Re: Announce: Linked Data Patterns book

On 7 April 2010 10:31, Vasiliy Faronov <vfaronov@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
> Thanks for your perspective--this problem is something I haven't
> considered before. But let me bring up a question.
>
> Suppose we have the resource (URI) X, which is the original resource
> that the annotations are all about. Someone comes around and publishes
> an annotation about X, using a newly minted URI Y (owl:sameAs X).
>
> Y conforms perfectly to the Linked Data model: you can dereference Y and
> get the annotation for X, then follow the owl:sameAs link and get the
> "authoritative" description of X.
>
> But the question is: where else in the Linked Data graph would we find
> references to Y? Since everyone wishing to annotate X mints their own
> URIs, we end up with a number of equivalent URIs that all point to X,
> but are themselves not pointed to. In other words: using URI Y in a
> description would constitue an annotation, and thus, according to your
> model, warrant minting a new URI Z. So, even though Y can be linked to,
> nobody actually ends up doing this.
>
> Maybe I'm missing some other uses for Y?

If there was an annotation, there should be an equivalency
relationship defined to the original URI, so Y would link back to X,
and Z would link back to Y, and possibly X.

To review:
* The major reason for not wanting to do this is that it requires
reasoning processes to infer the relationship between Z and both Y and
X.
* The major reasoning for wanting to do it is that non-authoritative
sources can be referred to, and the references can be resolved using
Linked Data principles, without requiring the original authority to
participate, as they may not want to do so for any number of social or
technical reasons.
* My contention is that it is not a good idea to promote the idea that
everyone use X in their documents, if the statements are not going to
be resolvable using the URI's in the statement, as they would be if
people used Y and Z.

I guess it is a fundamental mistrust in the social aspects of the
Linked Data X-only system that requires everyone to accept everyone
elses ideas. This mistrust does however have practical benefits, as it
results in a system where statements are resolvable using information
in the statements, so there are social benefits to the system.

In my opinion, the benefit of creating Y is to provide accessibility
while we are still emphasising direct HTTP GET resolution above other
future recommendations such as pinging multiple SPARQL endpoints for
information in order to resolve a URI. If distributed querying was
common than a sole URI, Y, would be useful, as there would not be a
simple one to one restriction between Y and *the* authoritative
document describing Y because a user could compile their own document
using their trusted endpoints (or simply all endpoints if they have no
trust opinions).

Cheers,

Peter

Received on Wednesday, 7 April 2010 01:56:15 UTC