[gcd-software] Redirection (was Re: Importing from other sites)

[Lionel English]

On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Alexandros Diamantidis <ad...@hellug.gr> wrote:

> > We might also consider using the Previews text files
>

> That's an interesting idea.  If not a direct import, perhaps a weekly check and a notice to GCD main about what needs attention?

I was thinking of the latter. Issue data per solicitation very often
differs from what's actually published (creators, number of pages,
publication date, story titles, all can change). To be sure that the
data is accurate, I was thinking of a new part in the OI application
displaying a list of issues (taken from the new releases list) with
links to Previews' solicitation info where possible, and a field
indicating if this item has been indexed in GCD, or if a skeleton
exists, or if both are needed.

This (indirectly) reminds me of another issue:  the desire to "link" series/issues/creators/charactors with common alternate names.  A "redirect" feature, if you will.  I think Henry has something planned for the publisher side, but I don't know if what he's planning is extensible to the other tables as well?  We want a way to say, yes, this Previews listing came out, but the official title is THIS, which is where you will find it.  Rather than saying "this is missing, let's add it".

 

--
Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net

[Alexandros Diamantidis]

* Lionel English [2010-05-24 16:08]:

> This (indirectly) reminds me of another issue: the desire to "link"
> series/issues/creators/charactors with common alternate names. A "redirect"
> feature, if you will. I think Henry has something planned for the publisher
> side, but I don't know if what he's planning is extensible to the other
> tables as well? We want a way to say, yes, this Previews listing came out,
> but the official title is THIS, which is where you will find it. Rather
> than saying "this is missing, let's add it".

For series, this is covered in the New Fun schema:

http://docs.comics.org/wiki/New_Fun_Schema

> Series is fairly straightforward, except that series names are held in a
> separate table to allow multiple names to be assigned to a given series.
...
> The name may come from the cover, the indicia, common usage or any
> other source.

The table is data_series_name: it has a source_id field with the
following description: "Foreign key to data_source. Explains where
(indicia, cover, gcd-assigned, etc.) the name comes from."

So series will be able to have multiple titles, and one can locate them
with any of them. Doing searches through a search engine and not
directly with SQL queries will make this both efficient and flexible
(for example, we might want to order results when searches match the
primary title as more relevant than matches with alternate titles).

For issues, there is a similar item_item_descriptor table, so an issue
might have multiple issue numbers, volume numbers, ISBNs, publisher
numbers, titles or names as needed.

For characters and creators, the schema hasn't been worked out yet, but
we will either have a way to link multiple entries as versions of the
same character or creator, or explicitly have multiple aliases or names
for each one.

Alexandros

[Henry Andrews]

----- Original Message ----
> From: Alexandros Diamantidis <ad...@hellug.gr>
>
> For characters and creators, the schema hasn't been worked out
> yet, but we will either have a way to link multiple entries as versions of
> the same character or creator, or explicitly have multiple aliases or
> names for each one.
>
> Alexandros

Technically, the old "new schema" had a system for this, but I was never convinced that it was sufficient. There will no doubt be extensive discussion of the topic at some point, but fortunately that's not the kind of thing we have to decide here. The notion that we want the way to identify these things is sufficient for this discussion.

thanks,
-henry

[Alexandros Diamantidis]

* Henry Andrews [2010-05-24 17:43]:

> > we will either have a way to link multiple entries as versions of
> > the same character or creator, or explicitly have multiple aliases
> > or names for each one.
>

> Technically, the old "new schema" had a system for this, but I was never convinced that it was sufficient.

Is this the gcdCreatortoCreator table? So that would be the former (link
multiple entries together). Both options have their pros, I can't tell
which one would be better.

I never read the original "new schema" discussions... I assume they took
place in gcd-tech (or its older incarnations) but when did they happen?
I can't find them in my archive, but it's missing several years
(unfortunately not the ones available from the gcd-tech group file
area). Does anyone have a complete archive of them that they could send
me? Thanks!

