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* [9fans] The Plan 9/"right" way to do Facebook
@ 2016-03-30 23:40 cigar562hfsp952fans
  2016-03-31  0:12 ` Winston Kodogo
                   ` (4 more replies)
  0 siblings, 5 replies; 36+ messages in thread
From: cigar562hfsp952fans @ 2016-03-30 23:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

Greetings, 9fans!

We all know that Plan 9 started as a retrospective "re-take" on UNIX,
occasionally referred to as "UNIX done right".  This has led to
differences between "the Plan 9 way" of doing something vs. "the UNIX
way" of doing it, such as those highlighted by the infamous "Unix to
Plan 9 command translation" page on the Plan 9 wiki.  More generally,
this can be viewed as the difference between the "right" way to do
something versus the "popular" way to do it.

So, my question is, what would be the Plan 9/"right" way to do Facebook?
Stated differently, if social networking were to be re-imagined and
re-done "right" this time, how would it be done?


E-Mail
======

The obvious answer that comes to mind is e-mail.  It worked well for
decades.  Although 9fans appear to continue this tradition in grand
style, using e-mail for social networking poses a number of problems:

1. _Spam.  The fact that SMTP doesn't authenticate senders of e-mail
   messages has led to a proliferation of spam which has greatly
   burdened the medium, requiring complex workarounds that usually put
   legitimate mail at risk of misclassification as "junk".

2. _`Subject lines`.  Few people seem to know how to choose an
   appropriate "Subject:" line, anymore.  People will use subjects like
   "tonight's meeting", without specifying what group is meeting, when
   the meeting is, or what it is about.  When the topic of a thread
   drifts from its original topic, few people remember (or even think)
   to update the Subject: line.  Often, when one person wants to send a
   second person an e-mail, the first person will simply reply to the
   last message they received from the second person, even if it was on
   a completely different subject.  (This, of course, creates false
   relationships between the Subject: and References: fields used to
   define threads.)

   Despite the fact that most MUAs (including Webmail_) offer the
   ability to automatically sort e-mail into different categories, many
   people don't know how to sort incoming mail.  When they get too much
   e-mail in their "Inbox", the become annoyed and confused.

   These problems were addressed, somewhat, by the advent of the Web
   forums which were popular in the 2000's.  On a Web forum, moderators
   could reclassify posts and reorganize threads to better reflect their
   content.

3. Listservs.  For people familiar with mailing lists, sending commands
   to list servers is not difficult.  Unfortunately, many people don't
   understand listservs, and want some way to subscribe to and/or
   unsubscribe from mailing lists using a Web page.  While some
   listservs provide a Web interface in addition to an SMTP interface,
   it is becoming more and more common for mailing lists to append
   footers containing "unsubscribe" links.  This information (which
   usually duplicates information found in message headers and should be
   obvious to anyone who knows how to use the listserv, anyway) pollutes
   the content of the messages.  Furthermore, if a message containing
   such links is forwarded to someone else, the final recipient could
   unsubscribe the forwarding party from the list without his or her
   consent.

4. _`HTML mail`.  Nowadays, people will write things in e-mail messages
   like, "I've highlighted the changes in red".  On my display, plain
   text is rendered in black-on-white!  Or they'll write something like
   "here's the link," without specifying any URL.  You have to dig into
   the text/html part to find it.  Forwarding an HTML message to other
   recipients can also pose security risks, if _hyperlinks in the
   message offer access to personal information.  HTML mail also makes
   e-mail messages five times the size they need to be.

5. MIME.  It's great to be able to attach small files to e-mail
   messages, but there are WAY too many people who will just blindly
   attach Word Perfect, Microsuck Word, or ZIP files to their messages.
   I've even seen otherwise "well-educated" lawyers do this.

6. Large attachments.  MIME permits relatively small files to be
   attached to messages, but it is not really meant for distribution of
   large _files such as large images, audio files, movie files, ISO
   images, or tarballs.  For people like us, that's not a problem; we
   just upload the file to a server and post its location, along with a
   brief description of the file.  People who do not know how to do this
   will typically end up jumping through hoops to upload their file to
   some dreaded third-party service like Flickr or YouTub, and then post
   a link to that.

7. _Quoting.  Very few people use Usenet-style quoting, anymore.  Often,
   people will quote the entire message to which they're replying, and
   use vague English phrases (or even in-line "quotes") to indicate to
   what points they're replying.  When top-posting became the default
   quoting style for Outlook, e-mail became all but undecipherable.
   Have you ever seen an e-mail containting five "Original Message"
   lines?  There can only be ONE "original" message!  Have you ever
   tried to respond to a top-posted message using Usenet style quoting?
   Have you ever tried to read a thread using a mixture of different
   quoting styles?  It's just a CF.

