Re: RFC: Multi-Owner Maintenance robot (MOMspider)

Lou Montulli ([email protected])
Tue, 7 Dec 93 10:47:40 CST


>
> >> <!ELEMENT HEAD - - ( TITLE? & ISINDEX? & NEXTID? & LINK*
> >> & BASE? & OWNER? & EXPIRES? )>
> >> <!ELEMENT OWNER - - CDATA -- Alias name for document owner -->
> >> <!ELEMENT EXPIRES - - CDATA -- Expiration date in RFC850 format -->
> >
> > Your suggestion for a multi-owner maintenance robot (MOMspider) seems
> > a good one, and I like the idea for making the owner and expiry date
> > part of the document HEAD. I never did like the <LINK REL="MADE" HREF=...">
> > notation. Perhaps we ought to stipulate the OWNER should be an email address?
>
> I believe that owner/author privacy will become an important issue
> as large-scale information resources are added to the Web. Therefore,
> I prefer to use a level of indirection such that the owner's alias name
> can be used (by MOMspider or other scripts) to look-up the real owner's
> e-mail address(es) and perform actions tailored to that owner. For instance,
> a {htbin-post | cgi-bin}/mail_owner script could be written which examines
> a table of author aliases at that site and determines both whether or not the
> owner wants to receive e-mail and what the true e-mail address is.
>
<Link Rel="made" href...> does not preclude the use of indirection.

There are many other uses for the owners address than just MOMspider
so hideing the owners address inside a comment when a defined structure
for that information already exists is foolish.

Also, the EXPIRES information you are looking for already has a
predefined method definition. The information is passed back as
an HTTP header that looks like "Expires: DATE".

:lou