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In lugnet.admin.suggestions, Duane Collicott wrote:
> Please provide a separate group for Brick Fair, such as lugnet.events.brickfair.
> They are forced to use lugnet.events and it has created so much clutter in that
> group that I've had to unsubscribe from it.
Agreed. There are more and more LEGO conventions popping up all the time and
LUGNET isn't keeping up.
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In lugnet.admin.suggestions, Gereon Stein wrote:
> recently we receive quite a number of requests from individual users to have
> their real names and/or profile pages removed from search engine result pages.
Would it be enough to let people change their names to an alias or screen name?
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I’ll admit this isn’t one of my better ideas, but I’ll throw it out there
anyway... Just read an article that
Ma.gnolia Goes Open
Source, But Bookmarking is Dying. Now, I’ve played around a little with
bookmarking. On one hand, it’s a good concept of keeping a list of bookmarked
web-pages on the web, so that I can find information I need from anywhere -- I
read an article, like it, bookmark it from work, then I can reference it when I
get home. Some companies go a step farther, and the more often a
web-page/article gets bookedmarked, it becomes a “top story” -- you can see what
the global zeitgeist is reading. I’d go a step further and do a thumbs-up or
thumbs-down, allowing people to vote positive or negative to an article...
One of the problems of bookmarking web-sites are that they’re too general --
everyone might be reading about John McCain’s new running mate, that’s great for
politics, but what about within the LEGO community? What are people talking
about? I know they’re talking, may not be on LUGNET talking about it, but I
know it’s out there somewhere -- new sub-themes are being talked about over on
Classic-Space, new construction developments are being discussed on
Classic-Castle, Eurobricks have some new set leaks for 2009, etc. It would be
nice to centralize some of that discussion. Blogs do a good job of that, but
LEGO blogs are just as fragmented as LEGO sites...
What would be nice, is do a hobby specific bookmarking web-site -- a service
that LUGNET could offer. Give out HTML/Javascript code that people can put on
their blog/web-site allowing people to bookmark/vote on an article. That
information could be collected like the “Top Stories” sidebar on LUGNET that
would allow people to jump to web-sites within the LEGO community of what’s
being discussed.
If you’re a registered LUGNET user, you can create a collection of hobby
specific bookmarks. You can add user specific tags to bookmarks; and organize
your bookmarks based upon those tags. And then for instance, some of the top
bookmarks tagged “pirate” could be put into a side-bar under “lugnet.pirate”
area. And with a little AI, the system can make web-site suggestions (to users
looking at their bookmarked collection), based upon those tags to help people
find articles/web-site they may not have known about.
Articles can be voted on for “top story of the day” -- HTML snipplet that people
can add to the end of their blog post. If a person likes it, they can vote
thumbs-up. Those votes are collected and processed a little like the “Top
Stories” -- registered user votes count more than an unregistered user vote.
And multiple votes sent from the same IP address; the first vote counts and
follow up votes are ignored. There could be a few sections of “What’s new
today?” and “What popular within the last X-hours/days/year?” (see:
Digg).
I haven’t looked into Ma.gnolia, nor it’s open source code... but I’m wondering
if there’s some ideas to be leveraged there.
--Mike.
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In lugnet.admin.suggestions, Gereon Stein wrote:
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Hi all,
recently we receive quite a number of requests from individual users to have
their real names and/or profile pages removed from search engine result
pages.
snip
My suggestion therefore would be - as is common practice with some of the
more recent communities out there - to implement some sort of “self-service”,
allowing every registered (!) user to set a flag in their profile, deciding
whether or not their profile, real name and other personal information should
be accessible to the public. Note that whatever implementation approach we
may take, availability of such profile and name information must at any time
remain accessible to registered users, since otherwise the whole community
approach would be put to question. However, since search engines work as
everything but a registered user, users deciding on keeping their profile
private will eventually not find their real names or profile contents in
search engines any more. This also applies to posts in the LUGNET newsgroups,
where the web display for unregistered visitors would show some generic text
instead of the real name and email address.
snip
I am very curious as to what you think about these suggestions/proposals. We
would want to find a solution that both helps those of you looking for more
privacy and still keep the community as such functional.
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I think this is a good move in the right direction.
A quick tangent: for those of us who have been around the LEGO community for
awhile now, having our real names out in public on LUGNET has helped me to
associate names of builders to people I meet at LEGO conventions/events. And
I’m also active on Flickr, where people can post pictures and be anonymous to a
certain degree. And for all of my the LEGO ‘friends’ on Flickr, I know half of
them by name and the other half by a username. My only suggestion, if you allow
people to be anonymous to the general public, I’d still enforce a type of
‘username’, so the username is displayed if the user elects to be anonymous.
Now, there is the question of what if a person wants to elect to be anonymous
even within the LUGNET community? Should this be allowed? Is there a
particular need for it? etc. Most on-line communities allow for this...