8. Paragraphs.  There is this thing, called a "paragraph", which people
   used to learn about in school.  The _paragraph is a great tool for
   structuring content, enabling an author to group related information
   together, and to separate it from content of a different sort.
   Nowadays, many e-mail messages are written on a single line (often
   even without word wrapping), without regard for any logical division
   or organization.  When paragaphs are used, they are often used to
   repetitiously reiterate the content of preceeding paragraphs.

9. Text messaging.  Because text messaging and e-mail are both
   accessible from modern phones, people have begun to treat them as if
   they were the same medium.  They are not!  People are now reading
   e-mail messages using cultural conventions from the "texting" world,
   rather than understood e-mail conventions, and mis-interpreting what
   e-mails say.  People are also writing e-mail messages as if they were
   texts: have you noticed how "A.M." and "P.M." have now almost
   universally become "am" and "pm"?

   People are also beginning to expect that their e-mail messages will
   be delivered to their recipients in the space of just a few seconds,
   like text messages are.  Oblivious to the fact that people don't
   necessarily even check e-mail every day, they seem to assume that
   anything they send is going to be received more or less instantly.

   Text messaging has also conditioned people to expect all their
   messages to be short.  This conditioning has gotten to the point,
   now, that people will consider an e-mail message longer than a single
   paragraph_ to be "long"!  (Certainly, the present post to 9fans would
   be considered epic-length, by that standard!)

10. Censorship.  Many groups _want some way to censor messages sent to
   other members of the group.  While mailing lists can be moderated, it
   generally requires one or more moderators to _`proactively screen`
   and approve each message before it is relayed to other subscribers.
   Once a message is delivered, it can't be un-sent.  This limitation
   was also addressed, to some extent, by Web forums.  On a Web forum,
   users are often able to _`flag posts` which are spam_ or violate some
   specified "_`acceptable usage`" policy, and moderators are able to
   edit or remove other users' posts.  Because Web forums store posts on
   the server, and don't offer means to _`cryptographically sign` posts,
   a user's words can be changed without them (or anybody else) even
   realizing it.  Most Web forums also allow a user to edit or remove
   their own posts, complicating historical perspectives on who really
   said what.  (Think of forum posts quoting other forum posts.)  For
   some people, the ability to alter or censor published content is a
   _feature.  For others, it is a _defect.

11. IMAP quotas.  Many people leave their mail on their mail server and
   just access it using IMAP.  When their mailbox quota gets consumed,
   messages sent to them will bounce, or cannot be filed correctly by
   the recipient.  I remember seeing a local city councilor who was so
   popular that her mailbox filled up, at which point she could no
   longer use it to communicate effectively.

12. _Webmail.  For starters, many people simply don't know the
   difference between e-mail and Webmail.  When using Webmail, mail is
   kept in the possession of a third party.  It makes it much more
   difficult to employ e-mail encryption, such as OpenPGP.  Webmail also
   encourages use of `HTML mail`_.  Have you ever received an e-mail
   message containing just a URL which you are expected to "click",
   without any further explanation?  By promoting the assumption that
   e-mail is always accessed on the World Wide Web, Webmail promotes
   this kind of Web-snobbishness.

13. E-mail is not stupid-compatible.  Participating effectively in a
   community using e-mail requires a certain level of education.  Each
   September, when a new crop of college students first gained access to
   e-mail, there would be an observable decline in the quality of
   e-mail.  Gradually, the situation would improve, as these students
   began to learn proper netiquette.  When AOL began offering Internet
   mail to its subscribers in September of 1993, however, there was a
   decline in the quality of e-mail from which the Internet never
   recovered.  This has been known as "The September that never ended".
   With the rising popularity of text messaging and mobile e-mail, this
   situation has grown progressively worse.  Now, droves of children and
   grandmas are getting access to e-mail without any of the requisite
   education.  This present state of affairs could, in a sense, be
   called "The September that never ended, that never ended."


Web Forums
==========

Many of the problems associated with e-mail were, at least partially,
addressed by the the Web forums which were popular in the 2000's.  (The
classic example is the Simple Machines forum software.)

A. As described under `subject lines`_, above, Web forums allowed
   moderators to reclassify posts by subject into organized threads.

B. Users could `flag posts`_ as spam_ or as violations of `acceptable
   usage`_ policies, avoiding the need for moderators to `proactively
   screen`_ messages.

C. Users (and moderators) could edit or delete posts (which could be
   considered a feature_ or a defect_, as noted above).

D. Users could upload or post references to multimedia files_, such as
   videos, with their posts.

E. Forums offered sensible quoting_ mechanisms, as well as the ability
   to include hyperlinks_ and to specify font colors, sizes, and styles.

F. Web forums were also fully stupid-compatible.  They offered graphical
   editing capabilities, so knowing the syntax of a particular forum's
   mark-up language wasn't necessary in order to make a post.

