Wikimania Hacker Days
I spoke on Identity 2.0 systems at the Wikimania hacker days this afternoon. It was a pretty interesting event.
One of the key principles the Wikipedia people want to preserve is inclusiveness, allowing as many people as possible to make a contribution. This works well in general, but a small minority of vandals spend their time ruining things. The article on the Spanish Inquisition is regularly replaced with 'Nobody expects', graphiti is added and so on.
Taking Wikipedia to the next level without loosing the inclusiveness is the objective. For this to work there must be accountability. In an environment like Wikipedia it is impossible to keep the vandals out without keeping out many more people who can make a useful contribution. It is impossible to prevent the bad actors performing bad acts but it is possible to discourage them by ensuring that there are consequences.
Good Wikipedia editors quickly establish a reputation on wikipedia but that reputation is not transportable to other environments. If they want to join another wikiproject or contribute to a blog they become an unknown quantity. We are back to the age old problem: on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog.
OpenID and Identity2.0 systems provide the starting point to correct this problem. Once I have a portable identity that I can use to show I am the same person editing the different blogs we have a starting point for exchanging reputation across those blogs. The wider the scope over which I use my reputation the greater its value is to me. Portable identity improves accountability because it increases the value of reputation and thus the consequences of default.
