Persistence at Sept 2011 TAG F2F

I'm acutely aware that we've already had five F2F sessions on
persistence, and that the ball is in my court to produce a document
(ACTION-478), and I haven't, yet.

But this is hard.  It took the print world 400 years or so to get the
problem of reliable reference worked out - it's important to be
persistent :). Since we didn't get to talk
about this in June I would appreciate a little of the TAG's time next
week to look at it again.

I propose that the goal of the session should be, as Noah has been
promoting, to prepare a 'product
page' for work on persistence.  If by some miracle we get that far, you
can give me feedback (time bounded) on ideas about what a document
might contain.

I think I have one new idea on the subject since last time, but
probably best to talk about that at lunch or break.

(1) Product page.

The product would be a document (finding?), one that would fulfill

  ACTION-478 on Jonathan Rees to Prepare a second draft of a finding on
  persistence of references, to be based on decision tree from Oct. 2010
  F2F.
  Assigned: http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2010/10/20-minutes#item01

(There is another possible "product" here, which is facilitation of
changes to standards or infrastructure, if this turns out to be both
desirable and practical - thus the idea of a "domain name persistence"
workshop, see ACTION-351.)

How would we like the world to be different?
  . Ideally there would be persistent references that were first-class
    on the web.  If not, we should have a convincing explanation of why
    not.
  . There would be more reason and common sense surrounding the
    persistent reference question

What audiences?
  . W3C management; linked data community; "memory institutions".
    (Note that this question originally came out of SWHCLSIG.)
    (Had we finished this sooner, the audience might have included
    Datacite and ORCID.)
  . Users of references (those who would put them in documents)
  . Providers of assignment and resolution services yielding metadata
    and/or content.
  . Others struggling with persistent reference on the Web.


(2) Things to maybe put in the document.  Help me shorten this list,
and/or find gaps.

  - Definition(s) of persistence; why important

  - An overview for those interested in evaluating
    persistence solutions, either as users or providers.
    . Assignment, resolution, conflict mediation
    . Adaptation, succession
    . Attempt to dispel myths & misconceptions, and provide a no-nonsense
      way to think about it.

  - How to do a threat analysis
    . Collisions
    . Technical failure or corruption
    . Organizational failure (orphaning) or corruption
    . Inability to adapt to change
    . Squatting, commercial capture, organized attack
    . Specification unclear / fragile definition of "correct"
    . Reference unfamiliar or not actionable

  - Discuss tradeoffs around syntaxes and protocols
    . pros and cons of uses of different schemes, domain names
    . "decision tree" from Feb F2F

  - Look at a few examples
    . urn:ietf:rfc:2648
    . http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224
    . ark:... (see ACTION-121)

  - Look at some tactics that are gaining traction, e.g.:
    . provide actionable forms of nonactionable identifiers
    . web archiving as an alternative to persistent reference
    . just assert persistence in http: space (independent of DNS doubts)

  - What can we conclude about design design and execution of new systems
    . Persistent reference *is* possible... sometimes resolution comes later
    . Invest authority in a constitution, not in an an organization ?
    . Get constitution recognized as widely as possible

  ? Attempt to answer the ISSUE-50 question, is http: any worse than
    any other syntax for this purpose.  (I.e. are all the problems with
    http: inherent in *any* solution, or are some unique.)


Prior TAG discussion of persistence
  - June 2011 (no F2F session)
      Persistence readings - email
        http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2011Jun/0009.html
  - Feb 2011 (Cambridge F2F)
      Persistence of references - F2F discussion
        http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2011/02/09-minutes#item06
      Persistent Reference Interventions - draft
      (this captures said 'decision tree')
         http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2011/02/intervention.html
  - Oct 2010 (Mountain View F2F)
      Domain Name Persistence - F2F discussion
        http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2010/10/20-minutes#item01
      'Slides' presented at F2F
        http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2010/10/persistent-reference-slides.pdf
      'Decision tree' drawn on whiteboard
        http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2010/10/PersistenceTreeWhiteBoard.jpg
      Persistent Reference on the Web - draft for ACTION-444, closed
        http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/persistent-reference/
  - June 2010 (London F2F)
      Domain name persistence - F2F discussion, with Helen Hockx-Yu
      and Kevin Ashley
        http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2010/06/07-minutes.html#item04
      Matrix on persistence solutions
        http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2010/06/persistence-teaser.html
      Persistence solutions summary - JAR email
        http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2010Jun/0036.html
  - March 2010 (Cambridge F2F)
      Persistent naming - F2F discussion
        http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2010/03/25-minutes.html#item04
      On URIs and trust - note by JAR
        http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2010/03/uris-and-trust.html
  - Dec 2009 (Cambridge F2F)
      Persistent domains - F2F discussion
        http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2009/12/09-minutes.html#item03
  - March 2009 (Redwood Shores F2F)
      Discussion of ISSUE-50 - F2F discussion
        http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2009/03/03-tagmem-minutes.html#item05

See also
  - Feb 2011, Review of TAG issues related to "URI meaning"
      http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2011Feb/0150.html

Received on Sunday, 4 September 2011 22:02:20 UTC