Subject: RE: I-D Action:draft-nottingham-site-meta-05.txt

From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 16:44:58 -0800

My comment, Eran, was editorial.

I've had this in my mailbox and not replied because I keep on
stumbling over:

> "Metadata is a word or phrase, not a technical term."

This is a technical document. It defines a mechanism, and says
it is good for "metadata". It doesn't define the term
"metadata", although that's the use case....
    
"a method for locating host metadata".

> In the context of this draft, it generally means "information about".

The document doesn't say that. That wouldn't be
so bad if the use of the term corresponded to the common
use of the term "metadata", but it doesn't match.

> I don't see the need for the document to say anything
>  more than it currently does.

Effective human communication means that a document
that uses terms should 

* attempt to use terms with their conventional meaning
* in the case of possible confusion (conventional meaning
  is ambiguous, or the document's usage doesn't match
  the conventional meaning), the document should define
  the term.

> It would be a waste of everyone's time if the
> process of reviewing and approving 
> registrations will involve a discussion 
> of the metadata-ness of the proposed document.

What a bizarre idea. How about something simple, like
changing the Abstract to say:

   This memo describes a method for locating host
   metadata for Web-based protocols. In this document,
   the word "metadata" is used in the general sense
   of "information about".

 [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hammer-hostmeta

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:apps-discuss-
> [email-masked]] On Behalf Of Larry Masinter
> Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2009 11:18 AM
> To: Lisa Dusseault; Apps Discuss
> Subject: RE: I-D Action:draft-nottingham-site-meta-05.txt
> 
> There's a lot of confusion about the use of the term "metadata". In this case,
> the term is being used for something that might more appropriately be seen
> as "default metadata for resources at a site" rather than "site metadata". I
> know it's not really the job of this document to clear up all of the confusion
> around metadata, but I think it would be better if this document were to
> include at least a sentence or two explaining how its use of "metadata"
> is not a close match, for example, to the the primary definition in:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata
> 
> or even
> http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Metadata.html
> or
> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/group/track/issues/63
> 
> Larry
> --
> http://larry.masinter.net
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:apps-discuss-
> [email-masked]] On Behalf Of Lisa Dusseault
> Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2009 8:55 AM
> To: Apps Discuss
> Subject: Fwd: I-D Action:draft-nottingham-site-meta-05.txt
> 
> FYI,
> 
> This document is currently in IESG Evaluation with a few DISCUSS issues to be
> cleared.  One of the ADs asked whether this draft had been widely reviewed
> and I wasn't sure it had been posted here though it has definitely been
> discussed on HTTPBIS and in W3C lists.  This draft proposes a namespace for a
> mechanism that can be useful for HTTP-based applications, e.g. if it were
> available and accepted 5-10 years ago, it would have been an alternative for
> some of the bootstrapping problems of WebDAV and CalDAV.
> 
> See also http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hammer-hostmeta-05 for an
> example of use of this namespace.
> 
> Lisa
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From:  <[email-masked]>
> Date: Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 2:45 PM
> Subject: I-D Action:draft-nottingham-site-meta-05.txt
> To: [email-masked]
> 
> 
> A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
> 
>        Title           : Defining Well-Known URIs
>        Author(s)       : M. Nottingham, E. Hammer-Lahav
>        Filename        : draft-nottingham-site-meta-05.txt
>        Pages           : 8
>        Date            : 2009-12-29
> 
> This memo defines a path prefix for "well-known locations", "/.well-
> known/" in selected URI schemes.
> 
> Status of this Memo
> 
> This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
> provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
> 
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