On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 09:48:39AM +1000, Gary Browne wrote: > James, thanks for raising this issue and in particular getting people to > put their money where their collective mouths are.
Believe me, if I could possibly avoid it, I would leave the issue well alone ;) I'm sure this will come as no surprise to anyone, but it seems like this issue has highlighted some conflicts of opinion. As I see it there are (broadly) two camps: those who believe that every meaningful tier in the DSpace content hierarchy should get external identifiers, and those who don't (or at least those who can't decide and so want it to be configurable). From the responses on- and off-list, it seems there are more people in the former camp (which is basically what I expected). While this kind of debate could usually be resolved with a "make it configurable" argument, I have a fairly major concern with this, which I will try to outline briefly for the brave few who are still following this thread. Users (and administrators) crave consistency. If we make this assignment configurable, there is no guarantee of consistency of application between collections, or even in a single collection over extended periods of time. The usual arguments about what we intend people to do with the tools we provide versus what they actually do apply as ever. This flexibility could leave repositories in a very messy state. It also adds another degree of complexity to the new identifier system I'm putting in place. The configurable parameters (if we are going to please everyone) would be: * whether or not to assign external identifiers at all * which external identifier system to use by default * whether or not external identifiers are re-assignable * whether or not new "versions" of objects get new identifiers * which tiers in the content hierarchy get identifiers (if any) I'm sure I've missed a few, but does that sound like something that is reasonable to want / implement / support? cheers, Jim -- James Rutherford | Hewlett-Packard Limited registered Office: Research Engineer | Cain Road, HP Labs | Bracknell, Bristol, UK | Berks +44 117 312 7066 | RG12 1HN. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Registered No: 690597 England The contents of this message and any attachments to it are confidential and may be legally privileged. If you have received this message in error, you should delete it from your system immediately and advise the sender. To any recipient of this message within HP, unless otherwise stated you should consider this message and attachments as "HP CONFIDENTIAL". ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ DSpace-tech mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dspace-tech
