[Developers] Changing "/topic/en" to "/en".. maybe

[Alec Flett]

Current state of the graph on this issue:
- /en now exists, and will start showing up in urls directly (such as http://www.freebase.com/view/history/en/cities_and_knights_of_catan)
- Software will be deployed next week (4/15 or so) that will make MQL  
default to returning "/en"

- in MQL today, the default is still /topic/en. That is, this query:
{
   "guid" : "#9202a8c04000641f8000000000013ec3",
   "id" : null
}

still returns this:
{
   "guid" : "#9202a8c04000641f8000000000013ec3",
   "id" : "/topic/en/cities_and_knights_of_catan"
}

Next week, this will return "/en/cities_and_knights_of_catan"

But today, this query will succeed as well, using the new ids:
{
   "guid" : null,
   "id" : "/en/cities_and_knights_of_catan"
}

returning this:
{
   "guid" : "#9202a8c04000641f8000000000013ec3",
   "id" : "/en/cities_and_knights_of_catan"
}


Alec

On Mar 27, 2008, at 12:39 PM, Alec Flett wrote:

> A followup: I've gotten some feedback about removing "/topic/en"
> entirely, and it sounds like lots of people would object here. So
> we'll leave /topic/en in the in perpetuity, though we will start
> returning "/en" keys starting around April 7th.
>
> Alec
>
>
> On Mar 26, 2008, at 5:26 PM, Alec Flett wrote:
>
>> As there has been no objection to this, I'd like to go forward. The
>> schedule will look like this:
>>
>> 3/27 (thursday) - In sandbox, I'll add the /en namespace to point to
>> stuff in /topic/en.
>> 3/31 (monday) - I'll make the same change in production
>> Some (to be announced) date around 4/7: we'll update the code to
>> always return /en/topic_name
>> 4/30, we'll remove the /topic/en namespace from the graph.
>>
>> This means you'll be able to start using /en/<topic_name> starting
>> 3/27 on sandbox, and 3/31 on OTG.
>>
>> Alec
>>
>> On Mar 19, 2008, at 1:37 PM, Alec Flett wrote:
>>
>>> Hey everyone -
>>> So there has been some discussion internally about shortening the "/
>>> topic/en" namespace down to just "/en". This is something that is
>>> being tossed around inside metaweb and I wanted to open up the
>>> discussion to the larger community to check the feasibility of this.
>>> To be clear, this is a one-time change while we're still in alpha.  
>>> We
>>> really, really don't expect to do another system-wide change like
>>> this, especially once we're out of alpha.
>>>
>>> The primary motivations are:
>>> 1) /topic seems superfluous, and in general adds heirarchy where
>>> there
>>> doesn't need to be.. it makes english names appear sooner in the id,
>>> which is nice for readability. We don't think there will ever be an
>>> actually domain "/en", "/fr" or whatever.
>>>
>>> 2) shortening urls - both at freebase and on anyone else using topic
>>> names in their URLs.  In particular, it makes anyone who inserts ids
>>> into their urls have a more readable url.
>>>
>>> If we decide to do this, here is what would probably happen -
>>> feedback
>>> is encouraged!
>>> 1) MQL would start returning "/en/topic_name" instead of "/topic/en/
>>> topic_name" in queries where you say "id": null, such as:
>>> {"name": "Bob Dylan",
>>> "type": "/music/artist",
>>> "id": null}
>>>
>>> (this would return "/en/bob_dylan")
>>>
>>> 2) MQL would continue to accept "/topic/en/bob_dylan" as a valid id
>>> for some period of time (a week? a month? 3 months? that's something
>>> we all need to decide)
>>>
>>> 3) During the time that the /topic/en compatibility exists, MQL  
>>> would
>>> also return "/topic/en/topic_name" when the /topic id is explicitly
>>> specified in the query:
>>>
>>> {"id": "/topic/en/bob_dylan", "name": null}
>>>
>>> would return
>>> {"id": "/topic/en/bob_dylan", "name": "Bob Dylan"}
>>>
>>> 4) Anyone can continue to link to http://www.freebase.com/view<id>
>>> using either /topic/en/topic_name or /en/topic_name, but freebase
>>> would do a HTTP 301 redirect to http://www.freebase.com/view/en/topic_name
>>> . We'll probably support the /view/topic URL mapping forever.
>>>
>>> But of course the issue is: what will break? The big issue is
>>> obviously if people are storing freebase keys in their databases,  
>>> and
>>> migration during a compatibility period is impossible.
>>>
>>> Please reply on this thread with your concerns/issues or even if you
>>> just think this is an awesome idea :)
>>>
>>> Alec
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
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