Unofficial Draft 25 October - comments

On 10/24/11 9:43 PM, Manu Sporny wrote:
> The 4 new use cases that we discussed on the last telecon have been
> added to the newest date-stamped use cases document:
>
> http://payswarm.com/specs/ED/use-cases/2011-10-25/

Greetings,

Here are some comments on my beginning to read the
PaySwarm - Use Cases
Unofficial Draft 25 October


[Title and Abstract]

I suffered a confusion, at the start, as to whether this is a 
commercial document (Digital Bazaar) or a W3C document, as indicated 
in the Abstract.

SUGGESTION: Is it perhaps premature to use the word “PaySwarm” in the 
title? PaySwarm is the name inherited from the creators; but there 
will have to be a consensus decision about the actual name — as well 
as the actual workings of the system. AFAIK that decision has not been 
taken and may not be taken for a long time, dependent on how much 
building/rebuilding is necessary in making the standard.  Or at least, 
the provisional nature of the name might be indicated, by calling it 
provisional or by having square brackets around it, or something.


[Table of Contents]

The list of 16 items looking identical (with the same subsection, 
‘Requirements’, and similar numbers, all bunched together), may be 
daunting for a new reader to approach (I found it so).

SUGGESTION: Perhaps group the types of Use Cases into three or four 
bunches, so the mind and eye gets a chance to skim down and get an 
overview, and then choose a type of use cases to read about. It 
doesn’t really matter what the groups are; maybe Single Payments, 
Distribution, Multiple Payments, Meta-Data, and Other Uses (for the 
real oddballs). Or some other grouping.

[1. Introduction]
I believe an essential overall goal is not specified here. What is 
there now skirts the main reason that I believe there is for creating 
this open standard, but never really says it.
SUGGESTION: Reduce the existing paragraphs to one, and add something 
like this:   The current Internet finance-transfer system is so 
complex and insecure that only large corporations can afford to 
transfer money; individuals must hire corporations to do it for them. 
Yet there is increasing evidence that our society is in danger from 
over-concentration of wealth and power in corporations. This is 
dangerous: in the higher cost of transactions for individuals, in the 
security of private information (since the corporate-held information 
can be accessed by governments, hackers, and other corporations), and 
in the conscious and unconscious censorship that is possible on the 
content provided by the individuals. So, for individuals to be 
rewarded for their work without adding to this danger, the Internet 
financial system must be an open standard available to all individuals 
at minimal cost and with near-perfect security.

Received on Thursday, 27 October 2011 17:43:58 UTC