John Leslie wrote:
I agree that "Unknown" is quite different from "Neutral"; and that it
would be unwise to interpret NXDOMAIN as exactly equal to either.
Whether it's necessary to distinguish these is less clear, but I'm
quite willing to allow for it.
"Unknown" would mean "ignore this accreditor in making your assessment,"
while "Neutral" would mean "accept this neutral ranking."
I suspect that most accreditation services wouldn't use this
(largely for fear of lawsuits). Thus, I'm hesitant to include it.
I would think returning "Strongly Not Recommended" would inspire more
litigation than a "we're withdrawing our recommendation because they
didn't pay their bill this month." :-) But I agree that semantically
there's little or no difference between "unknown" and "retracted."
I'd like to interpret NXDOMAIN to mean, "There's no relationship
between this sending domain and this accreditor." I intend there to be
a closed loop where the sending domain advertises its relationship
with the accreditor and the accreditor advertises its accreditation.
IMHO, only with an established relationship can we be confident that
information about reported problems and their resolution will flow
dependably.
I like this. Is there a clear published definition of the difference
between "accreditation" and "reputation" anywhere? Even here at Habeas
people regularly use the terms inconsistently. I think this distinction
of a relationship between sender and accreditor (and closing the loop)
is fundamental. I see discussion on the list back in October, but it
would be a Good Thing to capture this in the DNA spec.
<csg>