RE: [xdi] Thoughts in Modeling Personas in XDI

["Barnhill, William [USA]" <barnhill_william@bah.com>]

Those are interesting points Giovanni and they got me thinking a bit.

On your first point you said:
> Now, what is unclear to me is why these two patterns differ one from  
> another. Could we figure out any use case showing that a persona  
> (second pattern) cannot be thought at as a role of an individual in an  
> organization or group of members (first pattern)?

And the examples drummond gave of the two patterns for personas were:
(1) @company+salesperson=alice
(2)  =alice+work

I'd actually add a specific case for the shared persona
(3) @company+salesperson

Thinking from a permissions perspective this represents a persona that is enabled for the capabilities that define what a salesperson in that company can do in specific, and what a salesperson in general can do. 

There may be persona data (lack of 'l' is intentional) that is shared among the members of the group @company+salesperson.  This data may be augmented/overridden by persona data in @company+salesperson=alice if @company+salesperson allows overrides.  @company+salesperson=bob would not necessarily have to have the same augmentations/overrides, unless @company+salesperson had statements requiring it in the +salesperson or @company+salesperson entries in the XDI dictionary(-ies) used.

(3) follows from my personal working definition of persona : the attributes that define a community (or the special case of an individual - a community of one) when it is acting as an agent in some type of community interchange. Interchange here is defined as a location or event where two things meet, usually perform some kind of exchange, and possibly go on their ways again.  What the thoughts on this definition of persona?

My thoughts above lead me to agree with you to some degree: I think that the pattern (2) is a subset of pattern (1) , but I do think the use cases need to be separate because of:
(a) In (1) alice is not the data authority, in (2) she is
(b) In (2) if there is any augmentations/overrides from the parent context of =alice they are from an individual and not shared. In (1) they are from a shared persona, a group identity.

I think both reasons are valid reasons to have them be separate patterns. For me (b) is the more interesting one.

Thought on pts 2 and 3 as I can later.

Kind regards,
Bill
________________________________________
From: Giovanni Bartolomeo [giovanni.bartolomeo@uniroma2.it]
Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:50 AM
To: Drummond Reed; OASIS - XDI TC
Subject: [xdi] Thoughts in Modeling Personas in XDI

* * * IMPORTANT for XDI graph model specs: TC MEMBERS PLEASE READ * * *

Hello Drummond,

still thinking at a possible solution according to our findings of
last week's call
(http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/xdi/201011/msg00023.html), I was
asking myself some very basic questions.

You said

> Let me first summarize the two patterns. The first one (illustrated in your
> second link above), is where an individual, say =alice, can have different
> "personas" by being placed inside different supercontexts [...]
>
> @company+salesperson=alice
> @sports.club+pitcher=alice
>
> Let me note that this concept of "persona" is most commonly referred to in
> directory systems as a "role", i.e., =alice has the +salesperson role at
> @company, and =alice has the +pitcher role at @sports.club.
>
> The second pattern is where =alice defines her own subcontexts that
> represent different personas.

Now, what is unclear to me is why these two patterns differ one from
another. Could we figure out any use case showing that a persona
(second pattern) cannot be thought at as a role of an individual in an
organization or group of members (first pattern)? I mean, from my PoV,
+work, +baseball, +home, etc. are all "contexts" in which =alice does
play a "role": she is an employer in her "work context", a player in
her "baseball (team) context" and a housewife in her "home context".

Furthermore, to be precise, +work, +baseball, +home, are not proper
instances of contexts, rather they are different "categories" of
contexts; e.g. =alice is a +driver in @example.bus.company, not in
+work; she is a +player in @example.baseball.team, not in +baseball,
she is +wife in @example.family, not in +home, etc. Finally she is
herself in her default context, which is, simply, =alice.

A third thought is about the usage of "numbered subcontext": $1 ("the
first", $2 ("the second"), $3 ("the third"), ... and $ (understood as
"all of them") itself are OK when applied to an identifier which is,
by itself, a group - I would say an array - i.e. an entity that
naturally does contain members: =alice+sister$1,
@example.baseball.team+player$2, @example.bus.company+driver$,
@example.family+member$, etc. However, this is less convincing when
applied to identifiers identifying entities which are - per se -
unique, such as =alice.

