Topic maps and the semantic web share problems and dangers in their rush to re-name things with IRIs.
The problems include, the number of subjects, the propagation (enforcement?) of new names, the emergence of new subjects, and others.
Re-naming has a graver danger, identified by Michael Shara, curator of Astrophysics, American Museum of Natural History, when asked why the heaviest star in the universe, R136a**, doesn’t have a better name.* He responsed:
…partly because it [R136a] refers back to the original catalog, and once you go back to the original catalog, you can find all the literature that refers to it, so naming it John’s star or Betty’s Bright Object, would take that away from us.
So would renaming it to an IRI.
Request of the topic maps and semantic web communities:
Please let us keep our identifiers (as identifiers) and our history.
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*Weekend Edition – 24 July 2010 – Biggest Star Still Managed To Hide Until Just Now
**Astronomers find a 300 mass star (Royal Astronomical Society)