Talk:Diaspora (social network)

Userbox

Editors who use Diaspora can add this userbox to their user page, if desired:

Code	Result
{{User:Ahunt/Diaspora}}	*This user is on Diaspora.	Usage

- Ahunt (talk) 23:29, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Or take it in white:

Code	Result
{{User:Strahtw/Template:Diaspora}}	This user has an account on	Usage

--Strahtw (talk) 08:44, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Merge

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Diaspora_(software)#Merge Gwaka Lumpa (talk) 10:00, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

"Commercial?"

Seems a bit rhethorical. And the page about facebook doesn't have it.77.110.49.29 (talk) 04:52, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

That is just a standard parameter in the infobox template. It can be left blank if it worries you. The article on FB uses the Infobox company, whereas this one uses the Infobox website templates - that is why they look different. - Ahunt (talk) 12:30, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

'Founders'

Hey there folks. Just offering a suggestion here. In Ilya Zhitomirskiy's page there were some suggestions that the article be deleted because all of the other founders of Diaspora do not have a page in WP. Might I suggest that a section be created in this article about the founders of the project? The mention of Ilya's death seems to be in a random place right now, and a section that has details about all the founders would be an appropriate place for the mention of his death. Cheers! Wingtipvortex (talk) 19:33, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

That would work fine as long as refs can be found. It would be better to have information on them here, rather than individual articles, at least at this point in time, due to WP:1E. - Ahunt (talk) 21:24, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Join Diaspora URL

This morning, I added a link to https://joindiaspora.com/ to the box to the right of the page (was not logged in at the time), but it was undone again because 'too spammy'. It seems appropriate to have a URL for the Diaspora network, even though the structure is distributed. What do you think? EelkeSpaak (talk) 15:48, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I removed this URL from the info box because it said "join at https://joindiaspora.com/". While JD is the pod run by the developers it is only one of many dozens of pods, all of which are listed in the two external links "List of Diaspora pods" and "Another list of Diaspora pods". Wikipedia is here to describe Diaspora, not recruit members for it, so adding "join at https://joindiaspora.com/" to the info box is not appropriate as explained at WP:ELNO. - Ahunt (talk) 17:48, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I think if we are going to include a link for users to join it should be either to the diaspora foundation website, or to podupti.met where new users can find themselves a pod (of which joindiaspora is one of many).Iamsorandom (talk) 15:08, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

There is a link to podupti.me in the info box note. Unfortunately David Morley, who runs that website indicates that it is down right now and, indeed it is! Hopefully it will be back soon. - Ahunt (talk) 15:16, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Regarding feedback comment

This feedback comment requests: "Project Web site / source / GitHub links. Also, a graph explaining how a social mesh network works." This reader appears to have overlooked that the software's external links are available on Diaspora (software). I'm not sure how to avoid this confusion. The other suggestion seems useful but challenging. Dcoetzee 05:24, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

"ownership of data"

There has to be made a difference between "ownership of data" and "those able to look at the data". While the pod +user/passw remains in charge if the first, all authorised friends can do the latter. Deleting the data will not alter the "copy" made by some friends in their organic brain, nor in the pics they emailed to other ppl. Like wise imagine these scenarios:
-X has a pod and has fb account coupled to it. FB thus can claim its rights as usual to that data as if you posted it on fb yourself.
-X has a pod and befriends Y via diaspora. Y has a coupled fb account. All data that Y can see, fb can see as well, or any other party that has access to it.
94.225.85.13 (talk) 12:36, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I do not believe that Diaspora user get ownership of their data, as the pods are not owned by every single individual. A friend may easily make a copy of your post like stated above. Also usage of Facebook accounts decrease your control of your data. So in my opinion, "Diaspora users retain ownership of their data and do not assign ownership rights. The software is specifically designed to allow users to download all their images and text that has been uploaded at any time." would be better said as "Diaspora users have an increased ownership of their data, and do not assign ownership rights. The software is specifically designed to allow users to download all their images and text that has been uploaded at any time." I will leave this for you guys to decide, as I'm new to Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fanboystudios (talk • contribs) 00:58, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

