On Aug 20, 2007, at 5:51 PM, Booth, David (HP Software - Boston) wrote:
Bijan,
Certainly we want these recommendations to have uptake, every approach
has costs, and every recommendation has its own scope of
applicability.
But different people weigh the costs and benefits differently.
Of course. Isn't this exactly what we're discussing?
Yes,
some may view the cost of minting dereferenceable URIs as too high in
some situations, but I think the ubiquity of the web shows that very
many will view the cost of publishing dereferenceable URIs as low
enough
-- and probably still falling -- to be outweighed by the benefits.
I don't think the "ubiquity of the web" shows anything at all about
large scale scientific terminology building an management. After all,
the web contains a lot of stuff, most of it is not terminological.
The Web has obvious problems (e.g., in terms of stability i.e., links
break; PURLs are a workaround) for data that is intended to be long
lived. Etc. etc.
I don't want to reiterated the arguments already made in this thread.
But if you go back to the email of mine you responded to, i hope
you'll see that your attempt to go meta (i.e., this is what we are
doing) didn't help. It just avoided the technical issues.
In response to a question about whether there is a difference between
404 and non-dereferencable URIs, I pointed out that there were
several and several benefits. You reduced that to "well, sure, if you
don't want your URIs dereferenced, you shouldn't use a dereferencable
uri" but then said that 1) this was just a recommendation and 2) the
recommendation should benefit the community as whole.
This does not advance the discussion, IMHO.
[snip]
From: Bijan Parsia [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Aug 18, 2007, at 4:02 AM, Booth, David (HP Software -
Boston) wrote:
[ . . . ]
However, the purpose of this discussion is to come up with community
recommendations on minting URIs.
Sure. But there's a bit of a leap from "Use StudlyCaps in your local
names for classes" and "Set up a web server before making up any
names". Recommendations that 1) vary widely from reasonable practice
and 2) cost effort are generally idle recommendations.
Of course. But different people have different notions of
"reasonable".
I don't know why you think this is relevant. If there is no agreement
here on what reasonable and best practice are, then I don't see what
the point is. Even if you are defining "in group" behavior, well,
there seem to be several people in-group who disagree.
And whatever the perceived costs, recommendations themselves should
help
lower the costs by providing clear guidance.
Well, if I would ordinarily think it's a no-brainer to use LSIDs, and
now you have this recommendation that says, "Phooey on that; http
baby", then I have a decision to make which I didn't have to before.
If I make a decision that *costs* me more than the decision i'd have
otherwise made, then it hasn't lowered my costs, however clear it may
have been.
[snip]
- They should be designed to best benefit the community as a whole.
That's tendencious. (Do you mean as summed? on average? with a high
median? or some sort of qualitative notion? Are you trying to grow
the community? or make its overall costs lower? or...)
Some qualitative notion. Probably all of the above included.
I find that unconvincing. You may as well say, "They are cool and we
like them. Thanks" I have no problem with that, myself.
It seems clear that any such recommendations should be designed to
best
facilitate the publication and re-use of URIs by others,
This is one benefit. The other is to make them easy to mint. Naming
is hard.
Recommendations may be able to help by providing guidance on naming.
My point was that certain kinds of facilitations of certain kinds of
publication and certain kinds of re-use may make naming harder enough
that mere guidance doesn't compensate. See this thread for some
arguments in this direction.
and making URIs
dereferenceable to useful metadata is certainly one
convenient way to help do so.
Really? The point of these examples is that there are a variety of
cases which for a variety of reasons it's not so convenient
(actually, either for the minter or the discoverer). So the
recommendation can say, "When its convenient and helpful, use http
uris, otherwise, don't" But that's not so great a recommendation.
Can you explain specific cases in which you see usefully
dereferenceable
URIs as NOT being so convenient for the discoverer?
Sure. For example when they 404. Or if they cause the information to
be presented in an awkward way (e.g., in lots of little documents so
I have to spider rather than grep). Or when people publish multiple
views of the same term but in different places (all using the same
URI), so dereferencing leads me to only one view.
It may be that *judicious* links are overall better than
systematically fine-grained links. Web pages with too many links can
be really annoying and hard to work with.
This isn't to say I don't want to find information or find it on the
web. But there are lots of ways HTTP uris can be used without making
them the name of every term (why not of every axiom?).
[snip]
That
is its prerogative. But that does not mean that our
*recommendations* should encourage such practice.
Why not, if the good reasons out weight the bad? I mean, what more
would that be than saying, "eww, if you have to for a variety of
excellent reasons not be in our HTTP club, well, ok, but
you're still ICKY"?
That's not super community building :)
Well, I think that's an unfair characterization.
You think I unfairly characterize my *own hypothetical*? Bit much,
don't you think?
The point is that
usefully dereferenceable URIs are a courtesy that lowers the
barrier to
reuse -- quite the opposite of creating an exclusivee club.
Dude, if the GOOD reasons for using non-dereferencable uris OUTWEIGH
THE BAD, then we shouldn't recommend using HTTP URIs. Period. If
using HTTP URIs for bio-ontologies killed kittens, I think we should
recommend people not use them for bio-ontologies. Think of the
KITTENS!!!! Think of the rise in PETA donations!
If the GOOD reasons outweigh the BAD, then it's not a *mere courtesy*.
Presumably there's things people can do which will make their
URNs or
non-dereferencable URIs more or less accessible for reuse.
Publishing
a term index at an HTTP dereferencable URI is just one example.
Of course. I didn't mean to imply that using HTTP URIs that
dereference
to useful metadata is the *only* thing that can be done to make URIs
more accessible for reuse.
So why not frame the recommendation situationally? I don't really see
why HTTP uris are preferred, even as a default. Yes, I know, TAG blah
blah Webiosity etc. But c'mon, Chimezie is as web-loving a person as
you can find and he sees serious problems with recommending this
"courtesy".
But enough from me :)
Cheers,
Bijan.
