GNU MediaGoblin Wiki - User contributions [en]

User Experience

2011-09-02T23:30:22Z

Aether:

We need help doing user experience testing! This means users testing our software, observing what does and doesn't work for them, and recording that.

If you're here to help (HOORAY!) go to the testing instance set up by Caleb Davis: http://omgmg.dyndns.org:6543/ (was down, is back up!)

Sign up for an account'''*''', add some pictures'''**''' and play around. Take some notes and then either set up an account on this wiki and add your thoughts to this page or email them to press@mediagoblin.org. Please include your operating system and what browser you're using.

'''*''' Your email validation link may be in your spam folder! 
'''**''' NOTHING ON THIS INSTANCE IS PERMANENT. This is for user experience testing only... your pics will be wiped!

You'll be able to give us the best feedback if you don't look at anyone else's notes before you start. Thanks for helping us with usability!! We really appreciate it!

= User notes go in this section =

=== From Justin, on Mac OS X 10.6.8 with Google Chrome on 8.16.2011 ===

* username incorporated hyper-link "sk00's media" looks cheesy if username is underlined/a different color in order to signify a link: i have a hunch hundreds of users will click their own user name/other user's user names expecting to be returned to the respective profile. this is strictly personal preference and entirely aesthetic.

* is it possible to allow a user's profile website link to display tag other than "www.example.com/92921398/#/"? like using ahref code, but automatic? i know i'm reluctant to click on and/or care about a link which appears like the example i've provided.

* CAPCHA! without this it is much more likely to become an image dumping plant like imageshack and the like.

* UPDATE: my delete button is not linked/clickable/functioning.

=== From Justin on XP with IE and Chrome on 8.17.2011 ===

* OBSERVATION:My first account "sk00" was registered with a gmail address and your notification email went to the inbox, whereas my second account "sk00z" was registered with an old aol address and your notification email went into spam. I'm almost certain it had to do with aol sorting for emails from senders named “notice" and gmail not caring so much.

<blockquote>

This is probably caused by a difference in AOL and Gmail's spam detection systems. My best guess is that the MediaGoblin sender address does not pass in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework SPF] tests. Gmail's seems to care less about that than AOL.


I know from personal experience that Gmail does not always kick non-SPF-valid emails to the spambox.


--[[User:Joar|Joar]] 14:35, 2 September 2011 (EDT)

</blockquote>

* SUGGESTION:Are you thinking of including any sort of friend system? Not nearly as intrusive as facebook or myspace, but some way to follow another user as you would on tumblr and the like? If you were posting all sorts of bitchin' images from the time your family went toad licking in Arkansas, then I know I'd want to subscribe to your media channel for unrestrained access to future antics.

=== From Deb, UX notes on 8.16.2011 ===
I'm running Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx. It's the Netbook remix version on an Aspire One, with Firefox version 3.6.18 for Ubuntu

* Login page did not prompt for the possibility of forgotten password

* login is really big on netbook, so that not all felds are visible on the screen at once, not ideal for just four fields

* Not clear how you get to a page for adding media from the email verification page.

* The submit box is really large on a netbook, the whole box should be visible on one screen

* The tagging field should have small text underneath it about what format tags should use

* Thumbnails on the little nav buttons from one pic to the other would be nice

* The media submission page could also be scaled for the netbook screen

* people will want to submit multiple images which it seems you can't yet do

* Animated gifs work! Awesome.

* Tags seem to be not case sensitive and strip punctuation. Also awesome.

=== Nelson's notes on 8.13.2011 (paraphrased) ===

* hey, where's my notification?
* everything is working alright
* successfully uploaded stuff ...
* commenting works
* profile works ...
* is that all I can do?
'''I'd like to be able to'''
* find other users
* friend them ... or something
* go somewhere else besides my profile page
* download original image
* see full-size image
* use a public server

'''Other Comments'''
* go to a real domain and make it public

===I played around on 2011-09-02 (Iceweasel on Debian)===

* A user icon/avatar on the profile and for use when commenting would be cool.

* On the first page after email verification there is both a "submit media" and an "add media" option/button which might be confusing as it's likely to be the first time someone is visiting and they can't know that the "submit media" button is always there.

* Maybe have an instruction on the profile page under the images (or on hover) to click on the image to enlarge and/or edit it as it's not obvious.

* Noted that the profile page would not display added images unless they were tagged

* Noted the profile information (even though the "profile edited!" message was received) would not display unless a website was entered as well. Also noted that the website field required properly formatted urls, most people are probably just going to plug in "www...", if they have a web page at all.

* The "X" for the navigation between pictures is confusing (I think most people associate it with "delete"). Maybe have it say something like "Nothing more here" or have a picture of a sad goblin, etc. instead.

