Re: Dates in URIs?

John Cowan writes:

> Renato Iannella scripsit:
> 
> > My question then, as an example, if you look at the URI in [1] with 
> > the 2001 date in it - does this mean
> > that the resource in question was written on 2001?
> 
> It does not.  The W3C often assigns a year number as the most 
significant
> part of the URI path so that it can be sure that URIs are unique
> over time, even as parts of the URI space are created and destroyed.
> It is the TAG, not the particular resource, that dates to 2001.

Exactly.  I'd like to point out that John's observation is completely 
consistent with the draft finding [1], which I think does a pretty good 
job of making clear that the only metadata inferences you can depend on 
are ones for which the "encoding of such metadata [I.e. in the URI] is 
documented by applicable standards and specifications".

There is no specification from the W3C warranting that what appears to be 
a date in the URI of a W3C document is in fact its date of original 
creation.  On the contrary, the W3C URI policy is that the URI path 
segment in question refers to the date that the URI was allocated, not the 
date that content was made available for it.  This part of the W3C URI 
space was allocated for use by the TAG in 2001.

Noah

[1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/metaDataInURI-31.html

--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
--------------------------------------

Received on Wednesday, 8 November 2006 15:09:50 UTC