Re: [web-annotation] Add `mbox_sha1sum` for the same reason(s) FOAF did

> Then http://example.com/users/(sha-1-of-email) would need to be 
maintained by conforming systems, and we wouldn't need a new property.

Yeah...it's this last bit that's concerning. I'd like "conforming 
systems" to not have user management requirements--we don't currently 
have that requirement, for instance.

Systems managing users should certainly provide an `id` that's 
(ideally) dereferenceable via HTTP (because *Web* Annotation). 
However, my offline ebook reader (re: DPUB use cases) may not have a 
dereferenceable URI for me...and, frankly, I may not *want* it to have
 one that's dereferenceable...or even usable for communication (i.e. 
`mailto:`), but rather something more like a fingerprint ("signature" 
being far too strong a word for this idea) that says this annotation 
and that other annotation bearing this same string (somewhere in it's 
meaningful package) are all attributable to the same `creator`...even 
if the data about that creator is "minimal" (i.e. amounting to only 
this sha1sum of presumably their email address).

Right now, I'm exploring a "Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work" 
app which consumes emails as if they were simple annotations and 
output a Web Annotation per email: 
https://github.com/bigbluehat/anno-mail

 - There's no user system.
 - There *are* user identifiers however (though I'd rather not share 
them too widely ;) ).
 - There's no *need* (as far as this system is concerned) to create a 
resource that === the user.
 - There *will* be the ability to see all annotations by a particular 
`creator` however--identified by either their email address directly 
or the sha1sum (or similar) of said email address (since that's all 
the system gets told about the author at this point).

I *could* create a user URL for each email I receive, but that's an 
additional burden and out of scope for "Annotation via Email" as a 
concept.

So, the only thing I'm really trying to solve is have a unique 
identifier for a `creator` that is not actionable beyond being a thing
 to filter by later--which is (afaik) precisely the use case described
 in [FOAF's 
`mbox_sha1sum`](http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_mbox_sha1sum) 
(however geeky that key name may be...).

I'm very open to other options. I just haven't yet found any that 
don't come with additional requirements beyond "hash this string and 
put it in your data instead of this other thing." :wink:

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Received on Wednesday, 25 November 2015 19:32:31 UTC