I would like to add all the communities I participate in to Discourse. This could be done, if Discourse had a feature I call shortcuts, which is nothing more than adding links to your user profile. This feature is present on Github, where you can add up to 4 links to your user profile. This is interesting, as it demonstrates to the community other open source projects in which you participate or even out of curiosity if you have experience, which projects you collaborated with with ideas, solutions as well. Usually, some put links from LinkedIn or even the company they work for, or links from the company where they own the business.
Another complementary purpose of this feature is to increase trust and networking in the Discourse - since there are many links allowed in the user profile, at the end of the day we are leaving users with open knowledge of who is present in this discussion. This facilitates what I call transparency and security.
Pages like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter have the reputation feature. That is, to have a verified account it is not only necessary to connect to a gmail account, to have several conversations with users. It is necessary to have a verified account, several processes such as the amount of posting you make, this says the frequency of your posting, public personalities usually post a lot and that’s why you have a verified profile.
What I’m saying is that to further increase the reputation of Discourse users beyond what is done with badges, we can have the feature I call “shortcuts”, which would be something like “verified profile”. This “verified profile” feature has been used on social media for a long time. These shortcuts are used a lot on Github, and we can use them here with the profile concept verified here on Discourse.
Why is this feature interesting?
Increases users’ trust
Increases the credibility of the Discourse platform
Increases Discourse platform reputation level
It is a feature similar to the “verified profile” on social networks
It makes it easier for other users to find information from other users, which makes things transparent and safer for all users of Discourse, ie, new users and old users or possible new partners, collaborators
Increase networking on the Discourse platform.
Improved security and transparency for new and returning users of the Discourse platform. Discourse has great security and transparency.
But my idea is to complement that, is to further increase security and transparency.
I’d like to create ways that help the Discourse platform continue to be so great and good.
This idea is initial and is subject to change.
The blue verified badge is a way for you to know that the account you are interacting with is the authentic presence of a public figure, celebrity, brand, or notable entity.
What does this feature do differently?
It adds the concept of shortcuts which is something present on Github to Discourse as a “verified profile” point, something social networks have been doing for a long time.
How many links can users put in their profile to have their profile verified?
It can be many links or just 1, it depends on various factors like the stat information as well. I was initially thinking about having multiple links as I participate in many open source communities.
Notes
I didn’t find any similar resource or plugin. If you have something similar, it would be interesting to move to the specific topic.
I mentioned some social networks because they have a feature similar to what I described here. My goal is to analyze what is being used by these social networks, and see if it makes sense to add it here in the Discourse. Because it would be a new feature and it could give you more security experience, more credibility, more transparency as I said before to new or old users on the Discourse platform.
Statistical information that includes: number of posts you created or responded to, frequency of posts from the Discourse platform, number of likes sent and received, social media links associated with your user profile such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or links to websites where you work and want to show it to the community. Or links from the community you participate in.
Badges
Is a verified profile mandatory?
It’s something that only Discourse platform users can want, it’s not a must. But it’s something the user may or may not want.
Who manages if the user is a verified profile, is the Discourse platform through the statistical information. It is something that can be requested or something automatic. This concept is open. It could be something to be requested or something the user requests.
Verification is there to let people know that notable accounts — such as politicians, celebrities and companies — actually belong to these entities. The seal confirms the authenticity of an account, differentiating it from fake or fan profiles or or even just users - users I speak of are end customers.
In order to have a verified profile, it is necessary to comply with the community, that is, in accordance with the duties and rights that the community requires.
The profiles usually verified include companies, community leaders, developers, software engineers or anything that is related to the area of development, business, project management, people management such as human resources or even research positions, if you are a researcher or scientist. But there are a lot of other roles, if you’re a digital influencer or even a content producer, or you’re a writer in the information technology field.
It would be interesting to establish criteria on profiles verified in Discourse to establish what is viable, interesting or makes sense for the community. It’s not something I thought of initially, but it can be debated and perhaps proposed by everyone here.
So the “verified” mark could easily be done with a group “Verified” which has avatar flair, and links in the profile could be done using this Link custom user field to external website
But I don’t see how adding links to a profile would help verifying someones identity. I could take Elon Musks profile pic and link to https://twitter.com/elonmusk from my profile and then you would think that I’m Elon Musk?
If you don’t have a good process for this, then it’s useless (and maybe even dangerous since people will hold the community leadership responsible).
At least how Clubhouse did it was by not making it just a link but rather a “sign in with Instagram” or twitter link. Once the person signed in, that link was also added to their profile. I think they only used IG and twitter but I imagine it could be used for more.
