It seems to me that all of your angst centers around the question of
which URIs can be resolved and result in RDF content (selections from
your responses that I consider evidence are below). Essentially, you
are saying don't use <http://....> unless there's some RDF at the
address in between the <>.
This is indeed an issue, and I have complained about it myself.
However removing a selection of things from the universe of what can
be discussed on the Semantic Web doesn't seem like a great solution.
Instead we need to agree on a practical protocol for figuring out,
given some URI, how to go about getting the RDF documentation that
describes the entity that the URI names. I think that's within reach,
and given you mention you've been browsing the neurocommons.org web
site, you should be aware of what our thinking is on this matter.
Basically it boils down to, for starters, a) Giving a rdf:Type to
resources that are RDF formatted. b) Tightening up the protocol by
which one is supposed to find RDF so that it is predictable. (No vague
"see other" stuff. No unconstrained content negotiation. Some work to
establish a shared ontology in this area).
-Alan
On Jun 22, 2008, at 2:40 AM, Peter Ansell wrote:
Nonsense as in getting HTML after resolving an identifier where every
other identifier previously revealed RDF representations when
resolved. At least they could expect based on the vocabulary that a
typed literal needed to be dealt with differently on a
non-semantically extended HTML page. The set of RDF statements that
would otherwise be generated from the HTML page would be an empty set,
ie, completely unuseful, whereas if they were aware that HTML elements
on their own had value to them they wouldn't bother parsing for RDF
and could find the HTML page.
Semantic resource identifier (n.) : Anything that can be used in the
subject position of an RDF Statement.
I'm still failing to see harm in <http://....>. One can examine an
RDF
representation, read that, and resolve that manually as well.
A computer must presume that for RDF identifiers RDF is the preferred
format. Wouldn't it be easier just to acknowledge that HTML exists and
identify it using typed literals consistently so people recognise the
difference.
Consumers (n.) : Those people who will eventually penetrate the
academic jungle that is the semantic web community and utilise
resources without days of special instruction from the "experts".
What is a machine readable representation?
One of the many (confusingly) diverse RDF representations.
See below with respect to knowing to not ask for RDF if it isn't an
identifier but still a typed anyURI literal.
