Re: [metadataInURI-31] A guide to where we stand on issue metadataInURI-31

Mark:  looks like we mostly agree.  Regarding your last point, which is 
basically that users get value from finding metadata in URIs, there's some 
recent news that may be of interest.  On our call last week the same point 
was made by T.V. Raman and others.  As a result, we've decided to explore 
a significant change of direction in the finding.  Whereas in 2002 (before 
my time) the TAG decided [1]:

"Resolved: Accept issue matadataInURI-NNN with note that TAG thinks the 
answer is "no" and will explain what to do instead. "

last week we decided to have a more balanced presentation of the upsides 
and downsides of relying on inferred metadata.  In particular, we all 
regularly manipulate URIs based on guesses involving metadata.  For 
example, after somehow discovering a link to:

http://example.org/book/chapter2

many of us will quite reasonably experiment with trying to find chapter 3 
at:

http://example.org/book/chapter3

even if we haven't checked what the publishers actual URI assignment 
policy is.  If the document retrieved by that URI looks right, we may 
trust it.  Of course, you wouldn't use such a guess when requiring 
information that's 100% reliable, but in many cases it's a good an useful 
thing to do.   It's an important aspect of what people expect of the Web. 

So, I've been asked to redraft the finding in a way that covers both sides 
of the equation.  See the as yet unapproved minutes of our discussion at 
[2].  I think this means we're heading in the direction suggested by your 
note.

Noah

[1] http://www.w3.org/2002/12/02-tag-summary.html#metadata-uri
[2] http://www.w3.org/2006/03/21-tagmem-minutes.html

--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
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Received on Tuesday, 28 March 2006 15:06:18 UTC