Hello folx! The idea of a universal profile amongst SourceCred contributors has been brought up a number of times, so I’m trying to figure out:
a) Do we want a universal profile?
b) If yes, what do we want from it?
c) Which platforms offer what we want? What are our options?
The number of SourceCred contributors is growing. A profile would be a tool for new contributors to get to know the existing team in a fashion that is relatively typical these days (i.e. stalking someone’s profile). Profiles would be a way to find and connect with other contributors who share interests or skills.
If you have any additional thoughts, please feel free to add them.
a) yes for a profile to help for connections/support/discovery. I would rather go for the low hanging fruit profile = a more exhaustive discord profile.
b) some useful information could be :
the branch you have the most knowledge (cultivation/development)
initiatives you have led or contributed to
an open hook… Some Sourcred vibes to find here. It makes me think of the “how emotionally you’re doing today?” at the beginning of every community call. It could be environmental emoji you like … if they have some meaning behind … or maybe not
I want to lay out some evaluations of projects I’m intimately familiar with as a user and developer. Might update as I research this more, but these are my experiences.
3Box
Pros
Decentralized, ethereum-based
extensible apis: we can utilize other 3box features such as spaces to link sourceCred identities across projects, possibly link in initiatives and other stuff and augment the vanilla profiles pretty easily
The profiles are pretty comprehensive and have a “linkedin/facebook feel”. This could also be a con, but if we add our own wrapper and augment the info with other fields and data, it’s a non-issue, and we can inject our own vibe into the user experience if we want
Cons
Would require our own interface if we start customizing and augmenting 3box profiles with additional info
3box is still very young and since it’s decentralized it can be kind of wonky and slow. A caching layer would definitely be needed for now to meet the expectations of this project
Keybase: inpiration more than an alternative
Pros
It’s a profile of profiles, allowing users to link various accounts to one identity and use some cool, if geeky tools
It’s action oriented and petty minimalistic in it’s experience, but it also has a bunch of tightly integrated features like chat, storage, personal websites (built off of public storage)
Cons
obviously not decentralized
It’s all done using cryptography so it’s definitely harder to grok for the average user
It’s yet another tool to begin using and add fatigue (though I fear that might be the case for most options)
Other random thoughts and product ideas
a “profile of profiles” is a powerful concept, since it could be a way to combine identities from multiple SourceCred instances under a single profile. There are Github tools that basically scrape user activity and show visualizations of the projects they’re contributing to (and even try to rank contributors, which is a bit orwellian in my opion) but it’d be super cool to have a system that’d visualize user activity across different projects using sourcecred.
A profile system that links users’ existing accounts across the different platforms we use, like discourse, github, and discord would be a very useful directory for different user aliases and tracking peers across different platforms
a) I think universal profiles would connect community members and work as a tool to connect needs with skills.
b) Info that helps connect people on a personal level. Skills. How much involvement you want with the project (this could include our own type of measurement or just a blank space to describe one’s wishes).
c) One site not yes listed that could be good #inspo is OneProfile. Metagame is using it for inspo for their universal profile, that thye’re basing off 3box.
Pros:
It’s flashy as fuck.
It has many options of how to organize your information, with boxes for different types of information
It links you to all your different profiles.
Cons:
It’s not decentralized.
MetaGame users found it dd not suit their needs for describing their skills. Unsure if this would apply to us.
@topocount and @benoxmo, regarding 3box, I found it pretty inaccessible, as you need to already have one of a few offered accounts to even create a 3box account. Could either of you explain the need for that and if there’s a way to make an account without creating an account on a different site?
… if they have some meaning behind … or maybe not