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Diaspora Usability Discussion

ST Sean Tilley Public Seen by 72

I think it'd be good for us to consider the interface of Diaspora as a whole. While most of us could make the case that it's pretty good, I think we could make some great proposals for something along the lines of Gnome's "100 Papercut" initiatives, in which we can take long-standing usability issues, and consider how best to fix them.

ST

Poll Created Tue 12 Feb 2013 9:32PM

Set Publisher to be "Public" by default Closed Tue 26 Feb 2013 3:38PM

This is a usability trend I've noticed with a lot of Diaspora newcomers. Many newcomers will make Limited posts when in reality, they meant to make a public one to introduce themselves. This hurts discoverability, and frustrates the user. If a newcomer is too frustrated, they will likely end up just going back to Facebook.

I propose that we have the Publisher on Diaspora be set to the Public scope by default, with the option being more clear that the user would only need to use the drop-down to make a post private to an Aspect. Public could sit at the top of the drop-down, and anything else could be located under a separator underneath that.

Results

Results Option % of points Voters
Agree 18.8% 3 T M MK
Abstain 12.5% 2 M MV
Disagree 68.8% 11 FS TS JH JR F G T DM D DU L
Block 0.0% 0  
Undecided 0% 133 JL BK ST MS AA S CB HF BO DM GC JH M EG G AX PC PP BB LP

16 of 149 people have participated (10%)

M

matl
Agree
Tue 12 Feb 2013 9:50PM

Maybe we could also distinguish "public" into:
- public for the whole internet
and
- public for the users pod

G

goob
Disagree
Tue 12 Feb 2013 11:48PM

Have put my reasons in a message. I'm not keen on this, but not vehemently against it, with the right safeguards. However I think there are better ways of approaching the problem.

T

tortoise
Disagree
Wed 13 Feb 2013 1:17AM

Prefer "limited" as default. However, if the user could set one's own defaults in the preferences panel settings, then everyone could be made happy.

For newbies, I think it's important to default to private until they get the hang of it.

JR

Jason Robinson
Disagree
Wed 13 Feb 2013 7:52AM

I don't think it should be default but maybe we could add a setting to user profile to allow user to choose which one is default.

For sure it shouldn't be default for new users.

F

Flaburgan
Disagree
Wed 13 Feb 2013 8:54AM

The default option has to be private.

We deal with different issue there. About the newcomer who post his first message in private, there is already a sentence encouraging him to post in public, isn't it ?

L

L3MNcakes
Disagree
Thu 14 Feb 2013 8:59PM

I agree that "Public by Default" is not really in the spirit of what Diaspora* is about.

DU

Damien (ZBarg)
Disagree
Sun 17 Feb 2013 10:36AM

In terms of privacy, push people to think a second time before publishing a public post is a good thing. So I prefer "Limited by default". A "Public by default" option in Settings could be a good compromise for people who often publish public posts.

TS

Tom Scott
Disagree
Mon 18 Feb 2013 1:30PM

Instead of giving users a default which they will eventually not use, we should instruct them how to control their posts' visibility.

TS

Tom Scott
Disagree
Mon 18 Feb 2013 1:30PM

Instead of giving newcomers a default which they will eventually not use, we should instruct them how to control their posts' visibility.

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