[isf-wifidog] User profiles in WifiDog

Michael Lenczner mlenczner at gmail.com
Jeu 11 Mai 17:39:29 EDT 2006


I already registered my disatisfaction with Benoit in person about the
way that this particular feature was being handled.

I would have liked there to be a proposal for how profiles should work
which would have then been discussed before it was coded, including a
discussion of use-cases.

I'm especially concerned about how social networking services like
things like myspace, flickr, blogs, friendster, 43 things, vlogging,
podcasting, etc are included (or excluded) because I know that Benoit
doesn't care about, use, and therefore can't understand very much
about these extremely popular services which speak to the heart of
what we're trying to do at ISF - finding ways to use technology to
support community.

Here's my ticket request for the feature:
http://dev.wifidog.org/ticket/23
and here's my post in Novemember (just one of many emails about
profiles) asking to be part of the decision-making about how profiles
are implemented:
http://listes.ilesansfil.org/pipermail/wifidog/2005-November/001969.html

I don't have the requisite technical expertise to really be part of
the technical decision making, but I wanted the opportunity to ask
questions and to ensure that other, more technical people were part of
the decision making (like Francois - who found out only by accident
that profiles was being coded today and therefore sent the previous
email with his opinion - and people from Wireless Toronto that have
probably thought a bunch about profiles before).

That being said, I don't want to be unappreciative of anyone's time
that they are putting into this effort - Benoit least of all.  He's a
big reason for a lot of the great stuff about wifidog.  But I do want
to register that I very much wish that this feature had been handled
in a different manner where we had had a public discussion of a
proposal, even if it was a short one, -both at ISF and on the wifidog
list - before it was coded.

Mike

On 5/11/06, François Proulx <fproulx at edito.qc.ca> wrote:
> 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.
>
>
>
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