TV

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-28T23:04:18.0000Z

Cool; we're always looking for ways to improve the search/autocomplete features, so feedback is highly appreciated. Single-word searches often return many more results than can be displayed in the 10-item list, that "Midnight" failed to come up is not surprising. In the next release, you will be able to type in "midnight doctor who" and have a very good chance that the Doctor Who episode named "Midnight" will show up.

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-26T16:40:24.0012Z

Hi there,

Don't spend too much time worrying about this, I've gotten a little more experience now with how things work here - and a bit more confidence on how things are 'expected' to work. The point about the non-exact matcher is well-taken, now I've seen the autocomplete more often suggest topics which are "useful" rather than exact, I have a few ideas how to use it to help me search as well. The main thing I've been doing lately is, if I definitely need a precise node that's unlikely to be high up the list, I open up another window and search for its guid.

As it happens, I was experimenting with 'previous/next episode' as a reciprocal relationship. (This has been added to TV episode now, but to experiment with it I added a "TV episode additional data" type in my default domain). So:

1) I was trying to fill a 'previous' property on a 'TV episode additional data' type.

2) I was looking for the Doctor Who episode 'Midnight' and used just 'Midnight' as the search string.

3) The right node doesn't show in the suggestions - but I understand why, now. Until this relationship was filled, the target node didn't have the 'additional' type, just the existing TV episode. So the type information wasn't helpful in the search.

My expectation that an "exact name" would take priority threw me a curve ball - once I got past that, I have no expectation now that somehow the machine will automagically work it out for me *every* time... 99.9% of the time is good enough for me - the corner cases are worth the extra work.

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-23T00:27:07.0012Z

Hi Chris N,

You mentioned having problems with autocomplete, where the item you wanted wasn't on the list. Do you still remember what exactly you entered? I'd be interested to know: 1) the property you used autocomplete on, 2) the string you entered, 3) expected topic. Among other things I test the relevance engine that produces these results, so issues are of interest to me.

Also, autocomplete is not an "exact name matcher". You can enter additional information unique to your topic to help boost it to the top. For TV episodes, for example, entering the TV show's name in addition to the episode name helps, especially if the episode name is "The Rescue" or something that'd find many matches.

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2008-08-23T00:05:52.0000Z

Yay, thanks Jeff!

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2008-08-22T18:29:28.0000Z

The properties are there now. Have at them!

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-19T22:46:27.0012Z

I started filling in cast lists from the 2008 end and working backwards, so perhaps we'll meet somewhere in about 1975 :) So far I've left character as an empty field in places where the character is unnamed - that at least means the information can satisfy actor queries. But you're right, adding scenery characters does allow extra facts to be added and other connections to be made that are not otherwise possible.

I've already run (several times) into an issue with Freebase with "common" topic names - you can't link to the right one - which makes me want to avoid them if I can, but if the right bit of juicy data comes up, I'll be sure to do so :)

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2008-08-19T21:51:12.0012Z

A lot of things are sequential, but I think an abstract type ("sequential thing"?) for all of them would be more trouble than it's worth. The pattern is just a variation of the parent/child pattern, which appears all over the place in Freebase, without an abstract type collecting them all. That said, I can't think of any reason that TV episode shouldn't have previous/next properties. If no one objects, I'll add them later this week.

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-19T18:38:20.0012Z

First, thanks for doing this. I’ve recently begun attempting to watch all the Doctor Who episodes from the beginning, which is entertaining.

Secondly, please note that no value in Freebase is actually required. You don’t have to give the character.

That said, I don’t really see a problem with having a character for “Man in bar” as long as “Man in bar” from twentieth-season Doctor Who is not the same as “Man in bar” from Beverly Hills Cop, who is not the same as “Man in bar” from Babylon 5: The Gathering. Even those anonymous characters have gender and organizational affiliations, and for science fiction, species. I had a lot of fun fully populating the cast for the B5 pilot, though I haven’t gotten back to doing it for all the episodes.

