[sc34wg3] www.topicmaps.com (and topicmaps.org)

[Steve Pepper]

* Lars Marius (reporting from Montreal)
|
| The issue of site ownership (that is, ownership of the domain) was
| also discussed, and possibilities listed were:
| 
|  - the secretariat (SCC at present),
|  - the chairman (Jim Mason at present), or
|  - the secretary (Ken Holman at present)
| 
| Since none of these were available at the meeting nothing further was
| done about this.

* Jim Mason
|
| On the matter of onwnership of the domain, probably not
| wise to associate it with an individual, like Ken or me.
| Better to associate it with the organization, SC34 Secretariat.

An agreement has been signed with Empolis transfering ownership
to SCC. We need now to decide where to host the site.

| As for possible hosts, some alternatives came up: Ontopia could host
| it, we could host it the same place as isotopicmaps.org, and Sam Oh
| said he thought he could get a funded project in Korea to host and
| develop it. The consensus was that the last option was the most
| attractive, if Sam can indeed get the funding.

I would prefer to see one of the National Bodies as host, so
I have Sam's proposal, if he can get funding.

Regarding content, I think Lars Marius' list is a good start:

| - a list of available PSI sets
| - news/announcements regarding meetings, conferences, new tools, new
|   projects, etc
| - a list of publicly available topic maps
| - links to the standards
| - tutorials and guidelines, should anyone write some and want them
|   posted, or linked to
| - links to TM user groups around the world

This also raises the question of what to do about topicmaps.org.
It was frozen in 2001 because of disagreements in an organization,
TopicMaps.Org, which no longer exists. The question is, is the
community's interest served by allowing it to continue to give the
impression that nothing has happened with Topic Maps since 2001?

I personally would like to see it closed down with a redirect to
topicmaps.com. If it is not to be closed down, the home page
should at least contain a prominently displayed notice informing
readers about the status of the site.

What do others think? Do we have any idea how many hits the site
gets?

Steve

--
Steve Pepper <pepper@ontopia.net>
Chief Strategy Officer, Ontopia
Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3
Editor, XTM (XML Topic Maps 1.0)