Loomio
Tue 27 Aug 2013 1:36PM

diaspora* - the next 12 months

G goob Public Seen by 179

Big congratulations and thanks to everyone who's been part of the way diaspora* has grown as a community-run project over the past 12 months.

I thought now would be a good time to start discussing where we feel the project, the software and the network should be in 12 months' time, and how we might set about getting there.

Look forward to reading everyone's thoughts on this, the exciting next step in the journey.

F

Faldrian Tue 27 Aug 2013 1:50PM

If the federation works like a charm, my main wish for the software is to have a working and function-complete API and to be able to connect "Clients" to a Pod without giving the account-password to the Client (like Twitter does).

This way we can have Desktop-Clients that integrate with the OS, mobile Clients that can be used to easily share photos from mobile phones and also Bots and statistic-software, that connects via API to the account. All the things that made me like Twitter should be possible with Diaspora, too - so it will be (in my Opinion) the best of all social Networks. :)

Another big thing is the "reshare" function. I don't like to scroll over 5 reshares of the same post made right at the same time.
There could be a "fulltext-quote"-reshare with option to comment on the post, or a "just reshare"-function that will reshare the post like twitter does with tweets. That way you will se a post only one time in your stream, even if it's reshared multiple times by people that are in your stream.

D

diasp_eu Tue 27 Aug 2013 3:43PM

Thanks to all contributors for version 0.2.0.0 - thinking about the future federation must be rock solid :-)

JR

Jason Robinson Tue 27 Aug 2013 7:04PM

API is defo needed within the next 12 months - sooner better :) Also another huge thing we need is proper export of data - we are promising users data ownership yet offer currently less complete data export than Facebook. Not good.

Chat? Optional imho, but important.

Something I would love D* to push towards would be a direct competitor to Tumblr. Lots of blogs are hosted on Tumblr and D* could do that so much better. And it's so much closer to doing that than outdoing Facebook or Twitter - who are difficult to compete with.

We have almost everything Tumblr has. To run a blog people would really only need two things;

  • Possibility to customize the tags filtered by default on their profile. For example, if I run a blog, I could tag my blog posts with #blog and have only those by default immediately seen on my profile. This way I could combine my social account AND have a clean blog.
  • Allow anonymous commenting to the blog posts. This should of course be opt-in per user. Should these be federated? Possibly.

IMHO diaspora* could make the killer blogging engine due to the powerful social features and post formatting.

S

Shmerl Tue 27 Aug 2013 8:29PM

To compete with Tumblr D* should implement more comprehensive control over the posting. I.e. markdown is not enough by any means. One needs to be able to use HTML/CSS to a good extent. Blogger service allows that. Creating an HTML WYSIWYG editor for that in addition to raw HTML/CSS would be an extra bonus to compete with.

I've always viewed Diaspora not as some FB+Twitter clone which encourages single sentence status updates and brain dead reshares, but as a platform to post something meaningful. Giving more control over the formatting for posting helps that lot.

F

Flaburgan Wed 28 Aug 2013 8:50AM

Priority:

  • Improve the federation.
  • Do what we can to accelerate the decentralization of the network

For that second point, registration on joindiaspora and diasp.org are now closed, but we can do better, in term of communication but also in term of make the installation easier and the software lighter (make an smooth image for raspberry pi would be awesome).

Big features needed:

  • chat
  • account migration

Improvements needed:

  • Smoother and auto refresh stream and notifications
  • Mention in comment
  • Factorization of reshares

If we deal correctly with all these points, we are golden.

N

Nick Wed 28 Aug 2013 12:53PM

  • priority: add support for groups and events.
    Groups are hampered by issues by federation, but I would suggest we implement them anyway and restrict them to members of the same pod. This would make diaspora a viable channel of communication for organisations, who could setup pods for their own members, and thus grow the network. (discussion here: https://www.loomio.org/discussions/4547)

  • subscribe to rss feeds (possibly as an aspect)? done soon this would help us build on the google reader closure exodus.

F

Flaburgan Wed 28 Aug 2013 1:08PM

restrict them to members of the same pod

Disagree here. This would be another reason to go where the others are when we try to split the big pods.

G

goob Wed 28 Aug 2013 1:15PM

I'd like to focus on the 'bigger picture' rather than talk about individual features.

The things to aim for over the next year (although perhaps not all of them will be completely achievable in this time) are:

  1. Start to move the network from being 'centralised' on a few very large pods to a more even distribution of many more small pods.
  2. Get diaspora talking with other networks and apps.

1. increase number of pods

I think what we need to do is make the setting up and running of a pod far easier and a more desirable thing to do, and encourage people to set up their own pod, either for their own use or as an open pod.

To do this, I think we'll need to achieve the following:

  • make installation and maintenance far easier for the non-technical user (I suggest creating a GUI for both installation and maintenance).
  • also have really clear information about what is needed to run a pod (I suggest a guide to prospective podmins on the project site)
  • improve federation to the point where the experience on a single-user pod is practically the same (if not completely the same) as on a very large pod (no more 'empty stream syndrome')
  • enable full account migration, so people can move pod at will, and encourage people to try the smaller pods or to set up their own
  • encourage people to have a go at running a pod, perhaps with a pledge that if you want to try, we'll have people who will help and support you every step of the way (we'll need volunteers for this)

2. get diaspora talking to other networks and apps

  • discuss with other decentralised networks what will be needed to develop a shared protocol
  • create an API!

I think these areas need to be made priorities for development. I appreciate that they are more complex and harder to solve than coding a specific feature, for example, and so developers might not be immediately attracted to them, but I think this is where our new ability to raise money can come in: we could fund dedicated working groups to solve each of these areas: federation, API, packaging, migration and so on.

M

Maciek Łoziński Wed 28 Aug 2013 2:42PM

I think a wiki page should be created to summarize the discussion, and to prioritize things. It should also be reflected by milestones in GitHub's bugtracker. Or is it too obvious? ;-)

A

aj Thu 29 Aug 2013 1:00PM

the Debian installation package, and an account "merge" functionality

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