- From: Steven Rowat <steven_rowat@sunshine.net>
- Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2015 13:36:15 -0700
- To: public-credentials@w3.org
On 8/4/15 12:38 PM, Dave Longley wrote: >> D. Related to the problem in C: by the end of reading the >> Terminology, I'd become slightly disoriented about several terms -- >> how they apply to living beings as opposed to non-living beings, and >> a vague feeling that I may have entered an infinite loop in >> attempting to follow the connections between them. > > Would a "but not limited to" clause when listing examples also > alleviate this concern? > Perhaps it will help, although it will be hard to be sure with me now that I've read and considered the document -- but it may help for future first time readers. I think an example like the one you gave in "My name is Dave Longley" would be good to have. And perhaps several examples that take, say, three or four of the overlapping terms (like 'creator', 'entity' and 'recipient'), and telling in a few words how they relate, would help solidify the model. The glossary isn't the place for this, but somewhere in the Vision Statement might be. I think the problem I was having might be expressed as: when setting up a system of inter-related abstract terms, a new reader needs places to anchor back to their existing (day-to-day) model of the world, or else the new system's terms are too fluid and have too many possibilities, so that it becomes like trying to solve for 10 new variables with only 6 equations...suddenly it doesn't seem possible to solve for any of them. I'm speculating that you, as a person who has worked with these terms extensively, have a set of unconscious underlying connections and examples which are not expressed in this document but which nonetheless you can use to anchor yourself to the meanings of each term. A new reader doesn't have this and becomes lost in the wondrous possibility that anything can represent anything else, in language. A curse as well as an advantage. > "My name > is Dave Longley". I could create this credential for myself so I can > share it with others via a standardized protocol. Others may elect to > decide to trust statements I make about myself based on their > relationship to me or based on what the statements imply -- but they > would know that it was me who made them (I digitally signed them with > a cryptographic key I possess). I don't see this scenario as awkward, > yet I'm both a "creator" and a "recipient". > >> >> Though if I create something I suppose I'm the recipient of it. > > Yes. > >
Received on Tuesday, 4 August 2015 20:36:45 UTC