Re: Dataset vocabularies vs. interchange vocabularies (was: Re: DBpedia 3.2 release, including DBpedia Ontology and RDF links to Freebase)

On Nov 19, 2008, at 5:34 PM, Richard Cyganiak wrote:

> Interestingly, this somewhat echoes an old argument often heard in  
> the days of the “URI crisis” a few years ago: ““We must avoid a  
> proliferation of URIs. We must avoid having lots of URIs for the  
> same thing. Re-use other people's identifiers wherever you can.  
> Don't invent your own unless you absolutely have to.””
>
> I think that the emergence of linked data has shattered that  
> argument. One of the key practices of linked data is: ““Mint your  
> own URIs when you publish new data. *Then* interlink it with other  
> data by setting sameAs links to existing identifiers.””

So this sounds like you are saying there is a near-consensus of the  
semantic web community.  Except, the previous thread on "URIs and  
Unique IDs" emphasized the view of a number of people that multiple  
URIs for the same concept was "bad" (technical term), especially if  
they are generated en masse.

Do you think the argument is mostly settled, or would you agree that  
duplicating a massive set of URIs for 'local technical simplification'  
is a bad practice? (In which case, is the question just a matter of  
scale?)

John

--------------
John Graybeal   <mailto:graybeal@mbari.org>  -- 831-775-1956
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org

Received on Wednesday, 26 November 2008 21:54:37 UTC