Re: Question about identifiers

Currently a human readable pattern would not help in terms of crawling...
however I still maintain my (minority) view that as a method of expressing
current and past geographic hierarchies such uri schemes could be useful.

ed


On Fri, 19 Aug 2016 at 13:05 Frans Knibbe <frans.knibbe@geodan.nl> wrote:

> On 19 August 2016 at 12:10, Ed Parsons <eparsons@google.com> wrote:
>
>> So perhaps best practice is to update the resource at the old URI to
>> point to the new one ?
>>
>
> That is a possibility, but it would be messy. For individual resources
> redirection would have to be set up. That means high maintenance costs and
> a high risk of mistakes. And still there would be the risk of
> misinterpretation. A human consumer could interpret the first URI
> encountered without following it to an alternative URI, still leading to
> false data.
>
> But what would be the point anyway? If a  path in the URI like
> /{municipality}/{quarter}/{neighbourhood} is for human consumption only
> it is not that valuable, I think, assuming that most people don't read URIs.
>
> The only reason I can think of to want to have a hierchical path in a URI
> is if web crawlers are known to parse the URI strings themselves (next to
> the URI payload). That could in theory lead to improved discoverabilty of
> resources. I wonder if that actually happens... Perhaps Ed knows how the
> Google crawlers behave in that respect? Or would that be sharing trade
> secrets?
>
> Regards,
> Frans
>
>
>
>> Ed
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 19 Aug 2016 at 11:03 Frans Knibbe <frans.knibbe@geodan.nl> wrote:
>>
>>> On 19 August 2016 at 11:11, Linda van den Brink <
>>> l.vandenbrink@geonovum.nl> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yes…  it is generally easier to make meaningless IDs persistent. But it
>>>> is nice to have URIs that are human readable. In the Dutch URI strategy we
>>>> do advise having human-readable parts in the URI scheme, but say that
>>>> officially these mean nothing i.e. we say it is extremely ill-advised to
>>>> ascribe any meaning to {concept} **for the machine**. URIs are opaque
>>>> in a technical sense. Meanwhile, however, they do give hints to human
>>>> readers.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Then how can you tell humans that they can interpret the URI and tell
>>> machines that they should not? Is there a mechanism for doing that?
>>>
>>> Greetings,
>>> Frans
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *Van:* Ed Parsons [mailto:eparsons@google.com]
>>>> *Verzonden:* vrijdag 19 augustus 2016 11:02
>>>> *Aan:* Frans Knibbe; SDW WG (public-sdw-wg@w3.org)
>>>> *CC:* Linda van den Brink; Joshua Lieberman (
>>>> jlieberman@tumblingwalls.com); Byron Cochrane
>>>> *Onderwerp:* Re: Question about identifiers
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> While I accept that the current view of URI schemes having no explicit
>>>> meaning, I do see great value in the
>>>> /{municipality}/{quarter}/{neighbourhood} as a simple way of
>>>> expressing geographical hierarchy independent of geometry... What's the
>>>> worst that could happen ?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ed
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, 19 Aug 2016 at 09:30 Frans Knibbe <frans.knibbe@geodan.nl>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> A prime requirement of good URI minting is to not put any meaning in
>>>> the URI, at least no meaning that is somehow intended for consumers.
>>>> Everything that needs to be said about a resource, like its membership of
>>>> data collections or its versioning, can be said in the data that is
>>>> returned when the URI is dereferenced.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> URI schemes like /{municipality}/{quarter}/{neighbourhood} could be
>>>> dangerous, because consumers could inadvertently try to derive meaning from
>>>> such an URI. The usefulness of such a scheme in URI minting is also
>>>> doubtful, because administrative structure can change in time. That could
>>>> complicate the URI minting procedures over time.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I do wonder to what extent common web crawlers try to parse URIs and
>>>> attach meaning to URI parts.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Frans
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 18 August 2016 at 22:55, Byron Cochrane <bcochrane@linz.govt.nz>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I like the guidance under the URI-Strategy under Hierarchical URIs
>>>> generally, but have some reservations to this intelligent identifiers
>>>> approach.
>>>> For metadata access I think it is a good thing.  Most metadata for an
>>>> individual features will usually reside at the dataset or collection
>>>> (better term) level.  This hierarchical approach makes this metadata easy
>>>> to access.
>>>>
>>>> But this built in intelligence makes the permanence of the URIs more
>>>> difficult.  For example, administrative boundaries change through mergers
>>>> and annexations.  A spatial thing that was in one collection is now in
>>>> another.  The URIs for these things then confuse more than help.  URI
>>>> redirects are one way to deal with this, but perhaps tracking these
>>>> relationships through applied ontologies such as skos:broader and
>>>> skos:narrower is the better practice?
>>>>
>>>> No answers from me here, just questions.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Byron
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________________
>>>> From: Linda van den Brink [l.vandenbrink@geonovum.nl]
>>>> Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2016 8:28 PM
>>>> To: Joshua Lieberman (jlieberman@tumblingwalls.com)
>>>> Cc: SDW WG (public-sdw-wg@w3.org)
>>>> Subject: Question about identifiers
>>>>
>>>> Hi Josh,
>>>>
>>>> Coming back to the telecon yesterday:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> <joshlieberman> Should identifiers be part of a system for the features
>>>> of interest?
>>>>
>>>> joshlieberman: making identifiers part of a system, where the features
>>>> are part of the system?
>>>> ... for example corresponding to paths in a taxonomy
>>>>
>>>> Linda: no answer right now, will have to think about it
>>>>
>>>> Were you talking about recommending some system for creating HTTP URI
>>>> identifiers, i.e. some sort of URI strategy or pattern? Specifically where
>>>> the features can be organised into some system like a hierarchy, as with
>>>> administrative regions? There are some examples from Geonovums testbed here
>>>> https://github.com/geo4web-testbed/topic3/wiki/URI-Strategy under
>>>> Hierarchical URIs.
>>>>
>>>> Just trying to understand what you mean… we could add some guidance to
>>>> the BP about this. I think that would be helpful.
>>>>
>>>> Linda
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________
>>>> Geonovum
>>>> Linda van den Brink
>>>> Adviseur Geo-standaarden
>>>>
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>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> *Ed Parsons *FRGS
>>>> Geospatial Technologist, Google
>>>>
>>>> Google Voice +44 (0)20 7881 4501
>>>> www.edparsons.com @edparsons
>>>>
>>> --
>>
>> *Ed Parsons *FRGS
>> Geospatial Technologist, Google
>>
>> Google Voice +44 (0)20 7881 4501
>> www.edparsons.com @edparsons
>>
> --

*Ed Parsons *FRGS
Geospatial Technologist, Google

Google Voice +44 (0)20 7881 4501
www.edparsons.com @edparsons