Nabble friends

[Nalicter]

I would like to suggest the ability to add friends on Nabble—much like on a social network or even like the following forum:
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/

[Graham Perrin]

At <http://n2.nabble.com/user/UserNodes.jtp?user=228> I can
* search
* browse
* subscribe to your posts, and
* send an e-mail to you.

If a potential friend sends to you an e-mail, will you recognise their friendship?

Non-embedded Nabble is very well suited to social bookmarking and annotation.

Embedding of Nabble 2 is optional, not forced. If a forum owner forces embedding then social annotation may become impossible.

Looking ahead, I wish for OpenID to increase the open social aspect of Nabble.

Rewind six months, someone else suggested a friend feature. <http://www.diigo.com/04q3v> highlights that request.

Also at <http://www.diigo.com/04q3v>, highlights and sticky notes (with cross-references) re: rank.

Regards
Graham

[Nalicter]

Graham Perrin wrote

If a potential friend sends to you an e-mail, will you recognise their friendship?

This is a matter of semantics. Having a friend on a social networking site isn't the same thing as having friendship, however similar it may sound. The idea of friends is so that you don't forget about certain people you want to keep in touch with (on site, and not necessarily through email), and so that you have easy access to them (without having to find one of their posts first). So, really, I'm not necessarily requesting that people have to accept friendships (although that would make Nabble seem more personable), seeing as there's not any sensitive information that would require such—they could be one-way, for forums (and I'm sure that would be easier to implement, too).

The idea is to make Nabble seem a warmer, more inviting place—inviting more of that community the free software people like to talk about. Powerful software is one thing, but without united users (who feel united), well, it's not the same, even if it is still really cool. Also, this was my primary reason for having suggested the following feature in another post:
• Rank names for forum posters (Which rank a user has is based on the number of posts made in that forum, but the rank names for the different numbers of posts are specified by the forum owner. I wouldn't mind if ranks were only there if specified by the owner, either—as I suppose not everyone would want them.)

My secondary reasons for the ranks were aesthetics and imagination. The ranks feature is much higher priority to me than the friend feature, as the friend thing is just a little add-on meant to perk things up a little. As you've hinted, too, you can bookmark their user page (though that doesn't mean you'll have the bookmark forever—nor that it will be very organized), and so it is mostly for the feel of things. The rank thing is noticed by pretty much everyone (even the unregistered), and could do a great deal for the place.

Graham Perrin wrote

Non-embedded Nabble is very well suited to social bookmarking and annotation.

I'm not particularly interested in social bookmarking and annotation at this time. I don't generally find such third-party services desirable or convenient, although I admit I haven't tried Diigo (and don't plan to try it after having seen the demo, even though it is interesting). I don't think my privacy would be very secure with such tools. If I found a service I trusted for non-social bookmarking (I'm pretty strict), I might try that, but I'm not into the third-party, web-based annotating/highlighting/etc. thing so much.

Graham Perrin wrote

Looking ahead, I wish for OpenID to increase the open social aspect of Nabble.

I do find this idea fascinating. If it wouldn't eliminate the natural logins, I wouldn't mind. It might increase traffic to Nabble, as well, seeing as advocates of OpenID would probably take notice (and people who use it would be pleased that they didn't have to register).

Graham Perrin wrote

Rewind six months, someone else suggested a friend feature. <http://www.diigo.com/04q3v> highlights that request.

That was me.  I guess I forgot about that—and I couldn't find it when I searched to see if I had already posted. I guess I didn't look hard enough.

Thanks for your response and comments! I do realize that these things may or may not be implemented, but I had to put in my two cents.

[Graham Perrin]

Cordilow wrote

That was me.  

…  I had to put in my two cents.

Honestly I didn't realise that you were the poster within the past discussion  and this is without a doubt my first ever use of an animation in Nabble :)

The fact that I didn't realise the social connection (Cordilow knows Cordilow) speaks volumes about my lack of attention to identity of authors.

FWIW I find your thoughts worth much more than two cents and I have (you guessed it) flagged your message for future attention!

In the meantime, food for thought: I positively dislike being highlighted a top contributor to Diigo Community Forum.

My voice in that forum is an undesirable side effect of there being no tracker at this time. The most undesirable aspect is that bugs, suggestions and simple requests for help are apparently drowned by most recent activity, so occasionally bump, which only adds to the noise.

<http://www.diigo.com/04q42> also draws attention to a very fine ranking system, IdeaTorrent.

Best,
Graham