Re: the possible impact of future changes in webfinger (was Re: Anonymity and multiple identities)

On 7 July 2012 15:28, Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org> wrote:

> On 7 July 2012 13:35, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Webfinger should be a standard by now, or at least the peer reviewed
> > documentation of an existing process.  Despite your claims to the
> contrary,
> > it is not.  It's not a particularly complex problem to solve, and we've
> been
> > waiting for 3 years.  The IETF have made it clear that is has some severe
> > weaknesses, and that everything is still on the table including a rewrite
> > (depending on what track it chooses, standards or informational).
> >
> > In the meantime linked data, and for example facebook open graph, have
> > become standards and have been adopted by 10's of millions of sites, as a
> > way of discovering information.
>
> In standards work, it's important to be simultaneously very patient
> and very impatient! As you hint here re FB 'standards', there are
> various things that can count as standardization, including adoption.
> So IETF isn't the only possibility here, and things can progress even
> if the standards continue to evolve. It's always possible to improve
> things (eg. opensource implementations) even while waiting for final
> signoff on some version of some standard.
>
> Regarding "in the meantime linked data"; you make this sound like an
> overnight success. The RDF project has been going since 1997, and was
> heavily based on earlier work from 1995/6, ... which in turn was based
> on previous efforts. The important thing is to keep moving, and to
> keep making progress. Sometimes things happen really quickly, but
> often because other things have been quietly falling into place for a
> much longer time.
>
> > I'm perfectly happy for you to evangelize your preferred way to solve a
> > problem.  However, I think pretending that your solution is the ONLY
> > solution is inaccurate.
>
> It's best to avoid words like 'pretend' when talking about other
> people's actions and intentions. Good typically doesn't come of it...
>

Dan, thanks for the correction.  Apologies if my tone came across as overly
critical, not my intention.  Mainly hoping to encourage diversity of
thought.  We have lots of great standards in the social web, let's try and
make the most of them. :)


>
> cheers,
>
> Dan
>