[Data-modeling] Multiple Fictional Universes

[Warren Harris]

This might be somewhat "off base," but it seems like there's some  
overlap between the concepts of fictional universes and bases. Both  
represent a context for facts. In a universe, a familiar character may  
have a different set of facts associated with them (e.g. as a  
fictional character, George Washington might be 12 ft tall). In a  
base, we create a subset of types from the commons, and add co-types  
to extend them with base-specific properties.

These 2 concepts seem very similar. Although we don't currently define  
fictional universes as overlays on real-world topics (instead they  
reference them), we could. This might make fictional universes easier  
to define (just start with the real world and change it, e.g. the  
fictional LA of Bladerunner could be an overlay on the real LA topic  
-- part of the Bladerunner fictional universe base).

So it might be interesting if all fictional universes were "head  
starts" at bases (actually were bases put out there to invite people  
to expand on them). It might also be interesting if bases could be  
defined hierarchically -- the direction you're going here, but with  
Parent Base and Sub-Bases (e.g. the SNL base might be a sub-base of a  
larger Comedy TV base).

I know we're just getting bases off the ground, but I thought this  
overlap was worth pointing out,

Warren


On Oct 30, 2008, at 4:04 PM, Jeff Prucher wrote:

>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com
>> [mailto:data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com] On Behalf Of
>> Tadhg O'Higgins
>> Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 12:39 PM
>> To: Freebase data modeling mailing list
>> Subject: [Data-modeling] Multiple Fictional Universes
>>
>> How should we treat fictional universes within other
>> fictional universes? Or "alternate universes" within, e.g.,
>> the Star Trek universe?
>>
>> My initial thought is to have "Parent Universe" and "Sub-universes"
>> properties, but I'm not sure they cover all the cases. In
>> addition, we might run into the problem of having to use the
>> Star Trek universe as a hold-all, containing both the "main"
>> Star Trek universe (which most people will want to see data
>> about when they arrive at the page) and also the minor
>> alternate universes (e.g. from
>> <http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f80000000002
>> 1eea5>) as separate topics connected as sub-universes.
>>
>> Any thoughts on how these relationships should be handled?
>
> This is a really good question. All the alternate universes that  
> appear in
> the Star Trek series are part of the same setting (which we also  
> call a
> universe). So in a sense, the literary construct that we call the  
> "Star Trek
> universe" is separate from the primary universe in which the stories  
> take
> place, which exists on par with the Mirror Universe and whatever other
> alternate universes show up in the franchise. So parent and sub- 
> universes
> would work pretty well, I think. The trick would be to label or  
> describe the
> parent multiverse (which contains the Mirror Universe and the  
> universe in
> which the series are primarily set) from the primary universe it  
> contains,
> so that people can link to the topics reasonably consistently.
>
> Jeff
>
>> Tadhg
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