Forums, however, also had their share of shortcomings:

a. Web forums were stupid-compatible, but smart-incompatible.

b. Data was kept centrally, on a server.

c. Each forum was on a separate Web site, with separate accounts.

d. Using them required a Web browser with access to the World Wide Web.

e. Posts could be sensored (a feature_ or a defect_, as noted above).

f. It was difficult to `cryptographically sign`_ posts.

g. Forums had no obvious analogue to the RFC 822 Message-id header,
   making it difficult to identify individual posts.

h. The proliferation of different mark-up syntaxes used by various
   forums made it difficult to remember which syntax you were supposed
   to be using at any given time.


Social Networks
===============

The technology that's been displacing e-mail and Web forums over the
past decade or so is, obviously, that nebulously nefarious Medusa known
as "social networking".  Of course, there's no need to describe how
backwards and awful today's social networks, such as Facebook, are.
There have been several attempts to create "open source" social
networks; the most successful to date has probably been _`Diaspora*`
(http://diasporafoundation.org).  Diaspora* solves many of the
aforementioned problems, such as ensuring privacy and control over your
own data.  Because it's Free Software, it's also smart-compatible.
However, it still has significant limitations:

I.   Diaspora* cannot easily be used to create "groups".

II.  Content published on it cannot be removed, edited, or censored (if,
     indeed, that's something you want_ to be able to do).

III. It uses a push mechanism for distributing updates, so it cannot be
     used in disconnected operation, like a MUA can.

IV.  It is a Ruby/Rails application.


The Plan 9 Way
==============

So, if social networking were to be re-designed from scratch, all over
again, "the Plan 9 way", how would it be done?

Obviously, the network would present itself as a file system.  :D  I
should be able to browse and post content using shell commands at the
command line.  Or, I could use the Acme plug-in to automate the process,
just like using Acme Mail.  I'd be able to batch-up incoming or outgoing
changes using tar(1) or hg, so I could work disconnected from the 'Net,
too.  But... here's the tricky part...

It would have to be both stupid-compatible and smart-compatible at the
same time.  Perhaps there would be an HTTP server which would translate
between the file system interface and some flashy Web interface
reminiscent of Facebook or `Diaspora*`_.  Of course, the HTTP server
would offer some sort of click-tracking advertising framework, so that
the HTML view of your social life could be packed with ads by whatever
company you've chosen to host your profile.  Maybe that HTTP server
would be written in Limbo, so it could be run on Plan 9, Linux, Mac OS,
or Windoze.  Meanwhile, power users could fly right in, under the HTTP
layer, and access the file system using 9P, Acme, or whatever their
perferred tool may be, without having to deal with all the HTML cruft.
A social network has to be stupid-compatible if it's going to be
successful.  But it also has to be smart-compatible, i.e., done the
"right" way, if we are to keep from going insane.  ;)

--
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|           human <cigar562hfsp952fans@icebubble.org>                  |
|Any sufficiently high intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity.|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 36+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2016-04-08  3:25 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 36+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2016-03-30 23:40 [9fans] The Plan 9/"right" way to do Facebook cigar562hfsp952fans
2016-03-31  0:12 ` Winston Kodogo
2016-04-01 17:44   ` cigar562hfsp952fans
2016-03-31  0:23 ` Kurt H Maier
2016-03-31  0:58   ` Winston Kodogo
2016-04-01 17:30   ` cigar562hfsp952fans
2016-03-31  1:53 ` Bakul Shah
2016-03-31  2:09   ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2016-03-31  2:59     ` Bakul Shah
2016-03-31 19:41     ` Steve Simon
2016-04-01 15:00       ` michaelian ennis
2016-03-31  2:17 ` Staven
2016-04-02  3:02   ` cigar562hfsp952fans
2016-03-31  5:24 ` lucio
2016-03-31  9:03   ` hiro
2016-03-31 10:17     ` David Pick
2016-03-31 11:16       ` Iain Watson Smith
2016-03-31 12:44       ` Kurt H Maier
2016-04-01 20:00   ` cigar562hfsp952fans
2016-04-01 20:40     ` Wes Kussmaul
2016-04-01 20:53     ` Giacomo Tesio
2016-04-02  9:32       ` hiro
2016-04-02  9:58         ` Richard Miller
2016-04-02 10:08           ` hiro
2016-04-03  2:30       ` [9fans] OT: Ubiquitous data vs. Reality, WAS: " cigar562hfsp952fans
2016-04-03  8:13         ` [9fans] OT: Ubiquitous data vs. Reality, Richard Miller
2016-04-08  3:25           ` erik quanstrom
2016-04-03 20:04         ` [9fans] OT: Ubiquitous data vs. Reality, WAS: Re: The Plan 9/"right" way to do Facebook Wes Kussmaul
2016-04-03 21:28         ` Winston Kodogo
2016-04-04 11:37           ` hiro
2016-04-04 23:53             ` Winston Kodogo
2016-04-03  4:42       ` [9fans] " lucio
2016-04-03 11:24         ` Giacomo Tesio
2016-04-03 11:44           ` lucio
2016-04-03  4:22     ` lucio
2016-04-03  4:32     ` lucio

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