Keybase also has a way to do it thru public posts of cryptographic signatures (I believe) but not sure if that world work well here.
@RGJ Thanks for the feedback, but if you can clarify these points I’ve put here, I’d be happy for further feedback.
So the “verified” mark could easily be done with a group “Verified” which has avatar flair, and links in the profile could be done using this Link custom user field to external website
Yes, exactly. That’s right. That’s what I thought. I accessed this post and found it very interesting, it was exactly what I thought, but with the difference that it does not have the “verified” icon.
But I don’t see how adding links to a profile would help verifying someones identity. I could take Elon Musks profile pic and link to https://twitter.com/elonmusk from my profile and then you would think that I’m Elon Musk?
If you don’t have a good process for this, then it’s useless (and maybe even dangerous since people will hold the community leadership responsible).
Initial observations
Hope to help resolve these general considerations you mentioned or general issues you mentioned.
Part of the things I’ve listed are additional ideas that can solve these initial problems:
Not everyone can be verified, only specific people can be verified. This includes community team members or selected or invited users. User profile links are just a part of this verification process, another verification process would be the statistics information that I mentioned, in addition there is the issue of badges that the user must have, in addition to other criteria, for example, if the user wants to have a verified profile it would be necessary for him/her to have these characteristics: statistical information, official profile links attached, badges, to be selected to have a verified profile, or to have been a member of the community team for that.
If you include a link that is unofficial, your profile will be shut down. That is, you lose access to having the profile verified. Companies like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook already have clear processes for the person to have a verified profile. What I said earlier would be that we can build something that exists and adapt it to the needs of the community. For example, we can review the verified profile policy of these social networks and adapt to Discourse if that is interesting and good for everyone here.
Verified profiles can be from the community team, artists, journalists, people who have some ties to an IT company. If you are not in this category, you could not have a verified profile. What we can discuss at this point is which people would have this profile verified and how to establish clear and interesting criteria for this to be done. As I said, this process is still under construction and I think it would be interesting to ask for the opinion of more people, so that we have different points of view and that way we know if this resource is interesting or not. As I said before, this can somehow help Discourse to be more reliable, secure, transparent. I have a feeling this idea is a good one but needs to be evaluated by everyone here at Discourse.
I’m not criticizing you, I just wanted to show you additional ideas I got from reading your feedback. About the user profile links, they serve as a guide - I access the links and I know if that person claims to be who they are, is really who they say they are, because the links in theory direct to what the person wants to show for me. Even if there is some wrong link or wrong information, the community itself can send a request like “this user cannot have a verified profile, the information is wrong”. When there is a fake profile that is considered a verified profile, Twitter users themselves can report this profile, as this profile is fake. Also, people who want to have a verified profile often follow social media or even community policies for doing so. It makes no sense for you to want to have a fake profile verified, because one time or another they can find out and you lose access to that profile. Ideally, I believe there are more good people in the world who actually do what is good and help those who need help.
We can establish a criterion or acceptance level for this, as I mentioned earlier, invited people or selected people from the community can have a verified profile, maybe we can better evaluate this, with a test period, for example, evaluate for 1 year if that person deserves to have a verified profile. Or else we can just leave the verified profile just for the community team. Also, the person must be committed to the terms of security, privacy of the community in which they are inserted or wish to take part in order to have the possibility of having a verified profile.
@jimkleiber I thought your idea was very good - But, if possible and if you have time, I hope some further feedback from you on these considerations I made:
Keybase also has a way to do it thru public posts of cryptographic signatures (I believe) but not sure if that world work well here.
This idea is really interesting. But so, I had initially thought that the verified profile would be based on the following criteria:
Public statistics
Badges
Verified profiles are for specific user profile types - profiles such as community team members, users who have requested to have their profile verified and need some approval to do so, or users who the community has elected as a verified profile.
We can base the verified profile on the clear and objective processes that social networks already do so well and create something different for Discourse, but based on these principles
Maybe we could use a user scoring system to see if the user can request a verified profile or even if the user can be invited to have that profile verified
Maybe we’ll use the user profile links as I mentioned to be good starting points for establishing what is feasible to have a verified profile.
Now, this Keybase idea I think is really amazing, I think if we associate posts with a specific public key maybe this is more secure and transparent, but it’s something I thought about and it might be wrong. Because in theory, posts are unique with that specific key. Like a digital signature, which is interesting.
This idea is common in documents you need to sign, posts nowadays are like documents. But we have to see if this can be something safe for the user and is it private.
