RE: backronym proposal: Universal Resource Linker

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
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Email: michael.schneider@fzi.de
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Received on Sunday, 18 April 2010 18:32:11 UTC