Re: objections to webmention

And just to add a citation, I think this is the most definitive work on the subject, although it hardly addresses everything: 
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Feb/0085.html

As I see it, there are two main problems with decentralized extensibility:

1.   The mechanism (e.g. IRI prefixes) is always a bit more clumsy and error prone

2.  There's less pressure toward convergence, which results in less interoperability

I think the main problems with centralized extensibility can be addressed by suitable procedures, welcoming extensions.   Amy and I spent some time this evening crafting a possible process for this, with an eye to using it for AS2 extensions. Even though AS2 has URI-based decentralized extensibility, she and I think the above problems ought to be addressed.

      - Sandro

On June 5, 2016 7:41:36 PM PDT, Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org> wrote:
>
>
>On June 5, 2016 2:14:49 PM PDT, Melvin Carvalho
><melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
>>On 5 June 2016 at 22:20, Robert Sanderson <azaroth42@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> While I agree with Melvin's design aesthetics, I acknowledge that's
>>what
>>> they are.  There's no _functional_ problem with the current spec,
>and
>>while
>>> JSON-LD and URIs seem like a good practice, there's nothing written
>>in
>>> stone that says Thou Must Use URIs.
>>>
>>> I disagree however that it's a general purpose messaging framework.
>>It's
>>> explicitly (per the one sentence introduction):
>>>   "[...] a Webmention is a notification that one URL links to
>>another."
>>>
>>>
>>> Basing any understanding of webmention on the non-normative
>>extensions
>>> referenced seems like a trap to be avoided.  I (personally) would
>>simply
>>> remove Appendix B and focus on the actual value of the main
>>specification.
>>> Extensibility without namespaces at web scale is just impossible,
>and
>>may
>>> be leading to some of the confusion and design questions.
>>>
>>
>>Well put!
>>
>>So is webmention extensible, or is it not extensible.  I think this
>>could
>>be clearer.
>>
>
>We need to distinguish between centralized extensibility like in html5,
>css, uri schemes, schema.org, http headers, etc, and decentralized
>extensibility, as in RDF or link headers.
>
>Webmention has centralized extensibility.   Activity streams (by using
>json-ld) has decentralized extensibility.
>
>Personally, I feel like decentralized extensibility is a moral and
>psychological issue, but I'm well aware that the case for decentralized
>extensibility is weak.    The vision is of a wonderfully free and open
>yet interoperable ecosystem, but in practice that doesn't seem to
>happen. By far the greatest adoption of RDF happened when it was
>coupled with schema.org, with only centralized extensibility.
>
>Given that, I think webmention is fine having only centralized
>extensibility.
>
>     - Sandro
>
>
>>
>>>
>>> Rob
>>>
>>>

Received on Monday, 6 June 2016 07:26:38 UTC