Author's photo next to threads

^ See also https://www.loomio.org/d/XoMz3Gam/using-etherpad-in-place-of-the-context-box with respect to the evolution of context boxes.

Thanks @mixmix for raising the deeper issues. I think that people in general (not just Loomio) should consider letting go of the idea that topic creators have special ownership or facilitation rights or responsibilities... but I'll have to think harder.

I just found this thread because I wanted to suggest making it possible to remove author's pictures from the thread summary! I find it awkward and I think it sends the wrong message - more so with a picture than a name because the picture is more in your face, but in general I think authorship should be something you can check if you want but not a major focus since the purpose is group discussion. I worry that people in my groups will avoid starting threads if it's obvious that only one or two people have started all previous threads. Let me know if I should start a new thread on this.

Interesting points! I agree. Also it's weird that threads I started a long time ago still have my face featured prominently when they might now have gone in a totally new direction. I reckon this thread could be a place to talk about the whole issue of the author's picture in general.

Discourse has a scheme where they display some concoction of the top 4/5 authors in a thread in a row on desktop, with the most recent poster highlighted. On mobile they just display the most recent poster.

I find that scheme a little confusing, and seeing the same group logo over and over again would get really boring (plus pictures of people are always really engaging online). Maybe we could let anyone who has participating in a discussion select the image or something, somewhat akin to slack allowing anyone to set the topic of a channel.

The Material design spec recommends that lists are easier to scan if the most distinguishing content in each list item is furtherest to the left (for languages that read left to right).

That's why we chose to put author's photos on the left side of the thread lists: it helps you scan quickly and identify the thread you were looking for, without having to read all the text in detail.

Perhaps we can think of a consistent but more distinctive graphic to put their rather than the author's face, but nothing springs to mind for me.

I can imagine threads always having a host/facilitator, which defaulted to the person who started the thread; but which could be passed to a new person when appropriate. In that scheme it would be the host's face on the thread.

Personally, that wouldn't make me feel better. I have two problems:

1. My face is plastered all over my group's landing page. It makes me want to change my profile picture to a flower or something.
2. It looks like I'm the only one talking, which isn't true, and which could discourage others from starting threads. It's an accidental accrual of power thing. But my concern is just that it will keep low-engagement groups low-engagement.

Basically, I don't think discussions as they stand now have hosts or authors. I think they have initiators, and we need to know who they are so you can take into account who thought this was worth bringing up, who worded the title, who initially wrote the context, the same as how you show who wrote a comment (those pictures don't bother me at all). But the initiator didn't write the entire thread and doesn't have ownership or responsibility for the entire thread.

I guess there's a design argument for something visual on the left of each thread...I don't know off the top of my head what that should be, but allowing an uploaded picture would make sense, and I could imagine visualizing stats about the thread (like shades of a color spectrum representing how many comments it has). Maybe for some groups the author pictures make sense and they could be optional.

I like the idea of discussion stats, maybe a profile pic of the last person to comment, so it feels a bit more real time.