Re: Tag Time Issues

Sean B. Palmer <sean@mysterylights.com> wrote:

> This all stems from one of the most interesting aspects of the "tag:"
> delegation, which is its dependence upon the notion of "tag time",
> i.e. one particular day on or after 1st January 2001.

I really think tag is a good idea (though I'd appreciate a more unique name,
as Sean does) and something that's very much needed.

But there have been two issues about the tag spec that have bothered me:

1) Why does tag insist on using such strange dates? It seems that the magic
date 2001-1-1 will cause confusion and misuse of tags. Certainly it confused
me for a bit. Wouldn't it be simpler just to specify full dates as in the
original proposal -- I think this would make more sense and be more
compatible.

You seem to indicate that the shortness rule is because you need to encode
these in barcodes. Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems unlikely that
the few extra characters needed will make that much of a difference. And
even if they do, can't you put this in the barcode encoding/decoding
mechanism, and not bother the users with it?

2) Similarly, the rule that you can mint tags on dates before you've "owned"
the domain just seems silly. There is no technical reason for this, it just
seems like an exception so that people can use the magic date mentioned
above. People are highly unlikely to do diligent research on past domains,
and thus will probably accidentally run into conflicts. Since the scheme can
make a simple change to prevent this, I think it should.

Overall, I think the tag scheme should be simple. This will insure that it
will be understood and used properly.

tag:me@aaronsw.com;2001-04-29/example

is relatively easy to grok. We've got an email address, a date, and a path.
On the other hand:

tag:sandro@w3c.org/1:my-dog

is relatively confusing. At first glance, one can't really figure it out.

Hope this feedback helps,

-- 
[ Aaron Swartz | me@aaronsw.com | http://www.aaronsw.com ]

Received on Sunday, 29 April 2001 14:15:30 UTC