Related to Issue-46

Christophe,

I'm working through the UCR doc and have got to yours at
http://w3c.github.io/dwbp/usecasesv1.html#UC-DigitalArchivingofLinkedData

How do you square your (correct in my view) aim of having persistent IDs 
Web resolvable when your employer writes this on its web site:

"Web addresses such as Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are an 
unreliable way of referring to digital objects. URLs are, after all, 
only addresses. Like people, digital contents move from one address to 
another, and the old address may be taken over by different contents. We 
all know that broken links are a significant nuisance. More subtly, a 
link may work but the target changes - the results of confusion may be 
dramatic. After long enough time, almost every URL will become useless."

That's a quote from the persid Web site your use case refers to, see 
http://www.persid.org/initiative.html

That paragraph is, of course, only true if you want it to be true. 
Promoters of DOIs say the same thing and a lot of people believe it - 
even though it is patently untrue.

I am reluctant to have a W3C document point to a service that is based 
on the false premise that all URLs are ephemeral. URI/URL persistence is 
a choice anyone can make - one W3C is keen to promote.

My suggestion is to change the current text:

"Consumers of the data are expected to look for specific content based 
on its associated <a href="http://www.persid.org/">persistent 
identifier</a> , download it from the archive and use it."

To

"Consumers of the data are expected to look for specific content based 
on its associated identifier, download it from the archive and use it."

Note the removal of the word persistent and the hyperlink.

Sorry if I sound irritated - but this is an issue that I find, well, 
irritating!

Phil.

-- 


Phil Archer
W3C Data Activity Lead
http://www.w3.org/2013/data/

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

Received on Wednesday, 1 October 2014 11:44:00 UTC