"tag:" Identification Idea [was: Re: Proposal: 'tag' URIs]

Many people don't have their own domain name, but do have an email
address, so I envisage that many people will be minting "email" type
tags rather than domain ones. Problem is, it is very difficult indeed
to make sure that someone was using a particular email address, unless
they send a letter to a list on a certain date... The idea: the W3C
(or some trusted non-partial entity) could set up a mailing list
whereby one sends an email with a subject that is the "body" of the
email tag to be minted, and the list sends back a confirmation email,
a bit like the Yahoogroups subscription process. Then, as long as the
tag hasn't already been taken on that date, the W3C would archive the
tag.

For example, if I sent an email to www-uri-tag@w3.org today, with the
subject "sbp", and the body "This identifies the owner of this email
address on this particular date, Sean B. Palmer", then it would be
sent to the list, which would check that I haven't already requested
"sbp" today. If I haven't, it would send a message to
sean@mysterylights.com asking for confirmation. I would reply, and it
would archive the tag, with a pointer in the archives to
tag://sean@mysterylights.com;1-4-28/sbp which when referenced would
bring up the message body.

The only problem with this is that it's difficult to do namespaces, so
there could be another list (e.g. www-uri-tag-ns@w3.org) that when a
message is sent to, acts as a namespace. For example, a request for
"barnyard/" would mean that I could use
tag://sean@mysterylights.com;1-4-28/barnyard/* as a namespace for
barnyard animals, rather than having to register barnyard/Horse
barnyard/Sheep barnyard/Cow and so on separately.

It may also be the case that the W3C would want a (possibly member
only) list for delegation of tags under tag://w3.org;*/* because I
expect that certain SW folk will be using them, and there'll be no way
of keeping track unless some system is se up, even if the minting of
tags was restricted to Team members.

The more I think about "tags", the more intrigued I become... Good
idea guys.

--
Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
@prefix : <http://webns.net/roughterms/> .
:Sean :hasHomepage <http://purl.org/net/sbp/> .

Received on Saturday, 28 April 2001 11:01:35 UTC