[Data-modeling] playwright?

[Jeff Prucher]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com 
> [mailto:data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com] On Behalf Of Jon Reitsma
> Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 3:15 PM
> To: Freebase data modeling mailing list
> Subject: Re: [Data-modeling] playwright?
> 
> But films are different?  Even films based on books can have 
> screenwriters who aren't the book author.  Isn't the same 
> true of a play?  

I'm not sure where you're going with this. Just as films adapted from
another medium can have screenwriters who are not the original authors, so
plays adapted from another medium can have playwrights who are not the
original authors. That doesn't appear to argue for a separate property to
me, though.

> Also not all plays are published and the 
> Author type description, while including some plays, limits 
> it to published plays and specifically says it is someone who 
> has written a book. 

Oops. I thought I had updated that type description when we refactored
written works way back when.  Authors are basically people who have written
(or edited) something.  So, yes, a screenwriter could be considered an
author in that regard, and if we treated films separately from their
screenplays (the way we do stage productions from plays and recordings from
musical compositions), I would argue for modeling them as authors, too. 

Jeff