* Get a "the file doesn't seem to be an image!" message when I try to upload an .xcf file. Maybe consider allowing .xcf as it may be useful for people working on collaborations, etc.

* Images tagged "NSFW" show up on the "Explore" page, maybe an image holder (for those who will voluntarily tag their images) could be useful.

* Animated .gif s aren't animated on the "Explore" page, maybe allow that or display the file name of .gif files as "whatever.gif" to indicate they may be animated.

* I really like the use of coloured bars/text boxes as a recurrent design element :)

= General thoughts on running a user experience test =

Could someone with experience with this fill in info here? ;)

I (Jan-Christoph Borchardt) write a thesis at the moment on [http://owncloud.iuk.hdm-stuttgart.de/apps/files_publiclink/get.php?token=6c766212ba094bea08bf1bb800b3e1e7c785388e Coordinating low-cost usability testing in independent free & open source software projects] 
There are many small tips and recipes on how to do your own testing. Especially look into the ''Methods'' part. 
Please let me know if you have any other experiences with testing, I intend on regularly updating that document and release the full version freely licensed once it’s done as well as some kind of a ''quick start guide''.

User Experience

2011-09-02T23:26:52Z

Aether: added notes on my user experience

Category:DesignDecisions

2011-08-02T18:41:00Z

Aether:

Answers to questions regarding design decisions can be found here.

User:Aether

2011-08-02T18:32:01Z

Aether:

I have no idea wtf I'm doing. Um, okies, just thought I should let that be known. Oh, and "Hi" :)

User:Aether

2011-08-02T18:29:52Z

Aether: Created page with "I have no idea wtf I'm doing. I'm noting issues I come across in the article summaries. ~~~"

I have no idea wtf I'm doing. I'm noting issues I come across in the article summaries. [[User:Aether|Aether]]

Talk:DesignDecisions

2011-08-02T18:26:42Z

Aether: Created page with "Separated and catagorised as best I could. Also some improvised formatting. Articles can be found here : http://wiki.mediagoblin.org/Category:DesignDecisions Some problems with e..."

Separated and catagorised as best I could. Also some improvised formatting. Articles can be found here : http://wiki.mediagoblin.org/Category:DesignDecisions
Some problems with extensions/templates/omitted content listed in summaries.
[[User:Aether|Aether]]

Category:DesignDecisions

2011-08-02T18:17:33Z

Aether:

Answers to questions regarding design decision can be found here.

Category:DesignDecisions

2011-08-02T18:16:21Z

Aether: created

Design Decisions:

Why (non-mandatory) copyright assignment

2011-08-02T18:12:13Z

Aether: separated as per design decisions page, not sure "how to" part, cite?

==Chris Webber on "Why copyright assignment?":==

GNU MediaGoblin is a GNU project with non-mandatory but heavily
encouraged copyright assignment to the FSF. Most, if not all, of
the core contributors to GNU MediaGoblin will have done a
copyright assignment, but unlike some other GNU projects, it isn't
required here. We think this is the best choice for GNU
MediaGoblin: it ensures that the Free Software Foundation may
protect the software by enforcing the AGPL if the FSF sees fit,
but it also means that we can immediately merge in changes from a
new contributor. It also means that some significant non-FSF
contributors might also be able to enforce the AGPL if seen fit.

Again, assignment is not mandatory, but it is heavily encouraged,
even incentivized: Significant contributors who do a copyright
assignment to the FSF are eligible to have a unique goblin drawing
produced for them by the project's main founder, Christopher Allan
Webber.<ref> [[contributing-howto]]</ref>


{{references | 1}}
[[Category:DesignDecisions]]

Why AGPLv3 and CC0

2011-08-02T17:48:27Z

Aether:

==Software==
The [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html AGPL v3]preserves the freedoms guaranteed by the GPL v3 in the context of software as a service. Using this license ensures that users of the service have the ability to examine the source,
deploy their own instance, and implement their own version. This is really important to us and a core mission component of this project. Thus we decided that the software parts should be under this license.
==Content==
However, the project is made up of more than just software:
There's CSS, images, and other output-related things. We wanted
the templates/images/css side of the project all permissive and
permissive in the same absolutely permissive way. We're waiving
our copyrights to non-software things under the [http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ CC0] waiver.
==Templates==
That brings us to the templates where there's some code and some
output. The template engine we're using is called Jinja2. It
mixes HTML markup with Python code to render the output of the
software. We decided the templates are part of the output of the
software and not the software itself. We wanted the output of the
software to be licensed in a hassle-free way so that when someone
deploys their own GNU MediaGoblin instance with their own
templates, they don't have to deal with the copyleft aspects of
the AGPLv3 and we'd be fine with that because the changes they're
making are identity-related. So at first we decided to waive our
copyrights to the templates with a CC0 waiver and then add an
exception to the AGPLv3 for the software such that the templates
can make calls into the software and yet be a separately licensed
work. However, Brett brought up the question of whether this
allows some unscrupulous person to make changes to the software
through the templates in such a way that they're not bound by the
AGPLv3: i.e. a loophole. We thought about this loophole and
between this and the extra legalese involved in the exception to
the AGPLv3, we decided that it's just way simpler if the templates
were also licensed under the AGPLv3.

