20
votes
Suggestion: add an *optional* short-text bio blurb on user profiles
Now that user profiles have history, it would also be useful, like Hacker News and Reddit, to have a short plain-text bio blurb that users can optionally fill out.
It'd be great to let users provide some context about themselves.
What do you folks think?
Looks like this was in progress by an external contributor, but there were some UI issues preventing it from being merged. I assume it will be added at some point, just needs someone to implement a new version per feedback.
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/206
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/merge_requests/30
I am the OP of the thread that propmted that issue (although I did not open the issue myself). I still think that it is quite important, especially when we go public. I would like to be able to frame my presence here. It is a feature that should be rather easy to have, and those that don't want it can just ignore it.
I would appreciate this a lot. Bios and such did a lot to make traditional forums a lot warmer without sacrificing the core way that the sites function and I'd really love a bit of that here. I pretty much entirely disagree with the idea that posts and comments should be disconnected from the actual people involved, and would rather see more opportunities for added context / personality as long as they don't become gaudy.
I'm fine with that. I know that it would be relatively easy to implement, but I still wouldn't make it a priority.
If such a feature was provided, I wouldn't use it; I would not provide a biography of myself. Any context you need to know about me, I will provide at the time you need it. Anything else is none of your business.
And I probably wouldn't read other people's biographies, either.
EDIT: And, now that the feature has been added, I contradicted this comment and added a bio because... why not? Admittedly, all I did was copy-paste text from an older comment about my username which was already out there. But I did create a bio for myself.
That's cool. No one is forcing you to provide it. This is an optional feature.
I know that!
However, @thedima asked for our thoughts about this idea, so I shared my thoughts. Not everyone is going to agree with every idea suggested here - and noone had yet disagreed with this idea, so I felt a need to represent that different point of view.
Sure. I just read your comment as extremely defensive and/or overly assertive, especially for what is essentially going to be an optional micro-feature. I'm well aware you're a Tildes 'poweruser' but sometimes I can't help but wonder if you're being a bit too protective or overzealous on some topics. But that just might be enthusiasm. Shrug.
I'm a person with strong opinions, who expresses those opinions bluntly and directly.
I shared my opinion here just as the OP asked us to, to provide some balance in this thread, like I said.
I know that I'm in the minority. I know lots of other people want bios. I know this feature will end up being implemented at some future point. But that doesn't mean I can't provide a dissenting opinion about it.
I can appreciate that! Personally for me though, sometimes such bluntness has had a chilling effect on whether I want to continue participation in Tildes at times, as mentioned by others in similar threads.
For me, being able to effectively moderate bluntness and deftly write arguments in an empathetic way where you win people over with convincing & appealing points that can be understood from their perspective can sometimes be more effective and—I guess—kinder (?) than just applying a hard, brutalism based approach. I realise we're getting off topic here, and I apologise for that.
And don't worry, I'm not at all indicating you shouldn't be able to voice a dissenting view on the topic. Just voicing my view that I feel your response wasn't really commensurate with the ramifications of what is essentially an optional micro-feature.
But I wasn't trying to win people over to my point of view here. I know this battle is already lost. There has already been a lot of discussion about this proposed feature (this is far from the first time this feature has been suggested). I already know which way the wind is blowing. I know this feature will exist. As someone else pointed out, the work on this has already been done! It's just a matter of time until it's implemented. We will have user bios on Tildes.
This was just about me expressing a different opinion than those already expressed here, to provide some variety: nothing more and nothing less than that. I'm not trying to change minds here, because I know it's too late for that.
You're missing OP's point Asimov.
I think this is a valid concern for Tildes. I've stopped participating for long periods of time because of this before (but not because of anything from you). You catch more flies with sugar rather than vinegar and all that.
Yes, that was abundantly clear when you told us without being prompted that anything outside of your comments are "none of our business."
We like you Algernon. Please be nice to us ;-p
Agreed- it's certainly not for everyone, and on a site where everyone is otherwise anonymous, it could never be mandatory.
It sounds like you have a strong opinion on this.
Do you have a personal philosophy about your usage of Tildes or the internet in general in which biographical mini-blurbs would be damaging? (genuinely curious)
Yes, but that's not why I commented. I commented because noone else had disagreed with your suggestion, and I felt the opposite argument needed to be represented, so that this thread wasn't full of "yes" responses.
I don't believe that user bios on Tildes would be damaging, in and of themselves. I mean... there are whole sites built around the concept of people posting biographies about themselves, and other people connecting to them: Facebook, for example!
However, different sites have different focusses. In social media, there seem to be two main categories of sites: those which put users front and centre, and those which prioritise content. On Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on, you find a person you like, and you follow that person. They're all about the cult of personality. On Hacker News, Reddit, Tildes, and so on, you find a topic you like, and you follow that topic (by subscribing to a group/subreddit). They're all about content.
I feel that adding user bios to Tildes slightly dilutes the focus on content rather than users.
Not GP, but would have written a nearly identical comment if they hadn't.
I don't see the idea of bios damaging, just meaningless. I do my best to judge each comment on a site like this on its own merits, so in some sense the less I know about you the better. I also just don't care very much about all of you anonymous internet commenters out there.
I'm not really opposed to the feature, but I think it's a very small benefit for a relatively large investment of development time.
That's the great thing about community-developed open source projects. If the site administrator or board don't feel like it's high on their priority list, yet are unopposed to such a feature being implemented, any user with sufficient background knowledge can build it themselves then resubmit it for inclusion into the source—with only minimal overhead from the administrator needed.
I don't know if you're doing it on purpose, but both of your comments in this thread manage to come off as being extremely condescending. Someone asked a question and I answered it. I'm also well aware of everything you said and cannot fathom what I said to make you think otherwise.
Apologies if you read them as condescending. Not my intention. I read your final sentence to imply it was not worth any development effort. Maybe that wasn't your intention, and we're just misreading each other.
I'm just pointing out that I don't consider the "investment in development time" argument to be valid for inconsequential features on open source projects for the reasons I stated above.
I think this can be interesting. Definitely should be optional, and if/when the site goes public there should be some sort of limit on you account age before you can use it to prevent spam/ads.
I won't be putting any irl information in it, but I think it could be nice to include some info about my normal online identity (jackson1442) and a quote--maybe some information about my setup.