Comments on "Cool URIs for the Semantic Web"

Dear SWEO,

The TAG has been reviewing "Cool URIs for the Semantic Web"
at https://gnowsis.opendfki.de/repos/gnowsis/papers/2006_11_concepturi/html/cooluris_sweo_note.html

Below are some of our comments on Section 3. Comments on other
sections are underway.

First para of Section 3:

  "On the Semantic Web" suggests that the end state is two
  separate webs; in fact, the end state is a single web with
  a wider range of capabilities. Consider rephrasing:

    "With the advent of semantic web technologies, the web
    is extended so that (http:?) URIs can identify not just
    web documents but also ...

Second para of Section 3:

  s/description for a URI/description of the identified resource/

Throughout the text:

  You must only use "example.com" in your example URIs. W3C
  policy will not support the continued use of acme.com.

Figure 1:

  Please replace the diagram with the diagram in
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2007Sep/0061.html

  Note that the shapes in the diagram distinguish between
  URIs and resources.

Last para of Section 3:

  We'd prefer to be quoted more carefully. WebArch says that
  an "information resource" is where "all its essential..."
  We don't speak of "Web documents".

  Perhaps gloss "information resource" and "Web document"
  somewhere in the document.

Also:

  The recommendation to "err on the side of caution" is not
  well motivated; for example, we think many relational
  tables are "information resources" but people would not
  consider them "Web documents", and so this recommendation
  would result in unnecesary redirections. We suggest that
  you add motivation for the recommendation or soften it.

Section 4:

  We suggest that the "hash" solution should precede the
  "303" solution because it can be implemented without
  server configuration and does not impose a second
  round-trip on the network.

First paragraph of Section 4.1:

Saying that 303 "distinguishes" is too strong. We suggest
instead something along these lines:

  Web architecture tells you that for a non-information
  resource it is inappropriate to return a 200 because there
  is, in fact, no suitable representation for those
  resources. However, it is useful to provide information
  about those resources; therefore we propose a solution
  that is to direct you to a different (information)
  resource which can be well represented and can give you
  the information that you want. By doing this we avoid
  ambiguity between the original, non-information resource
  and the resource that describes it.

Consider how this position is outlined in
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2007Sep/0017.html

Diagram in Figure 2:

We note again that 303 is not directly related to variant
representations and content negotiation.

See earlier comment about replacing diagrams.

                                        On behalf of the TAG,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | People often say that this or that
http://nwalsh.com/            | person has not yet found himself. But
                              | the self is not something one finds, it
                              | is something one creates.--Thomas Szasz