==Documentation==
Then we have the licensing for the documentation. Given that the
documentation is tied to the software content-wise, we don't feel
like we have to worry about ensuring freedom of the documentation
or worry about attribution concerns. Thus we're waiving our
copyrights to the documentation under CC0 as well.

==Branding==
Lastly, we have branding. This covers logos and other things that
are distinctive to GNU MediaGoblin that we feel represents this
project. Since we don't currently have any branding, this is an
open issue, but we're thinking we'll go with a CC BY-SA license.

----

By licensing in this way, we make sure that users of the software
receive the freedoms that the AGPLv3 ensures regardless of what
fate befalls this project.

So to summarize:

* software (Python, JavaScript, HTML templates): licensed
:under AGPLv3
* non-software things (CSS, images, video): copyrights waived
:under CC0 because this is output of the software
* documentation: copyrights waived under CC0 because it's not part
:of the software
* branding assets: we're kicking this can down the road, but
:probably CC BY-SA

This is all codified in the ``COPYING`` file.

[[Category:DesignDecisions]]

Why AGPLv3 and CC0

2011-08-02T17:47:49Z

Aether: separated as per design decisions page, not sure about preamble part?

Why MongoDB

2011-08-02T15:59:37Z

Aether: separated as per design decisions page, not sure about audio part?

==Chris Webber on "Why MongoDB":==
In case you were wondering, I am not a NOSQL fanboy, I do not go
around telling people that MongoDB is web scale. Actually my
choice for MongoDB isn't scalability, though scaling up really
nicely is a pretty good feature and sets us up well in case large
volume sites eventually do use MediaGoblin. But there's another
side of scalability, and that's scaling down, which is important
for federation, maybe even more important than scaling up in an
ideal universe where everyone ran servers out of their own
housing. As a memory-mapped database, MongoDB is pretty hungry,
so actually I spent a lot of time debating whether the inability
to scale down as nicely as something like SQL has with sqlite
meant that it was out. But I decided in the end that I really want MongoDB, not for scalability, but for flexibility. Schema evolution pains in SQL
are almost enough reason for me to want MongoDB, but not quite.

==Most Importantly==
The real reason is because I want the ability to eventually handle
multiple media types through MediaGoblin, and also allow for
plugins, without the rigidity of tables making that difficult. In
other words, something like::

{"title": "Me talking until you are bored",
"description": "blah blah blah",
"media_type": "audio",
"media_data": {
"length": "2:30",
"codec": "OGG Vorbis"},
"plugin_data": {
"licensing": {
"license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"}}}

Being able to just dump media-specific information in a media_data
hashtable is pretty great, and even better is having a plugin
system where you can just let plugins have their own entire
key-value space cleanly inside the document that doesn't interfere
with anyone else's stuff. If we were to let plugins to deposit
their own information inside the database, either we'd let plugins
create their own tables which makes SQL migrations even harder
than they already are, or we'd probably end up creating a table
with a column for key, a column for value, and a column for type
in one huge table called "plugin_data" or something similar. (Yo
dawg, I heard you liked plugins, so I put a database in your
database so you can query while you query.) Gross.

==Keeping It Clean==
I also don't want things to be too loose so that we forget or lose
the structure of things, and that's one reason why I want to use
MongoKit, because we can cleanly define a much structure as we
want and verify that documents match that structure generally
without adding too much bloat or overhead (MongoKit is a pretty
lightweight wrapper and doesn't inject extra MongoKit-specific
stuff into the database, which is nice and nicer than many other
ORMs in that way).

[[Category:DesignDecisions]]

Why WSGI Minimalism

2011-08-02T06:52:13Z

Aether: separated as per design decisions page.awaiting cite extension

==Chris Webber on "Why WSGI Minimalism":==

If you notice in the technology list I list a lot of components
that are very "django-like", but not actually [http://www.djangoproject.com/ Django]components. What can I say, I really like a lot of the ideas in
Django! Which leads to the question: why not just use Django?

