- From: Michael Schneider <schneid@fzi.de>
- Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 20:31:35 +0200
- To: "Dan Brickley" <danbri@danbri.org>
- Cc: "Semantic Web" <semantic-web@w3.org>, "public-lod" <public-lod@w3.org>
I think people do quickly adopt any technical term, if the thing that it denotes becomes interesting or relevant to them, or to large parts of the society. People know what /firewalls/ or /dynamic IP addresses/ are, or what the term /bitrate/ means for their favorite /audio compression format/, and they know all sorts of technical terms related to microprocessors or hard disks, etc. In particular, they have already learnt what the term /URL/ means, they have not been born with this knowledge. So why shouldn't they learn /URI/? Certainly not just because of confusion due to the large similarity of these two terms. People can distinguish between so many different acronyms (for example, the many 3-letter abbreviations of German football clubs come to mind :-)), they will hardly fail on this particular one, if they /have/ to learn it or /want/ to learn it. So why don't people adopt the term "URI"? Instead of trying to re-mint terms (don't touch the Wikipedia article! ;-)), you may rather see the non-satisfying situation as an indicator: namely for how relevant or interesting the term "URI" (and what it is intended to refer to) is for people and society at the moment. The name is not the issue. Best, Michael >-----Original Message----- >From: semantic-web-request@w3.org [mailto:semantic-web-request@w3.org] >On Behalf Of Dan Brickley >Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2010 12:18 PM >To: Semantic Web; public-lod >Subject: Fwd: backronym proposal: Universal Resource Linker > >So - I'm serious. The term 'URI' has never really worked as something >most Web users encounter and understand. > >For RDF, SemWeb and linked data efforts, this is a problem as our data >model is built around URIs. > >If 'URL' can be brought back from limbo as a credible technical term, >and rebranded around the concept of 'linkage', I think it'll go a long >way towards explaining what we're up to with RDF. > >Thoughts? > >Dan -- Dipl.-Inform. Michael Schneider Research Scientist, Information Process Engineering (IPE) Tel : +49-721-9654-726 Fax : +49-721-9654-727 Email: michael.schneider@fzi.de WWW : http://www.fzi.de/michael.schneider ======================================================================= FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik an der Universität Karlsruhe Haid-und-Neu-Str. 10-14, D-76131 Karlsruhe Tel.: +49-721-9654-0, Fax: +49-721-9654-959 Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts, Az 14-0563.1, RP Karlsruhe Vorstand: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rüdiger Dillmann, Dipl. Wi.-Ing. Michael Flor, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Wolffried Stucky, Prof. Dr. Rudi Studer Vorsitzender des Kuratoriums: Ministerialdirigent Günther Leßnerkraus =======================================================================
Received on Sunday, 18 April 2010 18:32:11 UTC