Call directed identity "anonymous login"? (was RE: concerns about each user having a unique "URL")

[Drummond Reed]

I agree with Paul - although I like the technical precision of the term
"directed identity", it's too esoteric for the general public, who are going
to be very interested in this feature (I already find it's the most
frequently asked question about OpenID 2.0.)

I started a read-through today of the proposed Draft 11 spec to make
editorial suggestions (I plan to submit it back to the editors by the end of
the weekend). I find it really does need more a little more explanation of
this feature. In crafting some suggested text for this, I found myself
struggling with what to call this feature in terms the general public will
understand (even though it's a technical spec, the name of this feature
should IMHO be the same thing we want the general public to call it). 

The term Josh uses, "IdP-driven identifier selection", is technically
accurate, but somewhat like "directed identity", I fear I it will be lost on
the general public.

The best candidate I can think of so far is "anonymous login", because that
seems to go straight to the heart of the benefit to the End User. 

Is it strictly anonymous? No, it's pseudononymous. Furthermore, using
IdP-driven identifier selection, an End User could in fact use this feature
and end up deciding to use one of their public, easily correlatable Claimed
Identifiers. So it's not always strictly pseudononymous either.

But "anonymous login" still seems to be the best name I can think of that
lets the general public quickly grok the essence of this feature.

Does anyone else have a better suggestion?

=Drummond 

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Trevithick [mailto:paul at socialphysics.org] 
Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 11:04 AM
To: 'Josh Hoyt'; 'Drummond Reed'
Cc: general at openid.net
Subject: RE: concerns about each user having a unique "URL"

FWIW, I've found that that words like directed and omni-directional are
confusing to folks. I *think* Kim introduced these words first (not sure),
but I don't think they work. -Paul

Josh wrote:
> 
> On 11/9/06, Drummond Reed <drummond.reed at cordance.net> wrote:
> > I'm surprised the 2.0 spec you cite (draft 10) has no mention of
> directed
> > identity
> 
> I am the one responsible for the term "directed identity" not
> appearing in the specification.
> I think "directed identity" is a pretty nebulous term, especially
> since it includes the word "identity" which is notoriously hard to
> define.
> 
> I wrote about the feature that can be used to implement "directed
> identity", IdP-driven identifier selection. "Directed identity" is an
> IdP feature that requires IdP-driven identifier selection, but it is
> not the only thing that is enabled by IdP-driven identifier selection.
> If you have IdP-driven identifier selection, then (IMO) "directed
> identity" is easy to envision.
> 
> Josh
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