Comment on Section 4.8

Hi,

This email revisits some comments which I raised previously [1, 2]
about the early working draft but which I don't feel have yet been
adequately been discussed. I'm referring specifically to Section 4.8,
Common Properties [3].

It is clearly useful if people re-use existing properties where they
are applicable. It might also be useful to have some general guidance
on which properties are considered to be currently "best practice" or
are most widely deployed, etc.  However I don't think the LDP
specification is the place to do this. For two reasons:

* This kind of guidance is best published by specific communities who
are seeking convergence around their data. Not on a blanket basis by a
W3C group. There needs to be space for these kinds of recommendations
to evolve and be widely discussed
* LDP is meant to be defining a platform for managing data. It should,
as far as possible, be agnostic to what data is being stored inside
it.

A good example of community specific guidance around property usage
can be found in [4]. Personally I think thats more useful than a
simple picklist of properties.

My other issue with the guidance as it stands is that it diverges from
current practice. For example:

* rdfs:label is widely used as a default labelling property, its not
just used in vocabularies. Discouraging its use suggests that usage is
wrong; at the very least an alternative ought to be recommended
* There are occasions when using the old Dublin Core terms may be more
appropriate than the newer dcterms, see [4]
* The LDP specification recommends use of rdfs:range that are at odds
with their specification and common practice, e.g. dcterms:title and
dcterms:description both have a range of rdfs:Literal.

I'd like to propose that Section 4.8 as it stands be removed and
perhaps replaced with some informative text recommending re-use of
vocabulary where it makes sense to do so.

Cheers,

L.

[1]. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ldp-wg/2012Jun/0013.html
[2]. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ldp-wg/2012Jul/0026.html
[3]. http://www.w3.org/TR/ldp/#common-properties
[4]. http://aims.fao.org/lode/bd

-- 
Leigh Dodds
Freelance Technologist
Open Data, Linked Data Geek
t: @ldodds
w: ldodds.com
e: leigh@ldodds.com

Received on Friday, 7 December 2012 16:43:49 UTC