RE: What is a version?

> 
>> The second principle could drive the decision whether to keep the old one with a link to the new one, 
>> e.g. if the original dataset with the error came with some sort of persistence guarantee, or to add a property 
>> to the description of the dataset to make sure people understand what happened, like the way 
>> the European DCAT-AP uses owl:versionInfo and adms:versionNotes.

> Yep. Which is why I always come back to the notion of one URI for the immutable version and another 
> for the latest/most correct version, whatever that might be.

Yes, I understand that. But even when you do that, you need to take into account the consequences of using either the link to the 'latest version' as opposed to a link to a specific version. For example, I have seen cases where a translation of a specific version of a document linked to the 'latest version' URL/URI of the original as its source, which then broke the provenance chain when the original was updated and republished -- the translation then made a false claim about its source. 

Sometimes people have the tendency to think of the 'latest version' as the 'best' version, and I have always pushed back against that: you should only use the 'latest version' URL/URI if and only if you really want to refer to the latest version, and use the 'real' (e.g. timestamped or versioned) URL/URI in all other cases.

Makx.

Received on Thursday, 17 August 2017 16:57:49 UTC