[isf-wifidog] User profiles in WifiDog

[François Proulx]

Hi !

Since I know Benoit is currently (or will be soon) working on  
implementing the user profiles, I think it's important that I give my  
views on the topic since I have a very good knowledge of the  
different social software available now and that I'm constantly in  
contact with many of our "trendy" users who will be using this  
feature (artists, web designers, podcasters, bloggers etc...).

Notwithstanding the usual user profiles fields : nickname,  
description, interests ... we need to let each network decide which  
information they want to let their user enter in their profiles. Even  
though it implies to create a generic database schema, I am strongly  
advocate that we don't let this feeling get to the user. I know  
everybody will want to let people see their Flickr pics in a glimpse,  
see their 43 Things, Places etc... So the only way to do it is to  
have a subset of the Content plugins, so that we can reuse the  
Content interface, but without providing a full back-end and with a  
simple non-configurable output.

In other words : we need to create model that will let us create very  
small and simple Content classes for each "complex" profile field. I  
don't want us to use the Flickr aggregator here though, since it's  
way to complex to simply display the 5 last pics (so we'll use Flickr  
Badge : http://www.flickr.com/badge_new.gne). I will take time to  
code this part. Same for 43things and 43 places.

***The point is that people know these "brandnames" Flickr,  
del.icio.us, 43things, Friendster, LinkedIn etc... We cannot simply  
use generic name and style ***, thus the name for a subset of Content  
plugins at least for what the user will see (maybe these classes will  
have certain flag "profile content" or whatever...).

These are thoughts on the matter.