Person Browse

[dlschwartz]

@emgeier @davidamichelson

As discussed on Tuesday, Dave and I met to firm up some of the layout of the browse features Anthony and Erin have designed. We discussed creating three entry points for browse: Persons, Events, and Relations; instead of the current two: Persons and Factoids. I will write up one issue for each of those tabs.

One change that we didn't discuss on Tuesday is the need to nest a couple of the options. I'll show the nesting by indenting under the main browse filters sections. Please ask if this requires clarification.

Also, I'll display what we would like for the text of the different filters as markdown code, followed by an explanation of what should happen when a user selects an option under each filter.

---

Persons: When a user selects this option it defaults to a list of links to all person aggregation pages. For the formatting of the items in that list, see #118.

• Remove Filters/Show All Persons: We hope changing the text here will clarify things for the users.
• Sources: Filters the list of person aggregation links by persons appearing in the selected sources
  • Include All Sources: This radio button should be the default setting and when this box is selected it should automatically check all the other boxes.
  • Letters of Severus of Antioch: un-selecting this, or any of the following, should un-select "Include All Sources".
  • Lives of the Eastern Saints
  • Chronicle of Edessa
• Names: Filter list of person aggregation links by person name.
• Genders: Filter list of person aggregation links by persons having the selected gender.
• Occupations: Filter list of person aggregation links by persons having the selected occupation.
• Associated Events: Filter list of person aggregation links by the concept keyword selected for events in which they are mentioned.
• Associated Relations: Filter list of person aggregation links by the type of relationship selected in which the person is involved, subject or object.
• Associated Places: Filter list of person aggregation links by a place: birth, death, residence, citizenship.

[emgeier]

Just to confirm, the filter selections will perform in the same way as the current filters do on the factoids tab, in so far as a user can choose several relationships or several places within those menus. And additional menu selections will limit the results returned, so if I choose the place Edessa, the name John and the relationship child of, I will only get results that match persons associated with all three selections. Right? And though the relationships, for example, are attested in a factoid, we do not need to limit results based on the uncertainty associated with that factoid?

[emgeier]

Also, do you want the persons related to factoids without associated sources to show up in the search results with "all sources" selected? If we specify those three sources with the all selection, that excludes the persons related to factoids without sources. In contrast, right now the default factoid list on the factoid page contains all persons related factoids (there are about 100 without associated source triples) regardless of source, not limited by sources.

[dlschwartz]

Yes, the filter will perform as I understand the current filter to perform. The only caveat, is that it's still a little glitchy on the actual site. I believe it is already working this way and if our description sounds like what you've already written then let's assume we're all on the same page.

The uncertainty issue is a good questions. We decided to drop the uncertainty since the items returned are aggregation pages rather than individual factoid links that could be filtered out based on an uncertainty rating. Let me think through typing for a minute.

A user arrives at the page and they get a list of all person aggregation pages. If they selected an uncertainty rating to start with, this would not filter anyone out. I don't think any person appears only in uncertain factoids.

If on the other hand, they started by putting in a filter by event concepts, the person would be included if they are a participant in an event that meets that criteria, excluded if they are not. This would be the case regardless of an uncertainty rating on the event. If the user then filtered out by an uncertainty rating that was attached to that event factoid, the person aggregation page would get filtered out.

Do these scenarios match what you are thinking Erin?

If so, it would be nice to try to include uncertainty on the person browse page. If it is too complicated or doesn't work with additional faceting, then we can drop it. It's worth implementing if possible though. Thanks for catching this!

[dlschwartz]

Also, do you want the persons related to factoids without associated sources to show up in the search results with "all sources" selected? If we specify those three sources with the all selection, that excludes the persons related to factoids without sources. In contrast, right now the default factoid list on the factoid page contains all persons related factoids (there are about 100 without associated source triples) regardless of source, not limited by sources.

Hmm, they should all have a source. We may have an RDF serialization error that I missed. Can you give me an example?

[emgeier]

Maybe I am pulling the factoid data incorrectly? I have been assuming that factoids are the objects of the spr:reference-URL predicate in the SPEAR triples. But there are syriaca.org persons as objects as well: ex.
swds:death-when-8559-155-1
sps:death-when "0373-06-09"^^xsd:date;
spr:reference-URL http://syriaca.org/person/13 .

[dlschwartz]

Yeah, I'm afraid that this is a serialization error. Apparently I need to check these again but I'm not sure how best to do that. Let's discuss when we meet.