Wikidata:Property proposal/name of the character role

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Creative work

Motivation

The interlinking of items often goes hand in hand with a loss of information with regard to the exact mention of a person name (credits), a function or a character role in a given database, on a theatre programme, etc.

While we certainly should aim for a maximum of linkages by using just one item for a given person (no matter how many aliases, pen names, etc. the person used over their career), we should also make an effort to preserve the source information (i.e. the name by which the person was credited in a given context). For this purpose, I would argue, that subject named as (P1810) should be used systematically (and not just for cases where we are aware that an alias was used) when ingesting data from databases or original sources. In the long run, this will also solve the problem of having unsourced aliases on our items.

Now, the same goes not only for names of real persons, but also for the names of character roles in works of the performing arts. The same role may go by different names, depending on the given translation or adaptation of the work. In order to deal with them in the same manner as we deal with person aliases, I would suggest the creation of a new property "name of the character role", which can be used alongside subject named as (P1810) on cast members and voice actors.

Background: In cooperation with staff members of the Swiss Archives for the Performing Arts (formerly: Swiss Theatre Collection) and a member of the German theatre archive community, I'm presently preparing the necessary ontology elements for a pilot ingest of theatre production data (all the productions of the Schauspielhaus Zürich during approx. 30 years). For us, this is a first step towards ingesting all the production data held by the Swiss Archives for the Performing Arts (50'000+ productions). --Beat Estermann (talk) 11:56, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Notified participants of WikiProject Performing arts

Notified participants of WikiProject Theatre

WikiProject Cultural heritage has more than 50 participants and couldn't be pinged. Please post on the WikiProject's talk page instead.

I would suggest using the label "character role named as", which I think would be clearer. Also, this qualifier should only be allowed where character role (P453) is also supplied, in my opinion. --Yair rand (talk) 17:13, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Changing the label to "character role named as" is fine with me. --Beat Estermann (talk) 22:19, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

However, I wouldn't enforce a declaration of character role; it should be sufficient if the item has a reference to the Work the Performing Arts Production is based on. There is a certain difficulty when creating entries for character roles based on the information contained in theatre production databases or in theatre programmes: It is not always clear to what extent the original set of character roles present in the literary Work (the play) was used for a given production, as adaptations may have been made or the names of character roles may have been translated/localized (sometimes it is known that changes have been made, but the original names of the roles are not indicated in the database or on the theatre programme). Therefore, I would suggest to proceed as follows: a) Enter the names of the character roles as qualifier "character role named as" on the item for the production; b) create separate items for the character roles, using the literary Work (an edition of the play) as reference; c) map the entries on the item of the production to the items describing the character roles. This last step could eventually be supported by a tool. --Beat Estermann (talk) 22:19, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether string or monolingual text is the right property. Do you see the name as being language independent? ChristianKl (✉) 18:18, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would stay with the string; the names of character roles typically contain information about the function, profession, etc. of the character, its relationship to other characters (all translatable) and/or proper names (not translatable; undefined language). --Beat Estermann (talk) 22:28, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

 Comment just to be sure to understand it right, is it the string version of character role (P453) (author name string (P2093) like is the string version author (P50), with all the similar up- and downsides, but still a good idea) or is it something else? Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 22:24, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that "name of character role" (or: "character role named as") works more like subject named as (P1810) and object named as (P1932). But it also comes with the advantage that it can be used when the target WD item for the character role is unknown or has not been defined yet; from this point of view, it also functions like author name string (P2093). --Beat Estermann (talk) 13:58, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

•  Support let them move ahead with the project. As we didn't come up with a better alternative.
  --- Jura 07:40, 8 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support ArthurPSmith (talk) 16:57, 8 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• @Beat Estermann, ArthurPSmith, VIGNERON:  Done Created as name of the character role (P4633). ChristianKl (✉) 22:59, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]