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

[Alec Flett]

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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