[Henry Andrews]

> ----- Original Message ----
> > From: Alexandros Diamantidis <ad...@hellug.gr>

Those discussions were before my time as well. I joined in fall of 2007, and I've never seen a comprehensive summary. Most of it got folded into New Fun, but the creator and character tables, or at least their more esoteric details, did not.

thanks,
-henry

[Lionel English]

They happened mostly in '06.  My archive is incomplete.

--
Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net

[Alexandros Diamantidis]

* Lionel English [2010-05-25 06:41]:

> > > I never read the original "new schema" discussions... I assume they took
> > > place in gcd-tech (or its older incarnations) but when did they happen?

> They happened mostly in '06. My archive is incomplete.

OK, thanks, I found them. My mistake, they actually were in the
files in the gcd-tech group. I've downloaded them and I'm looking
through them now. They make for interesting reading - the only
troubling aspect is that we are still talking about things that had
been worked out in much detail in those discussions. Fortunately other
areas that were the subject of heated debated then have either been
resolved or are close.

This committee should produce some definite document of goals and a
tentative development schedule, to avoid having similar discussions
again in a few years!

[Henry Andrews]

I went over much of the "New Schema" and reworked it into the "New Fun" schema over the summer of 2009, which should be in the Google archives of gcd-tech and sometimes gcd-main. And much of it is documented on the wiki. Apparently no one noticed, as it gets forgotten constantly and people refer to obsolete "new schema" structures all the time (in case you can't tell, it's a bit of a sore point).

In any event, the goal of this subcommittee is not to produce yet another schema documentation set. We want to focus on high-level goals here. If you want to make a goal to update and improve the existing "New Fun" documentation (that no one ever reads), I'm all for it. It's largely out of date due to the server crisis. But that should be done outside of this subcommittee- we're just setting the goals here.

thanks,
-henry

----- Original Message ----
> From: Alexandros Diamantidis <ad...@hellug.gr>
> To: gcd-softwar...@googlegroups.com

[Henry Andrews]

To clarify, this was not intended to imply that Alexandros hasn't paid attention to "New Fun", as I know he has. It was me grousing about common occurrences on other lists and failing to be clear about my target. Sorry about that, Alexandros. I do agree that we should ensure the documentation is comprehensive and easily located as a result of this committee's work.
thanks,
-henry

----- Original Message ----
> From: Henry Andrews <andrew...@yahoo.com>
> To: gcd-softwar...@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Tue, May 25, 2010 8:18:30 PM
> Subject: Re: [gcd-software] gcd-tech archives (was: Re: Redirection)
>

[Jason Sacks]

Thanks for the clarification, Henry. I've assumed that this group is working
on Vision Document planning as opposed to studying older ideas - though that
may be part of the process.

My apologies for not being active so far with this group - work and family
have been eating terribly into my free time but there is now light at the
end of the ever-metaphorical tunnel for me.

Jason

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Henry Andrews" <andrew...@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 11:12 AM
To: <gcd-softwar...@googlegroups.com>

[Henry Andrews]

Hi Jason,
Apparently everyone was busy during the week when I finally started this project! Don't worry, Jochen's on vacation and Phil's been likewise busy at work but hopes to join us shortly.

As far as examining the history, well, the history is complex and Alexandros has a pretty good point that if you go back and look at it we have a tendency to argue over the same things repeatedly. I would prefer to focus this discussion forward and deal with smoothing out and documenting the history elsewhere, but sometimes we do need to examine that.

Most of the history is about the schema. Other areas (like interacting with social media) were never really considered before. And still others (most notably web design and content presentation) were ignored simply because we lacked anyone with the proper expertise. I'm hoping we can flesh those areas out here.

