[rdfweb-dev] Nicks needed to support anonymity

[Martin L Poulter]

On Thursday 24 July 2003 16:43, Julian Bond wrote:
> - Name seems to be problematic. Do we really need all of name, nick,
> givenname, surname, family_name, firstName, title. I'd suggest reducing
> these to name, title, firstName, lastName and spinning nick out into an
> IRC namespace

Spec editors correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that "nick" is
necessary to preserve _anonymity_. In an awful lot of online
interaction, people want to be known by a nickname of their choice and
do not necessarily want to reveal an actual human name.
I'm thinking of:
Online discussion boards such as Slashdot or MetaFilter
Many users of Usenet
Many users of Yahoo groups, MSN communities etc.
Oh, and IRC
In each case the person is known by a nick rather than a name

Despite not giving names, these personas still have connections, group
memberships, and _reputations_ and they would benefit from
machine-processable, trustable descriptions of these things. For
example, if I contribute a lot of dodgy-uploads to a dodgy-file-sharing
board[*], I would like that board's software to be able to export an RDF
file with (some) FOAF personal information along with attributes for how
long I've been a member and how much I've contributed, so when I join
other dodgy-file-sharing boards I benefit from that reputation.

My own FOAF file (currently broken because of mixed syntax) refers
separately to my two personas (Martin Poulter and Niccolo Pizzor),
basically as a reminder of this issue.


[*] A purely counterfactual thought experiment! The activity doesn't
have to be dodgy: I'm just being realistic about what people use the
Internet for.
-- 
Dr Martin L Poulter    Senior Technical Researcher, ILRT, Bristol, UK
Research interests: Philosophy of belief and Bayesian inductive logic

Home Page: http://www.weird.co.uk/martin/                                 
for Cult Concern FAQ + WEIRD (not WIRED) + "Bob" in the UK + Automated Love
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