Best Practices - Profile
From The Socknet
A profile is a webpage containing information about a user, generally including a list of messages and friends.
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Privacy
This being the main location that a user shows off, this is major location for privacy (but remember that the API must consider the user's privacy preferences, too). The web demands good privacy features.
At the very least, users should have an option between "private" and "public", private being an option that hides most of their information, but not so much that users cannot send friend requests.
Suggested criteria for publicity of messages
If a message is about a user, it should generally show up on that user's profile, publicly viewable to his friends and maybe anyone, depending on privacy settings. And all public messages should be forwarded to friends. This includes replies that the user makes, even if the friend is not aware of the parent message.
If a message is not about a user, written by a user, or in reply to a message about or by the user, it should only be visible to him, not displayed on his profile or forwarded to more friends.
Nothing in this specification forces these "rules". It is possible for a Socknet user to make all messages he knows about completely world-readable. Suffice to say, Socknet entities should realize that a user may be aware of more messages than he shows and distributes.
Considerations
When showing a message, its replies are generally shown, too. When a message tree becomes too large, it can be simplified. This is the system foolishmortal.org intends to use when it reaches this stage:
- include the top message;
- if there are too many replies, trim non-friends and services;
- if there are still too many replies, trim older messages;
- if there are still too many replies, trim deep messages;
- DO include the parent-lineage of any message from a friend;
- include all hidden messages upon request, of course
