Re: Persistence

This makes a lot of sense.

Who would be that will executor? In the case of public sector websites, 
presumably the relevant national archive? Is there a business model here 
I wonder ;-)

As for top level domains, some are more politically acceptable than 
others of course. Perversely perhaps, it seems that a vocabulary hosted 
on example.eu, example.us or example.gov.uk might face more resistance 
to uptake than example.ie or example.ly, especially if it spelled out a 
nice word like semantical.ly (which appears to be available btw).

What we're talking about is maintaining a set of URIs for the long term 
for vocabularies. For documents and Web content in general, an archivist 
might take a different view. Britain's National Archives can, 
legitimately, say that, for example, the Bercow Report of July 2008 is 
still publicly available online. It's at:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20080528125538/http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/bercowreview/docs/7771-DCSF-BERCOW.PDF

The issue though is that it used to be at
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/bercowreview/docs/7771-DCSF-BERCOW.PDF

and if anyone had linked to the original URI then someone following that 
link would see a short HTML page explaining at the dcsf.gov.uk site is 
no longer in operation, where the current live version is, and where the 
archive is. That's a very basic message for humans and no message at all 
for machines.

Hmmm... Given that the original URI of the doc is preserved within the 
new one, it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a script that 
automatically gave a 301 redirect *if* the target gave a sensible 200 
response and a helpful message in case the target lead to a 404?

Phil.

On 22/11/2011 14:30, Richard Cyganiak wrote:
> On 17 Nov 2011, at 19:26, Sandro Hawke wrote:
>> My strawman proposal would be:
>>
>> - vocabularies should be given their own domain name, probably in .net
>> (they are infrastructure).   this way full ownership as well as
>> maintenance duties can be transfered, legally, as necessary.
>
> +1. Getting an own domain for the vocabulary also helps keeping the URIs short.
>
> On the other hand, using something like purl.org also seems reasonable.
>
> I'm agnostic regarding the top-level domain. I note that the .net TLD isn't terribly popular and I can't think of many current examples of vocabularies in the .net namespace.
>
>> - there should be a two-level ownership structure, where one
>> disinterested, trusted, 3rd party (like the executor of a will) retains
>> final control, but delegates to the creator/maintainer.   With written
>> policies about what happens in various eventualities.   But, basically,
>> if either of these parties loses interest, they can be smoothly
>> replaced, and if the creator/maintainer ceases operation or stops acting
>> in good faith, it can be replaced.
>
> Again, +1.
>
> Best,
> Richard
>

-- 


Phil Archer
W3C eGovernment
http://www.w3.org/egov/

http://philarcher.org
+44 (0)7887 767755
@philarcher1

Received on Tuesday, 22 November 2011 15:13:06 UTC