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-19T17:15:04.0017Z

I ran into something of an annoyance when I started my freebase time filling out some Doctor Who cast lists. The "TV episode performance" requires a "TV Character". That's a bit much. There's always going to be credits entries like "Man In bar" or "Soldier #2". These aren't items that will need an entire "TV Character/Fictional Character/etc..." ontology - those entries require just a text string.

It seems to me there are two kinds of cast list entry - an actor performing a particular recurring character (TV Character Performance?) and performing an unnamed character (TV Extra Performance?). However the collection to formulate the cast list must order those in credits order - not as two separate lists, and must support reciprocal entries in either case (for instance, to support queries like "Which episodes of show X has actor Y appeared in?" (irrelevant whether the as a character or an extra).

Seems like this is an approach to handle the issue with "regular" appearances as well. There's one TV Character Performance node that says actor X has, at some time, portrayed character Y. All episodes where that's true, refer to that node. The reciprocal property on the TV Character Performance will enumerate all the episodes where that actor appears as that character.

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2008-08-19T16:54:22.0012Z

To get the hang of things here I messed around with a type extending "TV Episode" and added "preceded by" reciprocating as "followed by". Agreed, it helps navigate, and it's also common on the wikipedia source articles as well.

However my guess is there should be a much grander type involved here for anything that can be ordered in a sequence, not just TV shows. Items may probably appear in more than one sequence as well (for example, story chronology isn't the same as release chronology - Star Wars movies are the cliche example).

TV: Watch Online

2008-08-11T16:26:26.0012Z

I think Web links are appropriate for now. My paranoid worry is that leaving a blank spot for online viewing to fill in would be perceived by some parties as inviting users to fill in unauthorized distribution channels, and we really don’t need that legal hassle.

TV: Watch Online

2008-08-09T22:22:48.0018Z

I just added web links to the Monk topic to point to locations on the web (USA Network and Hulu) where the show can be watched online. Should this be a new property of TV Program or just keep adding them as web links?

TV: TV filming location

2008-07-02T18:39:23.0012Z

I think we should have a type, "TV filming location", for things like "Survivor: Vanuatu" which was filmed in Vanuatu. Thoughts?

TV: Suggested changes to TV character

2008-06-19T19:16:52.0012Z

tough one... my inclination would be to lead with the regular appearances, however, so it looks good to me.

TV: Suggested changes to TV character

2008-06-19T17:09:03.0012Z

Good idea. Take a look now. It looks to me like it's only defaulting to the first property, which is now "Programs in which character appeared as a regular" (or something like that). Is this the best property, or would "Episodes appeared in" be better? I mention this because only some characters will have data for the "Programs" property, while all characters could have data for Episodes.

TV: Suggested changes to TV character

2008-06-19T16:16:31.0012Z

What would you guys say to moving actor and series up ahead of year of 1st and final appearance? The filter page defaults to the first 3 properties and these make for much more interesting filter criteria.

TV: TV Series "seasons" and other naming

2008-04-07T20:41:55.0007Z

Thanks -- that's a very interesting document. I like that they've modeled it as deeply as "episode versions". I doubt Freebase is likely to go that deep any time soon, but it's a useful concept in a lot of ways.

Superficially, it looks like the brand/series/episode model is very similar to our series/season/episode model, which is encouraging, and means that it should be fairly simple to create mappings between Freebase and applications using the Programmes Ontology.

TV: TV Series "seasons" and other naming

2008-04-03T21:59:15.0000Z

Only a year late... here's the BBC Programmes Ontology, built by Yves Raimond based on the BBC's internal data model:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/programmes/2008-02-28.shtml

You may also be interested in our programmes database, containing all programmes broadcast from about August 2007 onwards: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/

The idea is to release a machine-readable version of the /programmes site, marked up with the Programmes Ontology, some time soon.

TV: Animated show?

