If Women Had Designed Facebook
j...@qworky.net
in general, and particularly relevant from Diaspora's perspective.
Here's an excerpt:
If women had designed Facebook, maybe it would be:
Warmer.
More welcoming.
Flexible.
Expressive.
Inclusive.
Emotional.
Aesthetically inviting.
Personalizable.
Collaborative.
Dynamic.
Intimate.
Engaging.
Flow-y.
Maybe there would even be some music.
More at http://authenticorganizations.com/harquail/2010/09/30/if-women-had-designed-facebook/
jon
Rick Waldron
Rick
Rick Waldron
way, so you can focus on the content."
I think Facebook just tries to be minimalistic and stays out of the
way, so you can focus on the content. That's actually one of its
strengths. I prefer that to the personalizable, expressive, and
creative themes on MySpace, which make profiles gaudy at best and
unreadable at worst. Most of them are an eyesore. It would be nice
if you could choose a few other colors besides the stock blue
(actually, you can already do that with a browser extension).
However, such changes should only apply to *you*, and everyone else
could view the site how they wanted.
As for Diaspora, why not leave the default theme as something simple
and minimalistic. They will be able to modify however they want.
eleusis
On Oct 3, 1:36 am, eleusis <mst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As for Diaspora, why not leave the default theme as something simple
> and minimalistic. They will be able to modify however they want.
install themes (like Wordpress does), so people can decorate their
instances however they want.
uiri
fine and dandy if you're running your own server, if you use someone
else's you have to use whatever they want. I guess css templates with
commenting could be created so that people can make their own
themes...
As for the original post, the link is so vague I'm wondering if the
perceptions are less about facebook's design and more about
Zuckerberg's morality (believing the movie that he has none) and
facebook's morality (which is none existent because it is a company
whose sole responsibility is to turn a profit). Women can design just
as well as men so why don't you get a woman to customize diaspora's
css and see what they come up with?
William Lahti
mike
Some pods may have different features integrated. It may be easier to
let the user have the choice in the preferences to disable this
feature as well. That way, those that want to put in a whole lot of
"mess" can do so and those who want just the diaspora theme can have
their way.
uiri
When you are using diaspora, all the pages are rendered using code on
your server - css, haml, html, erb, javascript, information from the
db, ruby, etc.
So, if you are theming, the themes will change css which you have
control over. Do you have control over all of your friend's servers?
No, just your own, and only if you are hosting your own. So don't
worry about your friend's eye-bleeding css to cause you any eye-
bloodshed. It will only be their eyes which will bleed.
mike
for firefox, in a diaspora pod that would enable such a feature.
But yes it would be a pod based service not a service like myspace
(eww). That would make for a horrible experience.
Russell Whitaker
> I think Facebook just tries to be minimalistic and stays out of the
> way, so you can focus on the content. That's actually one of its
> strengths. I prefer that to the personalizable, expressive, and
> creative themes on MySpace, which make profiles gaudy at best and
> unreadable at worst. Most of them are an eyesore. It would be nice
> if you could choose a few other colors besides the stock blue
I'm surprised that all of you missed the glaring, well-known public
fact of Mark Zuckerberg being red-green colorblind (an X-linked trait),
so the blue theme was the only one he could actually see rendered
the way unaffected viewers see it. Period.
The arrogant feminist crank "scholar" who wrote the original article
that spawned this thread, of course, couldn't be bothered to see
past her own delusional fantasies about the way the world works.
--
Russell Whitaker
http://twitter.com/OrthoNormalRuss
http://orthonormalruss.blogspot.com/
j...@qworky.net
behavior what you want to see in your community? If so, you'll have a
very hard time attracting women to your project -- or for that matter
guys who don't want to put up with garbage like this. If not, you
need to step in. More in "What a maroon" at http://kallistixf.dreamwidth.org/1048.html
On Zuckerberg's color-blindness, see Anil Dash's take in "The Facebook
Reckoning" http://dashes.com/anil/2010/09/the-facebook-reckoning-1.html
and my perspectives in the first comment.
For theming in general, a lot of people like personalizability and
creativity. And a lot of people just like to have some flexibility
with colors, layout, etc. So I pretty much agree with uiri.
jon
On Oct 12, 2:09 am, Russell Whitaker <russell.whita...@gmail.com>
wrote:
j...@qworky.net
Feminists: Different vs. Revolutionary"
http://authenticorganizations.com/harquail/2010/10/05/facebook-for-women-vs-facebook-designed-by-feminists-different-vs-revolutionary/
jon
Raphael Sofaer
Russell Whitaker
<rap...@joindiaspora.com> wrote:
> I've spoken to Russell out of band, and I think he'll be more civil in the
> future.
Raphael sent me private email declaring the fact of his sensitivities having
been piqued by a sense of humor he doesn't share. I agreed to shut up because
he's one of the four kids running the project. But then now...
> It was probably the flashbacks to the Dark Days of Auto-Playing
> Midi Files that drove him into a rage.
Rage? Wow. You've never heard - or apparently heard of - George Carlin.
> Poking fun is fine, but vitriol is unacceptable.
"Vitriol"? See above. You call it that because you disagree.
Anyway, I lost interest in this project (after having spent some of the summer
boosting it) when I discovered you kids aren't willing to listen to
the old security
farts about how to do this stuff right. You're in for some rough
handling from the
professionals in the near future.
