Sorry to bump this old thread, but just going through my backlog. With regard to URLs, I think there is some confusion about the purpose of a URL here.
If I write a a cool essay, say, and I stick that up at nslater.org/my-cool-essay, then I can link to it from other places on the web using that address. I might also want to put my cool essay on Dropbox, or post it to Tumblr, or send it in an email. Now my cool essay has lots of URLs. Each one of them perfectly valid. I don't have to go and edit the original copy at nslater.org/my-cool-essay, because I am making copies of it. My cool essay is completely unaware of the URLs that are being used to point to it. And it doesn't care that many URLs point to it. Yes, URLs can be used as identifiers. But when you do this, you tie the thing you're naming to the place you're hosting it. Sometimes that is useful, other times it will cripple you. There is nothing about URLs that requires you to do this. I would hazard a guess that 99% of URLs are de-coupled from the things they point to. WebArch is much more robust when the identity of the object is de-coupled from the URL. Look at Atom, the ID element is supposed to be a URL, but they recommend a non-dereferencable format, precisely to decouple posts from the location you happen to be hosting them this month. Hey, if we're gonna use URLs, maybe we want to go down the same route? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_URI At this point, I'm not sure what they buy us over UUIDs. Thoughts? Thanks, N
