Open cdata opened 1 year ago
The original petname paper calls names that you suggest for yourself or others "nicknames". Worth noting that papers from Spritely use the term "proposed name" and "self-proposed name" for this concept https://spritely.institute/static/papers/petnames.html
My feeling is that "petname" is not a great name, but is pretty well cemented as a term-of-art in decentralized systems. I think it would probably confuse things if we did not call our name system a "petname-based name system".
However, I think "petname" is a bad user-facing term. I feel we should not use it in user-facing copy, any more than we would use "DID" or "packet" in user-facing contexts. These terms-of-art reference subtle implementation details that mean something to implementors, but not to users.
Better user-facing terms might be:
Thanks for the extra detail! So, the full list of terms may have just grown to include:
My hope is that we can land on precise definitions / prescriptions for (or against) usage for all such terms.
Another note: When you give someone else a name on Discord, they call this a "nickname".
+1 to not telling users about petnames. I'd like to be able to propose a name for others to use to call me. I'd like to not take the suggestions when folks propose one. This is a potential area for abuse, which I suspect y'all are already thinking about. (e.g. if I petname someone as "ssn:22392739" or "big-ol-racist")
This is a potential area for abuse, which I suspect y'all are already thinking about. (e.g. if I petname someone as "ssn:22392739" or "big-ol-racist")
Yes, abuse vectors here are real and very serious. As a base case, you don't see someone's petname for you just because they follow you, but you can still encounter it via a triangular (or yet-more complex) traversal path. The remedy for this problem will have to be multi-dimensional and include pro-active filtering/warning within client applications such as Subconscious, as well as T&S protocols/countermeasures implemented by service providers, among other things.
The Noosphere name system is designed after a "petname"-style name system. The term petname is borrowed from this article, which distinguishes petnames and nicknames:
However, "pet name" as a matter of contemporary definition carries a slightly inflected meaning:
Whereas nickname is very close to our intended meaning for petname:
Given this distinction, we have begun preferring the term "nickname" in Subconscious UI, and as of #530 we have also introduced it to end-user-facing aspects of the Noosphere CLI.
All that having been said, we haven't done much in the way to document our rationalization for this, or the rules to follow when deciding how to use such terms. And, we are also faced with the problem that other things in the Noosphere domain could rightly be described as nicknames, such as:
So, this issue calls us to discuss this topic and land on precise definitions for terms such as petname and nickname (and/or other related terms), including prescriptions for when to use each.