Motion to get rid of the personal network feature

#21

Good to see it being discussed in a good way :smiley:

I think Urgaffel pegged it with the potential problems he suggested, as they seem to coincide with mine - there is a “noise factor” coming into play somehow too, and the exact meaning of the words “personal” and “network” may end up deviating quite a bit from their canonical definitions. So, it boils down to a perception issue, and the feature as such might not necessarily send the message we want it to send, so to speak.

And given the fact that not all people handle things as sanely as Kyena for instance (re: the deviant example), things can go the wrong way… sort of :shrug:

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#22

yeah but we can already do that over the PM system…if I could only find a way to stop that pesky wabbit filling up my mail box :smiley:

#23

give him to dimi he likes rabbit stew :smiley:
ok on a more serious manner now i think there should be a more sadle way to distinguish the personal network from the favorites in the portfolio while keeping the privacy for the users that dont want to be part of someones network. i am trying to find a way for these options to coexist without getting into extreme situations and the use of the blacklist option that is available.
ok if there was an option in the portfolio that would keep the portfolio invisible to the public except for the people the user has in the favorites ? in this way u have the privacy so not everybody can access your portfolio and still be visuable to the people u have on YOUR favorites?

#24

LOL and despite what I have been typing here, you’ve been accepted Rebecca :smiley: … aahhh I dunno maybe one should just let it run and see how it works, personally I do not have such a problem if I am in this network or that, the contacts I have already know who they are already and I don’t see much need to advertise it, I just know if you give people such an opurtunity to complain in the internet they will generally take it :shrug:

#25

The personal network has more planned, that will make it more useful; It’s true, you can hide people in your network that you don’t want people to know you know, and if someone is bugging you, you can blacklist them, this also stops them from leaving messages in your guestbook.

#26

The personal network has more planned, that will make it more useful; It’s true, you can hide people in your network that you don’t want people to know you know, and if someone is bugging you, you can blacklist them, this also stops them from leaving messages in your guestbook.

As for google earth, in the setup i do recommend that you don’t put the marker right on top of your house :slight_smile: Try putting it at your local post office or similar landmark.

#27

I’m not sure that I understand the need for the personal network feature either. I suppose it’s nice to see that certain people have connections to others here on CGS. But, there is no real way of knowing if the connections are business or personal connections (or if they are just popularity connections). So what’s the purpose?

I like the Google Earth feature just to be able to find some folks who may be in my area for possible future CGS related meetings or networking. But the connections (I’m afraid) are just going to make a yellow mess of the globe and make things more difficult to view over time. It’d be much nicer IMO if the locations showed without the network connections and I could look in certain areas on the globe for people that I’d like to meet with (if I were travelling, for example).

I think I’d prefer if our favorites showed on our pages rather than our personal network. This would allow people who view portfolios to see the work of other artists who inspire and have work that is appreciated by the artist even though there are no direct connections personally or professionally to them.

For example …

I’ve never actually met or worked with Linda Bergkvist and aside from the Forum Leader connection I’m not sure how she is associated with me in a personal network. Which made it feel awkward for me to request a personal network connection from her. However, I (as many others here … I’m sure) would love to show on our portfolio page that her work has been inspirational in some degree and are honored to provide a link to her gallery on our pages.

Same situation would apply to other artists on CGS such as Steven Stahlberg, Philip Straub, Meats Meier, Robert Chang, Kory Heinzen, Wei Ming, any many many more too numerous to list here. I know of these people through my history of being a member on CGTalk and may have a relationship or conversation history with them on the forum. But to claim that they are close friends or professional associates wouldn’t be exactly true.

So, I’d suggest loosing the personal network in favor of moving the favorite portfolios into the display slots on CGPortfolio pages and keeping the Google Earth without the personal network connections.

#28

You can turn off the orange lines;

In the places menubar on the right, if you open up the portfolios link, and scroll past all the users, there is a folder called “network links” if you unselect the checkbox it’ll hide all the network links and make the globe much cleaner :slight_smile:

#29

I like the favorites feature and I mean no offense to anyone but I really am not interested in networking or participating in google earth. I think the portfolio is great though with the different gallery features. I even wrote a little blog today.:slight_smile: I think all of you who have worked to make this happen deserve a pat on the back. It’s just that a couple of the features offered are not for me.

