Webfinger should have been omitted from the proposal declaration.

Did you know that you can search for people on D* by name? I just typed your name in to the search field and your account came up immediately, even though you're on a completely different pod and we've never interacted.

I don't think the answer to the current issues with searching for people is in any way to facilitate the sending of other people's user data without their knowledge or permission, whether those data are gleaned from a database held on D* or on another network. That is, in my understanding, completely against what D* is all about, and I'm completely against it. The answer is to sort out the issues with federation - when those are sorted out, a lot of the issues you mention will disappear.

Compare Facebook. There are two ways of searching for someone: by name, with no other filters possible, or by uploading your contacts list, containing the personal data of all sorts of people who haven't given you permission to do this, and some of whom might never want any sort of interaction with Facebook. If you eliminate the latter as being absolutely against privacy codes, then all you have is a very poor search-by-name facility, especially given the number of members on Facebook. This search-by-name is already available on D* (albeit not perfectly because of the federation issues currently facing the network), and could be improved by allowing people to search on various filters based on information that each person has made public in their profile (none of this exists at the moment, but could be built in).

So if you're searching for a Jane Smith who lives in Paris and is interested in Linux and tennis, you could search for her name and put in one of those other items as a filter: if she has made the information public in her profile, it can be used to narrow down the search.

The answer to the problems you raise is to improve the methods of searching based on what each person has shared publicly about themselves on D* and which is federated to all pods; the answer is not to go down the route of misappropriating other people's personal data as Facebook and other networks have done. It might be convenient for you as a user, but it's bad, bad, bad.

I'm afraid you'll never get me to support this.

Goob is right, in that, you should not be able to be found by any criteria that you have not deemed to be public. This should be very explicit. i.e.; not even assuming because you cross post with another network, that you want to be found using your id from that network.

So I think that is doable. Pods should not return results of users that have not enabled they wish to be found using that criteria.

As stated before, I think this is a little different from the mentioned search problem. If I search for 10 people and find no one (this happened, just because the network is so small), I may give up. If I can search for my friends without manually entering each one, I'm more likely to find someone to use Diaspora with.

maybe a stupid question, but what keeps anyone from publicly (or 'limited to contacts') announcing your D* presence on FB or Twitter to your friends and letting them add you?
Sharing your D*id like that won't be anything different than someone stumbling over your profile by other means (public posts, hashtags, name search...).

ps: so far we have collected 4 cents and 2 pfennige in this discussion

My solution to the 'contacting lots of people I already know to find out whether they are on D* and if so what their ID is' issue, as I stated before, would be to send my contacts an email asking them. You could place a link to your D* profile page in the email so that people can click on it to find you and then can start sharing with you. There's already a link to an invitation URL on joindiaspora.com which can be sent by email - not that an invitation is needed any more, but it's another way to get people you know to connect with you on D*, or at least to let them know that you are on D* and want to connect with them.

Or, as Florian suggests, give a link to your D* profile to your contacts on FB, Twitter, etc.

I think it's far better practice (from the point of view of privacy and so on) to give out your details to people you wish to contact, rather than uploading or entering the contact details of people who may not wish this to be done.

I honestly don't think this is an issue which needs coding or any feature built in. The problems Brandon raises will disappear by and large once (a) federation is sorted out, and (b) more people join the network, which will happen when the fundamental issues such as federation have been sorted out and a proper release version of the software is available.

Florian, can we put the 4 cents and 2 pfennige into D* funds?

Why advertise an D* account to people that have probably never heard of it, or don't think it is worth their time (mass emailing your address book)?

You can post something in Twitter but what is the likelihood the people you want to see it, will see it? Very unlikely actually.

The same goes for Facebook status updates. These messages are usually seen by a small percentage of your contacts. You can put it on your profile but friends would have to manually check that in order to know it was there (very unlikely).

You can send direct messages, but that is manual labor, on the internet medium where scripting / automation is not cutting edge technology. Smart thermostats, automatic headlights porch-lights and sprinklers, ATM machines: all examples of automating that which is possible, through the general opinion that automation is more desirable than manual labor.

Based on what is proposed, no D* account will be shown that has not indicated that it wants to be found (opt-in). It seems no privacy is being violated.

ok, to me it seems the proposal was a little premature, since we don't seem to have reached a point where we can all agree on... or the majority of people who have voted so far really don't care
;)