[Fwd: RE: "information resource"]

[shifting discussion to www-tag rather than the comments archive]

TAG members,

In his response [1]  to our revised definition of the term "Information 
Resource" Patrick makes it clear that he is not satisfied with the 
change that we propose.

Short version
--------------
I think that we have two key questions to answer (hopefully at our 
telcon on Monday):

1) Do we accept the first of Patricks suggested change from:
       the set of  resources for which "...all of their essential 
characteristics can be conveyed in a message."
    to:
       "An "information resource" is a resource which constitutes a body 
of information."?

2) Do we define an additional term for resources that are web accessible 
(that can be interacted with via an exchange of representations) - 
Patricks proposal being for the term "Web Resource"?

Long version
--------------
Patrick offers a counter proposal  (near the enf of [1]) that retains 
pieces of our revised definition that he likes.

Substantive changes that Patrick suggests is to define terms for *both* 
"Web Resources" and "Information Resources". 

With respect to Patrick's offered defn of "Information Resources" AFAICT 
the substantive change to the wording is to speak of  information 
resources as "...a resource which constitutes a body of information." 
rather than as the set of  resources for which "...all of their 
essential characteristics can be conveyed in a message."  That is a 
change I could support.

With respect to the introduction of  the terms "Web resource", defined 
as  'A "web resource" is a resource which has one or more web accessible 
representations.' I can live with there being a terms for such things, 
and modulo the concern expressed at our F2F about using up 'web' prefix 
"Web resource" would do for me.

A point of potential disagreement, which probaby gets to the heart of 
the matter is Patrick's assertion that under these definitions, not all 
"web resources" are "information resources" - meaning, I think, that a 
'dog' is not an "information resource" but that it can have a "web 
accessible" representation. That needs some thought.... but if we're 
talking generally of URI I think that's ok - I could conceive of a 
people: URI scheme were URI designate people and I could organise for 
web accesible representations of such designated people to be available 
(albeit low fidelity and  somewhat dated).

[Aside: A thing that continues to trouble me, and Patricks narrative 
triggers it again for me is a some shifting around as to whether or when 
URIs denote, designate, identify or  name. These various words get used 
sometimes as synonyms and at other times intentionally with differing 
nuiance - I'd rather we kept the number of different 'referring' words 
that we use in Webarch - small, and that if we do use multiple of these 
words that we are very clear about the differing nuiance the use of 
different words is intended to convey. Except in the context of 
namespace names I think Webarch uses the word 'identify' throughout. 
Partick's proposed text speaks repeatedly of things 'named' by URI and 
on one occasion of a thing 'denoted' by a URI. I would rather avoid 
introducing "named" and "denoted" unless absolutely necessary - and if 
necessary - I will insist that we explain the circumstances where we 
choose one of these words (identify, name,  denote and for good measure 
'designate' (used in many URI scheme specs)) over the others.]

Regards

Stuart
--
[1] 
http://www.w3.org/mid/1E4A0AC134884349A21955574A90A7A56471B7@trebe051.ntc.nokia.com

Received on Thursday, 14 October 2004 13:40:43 UTC