Re: telconf 07-11-2012 : what is webid

On 10 Nov 2012, at 02:14, Jürgen Jakobitsch <j.jakobitsch@semantic-web.at> wrote:
> hi,
> 
> just two small notes on today's telconf and the definition of what a
> webID is.

the minutes are here btw,
   http://www.w3.org/2012/11/09-webid-minutes.html

(Btw, there are still a few edits I would like to do that doc. 
Anyone know how I should go about doing that?)

> 
> 1. just to keep us out of troubles, i took a look around and found that
> the domain of predicate "denote" is widely used to be "URI" [1][2][3].
> none of the rare cases i found was something like "URL denote".

I think that is ok. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#section-1.1.3

   A URI can be further classified as a locator, a name, or both.  The
   term "Uniform Resource Locator" (URL) refers to the subset of URIs
   that, in addition to identifying a resource, provide a means of
   locating the resource by describing its primary access mechanism
   (e.g., its network "location"). 

So I am not sure if a WebID such as http://joe.example/#me is a URL or
not yet. Even if it were a URL it would also be a URI and so denote.
( Still it says that future specs should use the term URI. )

What we need to describe is first something more general that the LDP 
spec needs to define perhaps, or that we need to define: and that is a URI
that has a canonical method for dereferencing its sense ( or if you prefer
its definition ), and that this definition in priority identify the meaning 
of the term. This is core to how linked data works because the owner of the
URL namespace has priority in defining the meaning of the terms that are 
there.  We could call this a Linked Data Identifier (LDI).

It is important to see the difference. If in my profile at 
<http://bblfish.net/people/henry/card> I describe Tim Berners Lee
  
<http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card#i> a animal:Lion;
     ....

then I am not defining the meaning of that term. I can't: the namespace
does not belong to me. The namespace is not related to the document that
made that statement. The document that defines TimBLs URI is canonically 
related to the to the URI <http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card#i>, 
that means one has to look at the protocol part of that document.

This is what an LDI should be.

Extra features
--------------

Now a WebId is just a subset of such LDI's referring to agents. 

But I think we may need to also add that the Agent Referred to by a WebID 
also is aware/ in control of the WebID. This is because we need to make 
sense of talk such as 

 a. "my WebID is...",
 b. "you can link to my WebID here...", 
 c. "what is your WebID?"
 d. "Don't link to that URL, that's not my WebID - someone just made a copy of my
profile there", 
 e. "I have three WebIDs".
 f. "That is not my WebID, that's a wikipedia page about me :-)"

The point is we don't want a description of someone on Wikipedia to be considered
a WebID just because it uniquely identifies that person. If the person cannot be
considered to be  in charge or responsible for what is said there then it is just 
a URI describing that person. If it uses RDF then we can say that it is an LDI. But 
a WebID requires some notion of responsibility of the owner: for example I should 
need to know that if I loose my private key I need to update my WebID profile. ( 
This may involve contacting the bank ) I don't need to update all the copies of 
my profile people made. I don't need to ask people I don't know about to update 
their databases about me. Even though other LDIs correctly and uniquely identify
me a WebID is something I am in charge of.


> 
> 2. the "uniquely" thing.
> using IFPs requires knowledge about the property itself. is there any
> problem with that?
> an agent might (will in most cases) need to get the property's
> description also.

It either knows it or got it beforehand. For well known vocabularies
people end up hard coding this knowledge in the user agents. One need
not use IFPs only. Functional Properties can also work, and OWL Keys too.
There may even be ways of getting close enough probabilistically.

> 
> wkr turnguard
> 
> [1] http://dbooth.org/2010/ambiguity/paper.html
> [2] http://www.w3.org/wiki/SocialMeaning
> [3] http://bit.ly/YTdz3N (as i understand it)
> 
> 
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