redirect

hi guys. i redirected Diaspora (software) here. most info from there appears to be here.. fill out if i missed something important...178.148.233.248 (talk) 01:24, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

damn! i was planning to do the opposite, to redirect this article there... which of the titles makes more sense? 178.148.233.248 (talk) 01:26, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I have reversed your deletion of the article in favour of a redirect. Please see Talk:Diaspora_(software)#Merge - the most recent consensus was not in favour of merging. I am not against it, but to merge these you are going to make a case and gain consensus for doing so. - Ahunt (talk) 12:42, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

i understand. however, i don't find this that important to spend my time on it. it just seemed absurd to me that there should be 2 practically same articles (one subset of the other) with... cheers. 178.148.233.248 (talk) 19:40, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Quote density

Aren't there too many quotes in the article? --Mortense (talk) 22:36, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Community Project

It says in the article that diaspora is now to be a community project. However it also says elsewhere that Diaspora is managed by Diaspora Inc., a for-profit C-corporation.

This is a bit confusing - and the announcement that it is to transition to being a community project is now almost a year old - it would be good to have an update, whether it is now a community project, what's happened to diaspora inc. etc.? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iamsorandom (talk • contribs) 14:59, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

That is a good point. All we have is http://blog.diasporafoundation.org/ and that doesn't explain what has happened to the goverance. Let me see if I can find out directly! - Ahunt (talk) 15:08, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I checked with a key person at Diaspora and he says that the organization is in transition right now. There will be an announcement coming as to how the governance will look as soon as it is finalized. Right now there are no refs for this, but once the change-over is made there will be a public announcement that we can use as a ref to update this article. I am on Diaspora, so I will keep an eye out for that! - Ahunt (talk) 01:04, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

 Done - I finally found the ref I was looking for to explain the organization. - Ahunt (talk) 11:33, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Dead Project

The opening sentence Diaspora (styled DIASPORA*) is a nonprofit, user-owned, should probably indicate that Diaspora was as in past tense. The project failed and it is not expected to ever get off the ground. Does anyone object if I updated this Wiki entry somewhat to show that the project is dead? Damotclese (talk) 00:45, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Except that the project is not at all dead and your ref does not say that it is. The software development is currently transitioning to new community governance and has lots of developers working on it, while the community network is alive and well and still growing today with over 400,000 users. Everyday there are tens of thousands of users on the pods, making posts. - Ahunt (talk) 22:39, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

In the development discussion forum and on Facebook it appeared that the project declined in viability as developers lost heart in the project for a long while. Since it appeared to be dying, I abandoned the effort (along with so many others) and yet I was somewhat surprised to find that it continued. In fact I checked and found that I'm still in the user database, so it does appear that the project limps along. Damotclese (talk) 16:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Well new versions of the software are regularly being issued. The number of users is at 405,000 and growing slowly. I am on there every day and there are mountains of posts and intelligent discussions going on. It is hardly limping. - Ahunt (talk) 20:44, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

The ref to the number of users say 380,694, did 20,000 drop off or am I missing something? Jonpatterns (talk) 19:43, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

The diasp.eu stats are only guesses by that particular pod maintainer and are in no way official statistics about the project or network. So whether the user base is growing or going down is impossible to say. Indication from activity within the project is towards growing. Jaywink (talk) 20:22, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Tutorial Link Is Broken

The official web site's link to tutorials is broken, and even the link offered on the official page is broken. The next suitable reference for tutorials is off of YouTube. Damotclese (talk) 18:40, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I also see that the Other Documentation Link is also broken. Damotclese (talk) 18:42, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

The tutorials have been moved to http://diasporial.com/tutorials. I will fix it. - Ahunt (talk) 23:50, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you. Damotclese (talk) 15:24, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