#30

Exactly, if you don’t want to participate, you don’t have to;

Networks will add other functionality in the future aswell remember, now it’s just kind of for show, but in the future, if you rate an image highly, this would be passed on to network members, and network members would have communal sets of tags and so forth.

To reitterate, the fundamental difference between a network link and a favorite link, is that a network link is 2 sided, and a favorite works in one direction;

If you add someone to your favorites you give permission for their account to send you information;

If you add someone to your favorites list you opt into your accounts exchanging information between each other;

#31

At the moment, if you send a request, that’s the only request you can send (despite there being a ‘resend’ function it does nothing) - If the recipiant denies the request you are not informed, but may send another request, likewise, if you are blacklisted, you are not informed, but may not send a request.

if you are blacklisted you may not make posts to an artist’s guestbook, leaving cgtalk as the only place flaming may occur, and such things don’t float there.

#32

Well that kinda defeats the purpose of it :stuck_out_tongue: The purpose, at least in my understanding of it, is for people to see artists with whom the artist, whose portfolio they’re currently viewing, is connected. I do think it’s a good idea, but we should be given a few more options, such as the ability to prevent others from sending us invites, while retaining the ability to send out our own. That way, people can decide via PMs or whatever that they want to network and then you could send an invite to them.

Isn’t that what Favourites are for?

#33

Generally, I’d be against this type of idea as I do think it generally causes a lot of potential problems. However, it sounds like you guys have put a lot of thought and planning into the system and knowing the administrations reputation for keeping a tight ship I think it shows a lot of potential.

I do think it has been done right on other sites and been a great benefit, look at Flickr.
#34

Noted, however, lets take some obvious examples, if you block requests, and Enayla blocks requests, how do you join one another’s networks?

#35

Well then you just do a highly co-ordinated and well-timed switching-on of the system in your profile, accepting the invite, and then shutting it off again :smiley:

#36

Yes, but unless I’m missing something somewhere, Favorites are only visible to the artist who selects them. I’d rather see the Favorites list populated to everyone rather than the Personal Network. Maybe it’s just me … but who’s going to care who you know (unless they are looking to finesse a foot in the door somewhere)?

#37

That makes perfect sense to me - so, no, it’s not just you.

As you pointed out earlier, there’s no way of knowing the nature of the connections in the personal network, whereas a visible section called ‘Favourites’, well, there’s no mistaking the nature of that, is there?

So maybe it would be great if the portfolio owners could have the option to have favourites visible to the public instead of the network… or just rename ‘personal network’ to something else… like… er… favourites :smiley:

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#38

Did you see Linda’s networks list? It’s huge!

Poor thing is too nice to turn people down…now I feel bad for her…

#39

Another thing to consider:

The server load, bandwidth, and loading times are going to go substantially higher once this gets opened up to a wider audience. And the layout is going to get real ugly, real quick.

I’m on the fence about it. I hate the awkward social problems it raises, but there are some neat possibilities opened up down the line by having the groundwork laid. I think the best thing to do at this point is to better define what a network connection signifies – is it friendship? Professional acquaintance? Admiration of one’s art? Unrequited love? Let’s take it one step at a time:

  1. Friendship
    Would turn this place into more of a social club. It’s not a terrible idea, but one of limited utility. Some apps could be developed off of it, but they’d probably be more toys than anything.

  2. Professional acquaintance
    Probably best handled offline. The gaming and VFX industries, at least, have such peculiar internal politics that transcribing it down into digital form would be difficult and illusory at best. Some apps could be made off this, but I doubt they’d catch on. And honestly, 90% of the people using this system don’t have any professional connections to speak of.

  3. Art admiration
    Almost synonymous with “favorites”. This is the most obvious implementation, given that this place is set up already with lots of voting, gallery displays, and whatnot. Lot of overlap with the favorites, though. I say clearly delineate the difference. If this is the implementation the network is supposed to have, I say eliminate the network, as “favorites” is a better way to handle this functionality.

  4. Unrequited love
    This… I mean, I like you, Roberto, don’t get me wrong, but…

Given that #2 is fairly unlikely, given the audience, #3 is ruled out due to redundancy, and #4 is just silly, we’re left with the network really only being used to delineate friendship. It adds a bit more personal edge to the site, but its implementation is confusing, and it does bring up some legitimate concerns. I worry about the site becoming too myspacey. I’m also not sure it’s the direction y’all want to go (I mean, you guys shut down the Bonanza thread). So, food for thought.

#40

I think her and bobby are having a race :wink: