Re: Skolemization .well-known prefix: genid --> bnode or blanknode

Hi Richard,

On Wed, 2012-07-18 at 10:13 +0100, Richard Cyganiak wrote:
> David,
> 
> On 16 Jul 2012, at 03:52, David Booth wrote:
[ . . . ]
> > I suggest changing "genid" to "bnode" or "blanknode".
> 
> There was a poll between the alternatives "bnode", "genid" and
> "skolem" here:
> http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/meeting/2011-05-25
> 
> "genid" won. IIRC the argument that carried the day against "bnode"
> was: "It's not a bnode."

No, of course it isn't, it's a URI.  But it is *for* a bnode.  My
website is called http://dbooth.org/ because it is *for* me, not because
it *is* me.

Since the WG has already chosen the name "genid", the WG will have to
decide whether this input constitutes sufficient grounds to reconsider
the name.  But I really think the WG will be better helping the
community by choosing a name that is more clearly suggestive of its
purpose.  In debugging and validating sem web applications people
routinely visually inspect the data, looking at what URIs are used and
where they came from.  (There may well be other .well-known URIs that
become widely used in the future, so the fact that a bnode URI is minted
within .well-known will not necessarily be much of a visual clue.)
"genid" is a totally generic name that is already used for many other
purposes.  See for example, Microsoft's GenID object for generating
globally unique identifiers:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee796748%28v=cs.10%29.aspx 
OTOH "bnode" or "blanknode" would not be generic, and would clearly
correspond directly to established RDF terminology, just as my website
name *corresponds* to the name of my person and helps people to
instantly recognize that it is a website *for* me.  

P.S. A tongue-in-cheek suggestion: the-uri-formerly-known-as-a-bnode  ;)

Thanks

-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
http://dbooth.org/

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of his employer.

Received on Wednesday, 18 July 2012 18:02:31 UTC