webarch-20040606: section 1 and 2 Reviews

I've reviewed sections 1 and 2 and also posted annotated versions in
www-archive@w3.org [1]. Below are some notes on the more substantive
comments. The rest are mostly editorial/stylistic.

As far as publication of a TR page draft I wouldn't make any of these show
stoppers.

Regards

Stuart
--

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2004Jun/0037.html
[2]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webarch-comments/2004JanMar/1057.
html

General Comments
----------------
I found myself running up against what I might call a Pat Hayes induced
sensitivity to the word identity (see [2]) thoughout.

In section 2, which speaks of the assignment of URIs, I've suggested
replacing "assignment" with "association" in several places - which
'softens' the notions of ownership and authority.

Also, I think specifications 'specify' rather than 'license' and have
suggested several substitutions in that vein - I think that makes the
language simpler and more direct.

Section 1
---------
Section1 Introduction: Right after the first sentence "World Wide Web ( WWW
, or simply Web ) is an information space in which the items of interest,
referred to as resources , are identified by global identifiers called
Uniform Resource Identifiers ( URI )." I'd like us to say the "Anything that
can be named or described can be a resource." phrase, or whatver concensus
we ultimately achieve over the wording for 2396bis.


Section 2
---------
Section 2: I suggest deleting the first sentence. It's fuzzy and likely
opens up a philosophical minefield. "In order to communicate internally, a
community agrees (to a reasonable extent) on a set of terms and their
meanings."

Sections 2. and 2.1 speak of URI as an "identifcation mechanism" which
grates a little. I'd suggest presenting URI as a "single global system of
identifiers" rather than a "single global identification mechanism".

Section 2.4 URI Overloading intrinsically accepts that a given URI may be
used to refer to many things. However 2.3 opens "As discussed above, a URI
identifies one resource."  which is contradictory wrt to the concept of
overloading and also has a (C)/(D) sense problem wrt to 'identifies'.

Section 2.5 URI Ownership. This seems new. If the concept has any validity,
I think that we should be able to speak in terms of the rights and
obligations associated with ownership. I think that the most significant
right associated with 'ownership' of a DNS name and the associated derived
URI is the ability to deploy or organise the provision of representations -
in the event that a given URI is dereferenced. It is also not clear whether
the concepts of authority (which is mentioned) and ownership are synonymous
or not. I think this section needs more work to address some of the concerns
expressed in response to our LC.

Received on Monday, 28 June 2004 12:50:17 UTC