MetaFilter -> Diaspora November 29, 2011 10:35 PM   Subscribe

Can we add Diaspora to the social app list in our profiles? (Also can this be a thread for MeFites who want to link up on Diaspora with other MeFites?)
posted by hermitosis to Feature Requests at 10:35 PM (31 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

Seconded, and previously (2 and a half weeks ago.)
posted by contraption at 10:38 PM on November 29, 2011


Does Diaspora meet the criteria on the suggestions page at the wiki? Mostly that means: do they have public profiles that you can see without logging in? Last I saw they didn't, but things are changing there.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:39 PM on November 29, 2011


Oh, I missed that post. Glad to see it's already smoothing out and taking off a bit.

Yes, pb, they do.
posted by hermitosis at 10:42 PM on November 29, 2011


Cool. If someone wants to add it to the wiki we can add next time we add sites.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:42 PM on November 29, 2011


Great, I just added it to the wiki.
posted by hermitosis at 10:48 PM on November 29, 2011


Diaspora is a distributed system. May be harder to correctly link it in. Other than linking individual diaspora hosts.
posted by seanyboy at 2:14 AM on November 30, 2011


Are the profiles centralized, or can they be at different domains?
posted by pb (staff) at 6:39 AM on November 30, 2011


Profiles exist on the individual "pod" where they were created, each of which can have its own domain. joindiaspora.com and diasp.org are the two big ones at the moment, and there's a pretty complete list here.
posted by contraption at 7:12 AM on November 30, 2011


I'm on the "joindiaspora" pod. I don't even know how to connect to other pods, but I haven't really messed around with it much. I'd like to stick with the pod I'm on, because I managed to snag my (three character) name. Hooray for hollow/meaningless victories!
posted by Eideteker at 7:41 AM on November 30, 2011


hrm. That throws a wrinkle in things. We might need people to paste their entire Diaspora profile URL in instead of their username. I'm not crazy about that because we don't do that with any other services.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:59 AM on November 30, 2011


I clicked a link and saw a picture of a dandelion and some kid who apparently died. Is there no synopsis of what the heck the site is anywhere?
posted by Grither at 9:42 AM on November 30, 2011


Diaspora Foundation has more info.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:45 AM on November 30, 2011 [1 favorite]


You don't have to do anything special to connect to the other pods, as far as I know the primary function of a pod is the hosting of user profiles. People on one pod can interact with people on another without doing anything special to initiate a connection.

The kid who died a few weeks ago was one of the founders and core developers of Diaspora. The extended memorializing by people who didn't know him does seem a little weird.

We might need people to paste their entire Diaspora profile URL in instead of their username. I'm not crazy about that because we don't do that with any other services.

Clearly the solution is for Metafilter to host its own pod at diaspora.metafilter.com
posted by contraption at 9:59 AM on November 30, 2011 [1 favorite]


Clearly the solution is for Metafilter to host its own pod at diaspora.metafilter.com

We can think about that, but there would still be non-metafilter pod people who want to link up.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:05 AM on November 30, 2011


Wow, really? I was kidding but that would be awesome.
posted by contraption at 10:09 AM on November 30, 2011 [2 favorites]


Wow, really?

Sorry to get your hopes up. I think the chances are slim that we'd want to manage that, but who knows. I just wanted to note that setting that up wouldn't solve the multiple-domain problem.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:18 AM on November 30, 2011


ow my hopes
posted by contraption at 10:19 AM on November 30, 2011 [2 favorites]


Isn't it basically like jabber? "user@domain.tld" is your ID?
posted by Eideteker at 11:49 AM on November 30, 2011


More or less, but I don't believe there's a way to construct a URL without pointing it at the domain of the particular pod. I could see this getting misused or messed up, resulting in profile Diaspora links that go somewhere broken or malicious unless the pod's user-entered domain is checked against a whitelist of known Diaspora pods.
posted by contraption at 12:16 PM on November 30, 2011


While it might look like you need both username and domain, like an email address, it seems like pods might also somehow pull users from other pods.

For instance, when I signed up at diasp.org (my profile) I automatically got diasporahq@joindiaspora.com as a contact. I can check out their profile at https://diasp.org/people/21873, so even though joindiaspora.com is their "home" pod, they get a profile page over at diasp.org as well.

I'm guessing there is a page for me over at joindiaspora.com, but I don't know how I would find out what the address is. If that hurdle can be overcome everyone could just find their joindiaspora.com userpage and use that as their profile page link here on MeFi.
posted by bjrn at 12:50 PM on November 30, 2011


I see what you're talking about, bjrn, and can confirm that it's not just a special case for that special diasporahq profile (it also works with another contact whose "home pod" is joindisapora.com.)
posted by contraption at 5:32 PM on November 30, 2011


Given what Diaspora represents - a non-corporate alternative to the marketing suck world of the major social networks - I think it would be extremely nice and very much in line with the basic philosophy of this site if MeFi went the extra mile to make this work.
posted by mediareport at 7:54 PM on November 30, 2011 [1 favorite]


I agree mediareport. If we can find a way to do it without introducing a way for people to by jokey or tricky with URLs it'd be a nice addition. We need to find out if there's a way to come up with 1.) a canonical URL at a consistant domain, and 2.) a way for people to find that URL so they can let MetaFilter know what it is.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:09 PM on November 30, 2011


All right, what about the other part of the post - finding other MeFites on Diaspora? I just created an account @diasp.org to support the worthy cause in distress and claim my nick. Is anybody out there?
posted by hat_eater at 11:54 AM on December 1, 2011


Everybody add #metafilter to the list of tags in your profile, this will make you appear in the search results for #metafilter.
posted by contraption at 3:21 PM on December 1, 2011


...it also works with another contact whose "home pod" is joindisapora.com.

PB WHY DOESN'T MY PROFILE LINK WORK OF COURSE I TYPED IT RI – oh.
posted by contraption at 3:48 PM on December 1, 2011


I'm counting six people. Including me. Hey, it's TWO companies.
posted by hat_eater at 2:56 AM on December 2, 2011


I mean three. Or two crowds.
posted by hat_eater at 2:56 AM on December 2, 2011


It's a little confusing, but there's a distinction between following a tag and having it associated with your profile. If you look at the page for the #metafilter tag you'll see at the top that it is being followed by 21 people, while only 6 (shown in the left column) have added it to their profiles.
posted by contraption at 11:01 AM on December 2, 2011


Oh wait, the page for the tag on joindiaspora.com shows 11 people instead of 6. I'm assuming this list will eventually propagate over to the diasp.org pod, but I don't know how long that should take. In any case it does feel pretty Alpha.
posted by contraption at 1:19 PM on December 2, 2011


Oh, hey. That's a pretty neat method actually. Add #metafilter (or any other tag really) as a tag to your profile and then go to the page for that tag on joindiaspora.com and hey presto you've got a link to your userpage on joindiaspora! It's a bit convoluted, but it should work.

Except that it looks like it has gotten the link to my user page done, but the page itself returns a 404 error...

As for people whose home pod is joindiaspora, they'll have to use the menu on the top right of their screen. Click on your username and then "Profile" and you should get a link to a page with an URL like /people/
posted by bjrn at 1:44 PM on December 2, 2011


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