RE: petname implementation recommendation proposal

Tyler,

Thanks for your comments here.

With the additional tie-in with bookmarks as has been discussed on this 
list in another thread, I can understand the usefulness of these 
names/mnemonics.  Do we have any feedback from the user community who is 
using the petname plug-in as to how they are making use of the naming 
flexibility?  Or whether they are puzzled over how to best use the feature 
to their advantage?  Admittedly, if the user took the initiative to 
install the plug-in, they're already in something of a minority of the 
entire user community - but at least it would be some information on 
improving the interface.

Regards,
Tim Hahn
IBM Distinguished Engineer

Internet: hahnt@us.ibm.com
Internal: Timothy Hahn/Durham/IBM@IBMUS
phone: 919.224.1565     tie-line: 8/687.1565
fax: 919.224.2530




From:
"Close, Tyler J." <tyler.close@hp.com>
To:
Timothy Hahn/Durham/IBM@IBMUS
Cc:
"public-wsc-wg@w3.org" <public-wsc-wg@w3.org>
Date:
03/19/2008 03:59 PM
Subject:
RE: petname implementation recommendation proposal



Hi Tim,
 
There's no need for the names to be clever, or inventive in any way. It's 
fine, in fact preferable, to just use whatever name comes to mind when you 
think of the named entity. I think this style of naming is a surprisingly 
scalable solution for the human mind. If you tried to enumerate all the 
different people, companies, or entities of any kind, that you know of, 
and what name you use to refer to them, you'ld be surprised at how many 
more than 20 you come up with. Sometimes, we mentally attach little 
qualifiers to the names, like "Mark from the gym" as opposed to "Mark from 
work", but I think we generally manage to keep all the different entities 
we interact with separate and distinct in our minds, and I think we do 
that with petnames. The display software I am proposing is just a 
convenience for safely hooking up those petnames to their corresponding 
Internet identifiers.
 
--Tyler

From: public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org] 
On Behalf Of Timothy Hahn
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 11:05 AM
To: public-wsc-wg@w3.org
Subject: RE: petname implementation recommendation proposal


Tyler, 

I have to agree with you that it seems like it would be much easier for 
people to remember something they chose rather than something that was 
chosen for them and written in a "language" (if you could call it that) 
which only weird folks like us sometimes understand. 

Where I keep struggling with this though is in the reliance on the user to 
choose a mnemonic.  Looking at it from the point of view of a 
non-technical person (or so I believe):  Should they choose one that is 
unique for each site they visit?  After 20 or so mnemonics, they would 
probably run out of clever names.  They would probably start re-using 
names.  Is there any harm in this?  Or could they use the same mnemonic 
for everything?  (after all, this would be easy for them to remember). 
What is the potential harm in doing so? 

I am sure that you have some good answers to these questions.  Hopefully 
the rest of the list will find the answers as useful as I will. 

Regards, 
Tim Hahn
IBM Distinguished Engineer

Internet: hahnt@us.ibm.com
Internal: Timothy Hahn/Durham/IBM@IBMUS
phone: 919.224.1565     tie-line: 8/687.1565
fax: 919.224.2530



From: 
"Close, Tyler J." <tyler.close@hp.com> 
To: 
Rachna Dhamija <rachna.w3c@gmail.com>, Stephen Farrell 
<stephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie> 
Cc: 
Thomas Roessler <tlr@w3.org>, Mary Ellen Zurko/Westford/IBM@Iris, 
"public-wsc-wg@w3.org" <public-wsc-wg@w3.org> 
Date: 
03/19/2008 11:58 AM 
Subject: 
RE: petname implementation recommendation proposal







Rachna Dhamija wrote:
> By what measure?

I think if we make any reasonable effort to quantify the user effort 
involved in correctly distinguishing a known site from an imposter using 
the hostname display versus the petname display, we will find an advantage 
for the petname display.

On each repeated visit:

For the hostname display, the user must remember the exact hostname used 
by the known site and perform an exact character-for-character match 
against the string presented by the hostname display.

For the petname display, the user must check that the petname display is 
enabled and displaying a petname that looks like one they would have 
assigned to the known site. If the petname looks more or less right, it is 
exactly right.

On initial visit:

For the hostname display, the user must study the hostname display and 
commit to memory the exact string being displayed.

For the petname display, the user must type in a short mnemonic of their 
own choosing.

For multi-hostname sites:

For the hostname display, no indication is provided that a newly 
encountered hostname has any relationship with a previously known one.

For the petname display, when the site's certificate creates a binding 
between hostnames, the petname assigned to the previously encountered 
hostname is displayed.

What's hard:

I believe the following are hard tasks for users:
       - exactly remembering a string chosen by someone else
       - correctly performing a character-for-character match of a 
presented string against a remembered string
       - correctly searching for information that is not presented

I believe the following are feasible tasks for users:
       - approximately recognizing a presented string as one chosen in the 
past

Conclusion:

The petname display substitutes feasible user skills where the hostname 
display requires infeasible ones.

Again, I'm not saying the petname tool is perfect as is, but it's better 
and moving in the right direction and I think I know what the next steps 
are.

--Tyler