[rdfweb-dev] Nicks needed to support anonymity

[Karl Dubost]

Le samedi, 26 juil 2003, à 10:31 America/Montreal, Martin L Poulter a 
écrit :

> 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.

You could put the nick in the name field, because if you are anonymous, 
the nick is in fact your name in these conditions.


The more I think about the name issue, the more I think  there is only 
one way to be universal.

IMHO, There should be only an element name.

A french name
<foaf:name>Karl Dubost</foaf:name>

Let say a north-american native name
<foaf:name xml:lang="en">Fast Arrow the courageous</foaf:name>

maybe a nickname but it could be in name too :)

Said that, there's a need for a whole ontology on naming patterns 
depending on the culture, the civilization, etc.

The benefit is that it simplifies foaf and it let the doors open to 
import a vocabulary coming from an ontology on names.