Greet the user with their preferred name

[RubenVerborgh]

Pitch

• Users like to be addressed by their preferred name within apps.
  • This is a name that they are known as, or use for themselves.
• In some cultures, this is the first name.
  • It could also be a user-chosen name or nickname.
• Other cultures do not have the concept of a first name, so another strategy is needed.

Desired solution

• Encode the rules for arriving at the preferred name in a declarative way.
  • For instance, using reasoning rules.
• Expose the functionality via JavaScript
  • For instance, through getUserPreferredName or user.preferredName

Acceptance criteria

• I want to see an example app with at the top right a user bar.
• This user bar shows a profile picture, and "Hi, Alex".
  • Here, "Alex" is the logged-in user's preferred name.
• This demo should work for people from different backgrounds.
  • people without a first name
  • people with a nickname
  • people with a chosen name

Pointers

• https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names
• https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

Scenarios

• https://github.com/SolidLabResearch/Challenges/issues/5

[pietercolpaert]

I wonder whether we also have to consider language negotiation here, depending on whether you’re e.g., browsing a page in Chinese or in English?

[RubenVerborgh]

Absolutely. But perhaps we should have language as a separate challenge, and tie the two together later.

[RubenVerborgh]

Recently saw a good example

So this, without asking (every time).

[github-actions[bot]]

Please provide a status update about this challenge. Every ongoing challenge needs at least one status update every 2 weeks. Thanks!

[pheyvaer]

@Sindhu-Vasireddy What is the status of this challenge?

[Sindhu-Vasireddy]

https://github.com/Sindhu-Vasireddy/SolidLoginGreeter is deployed at https://sindhu-vasireddy.github.io/SolidLoginGreeter/ as a demo for this challenge

[RubenVerborgh]

Great, we're off to a good start!

Now I propose to specifically zoom in on this bit:

• This demo should work for people from different backgrounds.
  • people without a first name
  • people with a nickname
  • people with a chosen name

This it not fully reflected in https://github.com/Sindhu-Vasireddy/SolidLoginGreeter/blob/5b73ebea3775a6c84964c229d061fde3c16d3a5d/main.js#L116-L141 yet

And let's also implement this in a configurable way. So basically, that there is a declarative file in which I can state those preferences, something like this (pseudo-code, do not use):

preferred-name:
1. foaf:nick
2. foaf:givenName
3. schema:givenName
4. schema:fullName

So basically, there should be a generic piece of code that does not know about things like foaf:givenName; all of that knowledge should be in a declarative JSON or RDF file.

[Sindhu-Vasireddy]

Update: The user can now specify custom preference rules (and modify the order in default rules as well) to choose which name predicate (using eye reasoner on browser) to consider for the name greeting on the app, there is a default ruleset using foaf and schema vocabulary added to user pod in case the user doesn't want to specify the rules and just use the app. PFA the Reasoning proof result n3 file for a sample result. Please let me know your feedback @RubenVerborgh .

[pheyvaer]

@Sindhu-Vasireddy The link https://github.com/Sindhu-Vasireddy/SolidLoginGreeter/blob/main/PreferenceRules.n3 gives a 404 for me.

[Sindhu-Vasireddy]

@pheyvaer I have updated the link now it is in https://github.com/Sindhu-Vasireddy/SolidLoginGreeter/blob/main/public/PreferenceRules.n3. The file was earlier there but I updated the code in the latest commit and forgot to update the link here.

[RubenVerborgh]

Great work, thanks @Sindhu-Vasireddy!

[pheyvaer]

You find the report for this challenge here.