Dave wrote:
On 1/25/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Dave wrote:
>> anyone object to adding these 2 attributes for weblogs?
>
> Yes. Don't those belong on the user or a new user-profile object? A
> weblog has multiple users and could therefore have multiple bios and
> avatars.
Doh, I meant to specifically address that in my original email but
forgot :/
I had the same initial thought, but I came up with a few reasons why
these items wouldn't be associated with a user profile actually ...
1. with the many-to-many relationship between users and weblogs there is
really no reliable way to get to a user from a weblog and more
importantly there is no guaranteed way of getting a single user for a
weblog. so it would be troublesome to figure out which profile to use
in group blog situations.
2. users may own multiple weblogs and may not want to use the same
avatar and bio on both/all of them.
3. users may also come and go from a weblog, i.e. join and be owner for
a while then leave it to someone else. while this isn't likely to
happen very often, it would be a definite problem if a user who was
controlling the avatar and bio on a weblog and that stuff wasn't
available anymore.
I also think that at the end of the day the image and bio are really a
property of the weblog and in most cases are just being used to
highlight the author. However, in many cases they can be used in a more
generic way such as being an icon and a tagline. So I think it's
easiest and most appropriate to have them as properties of a weblog.
In that case it makes more since to call the field "about" instead of
"bio" -- it's a bit of text about the blog, which could be used as a
bio or something else. And instead of avatar how about "image" or
"icon"?
Good point, some more appropriate nomenclature would be helpful.
It would definitely be useful to also have those fields in the user
object or a new user-profile object, that way group blogs like The
Aquarium could include an about page that automatically lists each
blogger in the blog and a photo of each and is automatically updated
as member hip in the group blog changes -- you won't be able to do
that with one bio and avatar for the whole blog.
Yes, I agree that there is definitely still a use for tracking more info
at the user profile level, but there are also more complexities with
that. For example, we currently have no way to allow attaching of
uploaded images to users. All the current file uploads infrastructure
is segmented by weblog, so doing uploads for users would have to be
separate. There are little things like that which would have to be
considered.
-- Allen
- Dave
