[foaf-protocols] First WebID Teleconference minutes (July 27th 2010)

Kingsley Idehen kidehen at openlinksw.com
Tue Aug 3 00:07:46 CEST 2010


Seth Russell wrote:
> Henry, i resent your tone here.  I wasn't born yesterday, i have been 
> hanging around watching the W3C specification process for a long time 
> and i am quite familiar with the function of specification on the 
> internet.    That said, i will address the only  thing you said which  
> does not just sound to me like a rationalization to kick  an issue 
> down the road.
>
> > Even if we wrote it down, why would people follow it?
>
> Engineers and webmasters go to the specification all the time to 
> figure out what to do.    If they cannot find any place where it is 
> written down, then usually they turn to examples of how it is being 
> done in practice.    Well now, if those engineers and webmasters do 
> that, what do they find in this case?   Most of the examples of WebIDs 
> out there now do you return any human readable profile if you hit them 
> with your browser.   Your own WebID is a fine example of the way to do 
> it.   But mine, which i got from openlink is not ... it returns JSON.  
> How are we to change the behavior of  the engineers and webmasters if 
> we don't even have the courage to write down how we intend it to be done?

Seth,

You are losing me here.

How on earth does the WebID from <http://kingsley.idehen.net> give you 
JSON? Put your WebID in the Address bar of any browser and you will get 
an HTML representation of your Profile (with RDFa embedded). Negotiate 
RDF/XML, N3, Turtle, JSON, OData etc.. and you will get those 
representations.

What do you think your WebID is? Ditto your Structured Profile Page URL? 
Ditto your OpenID URL?

If you want, simply go to: https://id.myopenlink.net/ods and open a new 
account. The moment you open an account you have a WebID (URL based Name 
Reference) and a Profile  Document (conventional URL Address Reference). 
I am astounded how everything we put out can be so confusing.  You can 
also manage your profile via:

1. http://id.myopenlink.net/vsp/users/users.vsp
2. http://id.myopenlink.net/php/users/users.php
3. http://id.myopenlink.net/javascript/users/users.html .


Please confirm that you know JSON isn't our human readable option when 
HTML+RDFa is the default you get when placing an ODS WebID in your 
Browser's address bar.

Here are my details:

Personal WebID: http://kingsley.idehen.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this
Profile Document URL: 
http://kingsley.idehen.net/dataspace/person/kidehen  (you can negotiate 
a variety of representations for this resource but browsers will get 
HTML+RDFa since the ask for HTML by default)
OpenID URL: http://kingsley.idehen.net/dataspace/person/kidehen .

The above has been so for a number of years now.  You will get the same 
via: http://id.myopenlink.net/ods (or the other profile manager 
endpoints above).


Kingsley
>  
> Seth Russell
> Podcasting: tagtalking.net <http://tagtalking.net>
> Facebook ing: facebook.com/russell.seth <http://facebook.com/russell.seth>
> Twitter ing: twitter.com/SethRussell <http://twitter.com/SethRussell>
> Blogging: fastblogit.com/seth/ <http://fastblogit.com/seth/>
> Catalog selling: www.speaktomecatalog.com 
> <http://www.speaktomecatalog.com>
> Google profile: google.com/profiles/russell.seth 
> <http://google.com/profiles/russell.seth>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Henry Story <henry.story at gmail.com 
> <mailto:henry.story at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 2 Aug 2010, at 20:10, Seth Russell wrote:
>
>     > On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Henry Story
>     <henry.story at gmail.com <mailto:henry.story at gmail.com>> wrote:
>     >
>     >>
>     >> On 2 Aug 2010, at 18:45, Nathan wrote:
>     >>
>     >>>
>     >>> I really like that sentence - perfect even imho.
>     >>>
>     >>> 'MUST have a Machine and Human readable representation of a
>     structured
>     >>> profile document'
>     >>
>     >> "MUST have a representation of an RDF graph in a machine readable
>     >> representation. See the section on representations for more
>     about this."
>     >>
>     >> You cannot force a Human readable representation in the spec.
>     That is again
>     >> a pragmatic issue.
>     >
>     >
>     > Why not?
>
>     Because we are in the process of describing the WebID protocol,
>     not how to
>     make people like your site. In engineering, and in many other
>     fields of human
>     endeavor, small is beautiful. Do one thing, and do it well.
>
>
>     > If you leave this open, then  it is less likely to happen in the
>     > way most of us  want it to happen.
>
>     Here you are attributing to specifications some magic power they
>     don't have.
>     Even if we wrote it down, why would people follow it?
>
>     >   If it doesn't happen, then WebIDs will
>     > be less valuable and less useful.    Pepole and webmasters will
>     have far
>     > less motive to go the extra mile to get them, or agents accept
>     or provide
>     > them.
>
>     If those people need a spec to motivate them, then we should give
>     up! I have never heard of specs motivating anyone. They are useful
>     for guidance.
>
>     Notice all our implementations function without a spec!
>
>     > Then you are certainly would be right, "it will be difficult for
>     > people  to understand what is going on and  takeup will be
>     slow".    Your
>     > also right that this  a pragmatic issue.    Where is it written
>     in stone
>     > that  practical issues cannot be decided by specification?
>
>     e.
>
>     >
>     > Seth
>     > _______________________________________________
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>     > foaf-protocols at lists.foaf-project.org
>     <mailto:foaf-protocols at lists.foaf-project.org>
>     > http://lists.foaf-project.org/mailman/listinfo/foaf-protocols
>
>
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-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	      
President & CEO 
OpenLink Software     
Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen 







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