2007-12-31T18:00:12.0007Z

The "other crew" property on "TV episode" is intended to be used for this sort of thing (i.e., any creative or production role that isn't addressed by any of the other properties).

TV: Animated show?

2007-12-29T20:35:52.0005Z

I don't know if this belongs in its own domain, belongs in Media Common, or if Animated shows are just part of TV, but it would be nice to be able to enter other roles, like "Animated by" to TV shows.. my favorite is the fact that No Doubt's original drummer, Eric Stefani, went on to be a Simpsons animator.... but there's no way to represent this in freebase right now. There are other examples of famous animators like Mel Blanc that would be nice to connect to their TV work. There are over 150 people designated as "Animators" according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Animators

TV: The Colbert Report

2007-07-25T22:10:36.0007Z

And I asked the question that should be answered every time a type is added -- are there properties unique to the type that a group of people would want to use? The answer seemed very clearly yes. This is one of the many reasons that the scope of domains is actually so small. Some of them may have dozens of types or even more.

TV: The Colbert Report

2007-07-24T18:59:12.0007Z

I don't really know that it will lead us anywhere we weren't already going -- this is an ability implicit in Freebase's design, and is one we already make use of in a number of schemas. I would actually encourage people to copy this model, because it enables us to model general types with properties that will be broadly applicable, while at the same time allowing users with particular interests to model and capture data that is very specific to a group of related topics.

TV: The Colbert Report

2007-07-24T05:06:32.0007Z

I love the Colbert report as much as the next guy - does it really deserve its own type? Does this mean we might have types for all our beloved shows? Can we add 'Twin Peaks Episode' with a number of pie sightings and references to 'hot, black coffee'? 'Lynch films Films exploring similar themes'? Don't get me wrong - this type is a lot of fun, just wondering what it might lead to.

TV: Schema renaming, additional properties

2007-07-23T01:03:46.0011Z

I made some changes to the TV episode schema. It should not break any code, but I have deprecated some properties.

TV: The Colbert Report

2007-07-23T01:02:15.0011Z

I just uploaded all episodes of the Colbert Report as of July 19, 2007. I also created a special co-type for Colbert Report episodes that stores "The Word" and the introductory quip for each show.

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2007-05-29T06:11:30.0006Z

We have considered it, but we've not had a chance to actually implement it. Generally, we assume that 'higher functionality' like that would be the purview of an application developer that's focused on a particular subject area, in this case Television. The Freebase app is really the 80% solution, where dedicated developers can do something far more specific.

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2007-05-16T04:19:10.0006Z

I also would use it. I'm wondering though, could that not be generated automatically based on episode number? Have you (staff) considered adding the functionality for field that could be generated from a query?

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-15T17:40:19.0006Z

If the multi-part episode links to its constituent episodes, each of which has its own production code and episode number, I think it might be redundant to ask for the same data in the multipart episode type itself. The exception would be, of course, if the multipart episode has a code or something that refers to the whole work (which does seem to be the case with Doctor Who).

TV: TV Series "seasons" and other naming

2007-05-14T21:28:47.0006Z

Your assumed hierarchy is correct. You're also right in your guess that the inconsistent naming is because we recently changed the schema, and obviously we missed a bunch of the labels.

I'd love to see how the BBC handles the modeling of this type of information; there's been some discussion about our model's failure to handle Doctor Who serials, and it would be good to see what else we're missing.

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2007-05-14T16:26:12.0012Z

Hi, can we add "Previous Episode" and "Next Episode" properties to the TV series episode type? In addition to capturing the sequential data on TV episodes, that would also be a useful navigation tool for browsing.

TV: TV Series "seasons" and other naming

2007-05-13T01:24:17.0006Z

I find the varying usage of the words "Program", "Series" and "Season" a bit confusing -- it appears that in many cases the word Series is used to mean the same as TV Program (eg "TV Series Season" could be called "TV Program Season", right? unless I'm misunderstanding your usage. Plus "TV Series Episode" has links to both "Series" and "Season" but nothing to "Program").