No problem, thanks for bringing the issue here! - Ahunt (talk) 15:26, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Security

The article lacks information about data security on Diaspora. Is the data encrypted while being transported between pods? Is there end-to-end encryption? Is it possible to corrupt the system by setting up a malicious pod? There is hardly any discussion on security issues in the article. Kathedra87 (talk) 13:25, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

As per WP:V all we need to add information on this are reliable sources. - Ahunt (talk) 13:33, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Name styling

The official website https://diasporafoundation.org as well as https://joindiaspora.com uses the all lower case styling. Could user Ahunt explain the recent revert of the text in the introduction to say otherwise? Liiiii (talk) 15:47, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

As per project official decision lower case is the correct branding. Jaywink (talk) 15:53, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Well then they need to change https://joindiaspora.com/ as it is all upper case, as shown on that page. - Ahunt (talk) 15:55, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Joindiaspora.com is a pod by the project founders (who are not maintaining the project any more) - the project has no control over the branding on joindiaspora :) The only relevant project site that is official is diasporafoundation.org. Jaywink (talk) 15:58, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry I was confused! https://diasporafoundation.org uses all lower case letters. https://joindiaspora.com has an all upper case logo on its front page. Only first letter upper case is displayed when logged in. http://poddery.com/ uses all upper case logo but is inconsistent in the text. There seems to be no consistent styling between sites. Liiiii (talk) 16:02, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

I made the revert - thanks for noticing :) As said, the project does not own joindiaspora.com or poddery.com - only diasporafoundation.org. The correct branding is lower case. What single pods happen to use is free to the pods themselves, they can do camelcase if they want :) Jaywink (talk) 16:11, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

The logo image should be updated in the same way. Liiiii (talk) 16:31, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Done, good point thanks. Jaywink (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Since there is a history here it really should be reflected that the branding was changed. - Ahunt (talk)

Seems it should be a ref or something. Other changes are not reflected in the text either - is branding changes a wikipedia policy to keep track of in the main text? To me, this seems highly irrelevant to mention here. If we want to keep track, it could be in it's own section. 91.157.61.28 (talk) 19:37, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

There is no real policy on tracking branding changes, it is just a historical item. That said Wikipedia does try to capture the history of each article subject as far as possible and not just reflect the "now state" of things. If it is cluttering up the lead it could be moved down. - Ahunt (talk) 19:44, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Use by ISIS

Should the recent use about Diaspora's recent use by ISIS be in a separate section/subsection? Right now it is in the "Features" section, which is an unhelpful title and hard to find unless you read the whole article. Maybe it could be in a "Potential dangers" section or similar to not make it too specific? Llightex (talk) 18:10, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I think the initial addition intention of this was to make note of it, but not make too big a deal about it. The network allows use by anyone, so you will get the odd case like this. - Ahunt (talk) 21:59, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I think the mention in the paragraph on Features is "too big a deal" precisely because it's a controversial use of the feature, but isn't really about the feature. As a selection of a current news event it seems to accidentally carry a POV or weight that slants the article. I think this would be better in a separate section on notable uses which maybe discusses a few cases to balance it out. Christian Edward Gruber (talk) 17:09, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

I could buy that. Do you want to propose the other cases? - Ahunt (talk) 22:04, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I think this should be removed, since it is misleading. May be it can be added to a new section. Why is it in 'feature' section anyway.And also this problem is almost discussed http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/08/diaspora-shuts-isis-accounts/ to a solution. Please consider editing. AbhijithPA (talk)

