User:DeadSuperHero/Proposal:User Directories in Diaspora

This proposal is a work-in-progress. The purpose is to revisit some of the core ideas in how user discovery is currently done within Diaspora as well as the wider free web.

Current Implementation

At the moment, Diaspora has three pieces of the puzzle regarding user discovery. These three methods have historically played a part in how Diaspora users end up connecting on the network.

1. Tagged Searches - Searching for tagged posts brings up profiles of anyone that has those tags associated with their profiles.
2. Community Spotlight - Pods can feature a handful of its members on a special page for other people to discover and follow.
3. Search Lookup - Members on a pod can be searched for by their username or handle.

Limitations

1. Tagged Searches - User profiles can only have 5 tags, and not all search results for tags are necessarily shared between pods.
2. Community Spotlight - Although it works well as a feature, community spotlight primarily just features a few profiles that are given a community spotlight user role. This mostly exists as a minimal local directory for pods; results are neither shared nor federated between pods.
3. Search Lookup - Although a webfinger request usually works well enough for adding a contact, newcomers may not be sure of how to do this, and might find it difficult to find their friends who might be on any given pod at any given time.

RedMatrix-inspired Implementation

A directory for a RedMatrix hub.

For Red users, the directory is mirrored between directory server sites, and any of these mirrors can provide directory services to smaller sites or those that don’t wish to take on the directory role themselves.

Within the Red ecosystem, there are currently 9 mirrored directory servers out of about 300 sites. Additionally there are 7 “standalone” directory servers which are essentially private directory domains that are running disconnected from the overall matrix. (Clusters of sites can also participate in directory “realms” which can be hierarchical or clustered, much like Active Directory).

Benefits

1. Users would be easier to find across pods, regardless of what pod they're on. This could help connect people on "island" pods connect with people on the wider free network.
2. Profiles could be filtered through based on whether they were local to a pod, or part of the wider net.

Loomio Discussion

The Loomio discussion about this can be found here: https://www.loomio.org/d/LJaVegpr/user-directories-in-diaspora