[esip-semanticweb] [Esip-preserve] Identifiers for people?

[Curt Tilmes]

On 03/08/2012 09:20 AM, Bruce Barkstrom wrote:
> Peter Denning raised what would seem to be an important issue about
> "grounding" claims in objective or subjective ways [Denning, P.,
> 2011: The Grounding Practice, CACM, Vol. 54, No. 12, pp. 38-40].  If
> there is a claim that a particular individual is identified by a
> name, what objective tests are there to support that claim?  Or are
> we in a position where the only evidence we can offer to ground the
> claim are subjective ones - basically testimony offered by someone
> else (perhaps allowing a computer to offer the testimony).  Of
> course there may be problems.  Typing names into a repository might
> be subject to errors.  People lie.  Records (whether written or in
> data repositories) can be damaged or forged.  So - how could you
> tell whether a person's name is actually identifying that person?

Yep, just like everything else, we fall back on the provenance "Oh
yeah?" button.

   http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/UI.html#OhYeah
   http://www.w3.org/1998/02/Potential.html

We track the provenance of everything, and present it in a standard
form when asked -- easier said than done, but that's the plan..

Curt

-- 
Curt Tilmes, Ph.D.
U.S. Global Change Research Program
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