Good luck with all that.
Cheers,
Russell
> Cheers,
> Raphael
>
> On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 8:59 AM, j...@qworky.net <j...@qworky.net> wrote:
>>
>> Also cv's got a followup: "Facebook for Women vs. Facebook Designed by
>> Feminists: Different vs. Revolutionary"
>>
>>
>> http://authenticorganizations.com/harquail/2010/10/05/facebook-for-women-vs-facebook-designed-by-feminists-different-vs-revolutionary/
>>
>> jon
--
Russell Whitaker
> This is an interesting test for the Diaspora team.
Why? The "Diaspora team" are 4 guys. I'm not on that team. I'm not even
an embarrassing drunkard uncle they have to put up with at family reunions:
they can kick me out of their frat party anytime they like.
> Is Russell's
> behavior what you want to see in your community?
Who appointed you Arbiter of Taste?
> If so, you'll have a
> very hard time attracting women to your project -- or for that matter
> guys who don't want to put up with garbage like this.
What sort of crack are you smoking to not understand that open
source projects *in general* are "overrepresented" by males. This
isn't even controversial, except maybe among those who don't
code for a living and haven't seen a real workplace. Keep
fantasizing, kid.
> If not, you
> need to step in. More in "What a maroon" at http://kallistixf.dreamwidth.org/1048.html
>
Hilarious! Thanks for the coverage!
> On Zuckerberg's color-blindness, see Anil Dash's take in "The Facebook
> Reckoning" http://dashes.com/anil/2010/09/the-facebook-reckoning-1.html
> and my perspectives in the first comment.
>
> For theming in general, a lot of people like personalizability and
> creativity. And a lot of people just like to have some flexibility
> with colors, layout, etc. So I pretty much agree with uiri.
>
There's a time when I would have cared what you people think, but your
obsession with "creativity... colors, layout, etc" is laughable in light of your
agressive disinterest in the mundanities of security.
Because UI skins are *so much more* interesting than baking
security into the first developer release. You're not fooling anyone
guys.
Russell
> jon
>
>
> On Oct 12, 2:09 am, Russell Whitaker <russell.whita...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 1:36 AM, eleusis <mst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I think Facebook just tries to be minimalistic and stays out of the
>> > way, so you can focus on the content. That's actually one of its
>> > strengths. I prefer that to the personalizable, expressive, and
>> > creative themes on MySpace, which make profiles gaudy at best and
>> > unreadable at worst. Most of them are an eyesore. It would be nice
>> > if you could choose a few other colors besides the stock blue
>>
>> [SNIP]
>>
>> I'm surprised that all of you missed the glaring, well-known public
>> fact of Mark Zuckerberg being red-green colorblind (an X-linked trait),
>> so the blue theme was the only one he could actually see rendered
>> the way unaffected viewers see it. Period.
>>
>> The arrogant feminist crank "scholar" who wrote the original article
>> that spawned this thread, of course, couldn't be bothered to see
>> past her own delusional fantasies about the way the world works.
>>
--
Max Salzberg
> What sort of crack are you smoking to not understand that open
> source projects *in general* are "overrepresented" by males. This
> isn't even controversial, except maybe among those who don't
> code for a living and haven't seen a real workplace. Keep
> fantasizing, kid.
But really, I agree with the facts that the Free Software, and tech
world in general women are underrepresented, and that really bums me
out.
I don't agree with your stance that this isn't something that can
change. If we had that kind of attitude, I am not even sure we would
have started the project. While I am not about to give Diaspora a
default soundtrack, when the four of us started, we realized that a
fundamental part of making Diaspora a success is about designing for
people who are not "just like us". I think too many free software
projects design for their own "recursive publics", and they make great
software to serve their own needs. To date, no open source project
has really cracked the nut on creating a breakout social platform. I
wouldn't be surprised that if this wasn't somewhat correlated to the
tunnel vision of dudes making stuff for dudes. We are pretty self
conscious that we happen to be "four guys from the same school," and
we are doing our best to try and separate our users from our meatspace
selves.
When I sit down the keyboard, even if I am trying write something dumb
and nerdy like an asynchronous web finger client, all I am trying to
do is make something that my younger sister thinks is the coolest
thing in the whole world. I know if we can convince her, we win.
That's really all that matters: making something so awesome my sister
want to use it, because it is the best way to share stuff with your
friends, free software or not free software.
In order to do this, we need some help. We need a diversity of design
thinking. That includes the "delusional fantasies" of myself, Russ,
the author of the original article, an expanded community. Not
agreeing with a perspective is perfectly constructive feedback, but
dismissing it altogether is a fundamental mistake. Just because woman
are currently underrepresented does not mean that we should not
include them in our design target. In fact, that probably means that
attracting woman to help us with diaspora is more important.
> Because UI skins are *so much more* interesting than baking
> security into the first developer release. You're not fooling anyone
> guys.
code re: security, we would love to have a talk with you. You can
fork the repo at http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora, and submit a
pull request.
Please continue to have a constructive conversation, I just wanted to
clear the air a bit.
And if someone posts again explaining why Facebook is blue, I might go
crazy. Maybe Zuck just likes blue.
peace, love, and understanding,
maxwell