handling Inbox contributions was: [squeak-dev] The Inbox: Morphic-kb.428.mcz

Ken Causey ken at kencausey.com
Mon Apr 26 19:47:25 UTC 2010


> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: handling Inbox contributions was: [squeak-dev] The Inbox: 
> Morphic-kb.428.mcz
> From: Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, April 26, 2010 2:37 pm
> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
> 
> 
> Oh, I didn't think about that!  Yes, I completely agree, there should
> not be a requirement of "registration" to make a contribution.
> 
> For me, personally, registration _has been_ a real and significant
> barrier for me when attempting to access other kinds of content or
> programs..  I've gotten excited to read something, and then suddenly
> I'm being asked to fill out a web-form.  Good-bye....
> 
> I think that great TED talk by Clay Shirky you referenced the other
> day illustrates a good reason why..  it would shorten those "long
> tails" of single-contribution, individual contributors, because the
> registration _would_ pick some of them off..

Well, I'm not sure I agree.  We have pressure in the other direction
which is that we have to track the contributors to  ensure that all
submissions are properly licensed and to give credit where it is due. 
Is typing data into 5-6 fields one time really too much work to ensure
you get your props?

Ken 

> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 12:55 PM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
> > On 26.04.2010, at 19:38, Ken Causey wrote:
> >>
> >> On Mon, 2010-04-26 at 12:14 -0500, Chris Muller wrote:
> >>> When someone commits to trunk, the e-mail gives the name of the
> >>> contriibutor.  Would that also be useful for inbox contributions?
> >>
> >> Of course but this would happen (and only happen) if the user logged in
> >> before submitting the contribution.  Right now for perfectly valid
> >> reasons we don't require logging in wishing the inbox to be as open as
> >> reasonably possible.
> >>
> >> I recently suggested we change this to require logging in since creating
> >> an account is open to everyone and it seems like a small enough barrier
> >> to me.  But it is a barrier and therefore worthy of consideration, pros
> >> versus cons, etc.
> >>
> >> Ken
> >
> > Yes, it's a lot easier to say "when you have a fix, just select the inbox and commit your package", instead of explaining how to register (you need a web browser for that, can't do from within Squeak), then modify the repository definitions to add your user name, but alert them to not fill in the password yet, then commit ... If committing to the inbox would ask your username and allow to create an account right there (and remember it for the next time) then this might be a lot less inconvenient.
> >
> > Also, squeaksource does not yet support "being logged in" as an access restriction anyway. It's either "everyone can write without logging in" or "only approved developers can write".
> >
> > Help welcome, the server code we're running is at
> > http://source.squeak.org/ss.html
> >
> > - Bert -
> >
> >
> >
> >




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