signing a robot's key - was: Re: Global Directory signatures

[David Shaw]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 01:50:24PM -0600, Kyle Hasselbacher wrote:

> In some cases, a user might have wanted to use it as a trusted
> introducer.  To assign owner trust, it has to be valid.  To be
> valid, they have to sign it.  Perhaps some of them knew that this is
> better done with a local signature and fat fingered the signing, but
> it's a little hard to believe someone understood the web of trust
> well enough to want to sign but not well enough to know a local sig
> was better.

Oh, I can believe that.  It's the "I need to sign this to make things
work" thing.  Do beginners necessarily understand what signing
entails?  No.  Do they necessarily understand what the web of trust
even is?  No.  All they know is that the instructions say to sign the
key, so they sign the key.

David