I am not a big social media user. I have a LinkedIn account (2 actually, because I have no reason to pay for it so that I can merge accounts) and hardly use it. I have a Discord account and don't even know my user tag since I almost exclusively use it for Codidact. I tried Twitter once, so I probably have a username...but never use it. I don't have a Facebook account. etc. You get the idea.

But this really raises the issue that there is nothing special about Twitter. For the moment, there is something special about Discord with respect to the primary Codidact instance, because that is the location for chat. But another Codidact instance (private, or public but run by a different organization) might have nothing to do with Discord. I don't know the current configuration, but IMHO, the proper way to do this is:

• A table of profile alternate account definitions
• Each one includes name, description, input sample value and status (active, read-only, inactive). Active = normal, read-only if you want to turn something off without removing existing data (so allow a user to delete but not add or update) and inactive would get rid of it (but keep the user profile data in the database in case the community changes its mind).
• Each user profile includes optional fields for each of those accounts

Then each instance can make a decision based on any security, political, cultural or other reasons. Some people don't currently like Twitter - OK, remove it. A Codidact instance in some countries might say "absolutely no Tik Tok". Others might say "absolutely no Facebook". A private instance might even include a good old fashioned email address - we don't do that on the primary public Codidact instance as that is considered private information, but in a different context, such as a corporate internal site, that may be 100% appropriate.

The current primary instance then has 3 account definitions:

• Website - A link to anywhere on the internet for your stuff. - https://...
• Twitter - Your Twitter username, if you've got one you want to share. - @username
• Discord - Your Discord user tag, in the format username#1234. - username#1234

And if @ArtOfCode says "that's how we're doing it already" then my answer is obsolete.

Once this is all in the database rather than hardcoded (again, maybe it already is), any decision as to whether to turn off Twitter (or make it read-only) for this instance of Codidact becomes a community decision and not a technical one, and becomes a change that can be done as a simple database setting without any code changes.

posted 10 months ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

manassehkatz‭ staff

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