[OpenID] [foaf-dev] Can OpenID identify a person

[Chris Messina]

If you're specially asking about FOAF-esque and other web markup
conventions, I'd offer the XFN microformat does not currently allow
multiple to occupy a single URI; instead when I link to a contact, the
XFN parser will treat the entirety of that URL destination as a
"person":

<A href="http://scott.kveton.com" rel="contact">Scott</a>

I'll have to find out what the thinking on fragment identifiers is,
but my best guess is that they're ignored for the purpose of
identifying urls-as-people.

Chris


On 6/7/07, Lukas Rosenstock <lukas.rosenstock at identity20.eu> wrote:
> Am 07.06.2007, 17:02 Uhr, schrieb Dan Brickley <danbri at danbri.org>:
>
> > Some SemWeb people (notably TimBL) take care to have a "non-Document"
> > URI for themselves, distinct from their homepages. eg.
> > http://example.org/foaf#memyself  ... but I don't know any usage of
> > these as OpenID URIs. In fact I don't know if an OpenID can have a
> > #hashblahblah section, or how that interacts with common OpenID tools,
> > services and practice.
>
> This is impossible, because # defines a section of the document that is
> chosen locally and there can be only one declaration of an OpenID per
> document.
>
> > It would be good if we could get confirmation from an OpenID expert that
> > it is reasonable to take OpenID URIs as (when used as URIs) naming
> > documents, and only indirectly being person identifiers.
>
> I would say (imho) that not even inside the OpenID community we have a
> definite answer to that question. Technically, the goal of OpenID is
> merely to prove that the person who entered an URI is in control of that
> URI and the URI is nothing more than a means to find out the OpenID server.
> People think differently about their OpenID. Some don't care what happens
> when the URI is loaded from a browser (maybe just a "This is an OpenID."
> message) because it's for authentication only. Others, like myself, think
> of their OpenID as their digital identity that can be used for
> authentication, for humans to find out information about me or contact me
> (through the browser) or for machines to do the same (FOAF/Microformats).
>
> > To say that the URI "mailto:nadia at example.com" identifies both an
> > Internet mailbox and Nadia, the person, introduces a URI collision.
> > However, we can use the URI to indirectly identify Nadia. Identifiers
> > are commonly used in this way.
>
> Good example: http://jyte.com/cl/danbri.org-is-an-author-of-foaf
> Evan typed in: "http://danbri.org/ is an author of FOAF." (although it is
> clear that Dan himself and not his URI wrote the spec ...)
>
> I'm CCing the OpenID-list, maybe someone else has a better answer on this
> issue.
>
> > Various FOAF idioms (eg. use of primaryTopic and homepage properties)
> > can be used in RDF to make such "indirect identification" practice more
> > explicit. I think the "<foaf:Person><foaf:openid ..." design fits
> > reasonably well in that tradition, but I'm not an OpenID guru... (it
> > also allows more easily for multiple OpenIDs per person, tricky if you
> > use them as direct URIs, since owl:sameAs is too strong an assertion to
> > make to bind them together).
>
> I like this design and would be happy to see it in the  FOAF spec soon.
>
> Again I'm not an FOAF/RDF-guru, so would also something like
> <foaf:homepage rdf:resource="http://openid.net" foaf:is_openid="yes" />
> work?
>
> Regards,
>   Lukas
>
> --
> Lukas Rosenstock
> Identity 2.0 Europe :: http://identity20.eu/
> _______________________________________________
> general mailing list
> general at openid.net
> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/general
>


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