Back around March of this year, Vito Miliano created a greasemonkey “Autosave” script for Gmail. It was a great idea and solved a very annoying problem.
This morning I logged into Gmail and noticed the “New! Auto-save and more” link in bright red at the top of the page. Turns out, Gmail went ahead – some 8 months later – and added an autosave.
I had to post and give some public kudos to Vito for being ahead of the curve on this one. 😉
My identity concept was horribly flawed. I’m a little surprised I overlooked something so terribly obvious. As such, I suddenly realize what aspect of the identity problem OpenID serves to solve so nicely.
I wanted to have a “home” system… and when logging on to a community, you would pass your login, password, and home system to that community – then the community software would ping your home server and see if you were valid. Is it obvious where I was dumb? You don’t want to go handing your password out to every community you come across. That suddenly opens the flood gates to communities designed to harvest identities.
Wow – that was dumb. It’s time to go back to reading more on what other folks have already figured out.
I’m a huge advocate for the creation of a new generation of online identification.
Dick Hardt of Sxip explained the current identity scene very well at OSCON. You can watch the entire presenation of Identity 2.0 right here.
I’m was blown away at with Dick’s presentation. It was both informative and entertaining. He’s given me confidence in Sxip before learning any specifics about the project.
I’m stoked! 😀
In June I made a post titled “A Few Good Forum Ideas” where I first mentioned the idea of putting a jail on the Gearbox Forums. I said I would discuss the results of the jail if we actually implemented it – and we did.
I’ll jump straight to the point – the jail, or “Ban Bin” as we call it, is very successful.
How it works…
Previously, when a forum user broke the rules, the user was banned. If the violation was small, the user was banned for 24 hours. If it was large or a repeat offence, the user was banned indefinitely. This created a problem; when users were banned, they received no direct feedback on why and were not given a chance to dispute the punishment. As a result, many of the users created new accounts. Furthermore, these users were often disgruntled and their behaviour was worse than before. The net result of our previous form of punishment was an overall increase in negativity on the forum.
Now, when a user breaks the rules, the user is confined to the Ban Bin forum. In that forum, the user will immediately find a new thread with the user’s screen name in the subject line. In the first post of the thread, the user will find a post from a forum moderator that clearly states what the user’s violation was. The user is free to post any comments to this thread.
The forum moderators keep a close eye on the ban bin, responding attentively to any posts a jailed user makes. If a jailed user shows adequate improvement in attitude, the user is allowed back into the community. If the jailed user continues to disrespect the forum rules, the user is banned from the forums. It takes a vote from at least two forum moderators to make a decision.
A master thread tracks when users are jailed. The last time I checked the thread, only two users had been jailed twice, and none more than twice.
Why it works…
The Ban Bin provides the offending user with ample attention. This is opposite of a ban, where the offending user is ignored. Often times, an offending user was not trying to create problems, but is merely upset over a social issue on the forums. The Ban Bin technique allows forum moderators to directly address these problems, instead of ignoring them. As a result, a rehabilitated user develops a closer bond with the forum moderators, strengthening the community as a whole.
Often times, a user falls in the Ban Bin for something as innocent as being unaware of the rule he or she broke. This type of case usually has a quick turn around. On occasion, the offending user simply needed time to vent frustration and cool off. Rarely is a user a completely lost cause – although it does happen and they do get banned.
The Ban Bin greatly reduces the number of fake accounts being created on the forums. This significantly reduces the amount of work involved in policing the forums. Thus, while giving offending users direct attention requires a bit of extra effort, the net result is less work for the mods.
The Ban Bin is ultimately less work with positive results.
Several months ago, I started a project I called Isogame. Using bits of programmer art, art from old projects, and art borrowed from google images (apologies to artists) – I built a very basic isometric map with an html interface. Using some custom forum software I’d developed for another project, I connect each tile to it’s own thread. Then, I changed the map’s tile based on the number of posts in that thread.
What I have is not well refined or engaging, but it does convey a concept: “Evolve and change a virtual world using metrics based on social habits of the user.” My prototype is extremely simple; there are countless directions to take the concept. For example: instead of measuring post count, we could track the user’s mood and relate it to the world’s weather. We could make it rain when the users are sad and sunny when they are happy.
