Re: Person "identity"

[Antone Roundy]

On Friday, March 18, 2005, at 08:23  AM, Thomas Broyer wrote:
I propose adding an optional atom:id element to the Person construct
content model,
If it's not too late, I wouldn't be opposed to this, but I'm not sure I 
agree entirely with the specific rules.

with the following rules (to be reworded before adding into
the spec):
 a) There MUST NOT exists more than one contributor with the same id 
in an
entry of feed
+1 as long as this doesn't mean that you can't have duplicate IDs in a 
single entry or at the feed level, but that the same ID CAN exist in 
different entries, or at the feed level AND in entries.  I imagine this 
is what you mean, but just to be sure it's clear...

 b) There MUST NOT exists a contributor with the same id as the author 
in
an entry or feed
+1 with the same condition as above
 c) Each Person construct (in a feed) refering to the same
person/organization/etc. SHOULD be identical (same value for atom:name,
atom:id, atom:email and atom:uri; and if, e.g., atom:email is given, it
SHOULD appear in each of these Person construct)
I'm not sure I'd agree with this for a few reasons:
1) A person acting in a different role as the author of a particular 
entry, for example, might want to use a different email address, URI, 
etc.  If we specify that that person SHOULD have a different atom:id 
for their different roles if that role would affect the appropriate 
values for the other Person construct children, then okay.

2) I don't think we should require (or virtually require) that each 
Person construct sharing an ID contain the same set of child elements.  
But we could say that the values of any child elements that ARE 
included SHOULD be identical.

 d) Person constructs refering to different persons/organizations/etc.
SHOULD use different atom:name values all over the feed/entry
-1.  What if two people named John Smith contribute an entry to the 
same feed?  Does one have to alter their name?  Having a different ID, 
or one having an ID and the other not having one should be how the 
distinction is made.

 e) atom:id SHOULD be provided if known but MUST NOT be generated
automatically "just to provide one" or be given without the actual
person/organization/etc. aknowledgement (as it is a _globally_ unique
identifier).
+1.