While I really like Django's ideas and a lot of its components, I
also feel that most of the best ideas in Django I want have been
implemented as good or even better outside of Django. I could
just use Django and replace the templating system with Jinja2, and
the form system with wtforms, and the database with MongoDB and
MongoKit, but at that point, how much of Django is really left?

I also am sometimes saddened and irritated by how coupled all of
Django's components are. Loosely coupled yes, but still coupled.
WSGI has done a good job of providing a base layer for running
applications on and if you know how to do it yourself <ref> [http://pythonpaste.org/webob/do-it-yourself.html Another Do-It-Yourself Framework]</ref>it's not hard or many lines of code at all to bind them together without any framework at all (not even say [http://pylonshq.com/ Pylons] [http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/dev/ Pyramid]
or [http://flask.pocoo.org/ Flask] which I think are still great projects, especially for people who want this sort of thing but have no idea how to get
started). And even at this already really early stage of writing
MediaGoblin, that glue work is mostly done.

Not to say I don't think Django isn't great for a lot of things.
For a lot of stuff, it's still the best, but not for MediaGoblin,
I think.

One thing that Django does super well though is documentation. It
still has some faults, but even with those considered I can hardly
think of any other project in Python that has as nice of
documentation as Django. It may be worth learning some lessons on
documentation from Django <ref>[http://pycon.blip.tv/file/4881071/ PyCon 2011: Writing great documentation</ref> on that note.

I'd really like to have a good, thorough hacking-howto and
deployment-howto, especially in the former making some notes on
how to make it easier for Django hackers to get started.

==Notes==
{{references | 2}}

[[Category:DesignDecisions]]

Why Python

2011-08-02T04:46:23Z

Aether: separated as per design decisions page

==Chris Webber on "Why Python":==

Because I know Python, love Python, am capable of actually making
this thing happen in Python (I've worked on a lot of large free
software web applications before in Python, including [http://mirocommunity.org/ Miro Community] the [http://miroguide.org/ Miro Guide] a large portion of [http://creativecommons.org/ Creative Commons] and a whole bunch of things while working at [http://www.imagescape.com/ Imaginary Landscape]). Me starting a project like this makes sense if it's
done in Python.
==Why not...==
You might say that PHP is way more deployable, that Rails has way
more cool developers riding around on fixie bikes---and all of
those things are true. But I know Python, like Python, and think
that Python is pretty great. I do think that deployment in Python
is not as good as with PHP, but I think the days of shared hosting
are (thankfully) coming to an end, and will probably be replaced
by cheap virtual machines spun up on the fly for people who want
that sort of stuff, and Python will be a huge part of that future,
maybe even more than PHP will. The deployment tools are getting
better. Maybe we can use something like Silver Lining. Maybe we
can just distribute as .debs or .rpms. We'll figure it
out when we get there.

Regardless, if I'm starting this project, which I am, it's gonna
be in Python.

[[Category:DesignDecisions]]

Why GNU MediaGoblin

2011-08-02T04:28:57Z

Aether: separated as per design decisions page

==[[Chris Webber]] and [[Will Kahn-Greene]] on "Why GNU MediaGoblin":==

Chris came up with the name MediaGoblin. The name is pretty fun.
It merges the idea that this is a Media hosting project with
Goblin which sort of sounds like gobbling. Here's a piece of
software that gobbles up your media for all to see.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblin According to Wikipedia], a
goblin is:

:''"A legendary evil or mischievous illiterate creature, described
:as grotesquely evil or evil-like phantom"''

So are we evil? No. Are we mischievous or illiterate? Not
really. So what kind of goblin are we thinking about? We're
thinking about these goblins:
{|
|[[File:goblin.png | thumb |upright| alt=Cute goblin with a beret|Cute goblin with a beret. Illustrated by Chris Webber]]
|[[File:snugglygoblin.png | thumb |upright| alt=Snuggly goblin with a beret.|Snuggly goblin. Illustrated by Karen Rustad]]
|} .
Those are pretty cute goblins. Those are the kinds of goblins
we're thinking about.

==Why GNU?==
Chris started doing work on the project after thinking about it
for a year. Then, after talking with Matt and Rob, it became an
official [[GNU]] project. Thus we now call it GNU MediaGoblin.

==Request==
That's a lot of letters, though, so in the interest of brevity and
facilitating easier casual conversation and balancing that with
what's important to us, we have the following rules:

#"GNU MediaGoblin" is the name we're going to use in all official capacities: web site, documentation, press releases.
#In casual conversation, it's ok to use more casual names.
#If you're writing about the project, we ask that you call it GNU MediaGoblin.
#If you don't like the name, we kindly ask you to take a deep breath, think a happy thought about cute little goblins playing on a playground and taking cute pictures of themselves, and let it go (Will added this one.)

[[Category:DesignDecisions]]