Re: "Publish the policies followed when coining URIs"

Emma, Karen,

Thank you for the careful feedback!

I restored the original text, then reintroduced some changes (as described
below) so that the before-and-after can be compared [1].

[1] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/index.php?title=Draft_recommendations_page_take2&diff=6181&oldid=6175

On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 12:40:10PM +0200, Emmanuelle Bermes wrote:
> vocabulary / ontology (versionning, etc.). Maybe the "preserving"
> vocabularies is too much in the title here, but we should at least
> keep "managing" - so how about :
> 
> === Develop policies for managing RDF vocabularies and coining URIs ===

+1 - good - or just "RDF vocabularies and their URIs"?

> >>    * Patterns used to coin the URIs, preferably based on best-practice guidelines.
> >>    * Institutional commitments to the persistence of the URIs.
> 
> +1 for these edits, actually making things clearer

Okay.

> >>    * The use of "HTTP" URIs, which invoke the Hypertext Transfer Protocol supported
> >>      universally by Web browsers, and their resolution to any Web pages or RDF schemas
> >>      which document the meaning of the URIs.
> 
> +1, I like the new wording

Okay.

Remaining problems, in my opinion:

> >>    * Version policy for the resources identified by the URIs.
> 
> lost version policy for the namespace itself

The problem here, as I see it, is that the text refers both to "vocabulary" and
to "namespace" -- the latter sometimes as a synonym for "vocabulary" and
sometimes for a URI -- i.e., the base URI used to "derive" the URIs (as in:
"policies for the namespaces used to derive those URIs").

If "namespace" is being used to refer to a URI, it does not make sense to talk
about "versioning" the namespace, because a URI is not versioned.  (A URI may
contain "versioning information", though that is not best practice for RDF
vocabularies, but even then, a URI with new versioning information is not a
"version" of an older URI - it is simply a new URI.)

I think the ambiguity can be resolved by replacing "namespace" with 
"vocabulary" in:

    BEFORE> Version control for individual URIs and the namespace itself.
    AFTER>  Version control for a vocabulary and its terms.

and also in:

    BEFORE> Extensibility of use of the namespace by smaller organizations.
    AFTER>  Extensibility of the vocabulary by other organizations.  (*PROPOSED*)

However, I agree with Emma when she says it is unclear what is meant
in this sentence:

Emma> "* Extensibility of use of the namespace by smaller organizations."
Emma> I'm not sure what was meant here, but feel uncomfortable with removing
Emma> it altogether.

The sentence seems to be saying that the base URI for a vocabulary might be
used by "smaller organizations" (why "smaller"?) to coin URIs for (their own?)
terms, and that this use is "extensible".  If so, I don't quite get it.

If the point were "extensibility of the vocabulary by other organizations", I
can at least think of scenarios that would fit (e.g., AGROVOC extended by
editorial teams in India and China).  Or even: "Use of the namespace by other
organizations" (for when the AGROVOC team in India adds a new URI using the
AGROVOC namespace).
    
> >> --  Removed reference to "Good practice guidelines and recipes for constructing
> >>    ontologies and structured vocabularies." -- out of place here.
> 
> Not sure it's irrelevant : best practices would be needed when we're
> talking about providing URIs for a vocabulary which wasn't primarily
> designed for the Semantic Web (e.g. RDA)

I do not think the point it irrelevant; it just seems out of place in a
paragraph that focuses on managing RDF vocabularies and URIs.  Maybe it could
be turned into a full sentence and added to the end of the point on "Develop
library data standards that are compatible with Linked Data" [2].

Tom

[2] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/Draft_recommendations_page_take2#Develop_library_data_standards_that_are_compatible_with_Linked_Data

Received on Monday, 5 September 2011 15:49:09 UTC