[Data-modeling] Events

[Kirrily Robert]

Hi all,

A while ago I modeled some "event" types in my user domain and these got promoted into the "Time" domain as /time/event and related types.  Now we're starting to realise that what's there isn't really working for us, so I wanted to open up some discussion about how better to model events and time periods.

As I see it (now), the fundamental building block is just a time period which is simply two date/times, a start and an end.  This can be used for just about anything you might want, eg. the duration of a war, the run of a Broadway play, or the time when a sports event occurs.

Currently the /time/event includes additional properties such as "Location" and "People involved" which I don't think should necessarily be on the event type.  I think that subtypes should do the necessary things there.  For instance, for a war, it might be sensible to have location, but instead of people involved you'd probably just rely on the combatant properties that "military conflict" has.  So I'm thinking that we should probably leave the basic building block (whether we call it time period, event, or whatever) as bare as possible and rely on other types to get specific where necessary.

Further to this, I've got a type called "historic period" (/time/historic_period) which I now think is a big mistake.  There's been some discussion on the boards in the Time domain about instead having something that's more like a generic timeline.  A timeline can contain any kind of events at all, not necessarily related in the way that "historic period" suggests.  For instance you could have a timeline of important events in world history, or book tours, or weather patterns.  The current "historic period" topics would just revert to being more like a "time period" as discussed above.

For added thought, I'd like to point you at an article that Robert sent to me about Events, and about 9/11 and how many events actually occurred when the planes hit the towers.  The link is http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15370150

So, thoughts please? 

K.

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