Usernames are generally associated with an e-mail address or a group of e-mail
addresses. I think the idea behind it at one time was to help cut down on
fraud, but obtaining a new e-mail address is easy enough to do. Being anonymous
is not wrong in of itself, but what’s wrong is fraud, spam-bots, and
griefer. Other on-line communities employ
a “number of postings” system and/or a community “title” given to how active
they are within the community. Generally, people with a higher number of
postings aren’t going around committing fraud -- they might steal Star Wars LEGO
from Target, but that’s another story. It’s the griefer that you can’t write
programs to prevent; but the great thing about a griefer’s personality is that
they get bored quickly and move on.
Personally, I think if given the option, if someone elected to be anonymous even
within the LUGNET community, I don’t think it would prevent the community from
functioning... the community would simple have to adapt.
It’s been awhile since I’ve dealt with NNTP on a programmatic level, but can the
‘username’ be employed when posting to NNTP via the web? For instance, if I
post a response via the web interface, once it’s been submitted to NNTP, can
“Username fakemail@lugnet.com” be used as the poster (assuming the e-mail
address resolves to a valid e-mail address, but might be an internal alias to
/dev/null)? The idea here would be to maintain anonymity even via the NNTP
server. This give the anonymous post an option to remain so, but only if he/she
posts via the web.
It’s archaic, but there are still some bots that spider through NNTP servers
looking for information -- you might be able to shut access down to them
quickly, but once the damage has been done, it’s done. If the above approach
can be implemented, it will at least ease the thoughts of some people...
The other thing to think about is e-mails are sent out to e-mail subscribers...
I would assume they have people’s real names & real e-mail addresses. E-mails
can be intercepted. When are subscriber e-mails generated? I assume it’s a
script ran against the NNTP directory after a message has been submitted (some
are e-mailed immediately, a cron file/script for the queued ones). Assuming
everything is triggered after a message has been submitted to the NNTP server,
if you can implement the above, you’d help maintain an anonymity even if
subscription e-mails are intercepted.
Something else to think about, once a person ‘elects’ to be anonymous, should
something be done about past postings? On one hand, it’s a simple enough
search-n-replace script of all files, replace s/real name/username/ & s/e-mail
address/fake e-mail addres/... but I think the ‘election’ should be a one-time
thing. If you elect to be anonymous, you can not elect to go public again. In
which case, it’s suggested that you create a new/separate/public account.
One other thing, I’d think about changing the sign-in to LUGNET, editing your
profiles, & posting messages via the web to be done over https.
And another thing... :) Most new readers support reading NNTP over SSL & can
require you to authenticate, with a valid username/password. I know it goes
against the open-door policy, but it’s also something else to consider.
I’ve always thought there should be a general discussion area on LUGNET & a
private/or 18+ older area, locked down by username/passwords... A private area
could ran under NNTP over SSL, and the web-pages could be cloned/re-written to
work with this new private area. I know this opens up a whole new can of worms,
but it’s something else to consider. It’s always been my opinion why some LEGO
clubs have moved off of LUGNET to Yahoo Groups or Google Groups is because a
subscription/private area was never offered on LUGNET -- club member wanted to
do event planning without the passing interloper. The idea of permissions and
access rights isn’t fun to deal with -- there are technologies like OpenLDAP to
deal with it -- but it also might mean rewriting your authentication model. One
idea would be to offer the private area, but not have NNTP access to it; maybe
maintain it via NNTP, but prevent those directories from being served up to the
general public via the NNTP server. Just food for thought...
--Mike.
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In lugnet.admin.suggestions, Frank Filz wrote:
> Gereon "Jerry" Stein wrote:
> > Please note that whatever steps we will take, these will only be
> > applicable to _registered_ users (as other users may have posting
> > permissions but do not have a profile to change their settings in to
> > begin with). To put it that way, if you post as an unregistered user,
> > we won't be able to do much about your privacy. Also - apart from
> > emergencies or offense - we will not meddle with the contents of
> > posts, so before hitting the "Post" button, it may be useful to have
> > some brains kick in... I think you know what I mean ;)
>
> Would this affect NNTP reading?
No, because the news server is unaware of membership and profiles. That's why
posting through NNTP always requires the email authentication process.
However, individuals' names and profile data are not an issue with NNTP anyway -
apparently only through the web as that's where people don't want to be found.
Sure, one might get the idea to just archive news for data harvesting purposes,
but that would be pretty tedious and you'd have to know what you are searching
for - plus it wouldn't go unnoticed; I shut down network access for someone
trying to download massive amounts of data recently and am prepared to do so
again if necessary.
