Validator

The DiSo Project could benefit from a test suite that would determine whether a site or service supports the features necessary to achieve distributed social networking. The first criteria might comprise:

• support for OpenID authentication (does the site allow sign up with OpenID?) SREG/AX/microformats?
• discovery of authorization endpoints (emerging work)
• support for portable contacts — and no existence of the password anti-pattern (harder to test for)
• does it emit or consume activity streams/are said feeds valid/well-formed?

Bram Pitoyo points out some existing tools that we could make use of, among others:

• JanRain’s OpenID Checkup (IRC #openid)
• Lesinski’s hCard/microformats validator (email)
• Joseph Smarr’s PortableContacts test client (email)
• Mark Pilgrim's Atom autodiscovery test suite and Feed Validator (email)