Is that right? Perhaps the type called "TV Program" was until recently called "TV Series" and so the UI labels haven't been changed in related types?

Or I could just be confusing myself because we generally use "Series" and "Season" interchangeably here in the UK.

Right now I'm assuming the hierarchy is supposed to be:

TV Program (aka Series) -> TV Series Seasons -> TV Series Episode

is that right?

I know how hard it can be to model the varying relationships between episodes, programmes, series, strands, etc etc, if you want to see a few of our data models we use at the BBC, just ask.

You might regret it though ;-)

Brendan.

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-10T19:27:17.0006Z

Thanks for observing that some multi-part programs span multiple seasons, Jeff.

Instead of being a special case, a two-part episode bridging one season's finale and the next season's premiere was the normal with some of the Star Trek series (Voyager in particular). In terms of production and episode numbering though, they were considered two episodes, as were two-hour specials (like series finales) aired back-to-back. Nobody would say a typical season contains 25.5 episodes. That means a "multi-part TV episode", though singular from the perspective of a story, should be allowed to have multiple values for properties such as "episode number" and "production code".

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-10T18:42:37.0000Z

I think your model is pretty close to what we need, if we change the name to something like "Mulit-part TV Episode". The only other things I would change would be to make the links from "multi-part tv episode" to "season" and "series" be one-way, so that they aren't listed on the main series and season pages. (My thinking for this is that, with the exception of Dr. Who, it's not especially useful, and perhaps a bit confusing to have separate lists for "episodes" and "multi-part" episodes.) The "season" property should also be non-unique, since the ST:TNG two-parter that Faye found actually bridges two seasons. Otherwise, I think it should work fine.

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-09T03:57:29.0006Z

If anyone would care to take a look at the type I created and tell me how to improve upon it for any multi-part episodes (it may already be...) I would be happy to make those adjustments so others can use it.

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-09T01:16:42.0006Z

This is a great idea, but it sounds like it may need to be expanded to include any multi-part episode?

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-08T19:39:22.0006Z

Star Trek also had serial stories containing multiple episodes, such as the following story below that was split into the third season finale and the first episode of the fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was not happy about it getting typed as a TV series episode when I added it as part of the series. I think a "TV series serial" type would be useful in this situation.

http://www.freebase.com/view?id=%239202a8c04000641f800000000022ec00

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-08T18:53:28.0006Z

No, I think you're doing the right thing. The typer was going off the Wikipedia infoboxes, which use the same template for Doctor Who episodes and serials, so the two were getting conflated. By separating them out, you're actually improving the data, so please! keep up the good work. If the "TV series serial" pattern is (or was) common, we should consider adding it to the public TV domain, but, at the moment anyway, I haven't been able to find any other shows that use it, so we'll hold off on that.

TV: Damn the Metaweb bot

2007-05-08T05:41:01.0012Z

It didn't help that I was confusing myself by creating unnecessary personal types and getting unnecessarily complicated, but I figured out that the Metaweb bot has been "correcting" things for me. I'm working on an extensive Doctor Who dataset. I created a type to use called "TV Series Serials" because the early Doctor Who had episodes contained within the serial stories. Unfortunately, there are Wikipeda entries for each of the serial stories, not each episode, and you Metaweb has been importing them (and un-correcting them after I correct them) as episodes, which they are not.

Can you fix this? Or am I doing it wrong and supposed to fall in line with what the bot is telling me?

TV: TV Series "seasons" and other naming

2007-03-02T03:53:11.0012Z

The type "TV Series seasons" is oddly plural - it makes for some strange UI such as "Create New TV Series seasons" - perhaps it could be plural

Also, I'm finding myself wanting to type "TV episode" but finding it frustrating that I have to type "TV Series episode" to get autocomplete to match. I think a few of the TV types could add aliases (also known as's) with the word 'series' dropped to aid autocomplete