Re: please review issue-57 document draft before Tuesday telcon

On Tue, 2011-03-15 at 10:44 -0400, Jonathan Rees wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 9:16 AM, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:
> > On Sun, 2011-03-13 at 21:06 -0400, Jonathan Rees wrote:
> >> Not perfect but here it is...
> >>
> >> "How to refer to something using a URI"
> >> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/awwsw/issue57/20110313/
> >
> >
> >
> > 00. We've accumulated a lot of unfinished documents.  I think we need to
> > focus in more on *one* of them -- How about this one?  -- and finish it.
> 
> That's exactly what I've been doing... I think we discussed this on a telcon.
> 
> We'll pick up the ontology thread after this document gets released.
> 
> > 0. Limit the scope to RDF.  That's the use case that has been motivating
> > this, and we'll get more clarity if we can be more specific.
> 
> I'd be happy to entertain suggestions to make the presentation more
> concrete and readable, but it's very important to make clear that this
> is a webarch issue, not something in the jurisdiction of RDF.
> Currently RDF and OWL are the only languages (of which I'm aware) that
> care, but this may not be true in 5 or 10 years. Also if webarch loses
> RDF then the entire program of a global namespace is considerably
> weakened, so those who care about webarch need to be alerted that this
> affects them.

Agreed.  But since RDF *is* the motivating use case, I think it would
helpful to write this as a Webarch issue expressed in RDF.

> 
> > 0. A summary table of options may help, with links to
> 
> Was going to put that at the end. Just not done yet.
> 
> > 1. In sec 1.2 Glossary, in some cases you talk of "specializations" and
> > in other cases you talk of "versions", and "specialization" is not
> > defined.
> 
> Thanks for catching this. I've changed them all to "version".
> 
> > 2. Sec 2 in general: I think this section could benefit from referring
> > to the roles (URI owner, statement author, consumer) described in
> > http://dbooth.org/2009/lifecycle/#roles
> 
> I'm calling these roles "Alice", "Bob", and "Carol".
> 
> The "URI owner" theory is an unnecessary distraction.

I disagree.  I don't see why you are referring to it as a "theory" any
more than "Alice" is a theory.  They are both terms for the roles in the
scenarios.  I think it is helpful to use established terms, but I don't
think it is worth arguing this point further, so if you prefer to stick
with Alice, Bob and Carol at this point, I'm fine with that.  

When we start writing generalizations or (prose) rules though, I think
we will need to use general terms like "URI owner", "RDF statement
author" and "RDF consumer".

> 
> > 3. Sec 2.2 this sentence doesn't make sense to me, because AFAIK,
> > Alice's account does not describe a document, it describes a mynah: "The
> > referent is not the account that Alice publishes, it is the document
> > that Alice's account describes."
> 
> The sentence is correct as written. I've changed "document" to
> "information resource".

I'm still baffled by that sentence.  The sentence refers to "the
*document* that Alice's account describes".  But the definition of
"account" is: "A document or document part that provides information
about the meaning of a URI or other phrase."  And the description of
scenario 2.2 says: "Alice publishes a document that would lead a reader
to realize that the phrase refers to Fred".  So Alice's published
document seems to fit the definition of "account", and that account says
that the phrase "refers to Fred", i.e., Alice's account describes
*Fred*.  I am assuming that Fred is not a document.  Therefore, the
sentence in the second variant that mentions "the document that Alice's
account describes" does not make sense to me.

Perhaps the confusion is that the second "Variant" does not make clear
exactly which parts of the original scenario are being kept and which
are being changed, nor which "referent" is meant.

I think this could be clarified a lot by giving specific RDF and
document examples.

> 
> > 4. Regarding section 3.5:
> > [[
> > 3.5 Cite your sources
> > Whenever using a URI to refer to something, provide a link to the
> > document that carries an account of the URI's meaning. This is the
> > approach taken by OWL (owl:imports). The rdfs:definedBy property could
> > also be used for this purpose.
> >
> > Both of these properties beg the question in that they do not say how to
> > figure out what the target URI refers to.
> > ]]
> >
> > Do you mean that they beg question because they do not specify what to
> > do after one has obtained the document that carries an account of the
> > URI's meaning?   Or do you mean that they beg the question because they
> > do not say how to determine the document's URI, for example in a case
> > like this:
> >
> >  <x> rdfs:definedBy _:aBnode .
> 
>           Both of these properties beg the question in that
>    they do not say how to figure out what the URI that is the
>    target of owl:imports or rdfs:definedBy refers to. If the
>    meaning of <emph>that</emph> URI were given by citing a source,
>    there would be infinite regress.

I'm still not sure what you mean.  Suppose the community adopted the
convention that for any statement of the form

  <u1> rdfs:definedBy <u2> .

the document obtained by an HTTP GET of u2 should be taken as an account
of <u1>'s meaning.  In this case, the meaning of <u1> does not depend on
the meaning of <u2>, so where is the infinite regress?

> 
> > 5. In sec 3.7:
> > [[
> > [Is anyone, in practice, deploying 303 redirects to a "primary topic"
> > page not mentioning the URI to be accounted for, rather than to be a
> > document that explicitly mentions the URI?]
> > ]]
> > The delegation of authority at http://thing-described-by.org/ says
> > (among other things):
> > http://thing-described-by.org/#Delegation_of_Authority
> > [[
> > b. If dereferencing u yields content that does not explicitly specify
> > what resource http://thing-described-by.org/?u names, then
> > http://thing-described-by.org/?u names the primary subject of that
> > content.
> > ]]
> 
> Sure, but my question remains, is anyone using this?

I have no idea.


David

> 
> Thanks for the comments! You can see what I did here:
> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/awwsw/issue57/latest/
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> > --
> > David Booth, Ph.D.
> > http://dbooth.org/
> >
> > Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
> > reflect those of his employer.
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 

-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
http://dbooth.org/

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of his employer.

Received on Tuesday, 15 March 2011 18:06:35 UTC