[Social-discuss] Questions to think about

[Petr Viktorin]

We need to have a model to make a protocol or software implementation:
technical consideraions aside, we need to think about this:

What is a post/dent/update?
Just plain text? Or HTML (which subset of it)? Some kind of Wiki
markup? Or anything, with content negotioation, HTML/text being
required?
Is there a character limit? If yes, is there some other category of
"post" I can use if I'm over the limit – blog post, journal – and how
does that work?
Can I share links, photos, videos, PDFs, mp3s, 3D models, Javascript
webapps? Any considerations about bandwidth (videos allow alternate
link to Youtube/other site)? Legal issues?
What metadata does a post have?
Can it be shared/re-posted? By whom? How do we prevent unauthorized
sharing? What metadata gets shared?

Can I comment on anything I can see? Who sees my comment, who gets
notified of it? Does it get attached to the original post? What is the
comment, anyway – a first-class post, or something specific? If
something specific, can I comment with rich text? A video, song, an
executable program?

Can I recommend something to someone else? Add a personal message to
that recommendation (a private-r version of "comment", maybe)?
Do we want to support aggregator websites that for example make a
gallery out of all/some pictures recommended to them?

How does privacy tie into all of this?

How do private messages work? Can I message just anyone? What about
spam? If some private messages are blocked, how do I contact a new
friend for the first time?

What is an user? A relationship/friend/follower? FOAF has some answers
here, is that enough?
If I'm a celebrity, can I separate my public and private profile? Can
I still have a single login? Can I have my PR guy put stuff on my
profile?

And back to the second sentence: we really need to think about terminology, too.

Feel free to ask more questions, these are probably pretty biased
towards the model in my head.