Re: Web Identity specification and Social Web

On 02/24/2014 08:25 AM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> The attributes you've outlined above constitute Identification,
> based on verifiable Identity. Thus, you are referring to a Web 
> Identification spec whereby a collection of Identity Claims (as 
> you've listed above) are used as the basis for verifiable 
> Identification of an entity denoted by an Identifier.

I don't disagree with the statement above. :)

I also think that "Web Identification" is going to be a very confusing
term for most developers. It's not immediately obvious how "WebID", "Web
Identifiers" and "Web Identification" are different. I'm sure the OpenID
Connect folks have had loads of discussions about this. We should see if
we can re-use the terminology they ended up using (unless it's equally
awful). :)

> Note, the following are loosely coupled:
> 
> 1. Web Identity spec -- this is just about entity denotation e.g., a
>  WebID (which is just an HTTP URI used to denote entities of type: 
> foaf:Agent)

+1, although I don't think we need a spec to say: "An identity is
denoted via a URL".

> 2. Web Identification -- this covers identity claims associated with 
> a WebID (for instance) or other Identifiers (e.g., those supported
> by OAuth)

+1

> 3. Web Identification Verification -- this would be about protocols 
> for verifying identity claims.

I don't see much point in decoupling #2 and #3 other than design purity.

How you make a claim about an entity should probably be verifiable to be
useful to the Web platform. Having the former without the latter is not
very useful from a Web Payments perspective (and this is why the badly
named "Web Identity" spec includes both the expression and protocol for
modification of claims).

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: The Worlds First Web Payments Workshop
http://www.w3.org/2013/10/payments/

Received on Monday, 24 February 2014 14:46:34 UTC