Entity attribute of the PROFILE element

I note Christopher Hunter's response and Karen Coyle's suggestion regarding the entity attribute of the POLICY element and would like to second the request and suggestion.

I'd also like to see the entity attribute expanded to add more structure, so that an automated process could discover if physical address, phone number, email address, organizational placement, and other contact information were left out. In its current state, there seems to be no way to discover the actual information present in the field without actually looking at the field before proceeding. 

Granted that an external organization or government could enforce certain contents even in the existing unstructured field, the abysmal lack of current contact information in InterNIC records and on Web sites would seem to indicate that there are very many, perhaps millions, of sites which desire to hide their actual address and prevent the very contact that this field seeks to encourage. 

If the data was sufficiently structured, at least an automated agent could be created to hazard a guess as to whether the fields were present and correctly formatted, and automated tools could probe addresses, or even phone numbers and e-mail addresses to demand a mandatory response.

This doesn't replace regulation or contract, but would supply a rich database that would make enforcement of contract or regulation easier.

Thank you,

Lee Anne Phillips

Received on Friday, 3 March 2000 03:32:48 UTC