Fun stuff…
News Corp must have a plan. Either that, or they’re still operating off of that mentality that drove so many investors to waste cash during the bubble. Recently I mentioned that News Corp picked up Myspace for $580 million. This time, News Corp purchased the massive gaming community network IGN. The price tag on IGN? How about $650 million! Myspace and IGN are completely different networks. Myspace was a home-grown social network. IGN is a collection of news sites, online tools, and various communities. For a while, IGN was in the buying game as they picked up various sites and communities to add to it’s collection. Apparently, the strategy worked.
This is – of course – nothing new. Both Google and Yahoo have been snatching up communities lately. Ironically enough, I’m posting on blogging software that Google bought. While everyone may have expected Google, Yahoo, and even Microsoft to be players in the online community market – it seems that News Corp is moving in on their cyber territory. (yes, I said cyber).
Is it just me, or is it getting to be impossible to secure a reasonable domain name? I recently had several of my domains expire. Some were live projects that I eventually stopped caring about, others were projects I never got posted and gave up on. I was considering revisiting one of these projects and I found one of those search pages wrapped up with lots of keywords related to the domain. I checked out another of my old domains and it was snatched up by a domain reseller. The page read, “this domain might be for sell!”
Even with the dot com bubble having long passed, it has continued to become more difficult to secure reasonable domain names. This is really frustrating. It’s also filling our Internet full of useless pages that don’t really benefit anyone… other than the people who are skimming a few cents in advertising off of the random traffic that hits them. To me, it’s getting as annoying as spam.
Ah well… if only everyone could have enjoyed the Internet before spam, popup ads, and whatever this new web polution is called.
The Social Software Weblog posted a bit about comScore‘s “Behaviors of the Blogosphere“. Halfway through the report, I was shocked. Ranking high in a graph titled “Top Blogs Ranked by Visits”, I found sites such as Drudge Report, Fark, and Slashdot. First I thought, “these sites aren’t blogs, what are they doing in this report?” That’s when I realized that these three sites were some of the top ranked sites in the study. Sounds like comScore is inflating numbers to me.
I decided to check into things. I went to comScore’s website to contact them. Their webform required a lot of information, but I filled it all out and started to compose my question. I finished, hit submit, and nothing happened. Their webform was not compatible with Firefox – bad javascript checking for those required fields. Smooth move there comScore.
So I flipped over to IE and submitted the following:
Please note, your contact form requires far to much information. I found it to be intrusive.
Also, your form is broken. Your broken Javascript prevents the form from being functional in Firefox.
On to the reason I’m contacting you. I recently read your report on blog use posted here:
http://www.comscore.com/blogreport/comScoreBlogReport.pdf
After reviewing the report, I have a question of significant importance to ask.
Why did you include sitse such as drudgereport, slashdot, and fark in your report? These are not blogs. These aren’t even close to being blogs. On page six of your report, 3 of 5 “Top Blogs Ranked by Visits” are NOT blogs. And, 3 of 6 “Top Blogs Ranked by Unique Visitors” ARE NOT BLOGS.
DrudgeReport is a news site, like so many others on the Internet. It’s a collection of links to interesting news. You don’t see dated posts with personal commentary of any kind. There’s nothing blog like about it – at all.
Both Fark and Slashdot are online communities where the posts are gathered by a group of people. Blogs are not run by committee.
Does your organization know what a blog is? If it does, why did it still include these sites in your report? Was it to influence your statistics and inflate your numbers?
I eagerly await your reply.
Thanks for your time,
Scott
I hit submit and got a new error message. Their webform only allows for submissions less than 500 characters!?! *groan* … So I cut my message down to this:
Why did you include sitse such as drudgereport, slashdot, and fark in your blog report? These sites are not blogs, not even close. Three out of five of your “Top Blogs Ranked by Visits” are NOT blogs. Does your organization know what a blog is? If it does, why did it still include these sites in the report? Was it to inflate your numbers?
If I get a reply, I’ll post it here.
Problem: I frequent several different communities on a regular basis and I must maintain an individual profile on each of them.
Solution: One login to rule them all.
