Short namespace URIs for W3C TRs available

Dear Chairs, TAG

After announcing a proposal for short namespaces on www-tag [1]
and sending the Chairs notice of the proposal [2], and receiving
positive feedback on www-tag and from the Director, I have updated
the "URIs for W3C Namespaces" [3] to include this text:

 <new>
 Director approval of a namespace URI is REQUIRED when the URI 
 has the form http://www.w3.org/ns/ssss, where:

      * ssss is a short string not causing confusion, alarm, or
        embarrassment. For instance, the short string should not cause
        confusion when used in both http://www.w3.org/TR/ and
        http://www.w3.org/ns/ URIs.
 </new>

As before, a trailing "/" MAY be used and does not require Director
approval.

See below for an attempt to build a FAQ. As we learn more, I expect
to document good practice in [3].

Thank you,

 - Ian

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2006Jul/0022
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/chairs/2006JulSep/0015
[3] http://www.w3.org/2005/07/13-nsuri

------------
Draft FAQ
------------

Here is an attempt to answer some questions based on very limited
experience; thanks to MaxF and DanC for engaging in discussion that
inspired this FAQ. 

Q1. Love the new short namespace URIs! Can I mint one in my spec??
A1. Yes. Please note that Director approval is required.

Q2. What should we do with the existing namespace URI in our spec?
A2. Please maintain it, per Webarch 3.5.1: A URI owner SHOULD provide 
    representations of the identified resource consistently and
    predictably.
    http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#def-URI-persistence

Q3. Does that mean I should not request a second namespace URI
    for the same namespace?
A3. Per Webarch 2.3.1, you SHOULD NOT associate
    arbitrarily different URIs with the same resource.
    http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#avoid-uri-aliases

Q4. If we do end up with two namespace URIs for the same namespace, how
     should the namespace documents relate?
A4. I don't really know. One suggestion was that at a minimum,
    all implicated namespace documents link to the others.

-- 
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                     +1 718 260-9447