The core issue is that one can't reliably tell from a name (a string) if it's a "real" name or a "pseudonym", only make a qualified guess.
I believe that what matters here is that if there is litigation over something in a WHATWG Living Standard and a legal process, it should be possible to figure out who made the relevant contributions. (A solution to https://github.com/whatwg/sg/issues/93 should either preserve that property, or involve upfront due diligence instead.)
We don't want to require contributors to use or give evidence for their full legal name. If someone's legal name is "William Nguyen" but they always use "Bill Nguyen" (made up example) our process shouldn't call that into question. This seems especially important for transgender or non-binary people who don't use their legal name at all.
I think to resolve this issue two we should have two things:
A bit more details in the participation agreement about what the name should be, perhaps a link to some document explaining it.
More clarity on what should be done when verifying individuals, which at minimum is to check if we're being spammed or attacked via this form.
In https://github.com/whatwg/sg/issues/101 it became apparent that we don't have clear guidelines for what should be checked when setting "verified" to true in https://github.com/whatwg/participant-data, which is what allows individuals to contribute (via pull requests) to our Living Standards.
The core issue is that one can't reliably tell from a name (a string) if it's a "real" name or a "pseudonym", only make a qualified guess.
I believe that what matters here is that if there is litigation over something in a WHATWG Living Standard and a legal process, it should be possible to figure out who made the relevant contributions. (A solution to https://github.com/whatwg/sg/issues/93 should either preserve that property, or involve upfront due diligence instead.)
We don't want to require contributors to use or give evidence for their full legal name. If someone's legal name is "William Nguyen" but they always use "Bill Nguyen" (made up example) our process shouldn't call that into question. This seems especially important for transgender or non-binary people who don't use their legal name at all.
I think to resolve this issue two we should have two things: