RE: Building terminological consensus, part 1: Foundations

Hello Pat, Henry,

> >Finally for this first message, note that there is another 
> >correspondence which I think obtains:
> >
> >   pl:baptism == [webarch:minting] ([2] itself doesn't actually have a
> >                                    term for this, but minting is commonly
> >                                    used in discussion of the Web )
> >
> >In both cases the person who first 'utters' a name has the authority 
> >and takes the responsibility for determining the 
> >pl:referent/webarch:resource it will thenceforth 
> >pl:denote/webarch:identify.
> 
> Ah, but (very important point) to take responsibility for 
> baptizing isn't to actually baptize. There isn't anything in 
> the webarch: domain corresponding to pl:baptizing, 
> in fact: a central lack in the Web world picture that 
> I've been complaining about for years. 

FWIW I think that text around http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#uri-assignment may be relevant.
Doubtless the terminology will not be to everyones liking, and it may stop short full immersion, but it does concern the establishment of associations of URI with Resources.

I'll also note that there are comments to be found in the archive that argue against notions of ownership and delegated authority e.g. [1] (from IANA to scheme spec's to ICANN's DNS registry to DNS registrar to DNS name owner/renter to webmaster to...) arguing perhaps that delegation stops at scheme - taking the FTP and HTTP scheme as example, both provide an operationalise account of what resource is referenced by URI of those particular schemes.

However, as far as Webarch goes, it places the right and responsibility to 'baptise' on "URI owners" - ownership being established through some social process - eg. I get to own an infinite bunch of URIs for £10 for each 2-year period - which is about 0p each which I suppose is reasonable. That I cease to 'own' them if I fail to pay is maybe more worrying... and what becomes of them once I cease to be around to pay I guess I should care about - but have so far failed to take a socially responsible attitude in that respect :-).

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Sep/0192

> If we had some unambiguous and standard way of 
> *saying* what URIs actually mean/denote, then we could 
> require minters to do their own baptizing. 
> Named graphs were one idea on this direction. AFAIK, its 
> still the only proposal for a convention which would actually 
> baptize a URI, in the sense of determining its referent; if 
> you prefer, making it into a real proper name.
> 
> > In both cases such authority may be exercised 
> > felicitously or spuriously.
> 
> Right now it can't be exercised at all. There aren't any 
> suitable ceremonies to exercise it in.
> 
> Pat
> 
> >
> >ht

BTW, thank you both for the energy you have and are putting into this endeavour. 

Best regards

Stuart

Received on Tuesday, 10 July 2007 10:35:39 UTC