acl-org / acl-org/acl-anthology

Explicit event representation

Open
#2,743 7 comments 0 reactions 3 assignees Claimed by @davidstap View on GitHub
db-schema
Dominant language
Python
Stars
797
Forks
408
Avg merge
3d 19h
Merged PRs (30d)
36

Description

In a similar vein as #2603, I'd like to make all events explicit in the XML.

We implicitly generate events of the form "{venue}-{year}" for every venue referenced in a volume. For example, the following XML ...

```xml



...
2014
gwc
```

... induces an event ["gwc-2014"](https://aclanthology.org/events/gwc-2014/).

However, old-style collections like W14 contain many different workshops, and therefore many different "events". This creates some challenges to making these events explicit:

1. The schema currently only allows a single `` per collection.
2. An explicitly defined `` lists `` volume IDs. This doesn't include the volume IDs defined in the same XML file, as they are assumed to be part of the event automatically.
3. Thus, if we allowed multiple `` definitions per collection, we'd have to list _all_ associated volume IDs explicitly. This is because an event like "gwc-2014" should only include "W14-1", but not all the other volumes defined in W14.

In my opinion, this raises the question if events should be defined in the collection XML at all. In the library, if we want to find an event with ID "gwc-2014", it is undeterminable which file will contain this event (_except for the rather loose association that it's probably in a "?14.xml" or "2014.*.xml" file_). On the other hand, events can also define bibliographic items like talks, which we also hope to expand in the future — and those clearly belong in the XML.

I'm not sure how best to resolve this yet, and welcome opinions.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

Start by reading the related discussion in issue #2603, then review the collection XML schema and the library's event lookup behavior described here. Trace how implicit events, explicit events, and colocated volume IDs are currently represented. Done means agreeing on and documenting a design that resolves the single-event limit, volume association rules, and event discoverability.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
xml
Domain
backend, content
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.