The purpose of Note use-cases

This WG is chartered to "... to enable users to come to a better
understanding of the context that they are operating in when making
trust decisions on the Web". The way I see it, the Note use-cases should
provide concrete scenarios documenting the different kinds of trust
decisions users need to make when using the Web. When evaluating
recommendation proposals, we should then see how they work in these
scenarios, to judge whether or not the user is being helped.

In my opinion, the Note use-cases do not list the techniques that are on
our agenda to study as possible recommendations. Were that the case,
there are several techniques that are not represented. I think there is
a basic issue of fairness in ensuring that the use-cases only describe
user decisions, and not tilt the playing field toward any particular
recommendation proposal by presupposing the use of a particular
mechanism.

I think Ian correctly pointed out in today's telecon that one of the
existing use-cases violates this principle. See:

http://www.w3.org/2006/WSC/drafts/note/#any-iui-2

In my opinion, this use case is also a duplicate of the user decision
described in:

http://www.w3.org/2006/WSC/drafts/note/#any-iui-1

I propose that to resolve this issue, we delete the first use case
listed above from the Note, and encourage Ian to submit a recommendation
proposal that covers the techniques he thinks this WG should be
investigating. I think this resolution clarifies the purpose of the
use-cases, making the Note better, and gets Ian's topics onto the agenda
of things being considered for our FPWD. These are the results that I
think we all want.

--Tyler

Received on Wednesday, 29 August 2007 18:28:03 UTC