the wikipedia use case

Tue Nov 22 17:50:06 PST 2005

Ernst Johannes <jernst+lists.danga.com <at> netmesh.us> writes:

> 
> Let's say I'm a substantial wikipedia contributor and have a  
> wikipedia-hosted home page called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
> User:Jernst (if you go there, you'll see I'm neither ... this is just  
> an example).
> 
> I also have a YADIS-enabled URL, e.g. from my LiveJournal blog, or  
> hosted by mylid.net or whatever.
> 
> I'd like to "point" from my Wikipedia page to my YADIS URL using  
> indirection/delegation as we have been discussing it on this list.
> 
> Can I?
> 
> It appears that Joaquin's idea of putting magic markers into HTML  
> BODY would make this possible -- but, given that this is a wiki,  
> somebody stealing my identity would be a very trivial exercise.
> 
> On the other hand, most wiki software is progressing towards the  
> ability of locking individual pages. But in my scenario, even if I  
> managed to lock my wikipedia page (let's assume some wiki allows me  
> to do that), I can't really add the pointer to my YADIS URL because

Hmmm, the double dashes in your original post seem to have caused the 
system to clip your message off at that point. Interesting to note, 
as I'm an intransigentdouble dasher myself.

I'm confused reading this, maybe because the issue of "discrete IDs vs.
pointers-to-discrete-IDs has been bugging me all day. The "magic marker" 
idea in the Wiki page doesn't *establish* your identity, right? It's just a
pointer to it. Just link a simple link to your homepage is a pointer, the 
"magic marker" just links back at the *real* identity. Assuming you weren't
trying to establish the Wiki page as your *authoritative* ID, then I don't see
the problem. Sure, Wiki pages positively beg to have someone change your 
pointer at your ID to something else, but that's no different than coming in to
change a link to you blog homepage, right?

I think Brad had the right idea about the <head> typically being locked down
tighter than the <body> in CMS deployments. But that's the *typical* case. 
There will be cases where even the <head> section is volatile. 

A user's YADIS ID is only as good as his/her ability to control the content
supplied when the URL is dereferenced. Pointers to the authoritative YADIS ID
(URL) for a user will pop up just about anywhere. That's the cool thing about
this; anywhere you can supply a URL, you can supply your YADIS ID. But there
will be all sorts of cases where the pointers get over-written, replaced,
altered, etc. To me, that's a phenomenon of content management for the web in
general, and outside the scope of YADIS itself. Were we to try and make it "in
scope", we'd be helpless to do anything about that problem anyway, so why go 
there?

Reading through your options at the end, not sure where it fits, and I stress
this is beyond the scope of YADIS proper, but my solution would be to 
allocate a page (or pages) for each registered user that are controlled solely
by the user. Other users can comment on your "profile page", but they can't 
edit it directly, a la the rest of the wiki. If a Wiki recognizes a 
contributor of a certain value, that contributor gets a "profile space"
in which control over the content  is given to the contributor.  

In that case, unless the system itself is compromised, your pointer, 
supplied by "magic marker" or <head>/<link> tags should suffice and persist, I
think.

-Mike