[tech] Draft RFC: RDF/Semantic web metadata embedding in gemini resources

[Luke Emmet]

On 23-Apr-2021 09:41, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 09:22:47AM +0100,
>   Luke Emmet <luke@marmaladefoo.com> wrote
>   a message of 58 lines which said:
>
>> However my main concern is that the semantics of the links are not
>> what they normally are in gemini. For example the URL links are
>> schema references, rather than browsable content for users. So the
>> normal processes of reading a hypertext gemini document and
>> following a link to another gemini document don't apply and so you
>> have to approach such an encoded document with the expectation that
>> many of the links may not be normal links. This is somewhat of a
>> cognitive overhead.
>
> This specific issue could be solved by requiring that the URIs used as
> identifiers are URLs, and reachable and have content. This is a common
> requirment in the world of "linked data" and other semantic stuff
> <https://www.w3.org/TR/ld-glossary/#dereferenceable-uris>
> <https://explore.dublincore.net/competency_index/d2695955/s2696018/s2696061/s2742457/s2742458/>.
>
> Let's quote the inventor of the Web
> <https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html>: "Use HTTP URIs so
> that people can look up those names."
>
> This is an old issue
> <https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Mar/0092>.
>

TBL has a positive balance on his authority credit score from inventing the web (in its early format!). But the semantic web/ontology movement has obviously struggled much harder to get out of the research community.

Yes, dereferencability (is that a word?) is highly desirable attribute of URLs. I think what I was try to express that even beyond mere dereferencability, Gemtext should be primarily about linking to content a human would want to read - not just a technical schema reference into an ontology. Its about humans being the primary agents on the geminiverse and for us to build for them first and foremost.

Hence my suggestion to use another (or derive a new) media type for extended metadata.

But as I said, I don't really have a horse in this race.

 - Luke