In other words, we should not have multiple =alice, rather we should
probably aim at having the very same =alice playing, as you said,
different roles in different contexts - or better - context instances.

I might miss some important points here. If this is the case, please
let me know - the ideal would be to have a use case for this - If not,
then I think that this proposal is so simply that it could even
succeed.. maybe.

Best Regards,
Giovanni

Def. Quota "Drummond Reed" <drummond.reed@xdi.org>:

> On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Giovanni Bartolomeo <
> giovanni.bartolomeo@uniroma2.it> wrote:
>
>> In order to speedly proceed toward closing some issues:
>
>
>> During the call we discussed two alternatives for identifying different
>> personas, one is the currently adopted in PDX
>>
>>
>> http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi/PdxExample#Pattern.3ASubjectSuperset.28PersonaContext.29
>>
>> and the second is the one I proposed here:
>>
>>
>> http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi/XdiOne/AddressingAndGraphModel#A.24has.24aforqualifyingcontexts
>>
>> my problem with the first option is that it causes semantic conflicts with
>> the mereological interpretation of structured identifier (see hereafter
>> reported excerpt from minutes):
>>
>>
>> XDI adds a second feature to RDF, which is the ability of XRIs to express
>>> structured identifiers reflecting the merelogical structure of the graph,
>>> i.e., aggregation.
>>>
>>
>> that's why I'm in favour of the second one. However, I've understood that
>> the first pattern has been introduced for some issues related to the XRI
>> resolution process - which I'm a bit less familiar with. Could you maybe
>> guys provide some more details on this issue?
>>
>
> Giovanni, in preparation for today's call, let me explain that I don't think
> there is any conflict between the two patterns/models, i.e., that both work,
> and both are part of the way personas can/will be modeled in XDI.
>
> Let me first summarize the two patterns. The first one (illustrated in your
> second link above), is where an individual, say =alice, can have different
> "personas" by being placed inside different supercontexts.
>
> @company=alice
> @sports.club=alice
>
> This pattern can be even more granular using tagged supercontexts.
>
> @company+salesperson=alice
> @sports.club+pitcher=alice
>
> Let me note that this concept of "persona" is most commonly referred to in
> directory systems as a "role", i.e., =alice has the +salesperson role at
> @company, and =alice has the +pitcher role at @sports.club.
>
> The second pattern is where =alice defines her own subcontexts that
> represent different personas. This one is trickier, because =alice can have
> many subcontexts, and not all those subcontexts represent personas of
> =alice. For example:
>
> =alice+tel    ==> represents the collection of Alice's telephone numbers -
> not a persona of alice
> =alice+friend      ==> represents the collection of Alice's friends - not a
> persona of alice
>
> So the question is, how can =alice define the set of personas for which she
> is the sole authority, not inside other authorities (like @company or
> @sports.club)?
>
> The pattern for doing this (illustrated in your first link above) is the
> inheritance pattern, i.e., defining subcontexts of =alice that are by
> definition instances of =alice. Following  the metagraph symbol proposal,
> this uses the superclass/subclass operator, !. It also uses the subject
> operator, $, to indicate that the subcontext is a new subject.
>
> In this pattern (illustrated using i-names instead of i-numbers for
> readability), =alice can create subcontexts that semantically assert they
> are personas because they are each subclasses of =alice. Each of these
> personas is identified as a numbered subcontext, e.g., $1, $2, $3, etc.
>
> The XDI statements that create these subcontexts are:
>
> =alice/$1/$  ==> creates =alice$1
> =alice/$2/$  ==> creates =alice$2
> =alice/$3/$  ==> creates =alice$3
>
> The XDI statements that asserts that these subcontexts are personas are:
>
> =alice/!/=alice$1
> =alice/!/=alice$2
> =alice/!/=alice$3
>
> Thus the semantics of =alice$[digits] where [digit] is a placeholder for any
> number of digits is that it represents a persona of =alice defined by
> =alice.
>
> This doesn't yet answer the question of how =alice can identicate what type
> of personas these represent, i.e., which one is her +home persona, her +work
> persona, etc. These can be done with other XDI statements:
>
> =alice/+home/=alice$1
> =alice/+work/=alice$2
> =alice/+baseball/=alice$3
>
> Talk to you shortly,
>
> =Drummond
>



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