[Data-modeling] Awards refactoring

[Kirrily Robert]

I don't know.  I think of a "category" as a grouping of things rather than a specific thing.  Therefore, I would think that "Academy Award" was a category of award, and "Academy Award for Best Actor" would be a specific award.

K.

----- "Faye Li" <faye at metaweb.com> wrote:
> Jeff - I can't believe you remember my suggesting this -- but that's 
> great! :)
> 
> In general I agree with you that type key changes should be avoided
> and 
> any change should be made backward-compatible. The exception I'm 
> evidently more open to, is when keeping the same key in the interest
> of 
> backward compatibility unintentionally but unabashedly causes forward
> 
> confusion. I can just imagine future discussion threads from users 
> puzzled over the fact that the "Award" Type has the key
> "/award/<insert 
> some weird name here>" while "Award Category" has the key 
> "/award/award", and then some old-timer from the community will have
> to 
> explain, sheepishly, the "legacy" schema and backward-compatibility 
> policy that together produced this awkward design.
> 
> So my practical question is, hypothetically, if the type key were to
> be 
> changed to a more logical name, would that break anyone's code? Please
> 
> speak up if this would affect you. I see a trade-off between
> supporting 
> our current community now and avoiding confusing future users (which 
> dare I say number much higher than they do now...), and I think to 
> evaluate that, the missing piece of information of actual impact of a
> 
> key change must be known.
> 
> -- Faye
> 
> 
> Jeff Prucher wrote:
> > I'm cross-posting to the developers list because this proposal
> touches on
> > the type keys in the awards domain, which might affect developers.
> >
> > There is a problem in the current awards schema. There is no way to
> group
> > categories of awards together under the same general award. For
> example,
> > there are topics for every Academy Award category (best picture,
> best
> > original screenplay, etc.) of type "award", but there is no way to
> assert
> > that all these awards are the same sort of award. So if you want to
> know
> > which picture has won the most Academy Awards, you have to query
> against
> > every academy award topic, do some kind of string matching against
> the topic
> > name, or go by the awarding organization. (This last one wouldn't
> work,
> > actually -- different Nobels are technically awarded by different
> groups,
> > and some organizations sponsor multiple awards.)
> >
> > So I'm proposing (well, this was Faye's idea, really) that we add a
> new type
> > that will connect to both "award" and "award presenting
> organization". This
> > would ordinarily be a very simple thing to do. The problem is with
> the
> > nomenclature. From a practical standpoint, the new type (i.e., for
> the
> > general "Academy Award") should be called simply "award", and the
> old type
> > (i.e., for the specific category, "Academy Award for Best Foo")
> should be
> > renamed "award category". I'm pretty satisfied with making that
> change, but
> > I'd like to hear other suggestions.
> >
> > My main concern with the naming I'm proposing is that the type keys
> might be
> > a problem. The type "award category" (formerly known as "award") has
> a key
> > of /award/award. The new type "award" can't use that, since keys are
> unique,
> > so it would have to have some weirdly-named key. This is doable,
> just
> > inelegant and probably confusing to anyone who tries to write
> queries using
> > the keys. The alternative would be to move the /award/award key to
> the new
> > "award" and create a new key for "award category", but this would
> completely
> > break any code that uses this schema, which is not something I'm too
> keen on
> > doing.
> >
> > The Academy Awards (type = award):
> > http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/en/academy_awards
> >
> > Academy Award for Best Director (type = award category):
> > http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/en/academy_award_for_best_director
> >
> > The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (type= award
> presenting
> > organization)
> >
> http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/en/academy_of_motion_picture_arts_and_scien
> > ces
> >
> > Thoughts on how best to proceed?
> >
> > Jeff Prucher
> > Type Librarian & Ontologist
> > Metaweb Technologies, Inc. 
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Data-modeling mailing list
> > Data-modeling at freebase.com
> > http://lists.freebase.com/mailman/listinfo/data-modeling
> >
> >   
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Data-modeling mailing list
> Data-modeling at freebase.com
> http://lists.freebase.com/mailman/listinfo/data-modeling


-- 
Kirrily Robert
Freebase Community Director
kirrily at metaweb.com