Re: On Chatterbox Echoes, and the Identification of Monks in the Wild

[Corion]

I can't comment on the chatterbox features, as I'm still a user of the plain old web interface.

As to verifying a monk, I think if we forget about zero-knowledge proof, the easiest way to verify a monk would be to talk with that monk about his posts.

Of course this dosen't guarantee that the person you are talking with is indeed the monk on Perlmonks, but at least it will verify to you that this person knows enough about that monks posts to immitate that monk.

Other than that, monks that wish to be verified can simply post their email address on their node or /msg you their email address, and you can swap some PGP stuff then.

In fact, there is no way to verify that I am indeed the person I claim to be, except by visiting the given address and interviewing me about my posts...

[Petruchio]

Corion: the easiest way to verify a monk would be to talk with that monk about his posts

Of course... if you want to talk to him. Identifying him in that case doesn't require much at all. As I said, if someone wished to provide services for PerlMonks.

Let me give you an example. Say I write a brain-bench type quiz. Or, more interestingly, a timed quiz which requires people to write one-line solutions to problems, and evals the answers for correctness. Of course, you'd want to keep track of scores. Or an auxilliary web site... another person could write what amounted to an extension of the Monastery, and automatically maintain the identities of the Monks. Or a chat channel, or (very likely) any number of things I haven't thought of, but which some clever Monk will. Anything where people want to be able to "be themselves", and maintain their established identities.

In these cases, it is not reasonable to authenticate identity personally, and no mechanism yet exists for doing it automatically. Monks have thus far shown great creativity utilizing the rudiments which the site has provided (the XML tickers, in particular) to extend the functionality of the site. It would be interesting to see what people would come up with, given more such tools. As it happens, by the way, neither of my suggestions is rooted in speculation; I've actually worked on things which would require (or at least be greatly facilitated by) such functionality.

Besides the fact that such things could help alleviate the burden on vroom to add all kinds of features and services by himself.

[tilly]

Give the external server a PerlMonks account. Have people who sign up have to send a private /msg to that account. Seems pretty easy to me.

[Tyke]

Reminds me of the *old* howler: "The Iliad was not written by Homer but by someone else with the same name"

How can anyone know that the person you claim to be has actually posted the nodes that appear under what you claim to be your name?
...errm sort of...

At some point we have to take things on trust. After all the important thing is the information being shared, rather than the name. And no-one can imitate information content... either it's there or it isn't.