It depends what you want to achieve in specific. The problem of categorisation of skills is itself non perfectly solvable, so you should pick heuristics.
These heuristics would inform your nostr design, which would inform your db design. It really is a problem that can have many many different working solutions, it all stems from the assumptions.
For example:
- who makes the categories? You or the users?
- who attributes skills?
- skills are always positive or can be negative (e.g. bad speaker)
I think for categories, I would create them to start, I think that's needed just to get off the ground.
Skill attribution should be whoever, but probably be relay based badges or lists for the sake of initial bootstrap, but again I'm unsure if badges are actually currently working on nostr BC no badges show on nostr:nprofile1qqs24yz8xftq8kkdf7q5yzf4v7tn2ek78v0zp2y427mj3sa7f34ggjcpzamhxue69uhhv6t5daezumn0wd68yvfwvdhk6tcpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezumt0d5hszrnhwden5te0dehhxtnvdakz769wywf for me even though I've accepted several. I like badges over list BC of the accepting part vs someone can put you on a list you don't want to be on (ie I know SQL but don't want anyone to come talk to me about it). Which then makes skills always positive and wot would be what solves the negative part. Permies.com does this with their PEP badges which I've been thinking I should port to nostr since I first got on. Also i know it's not possible today, but something I could see myself adding to the badges spec would be multiple user signed badges (ie badge is only awarded if a and b sign notes granting it.)
So I guess what I would ask you is, have you considered badges as a booster to wot? Because really that would be the purpose of this, to add filtering layers to wot.
For example, imagine AWS and azure were on nostr. Their certs could be badges. As an employer, I could delegate my trust to those npubs, and use this tool to search for people they've granted badges to in specific areas.
Also, I guess badges could be used in any nostr app related to "knowledge".
I forget the nostr based wiki, but I could follow you and want to read wikis you've contributed to or vouched for on tech, but I don't necessarily care what you think about nutrition, for example.
These are fair takes.
No, I haven't considered badges yet in my WoT because few people use them (relatively to follow lists), so the "signal" I could extract would be little to none.
There must be a good UX and incentives for people to assign/check badges for this data to grow in importance. As an advice, I think you should focus on these aspects, meaning UX and incentives.
Why would someone issue a badge/certificate of skill on Nostr? How they have been doing it before? What problems do they have?
Badge UX would be important for sure, so I'll consider that. Assume it's amazing tho BC a lot of the questions I have are irrelevant.
Why nostr - I guess the only response to this would be the uncensorable nature of nostr. I don't care if my front end dev is a nazi, just make pretty stuff.
Prior methods and problems -
linkedin , endorsements are often given to colleagues as a kindness, because hey you added some to my profile I'll go add some to yours. Also nostr would basically enable you as a freelance person to rack up endorsements from clients. Would also allow you as a business to not have to maintain a list of good people to use for specific tasks. Imagine John comes and does good plumbing at your house. You then endorse him for sink work, so next time you need a plumber, you have your go to guy and you don't have to find his card and your endorsement helps other people.
I feel like developing this type of tool for one specific use case is the wrong approach. BC if done correctly, it almost could have the benefits of LinkedIn, angies list, uber, yelp, etc All at the same time. Badges are basically a way to attach a review to an npub for something they did. Which makes me circle back to, I wonder if there is a way to view badges someone has been given that the haven't accepted (ie uber driver gladly recieves all of the 5star badges but declines all the 1 star ones.) So I think it's possible that badges would be insufficient and lists don't even seem like the right data structure to solve the general case.
I think reviews are great when what's being reviewed is a product or service. Giving stars to people feels off from the human UX perspective.
There are multiple nip PRs for review, none seems to be achieving "convergence". To become a standard one needs a product that actually is used, so others will follow.
That's why I'm emphasising the UX aspect
Who makes the categories? Excellent question. Ok for you as dev to make them for starters, but the only answer that will work in the long run is that your WoT needs to manage the categories.
Which is why I authored this Decentralized Lists custom NIP:
nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzpef89h53f0fsza2ugwdc3e54nfpun5nxfqclpy79r6w8nxsk5yp0qyt8wumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgtcprpmhxue69uhkv6tvw3jhytnwdaehgu3wwa5kuef0qqc8xetjwe5kxefdwpex7anfv3jhyuedvehhyttsv4e8xmmwv9kxj7n9vskhgun4wd6z6mt9w3exjcmn6a2pm6
