Blog URI, is it necessary?

[Ben Hyde]

Interesting work going on here!

I don't pretend to understand the design entirely at this point.  You 
can tell I don't because the blog posting[1] I wrote last night suffers 
from a bit of deep confusion.

I skimmed the "how it works" page and over generalized.  The how it 
works page shows the user being prompted for the the URL of his blog.  
I projected my own assumptions of how to do this and assumed that the 
user was being prompted for the URL of what I call a "vouching server" 
in the posting.

Why is it better to ask the user to reveal his blog's URL?   When he 
reveals that he is revealing quite a lot of information about himself.  
If you ask him instead to reveal only the name of a site that can 
vouch/introduce/ID him then you minimize how much he is forced to 
reveal himself to the site he's visiting.

In my naiveté it appears that this change is very low impact.

In my confused blog posting I suggest there are these players in the 
senario.
   - the anonymous visitor
   - the suspicious site (which would like to get a better handle on 
this anonymous visitor)
   - the vouching site (which is willing to help the anon-visitor and 
the suspicious-site work thru this problem)

Call these Alice, Steve, and Victor respectively.

If Alice enter's  horde-of-bloggers.com (a blogging mega-site) rather 
than innocent-child.horde-of-bloggers.com (her blog of embarrassing 
poetry) it appears that the Steve can still work with Victor and Alice 
to get the tiny minimal bit of handle that Steve needs to feel more 
comfortable about Alice.

So, my question:  Is it really necessary to insist that Alice reveal to 
Steve her blog?  Isn't it sufficent and better to just ask Alice to 
suggest a Victor who can vouch for her?   What would this change break?

   - ben

[1] http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/archives/2005/05/openid/

----
http://enthusiasm.cozy.org   http://gibbon.cozy.org   
tel:+1-781-240-2221
  I forecast sunny weather!