The monolithic dark lords of all that is digital tried to solve this problem; but they have failed… Users did not want to sell their private lives to the dark lords for the gift of easy identity management. The dark lords failed because their solution was not open.
But perhaps there’s still a chance for mankind after all. Perhaps we can have a system that allows us to maintain a single user profile across all of the communities we frequent.
What it will look like.
When a user logs in, they’re used to seeing a screen that looks something like this:
What if, instead, a user logged into a screen that looks like this:
A user’s “Home System” would simply be the domain for an “Identity Server” the user chose to use. This server would be running an open source software package freely available to anyone who wanted to setup his or her own server. Any number of users could potentially create an account on a given Identity Server.
How it would work.
Lets begin by looking at the Identity Server itself and what it actually does. Every online community has a system that stores a user’s name and password and uses that information to authenticate them by having them log into the system. The Identity Server is, oversimplified, the place where the user’s name and password are stored.
Now lets consider how community software would function with an Identity Server. When a user fills out a login form and hits submit, the community software takes the user’s name and password and validates it with the Identity Server via SOAP over SSL. All of the user’s community specific information – such as display preferences – would remain in the community software’s database. However, all identity specific information would be obtained from the Identity Server.
This is some of what this system will let us do.
The Identity Server doesn’t have to be restricted to a user’s name and password. The system can also store a variety of profile, biographical, and reputation data. If a user were to visit a community for the first time, the user’s new account could be auto-populated with information taken directly from the Identity Server.
Users who do not want to maintain accounts on an Identity Server don’t have to be inconvenienced in any way. In fact, there’s no reason why community software can’t continue to function exactly the way it does now. Support for and Identity Server can simply be an additional feature to existing authentication methods.
An Identity Server system like the one describe here could easily support a variety of interesting permission systems. A community might run a black list of bad Identity Servers and prevent individuals on those systems from logging in. A more strict community might have a white list and only allow certain system in.
Identity Server hosting could be a new service. Service providers could charge a small regular fee for maintaining an account on a system. To stay off of black lists and on white lists, a service provider would make sure his/her system had a good reputation by governing the community of users on that system.
Communities could be connected in ways never before possible. Not unlike Amazon’s product recommendations, a system might tell a user what other unexplored communities might interest a user based on his/her past activity. If you enjoy a user’s posts on one system, you could easily find that same user’s posts on other systems.
How we get there.
If we are ever to see a simple system like this happen, it will take a lot of work and a lot of collaboration. First, we must write reasonably secure server software. Then, we must start building plugins, modules, and patches so that existing software can take advantage of the servers. Next, we must make sure Identity Servers are available to and understood by the general public. The adoption of this system by major communities is crucial to the success of the system.
Once we have the basic stable system down, many new ideas never before thought of will suddenly become possible. I don’t see this as if; I see this as when.
Conclusion
If you’re inspired, make it known. If you’re already working towards this goal, make it known. If you need my help, make it known. This will be a huge stride forward in establishing a cohesive online identity. I would like to see this happen.
Blog Blog Blogidy Blog
I suppose I’ve been a blogger longer than I realized. In August of 1996, I started making weekly web updates regarding the progress I was (or wasn’t) making on a computer RPG project. Back then, we just called them websites. Actually, to be more accurate, we called them Web sites as the Web was still something special enough to warrent a capitol letter.
I remember hearing the term blog for the first time around 2000. I actually read one particular personal blog regularly because I found the writing style to be completely compelling. As more and more blogs started to pop up around the Internet, I started to dislike the term. Part of me still felt that these blogs were just specifically formatted web pages and that giving them this trendy new name of ‘blog’ was pretentious.
Blogs Don’t Totally Suck, Only Mostly
I do have to give blogs some level of credit as their popularity has pushed web technologies along during a stagnant time. My favorite by-product is the powerful RSS format. Blogs have also encouraged the adoption of CSS techniques. In fact, at the beginning of last year (2004) I wanted to improve my xHTML/CSS knowledge and created an online journal about snowboarding as a testing ground. You’ll notice that no where on the site do I call it a blog. 😉
I’ve never been a big fan of blogosphere evangelist. Think about it, you don’t find forum users posting endless threads about how posting to forums is going to revolutionize the face of the Internet. The same holds true for countless other online communities. Oh, but that blogging community, they love to love themselves. A few days ago I read a blog post that was about a blog post about blogging. This was a breaking point for me. The day I found that post, I turned anti-blog.