There are also some things we should clear up about the schema, though. Lionel mentioned it being unlikely that we'll get to character tables within the next four or five years, and that it was questionable that we would get to creator tables. I actually think that's no longer the case. There is some important and difficult work to do, particularly with regards to the UI, for implementing the forms to work with multiple tables effectively. But the reason creators and characters were left out of New Fun is that we couldn't do the migration off-line. It's too complicated. However, circumstances have forced another path, and I would now advocate jumping those projects up in priority after doing a few simpler fields. Ralf's working on price, Jochen's working on reprints (which have a long history of preparatory work behind them), and I would like to implement feature, as it will flush out a lot of the issues that we'll see with characters and
creators, but is structurally *much* simpler. Even if no one can agree on what, exactly, a feature is.

But to get back to Jason's question, yes, I'd like to keep this focused on the vision, not the specifics. I'll try to summarize the points made so far and re-cast them in those terms tonight.

thanks,
-henry

----- Original Message ----
> From: Jason Sacks <jason...@hotmail.com>
> To: gcd-softwar...@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Wed, May 26, 2010 11:22:07 AM
> Subject: Re: [gcd-software] gcd-tech archives (was: Re: Redirection)
>

> Thanks for the clarification, Henry. I've assumed that this group is working on
> Vision Document planning as opposed to studying older ideas - though that may be
> part of the process.
>
> My apologies for not being active so far with this
> group - work and family have been eating terribly into my free time but there is
> now light at the end of the ever-metaphorical tunnel for me.
>
> Jason

> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Henry Andrews"

[Philip Rutledge]

Forgive me if this is already documented somewhere but does the new schema allow the creation of a "virtual-series" which is a logical join of multiple independent series?

I can understand a single series having a 1 to many relationship with multiple "aliases" for that title but what I'm thinking about is having a "virtual" series title which pulls together in a single series a series that has gone through multiple renames or companies.

For example a "Firestorm" series that joins "Fury of Firestorm" and "Firestorm, the Nuclear Man" into a single series just for presentation purposes.  This is a simple example but another one would be a single "Sun Runners" virtual series which pulls together the 5 different series that this book jumped between.

Not a high priority perhaps but a possible nice usability enhancement in my mind.  I think it would help the casual user find the books they are looking for faster.

Phil

[Henry Andrews]

Yes.  One of my favorite features actually, although sadly I agree it's not a high priority.  The number of cases is surprisingly high and complex, and you need the more structured and versatile tracking link system from New Fun to do it properly.

thanks,

-henry

[Philip Rutledge]

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Henry Andrews <andrew...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi Jason,
 Apparently everyone was busy during the week when I finally started this project!  Don't worry, Jochen's on vacation and Phil's been likewise busy at work but hopes to join us shortly.

Ok, I think I've caught up on most of the messages with some of my initial thoughts.  I have a couple of ideas to throw out there (and my response to Henry's homework assignment) that I'll get to later tonight.

Just a general question, I take it that at this point you (Henry) just want to have some general brainstorming of ideas and concepts and then later on you'll start to transform it into the vision/roadmap output?  

I did notice that some of the discussions did tend to start to get into the implementation challenges (which is natural) but at this level of the discussion I would think that you just want to get ideas flowing as long as they are reasonable and worry about the cost/schedule issues later?

Phil

[Henry Andrews]

Yes, I don't mind getting into implementation a bit right now, but I will prod people away from that as soon as I think the point has been made.

I said I'd write up a vision summary last night, but after going over the messages so far I'd like to let the brainstorming go on a bit longer.  I feel like some things haven't quite settled, and some topics haven't been touched (so I'll start a thread on those if your next few messages don't get to them).

After I feel like each major area has gotten some thought, I'll try to examine them to see what beliefs they espouse, and what goals would seem to take us in the right direction (see my initial email to the list).  Then we can debate the goals and move towards *high level* plans and measurements.

thanks,

-henry

From: Philip Rutledge <philip....@gmail.com>
To: gcd-software-committee <gcd-softwar...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Thu, May 27, 2010 12:42:54 PM
Subject: Re: [gcd-software] gcd-tech archives (was: Re: Redirection)