Jerry
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Gereon "Jerry" Stein wrote:
> Please note that whatever steps we will take, these will only be
> applicable to _registered_ users (as other users may have posting
> permissions but do not have a profile to change their settings in to
> begin with). To put it that way, if you post as an unregistered user,
> we won't be able to do much about your privacy. Also - apart from
> emergencies or offense - we will not meddle with the contents of
> posts, so before hitting the "Post" button, it may be useful to have
> some brains kick in... I think you know what I mean ;)
Would this affect NNTP reading?
Frank
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Hi all,
recently we receive quite a number of requests from individual users to have
their real names and/or profile pages removed from search engine result pages.
We realize that some of you probably would rather not see their names on such
pages for various reasons that we in turn would not want to discuss here.
Our general approach is that LUGNET is a public platform, so availability of
information should only be limited in places where this is absolutely necessary.
I think most of you are aware that whatever you post here in terms of both
language and content may eventually be searched for and found on the web. This
is part of why LUGNET has become so popular - we do find a lot of people come
here through search engine results, and of course it is vital for LUGNET to keep
it that way.
My suggestion therefore would be - as is common practice with some of the more
recent communities out there - to implement some sort of "self-service",
allowing every _registered_ (!) user to set a flag in their profile, deciding
whether or not their profile, real name and other personal information should be
accessible to the public. Note that whatever implementation approach we may
take, availability of such profile and name information must at any time remain
accessible to registered users, since otherwise the whole community approach
would be put to question. However, since search engines work as everything _but_
a registered user, users deciding on keeping their profile private will
eventually not find their real names or profile contents in search engines any
more. This also applies to posts in the LUGNET newsgroups, where the web display
for unregistered visitors would show some generic text instead of the real name
and email address.
The benefit in turn could be that for logged-in users, we would not have to
spam-cloak email addresses anymore since search engines (and eventually addresse
harvesters) wouldn't be able to see them but registered users could more easily
try to email other users if necessary.
I am very curious as to what you think about these suggestions/proposals. We
would want to find a solution that both helps those of you looking for more
privacy and still keep the community as such functional.
Please note that whatever steps we will take, these will only be applicable to
_registered_ users (as other users may have posting permissions but do not have
a profile to change their settings in to begin with). To put it that way, if you
post as an unregistered user, we won't be able to do much about your privacy.
Also - apart from emergencies or offense - we will not meddle with the contents
of posts, so before hitting the "Post" button, it may be useful to have some
brains kick in... I think you know what I mean ;)
Thanks for your comments,
Jerry
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Please provide a separate group for Brick Fair, such as lugnet.events.brickfair.
They are forced to use lugnet.events and it has created so much clutter in that
group that I've had to unsubscribe from it.
Thank you.
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In lugnet.general, Brendan Powell Smith wrote:
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---an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.
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Well played Jedi Master Brendan...well played.
-Dave
ToT-LUG
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In lugnet.admin.suggestions, Brendan Powell Smith wrote:
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Even apart from the worry over some LUGNET posters intentionally driving up
their own “view counts” for egotistical reasons, I would appreciate some sort
of reload-blocking if only to keep myself from accidentally driving up my
own posts’ “view counts” due to over-actively reloading the page just to
check whether anyone else has been viewing the my posts.
I can just see myself thinking, “Hey, every time I reload the page, another
person has viewed my post! It must be really popular!” :)
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I second this thinking.
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1. Latest MOCs - Expand this section to include thumbnails of the five or six
most recent MOCs. I would also swap the positioning of the Latest MOCs
column and the Top Stories column to give the MOCs more prominence.
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I agree that thumbnails would be cool.
I disagree about swapping Top Stories and Latest MOCs. LUGNET is primarily a
discussion site, so the stories should remain the focus. Since the
center-column articles are updated so rarely, I could see reducing them somewhat
- put latest MOCs horizontally across the top, instead of vertically on the
right?
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2. Top Stories - Have this section only include non-MOC announcement posts,
and have posts make it to the Top Stories section by a combination of “view
count”, spotlighting, and how recently it was posted. This will draw people
attention to the most active discussions and/or stand-out non-MOC
announcement posts.
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I think using view count as a criteria wouldn’t work. The postings in Top
Stories have inflated view counts *because* they are in Top Stories, so using
view count would tend re-enforce the standings of the stories already in the
list.
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I’m torn as to whether spotlighting should continue to effect MOC
announcement posts. It almost seems as if the front page needs yet a third
automatically-updating section for recent noteworthy MOCs. Maybe this could
be something that appears automatically at the end of each week in the middle
section of the front page? It would include thumbnails of the five MOCs from
the past week with the highest “view counts” and spotlight ratings?
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That sounds like a very interesting idea.
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I think LUGNET could also use a more obvious way to post new MOCs--one that
walks newbies through it, and encourages inclusion of at least one
reasonably-sized representative image in the post.
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That would be very good. Maybe even a “Announce MOC” icon in the top navbar.
Steve
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