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

[Alec Flett]

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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