User:Reversedragon/SignEntityProposal

Data model

A Sign Entity resembles a Wikibase Item with the capacity for representing figurative symbols. It has a main body much like a regular Wikibase Item, a conceptual area of Fragment sub-Entities which represent small-scale variations in form, and a conceptual area of meaning sub-Entities which represent literal or figurative assigned meanings. In concept, it should not be assumed that any particular Sign Entity will actually use all three of these fields. Many Sign Entities may be used for completely literal concepts which only "figuratively" refer to themselves, and many Sign Entities will have only one variation such that they will not need Fragments. This will already sound perfectly logical when assuming that Signs which do not have Fragments will have meanings, or Signs which do not have meanings will have Fragments. However, Sign Entities are also allowed to have neither any meanings nor any Fragments. In this case, a Sign Entity is representing something strictly and completely literal which is not meant to refer to anything else, exactly as it would if it had a meaning referring to itself. This characteristic of the Sign Entity is a concession to the fact that in terms of the linguistic definition of sign, all digitally-encoded Entities are themselves technically signs rather than the literal real-world concepts they model; as models of reality, or of some particular fictional reality, all Entities potentially include errors with respect to their correspondence to the relationships existing within a particular defined reality (observed or defined Facticity). As such, it fundamentally makes sense to give all concepts in an ontology the ability to be changed from figurative to literal or from literal to figurative depending on how well they are found to properly correspond to a given defined reality. If, in a hypothetical scenario, people believed in the existence of luminiferous ether into the age of digital ontologies, this concept might be encoded as a literal Entity one day, but the day this model was falsified, whoever was maintaining the ontology would want to take the same Entity and reassign it as a figurative concept with a meaning of being a falsified model of what it models. Equally, if people were convinced string theory was impossible, but experiments showed a string theory equation to be correct, it would be important to update the ontology from having one meaning of the equation literally referring to itself to having two meanings of referring to itself or referring to the real-world process it accurately models. In other areas of knowledge, such as religion or poetry, all Signs would be assumed to be figurative and the purpose of the meanings area would be to separate different meanings of the same sign

...wait, what about S2 statements. S2 statements are supposed to represent specific models of objects or signifiers put together a specific way, so that a model from mainstream Marxism-Leninism stands separate from a model from Trotskyism stands separate from a model from Christianity from Buddhism from Hinduism. do we really need the meanings field when there are S2 statements?? that is a conundrum

a WikibaseSign
dimension - Z, S1, etc, as defined on Wikibase instance
Fragments
Meanings

Works and editions

A Sign Entity can group together works and editions for easy reference, rather than having a number of separate free-floating Items that take extra time to plan out or keep track of. The meanings area is unused given that works and editions are literal objects, and the Fragments area is used to represent specific editions for particular years, physical media, languages, localization regions, adaptation formats based very clearly on the exact same story (Scholastic comics are a good example), and so forth.

Journey to the West
two editions

Dragon Ball
single-volume edition
three-volume edition

Wings of Fire
Wings of Fire Graphix

Into the Pit
Into the Pit (game)
Return to the Pit

Pokémon card with clear editions

Binomial names

A Sign Entity can represent a genus containing multiple binomial names, or a species containing multiple subspecies, with the binomial names modeled as Lexemes. The Meanings field may optionally be used to associate particular type specimens which were at one time claimed to belong to the genus or species. If a particular type specimen is reassigned to a different genus or species constituting a different Entity, the Meaning should be marked as an obsolete model.

Archaeopteryx lithographica

Abelmoschus manihot var. pungens
Abelmoschus manihot var. tetraphyllus
Abelmoschus manihot subsp. manihot

Scientific models

string theory model of gravitons
meaning - tentative model of gravity

graviton field model
meaning - tentative model of gravity

loop quantum gravity
meaning - tentative model of gravity

Philosophical models

[S2] Proletariat is singular and multiple countries can unite at once

[S2] Proletariats are plural and belong to specific national populations

Software versions

MediaWiki
important versions

SCP reports

S447
S447-F1 (SCP-447-1), the sphere itself
S447-F2 (SCP-447-2), the ooze that comes out of it

Creature form charts

Pokémon

Vulpix
Alolan Vulpix
Ninetales
Alolan Ninetales

Digimon

Tamagotchi

Keitai Denjuu Telefang

Asekai (zensekai project; unreleased) - I am doing this totally from memory. Valenoern had better fix this

Valenoern
Metric 012n / Metric Lei'un'er'n
Metric 012n / Metric CypherWanton
Rexdecima
Burskandrix

Monster Rancher / Monster Farm

# in Monster Rancher, hybrids are listed by their main strain

Crossdrawn Ways / CDRW (zensekai project; unreleased)

# in CrossDRawn Ways, hybrids are listed by their texture strain rather than their main strain
sundersorce  Sundersorce "Sunder"
Bear-arms    Chase    × Sunder
Escalade     Memorō   × Sunder
(puppy)      Verve    × Sunder
Sledge       Shade    × Sunder