xor wrote: >> Surely each client app will need only one trust value for itself, then the >> meta-trust value can be handled by WoT itself? > > What do you mean by "meta-trust value"?
just your "global trust" thing, sorry, i thought "meta" was clear by itself - it's usually used for stuff like this (eg. meta-mathematics). you were putting "global" in quotes and this was just my suggestion on what to call it. to clarify: meta-trust == the trust context which decides which trust values to download. > Each trust value will only be associated with the context in which it is > given, yes. This is not overkill, I quote myself: >>> If someone publishes crap in the file sharing that does not prove >>> that he is not able to produce nice messages in Freetalk, and vice versa. > > It would be unfair if an identity was distrusted in ALL client applications > just because the user misbehaved in one, wouldn't it? ah, you misunderstood me, see the "meta trust" above. i was saying that it's overkill to have a meta-trust for each "real" trust context, you should just have a single meta-trust for the whole ID. this seemed to be what you were already suggesting, but your "every client must deal with 2 trust values" made it confusing. in case you actually do mean the latter, i think it is unnecessary. if an ID gives out a bad trust value for one context but not others, then the most severe cases of this would likely be intentional abuse of the trust system. then, it's right for other IDs to decrease their meta-trust values for that ID. > It's a bad thing because the user of 1 client application will have to manage > 2 trust values, the global trust and the local trust of the client > application. my first point (that you didn't understand) was dealing with this. in summary: why does the client application need to deal with the global/meta trust? this can be totally the WoT's responsibility. why does the client ever need to see any ID's meta-trust values? >> On a different issue, I don't think it's a good idea for the algorithm to >> recurse indefinitely. Would you be able to make it automatically construct >> a small world network? Download the trust list of your most trusted IDs, >> then (say) 2/3 of their most trusted, then 1/2 of theirs, etc? > > It is absolutely necessary that the algorithm downloads ALL identities > because > with messaging systems like Freetalk ALL messages should be visible to the > user, not just "some" messages. we will have to come up with a way to *make* this work because contacting everyone in a network cannot (as in mathematically impossible to) scale. i don't see why it is necessary to do as you say. here is my understanding of how freetalk works: - gets a list of IDs with good trusts - polls the outboxes of them - downloads and displays new messages to the user in a web of trust, each node clearly does *not* think everyone as equal. i don't see this to be a problem or hindrance to liberty. in fact it would be pretty authoritarian if everyone had to treat everyone exactly equally. in the case of enforcing free-speech, if there are more censor IDs in a network than free-speech IDs, then the former will win unless you arrange things hierarchically such that the free-speech IDs are on top. then (as in any hierarchy) you will have the problem of judging who is "free-speech". ultimately, a WoT must reflect the wishes of its population; nothing more or less. **we cannot go against the wishes of the population**, we can only make it such that, **if** most people desire free speech, **then** they are capable of having it. we can only take a horse to water, etc. that said, it is easy to have freedom of speech, in the sense of being able to reach people that want to hear you. in the case of releasing top-secret documents, you can have something like this setup: - one ID acts as a 3rd-party publisher, that everyone trusts (cf. wikileaks) - the informant gets trust in this publisher - the informant publishes their dox - the publisher polls and retrieves the dox and in turn publishes it in their outbox - everyone downloads it this setup can also be used to "enforce" freedom of speech - set up publishers that agree to echo all non-spam messages that get sent to them. obviously this adds some degree of centralisation in the system, but you can re-decentralise by having several publishers that trust each other etc, sort of like Usenet. when one publisher is compromised, the others can then de-trust them. etc etc etc. anyway, sorry if all of this has been discussed and said before. i'm new to all of this. feel free to tell me to RTFM (but also tell me where TFM is ;) X
