Re: metadata vs. meta-(meta)-data

   [larry masinter]
   The web page and the thing the web page is about are at
   different levels of quoting, but these levels are confounded
   in RDF today.

Thanks for the extremely lucid explanation.

   I can think of several ways of fixing this, but they're all somewhat
   unpleasant:

   ....
   - Define that each relationship should be specific about its level
     of indirection, e.g., "dublin core RDF relations are about the
     URI as a web resource, but other kinds of RDF assertions might
     really about the thing described by the web resource rather than
     the web resource itself".

I guess I implicitly assumed that this was the idea.  E.g., if I write

   <rdf:Description about="denotation://bigbrother.org/benign#BushGeorgeW">
      <webpage resource="http://whitehouse.us.gov/W"/>
   </rdf:Description>

the first URI refers to W himself, and the second refers to his
webpage.  The second provides a protocol that will put you in touch
with the webpage, while the first provides nothing of the kind.
Determining the intended sort of a URI is a matter of the context
(e.g., <webpage ...>) and the scheme (e.g., "denotation:"
vs. "http:"). 

                                             -- Drew McDermott

Received on Tuesday, 22 May 2001 12:10:06 UTC