Subject: Re: What's in a name? Let's use a (uuid,name,email) triplet

From: Michael Haggerty <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:41:37 +0100

Michael Witten wrote:
> Rather than use a (name,email) pair to identify people, let's use
> a (uuid,name,email) triplet.
> [...]

A UUID doesn't need to be a big hex number.  All it has to be is a
"Universally Unique Identifier".  Like, oh, for example, your

                   *** EMAIL ADDRESS ***

[1].  There is even already a way to fix up mistakes or unavoidable
email address changes, namely the .mailmap file.

So if you are exercised about having a persistent identity, simply find
an email provider that is unlikely to ever give your email address to
somebody else, and use that address consistently.  Encourage other
people to do the same and to keep their .mailmap entries up to date.

(Not that it's likely to happen, but having people maintain opaque UUIDs
is even *less* likely.)

Michael

[1] The only non-UUID property of legitimate email addresses is that the
username part or even the domain name part of an email address can be
recycled.  But with a reputable email provider this shouldn't be a
problem.  For the purpose of the UUID it is not even a problem if the
email address becomes defunct, as long as it is not taken over by
somebody else.