Well, here I am, posting a blog post about being anti-blog. That makes me sound like a hypocrite. What I mean by “anti-blog” does not mean I dislike the blog format itself. For content that is appropriate, blogs are well refined and generally easy to deploy. Aside from just hating the arrogance of the blog culture, I’m particularly none-to-keen on the over-use of blogs. A lot of content that is published via the blog format is not best tailored for that delivery method. In fact, the intent of my own blog here does not fit a blogging format. (Yes, I am guilty!) Ultimately, this format has influenced my content development to be more blog-like and less like I had originally intended. Anyway, I’m going to provide two examples of content types that are often deployed as blogs but would be better delivered in another customized format.
Essay Archives
My original intent for this site was to deliver more essays and less personal ramblings. While a brief post about the latest happenings with Google or Winamp might appeal to my audience, these posts should not be given the same treatment as a post about virtual community – the intended core subject of this site. In fact, this very post deviates from the topic. Anyway, I had originally hoped that this site would be a collection of small essays with useful content about virtual communities. On Life With Alacrity, Christopher Allen has done a good job of keeping the majority of his posts on topic and in an essay style format. With this example in mind, we can consider how his content (and my intended content) could be delivered better.
First, let’s consider where the blog format is weak for essay delivery. A blog is generally organized by date and time. Occasionally a blog will also include a single layer of categories or groups. More than any other parameter, “recent’ content is given priority in a blog. This assumes that users visit your site regularly and keep up with your content. However, content like much of that found on Christopher’s site is timeless. As a first time visitor to his site, a user may be most interested in his oldest posts. The blogging format does not lend itself well to this scenario.
A better solution would be an essay archive format. This format would give more billing to the subject of content and less to the date it was posted. There would still exist a section of the site that would allow for denotations of recently added or updated content; but this would come secondary to a searchable index of multi-layered categorical organization. The format would likely look like a hybrid of software documentation and a directory. (note: I suspect this format exists, but failed to find a good example.)
E-Zine / Webzine
On the Gearbox website, we have a section called Gearblogs. Using a blog style format for this section ultimately created many brick walls. I forced the format to apply to content such as photo albums. While the format worked, I feel it was not a natural delivery. The blog format also created a “one content item per post” feeling. Given the nature of the content we have available for posting, I’ve often wanted to post a variety of pieces glumped together.
A webzine format (nothing new or revolutionary) would work very well. What surprises me is that this format never received a level of refinement comparable to blogs. Blogging is considerably more popular. Perhaps this is because the publication of an e-zine is best suited for a group of people; meanwhile, a single individual with something to say can get the message out quicker by posting a blog. Organizing the development of a full webzine would require extra work, and nobody likes to work anymore.
Back to the format: A webzine format would allow the bulk publication of multiple articles in an “issue” style delivery. This delivery would allow readers to enjoy a variety of information in regular intervals. This content could still be organized such that articles in older issues could easily be looked up via a search feature or a directory. Furthermore, since each issue will likely have the same basic structure (think of how the newspaper always has the same sections), readers can easily go back and catch up on any given section they are interested in.
A webzine could also still offer a constantly updated news section to track current events that would feel too dated if they were held until the next issue publication. In fact, if appropriate, a blog and forum could be rolled into the mix. In fact, this is much like how Sitepoint works. (Greets to all you sitepointers!)
I do plan to develop a webzine to replace Gearblogs in the near future. In retrospect, I think I might have been lured into the trendy nature of the blog format without fully considering how I really wanted to deliver content on our site. Or, perhaps, the blog format was a simple solution that got the job done when I needed to get a lot done quickly.
Conclusion
I haven’t presented any revolutionary ideas; however I still want to stress the need for both CMS developers and content producers to explore other standard delivery formats beyond the blog. I would very much like to see a powerful and easy to use webzine or essay archive service reach the same level of quality as blogger and typepad. Really, it’s time for bloggers to grow up.