaks it down further that that.

>I would like to have a date for the earnings total so a better more accurate comparison of over a century of grosses can be done.

Do you mean you would like to have the data adjusted for inflation?

Film: Add Box Office property to the Film type?

2008-05-21T01:19:44.0000Z

I assume total gross earnings would be appropriate? I guess it could be similar to the estimated budget. I would like to have a date for the earnings total so a better more accurate comparison of over a century of grosses can be done.

Or is it that more detail is desired?

US-centric: US Domestic & Foreign
By Region: Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Africa, Oceano-Pacific, Antartica
Other?

Comic Book Fictional Universe: New property Comic Book Series Set Here?

2008-05-18T05:51:30.0012Z

Could you please add a new property Comic Book Series Set Here? For example, the Fables universe would have 2 values there: Fables, and Jack of Fables.

Thanks

Film: Add Box Office property to the Film type?

2008-05-18T03:21:20.0012Z

Could someone add the Box Office or Earnings property to the Film type? http://www.worldwideboxoffice.com/ can be used to get this data for major films.

Comic Books: Linking Story to Issues

2008-05-13T18:55:11.0007Z

Ah, sorry. Didn't realize printing was a compound value. Thanks.

Comic Books: Linking Story to Issues

2008-05-13T17:18:19.0007Z

The properties "contents" (on "comic book issue") and "appeared in" (on "comic book story") are for that purpose.

Comic Books: Linking Story to Issues

2008-05-13T12:06:43.0012Z

Could we add a property that links Comic Book Story to Comic Book Issue?

Film: Exporting

2008-05-08T07:18:29.0015Z

I take it back, these have guids instead of compound values.

Film: Exporting

2008-05-08T06:10:51.0040Z

I forgot about data dumps. http://download.freebase.com/datadumps/2008-03-28/browse/film/

Film: Exporting

2008-05-05T19:29:35.0000Z

That's a bug, all right. It's being tracked internally. I'm not award of any workarounds, short of using the API.

Film: Exporting

2008-05-02T05:03:43.0012Z

I tried to export all /film/film as a csv and got only 857 rows of data. Advice?