[Haskell-cafe] Haskellers.com recent changes (and I need some volunteers)

[Michael Snoyman]

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 2:44 PM, Magnus Therning <magnus at therning.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 13:14, John Lato <jwlato at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> From: Michael Snoyman <michael at snoyman.com>
>>>
>>> Also, now 10 random profiles will be displayed on the homepage. Only
>>> "verified users" will be displayed here. I'm also considering adding a
>>> new status as well: real picture, so that only people with real images
>>> (not cartoons, not identicons) can show up on the homepage. I think
>>> this might give a more professional feel. Thoughts?
>>
>> I agree that it would be nice to use only real pictures, however I wouldn't
>> want to leave out those who choose not to use any image at all.
>> What about a site policy that user images must be real pictures (if they
>> exist), and violations can be flagged/blocked?  Although, I don't know how
>> this would interact with using OpenID, which appears to be most of the users
>> currently displaying an identicon.
>
> I think it would be wrong to have haskellers.com impose restrictions
> on what image I put on gravatar.  My image on gravatar pops up in
> numerous other sites (I believe stackoverflow, ohloh, flickr, etc) and
> I'm not necessarily happy with putting my photo everywhere, even
> though I'd be fine with putting it on haskellers.com.
>
> So, instead I'd like to see the use of gravatar become optional.  Then
> if haskellers.org could require a photo, and I could simply choose not
> to get my cartoon image from gravatar.
>
> An obvious extension would be to allow me to get the image from other
> sources in the future, maybe an option to grab a picture out of an
> album on Facebook, or Flickr?

So firstly, just to clarify, I was never recommending we make real
photos a requirement to have an account on Haskellers. I was simply
talking about the 10 random profiles that get shown on the homepage: I
think it gives a more professional feel to the site if we see 10 "real
people" and not Bart Simpson. That was my question.

Now, the idea of using something besides gravatar is a fair point. I
know personally I *like* it when sites use gravatar, as it's one less
site I have to upload my image to. Otherwise, I need to search around
for my preferred profile image, crop it to whatever that site wants,
hope they'll scale it nicely, etc. From the site maintainer
standpoint, gravatar also means there's less moving parts on
Haskellers, and it decreases our bandwidth significantly, which is
definitely something to consider.

I'll definitely put some thought into providing an alternative to
gravatar. In the meanwhile, an option you have is to add a second
gravatar email address. This works especially well with Gmail
accounts, where you can just use a + sign (eg,
michael+haskellers at snoyman.com). I'm not saying this is ideal, but if
you want to have your real photo up, it will work today.

Michael