It is there because it was apparently specific features that attracted the group to use it. - Ahunt (talk) 11:45, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Ahunt can we do anything about it. We dont want to scare the new diaspora users. AbhijithPA —Preceding undated comment added 14:15, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Our job at Wikipedia is to write an encyclopedia, including all relevant and sourced information in a neutral manner. We are not here to defend or promote the article subject, in this case Diaspora. That said, I am very active on D* and have never seen any discussion or evidence that its use by ISIS has repelled users or potential users. All social media networks have at one point or another been used for nefarious purposes. It doesn't effect other users on the network. - Ahunt (talk) 14:32, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Proposed merge with Diaspora (software)

The software is not covered as distinct from the social network in reliable, secondary sources. It would be sufficient to describe the software in a dedicated section of the parent article. (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 22:55, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose: We have already been though this once before, not seeing a better argument this time. Two different, although related subjects, with different histories. More than enough refs and text for two articles. - Ahunt (talk) 23:19, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

...eight years ago? What sourcing (then or now) covers the software components as being independently notable from the social network aspects? The software article is sourced almost entirely to primary sources. czar 04:09, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

• Support per WP:OVERLAP. I see a lot of overlap between the two articles, as they share the same history. Most of our social network articles (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.) describe their first-party clients in the same article, since there is too much overlap to justify a separate article. This is also the case here. — Newslinger talk 12:15, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
• Support: It appears these two articles contain information on what is part of a whole. So, it makes sense that they must be in the same article, unless the size becomes problematic. I searched for "article size" and I came up with a WP:ARTICLESIZE, which says the split threshold is 50 kilobytes. One article is 7.2 kB in size, the other is 17 kB. That's 24.2, which is 25.8 kB shy of the splitting threshold. Still, I think merging them cannot be done with simple cutting and pasting. The resulting article needs to be re-written. flowing dreams (talk page) 10:29, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
• Support; I supported this back in the day and continue to think so now. The content in these two articles is basically the same and it all sits together. --Errant ^(chat!) 10:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
  • User:flowing dreams is quite right, merging requires a complete re-write of the two articles into one from scratch, not just a cut and paste merge. I suggest one of you who supports merging the two articles needs to take on the job, make up a sandbox version of the newly re-written combined article so we can see what that would look like, then bring a link back here for discussion. - Ahunt (talk) 12:30, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
    • See how it looks! 😊 I was of the opinion that the merger is going to be complex, so I prepared PDF versions of both articles with comments and labels. When I did that, I realized that the merger was no so complex after all. It was as if the two article were each one piece of jigsaw puzzle. I'm sure the result needs a peer review, but I think I've done a rather decent job. flowing dreams (talk page) 11:56, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Are you finished? - Ahunt (talk) 14:08, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

I am. flowing dreams (talk page) 04:22, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Were you planning to redirect Diaspora (software) or just leave it in existence? - Ahunt (talk) 12:31, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

I take that to be rhetorical question that means "You have to redirect Diaspora (software) to Diaspora (social network)". That implies you like my proposed merger and do not intend to revert it. Well, I'm glad. It was a pleasure working with you. 👍 flowing dreams (talk page) 11:09, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Actually it was an honest question! You said you were done, but the merger had not been completed, so I was wondering if you were going to complete it. I see you have done that now. Nope I am not going to revert it, as it looks okay. Thanks for all your work on it. - Ahunt (talk) 13:54, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Repository

The infobox lacks a link to the source code repository. The repository is at https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora Reading the Template:Infobox_software documentation I see this needs to be added via Wikidata which I have no experience using. I'm posting this here in the hope that someone who knows how to update the Wikidata can add it. Thank you Kiore (talk) 19:10, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for this. Fortunately I was able to add it without going near WikiData. I just added the parameter and your link! - Ahunt (talk) 19:41, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for this Ahunt. Looking at your change it looks very similar to one I attempted that gave me errors in the preview, leading me to go and read the docs of the Infobox. Obviously I did something wrong, exactly what is a mystery & now irrelevant as between us we've improved Wikipedia :) . Kiore (talk) 20:08, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Collaboration works! - Ahunt (talk) 20:46, 1 December 2022 (UTC)