Re: [metadataInURI-31] New editors draft for Metadata In URIs Finding

Hi Noah,

thanks for this update, it is very interesting.

On May 12, 2006, at 00:02, noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com wrote:
> * Until May 2nd, the drift of TAG discussions had been very much:
> "Metadata in URIs, just say no".  During the telcon, some TAG members
> emphasized a second line of thinking, which is basically:  "While  
> it is
> indeed undesirable for software to be reliant on URI metadata, and  
> while
> it's very important to understand which sorts of metadata can be  
> inferred
> reliably and which not, having meaningful URIs is very important to  
> human
> users of the Web.  If you read a URI on a billboard or the side of the
> bus, you want it to be sensible."   The TAG asked me to try to make  
> that
> point strongly too, so this new draft attempts explore both the pro  
> and
> the con sides of exploiting URI metadata.

I find this foray into "URIs are cooler when humans can actually  
fiddle with them (at their own risk)" to be highly encouraging. I  
think however that it is incomplete without an adjacent discussion of  
when and why it may (or may not) be appropriate to take active steps  
in preventing users from being able to "explore and experiment" with  
URIs, notably through such devices as including the creation year in  
the URI (aka datedspace).

I wonder if a discussion of metadata in URIs that are not necessarily  
dereferenceable (e.g. namespaces) could be useful. One aspect of this  
is including the version number of the vocabulary in the URI. Another  
is related to the above "hackability" of URIs but in a lesser form,  
that is how hard should it be to remember a namespace URI, notably in  
the context of an organisation that produces a great many of them,  
and which authors will need to manipulate on a daily basis.

-- 
Robin Berjon
    Senior Research Scientist
    Expway, http://expway.com/

Received on Friday, 12 May 2006 11:30:16 UTC