Global icons accessible by all

[chris]

Title:
Global icons accessible by all

Area:
icons

Summary:
Create a new class of icons that do not belong to any particular DW user, that can be accessed by DW users (probably restricted to paid accounts) at large without counting against individual DW users' icon limits, as an alternative to selecting one of your own icons.

Description:
Icons are expensive for DW to offer. It may be unnecessarily expensive when fifty DW users individually upload and use identical icons. It may be cheaper for DW to offer the same icon to every (paid?) user, in addition to offering slots in which people can upload their own icons.

Establish a central communal gallery of icons. These icons are not owned by individual DW users, but are instead available to all (paid?) users _as well as_ all the icons that they have uploaded into their own usericon slots. This may be computationally cheaper for DW to offer than extra usericon slots, particularly when multiple users happen to fill their slots with icons that turn out to be identical. Societally, the phenomenon of people happening to use the same icon as each other in conversation with each other is well-known and is generally enjoyed by participants; I guess it would be at least nearly as much fun - and, in some circumstances, more fun - when both people know they're using the same icon from the same source, rather than that they had both chosen to expend a precious usericon slot on the same image.

I can see three classes of problems to be solved here. One considers intellectual property issues; if you have uploaded an icon yourself, you have the responsibility for ensuring you have the right to use it, whereas if you are using an icon from a global gallery then you have not had to consider this yourself. (However, this can be resolved by ensuring that all icons uploaded to the global gallery are IP compliant at the time of uploading.) A second class of problem considers UI issues - lists of scores of icons are already unwieldy, so adding potentially hundreds more to the list could get very unwieldy and having different UI for selecting usericons that you have uploaded personally than for selecting usericons from the global gallery risks being confusing. A third class of problem considers drama when people become too personally attached to usericon concepts which might happen to be replicated globally, but this is not functionally different to problems that may exist already, just on a different scale.

Compare this with the "Communal Community icons" suggestion, but expand the concept from a community-wide to a DW-wide, or paid-DW-wide, scale.

Poll #1854 Global icons accessible by all

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 61

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
7 (11.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
4 (6.6%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
33 (54.1%)

(I have no opinion)
14 (23.0%)

(Other: please comment)
3 (4.9%)

Comments

[aedifica]

In my experience icons are by and large a point of individuality, and people I know make a point of not using icons others on their lists use commonly. This may be different in other circles; is it?

[snakeling]

I voted against, for one reason: One considers intellectual property issues; [...] whereas if you are using an icon from a global gallery then you have not had to consider this yourself.. Which means that the onus falls on DW, which is bad and could potentially lead to DMCA and lawsuits. Sure, DW could only make communal those icons made with public domain/CC material, but that would severely limits the options, plus might take a long time to establish.

ETA: Sorry, meant to reply to the post. It probably means I should go to bed right now *g*

[denise]

See my reply here to this concern -- if DW doesn't exercise any restraint, DW is shielded from liability.

[cesy]

I think a communal repository of public domain/CC material could work well. I suspect a fair number of icon makers could use public images and release their icons as CC for this purpose.

[kerravonsen]

Interesting idea. I can see why some people wouldn't like it, because they loathe the idea of having identical icons to anyone else, so they wouldn't want to use a global icon community.

[white_aster]

Neat idea! I think that having a repository of community icons that anyone's free to use would be awfully cool. If it's computationally cheaper (I've no idea if it is), then that would be awesome, too.

Choosing the community icons during posting could be confusing, yeah. Maybe you could go to the comm icon gallery and choose which comm icons to put into your usual "icon to use" dropdown? Not sure if it would be computationally annoying to let folks re-name the icons for their dropdown or not, but that might be a possibility.

Also, I think that comm icons should still count for user icon slots. If the community icons don't count against personal icon slots, then I can see people just kind of dumping all their extra icons into the community icon pot. I have a hundred slots and about 500 icons I'd like to use: why not just dump the extra 400 into community and then viola, I've got as many icons available as I want! The community pot would get huge kind of quickly, I think, and make any "more usericons" upgrade DW has/will have be kind of redundant. On the other hand, not sure WHY folks would use the community icons (other than the "this helps DW!" if they DO count for icon slots. Hrm. Maybe a certain number of comm icons per user can be used and don't count as icon slots?

The copyright issues might be hard to deal with, too. On the one hand, if DW takes a hands-off approach (ie, doesn't attempt to promote this as something they are condoning/promoting/patrolling, but instead just says, "this is an extension of the usual usericon space"), then it might not raise any more than the issue of copyright in normal icons does?

[denise]

On the one hand, if DW takes a hands-off approach (ie, doesn't attempt to promote this as something they are condoning/promoting/patrolling, but instead just says, "this is an extension of the usual usericon space"), then it might not raise any more than the issue of copyright in normal icons does?

This is precisely correct. If DW exerts zero control in the selection or display thereof, we are shielded from liability for any potentially infringing material.

[white_aster]

\o/ I know there's a term for it...the "once you start policing it, you're responsible for following through, but if you don't police, you're in the clear" thing. I keep wanting to call it the "hands-off rule". ;P

[denise]

"safe harbor" or "section 230 immunity" (referring to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act). wikipedia's pretty good on that one.

[cheyinka]

I can see the use in a community having a pool of icons - topic-specific ones for people who use icons as a topic marker rather than a mood marker, NPC or location icons for a RPG community, and probably things I haven't thought of. Not all communities would use icons the same way, but all members of a community would probably use the common pool in a consistent way.

I can't think of a consistent use for site-wide icons, because people use icons in so many different ways. Also, site-wide icons would have to have preset keywords and alt text, and I imagine even visually-identical icons might have different keywords and different alt text, depending on what someone wanted to emphasize about the picture.

My understanding is that storing icons is cheap, it's displaying them that's expensive - so saving a megabyte here or a megabyte there (at very most - icons are pretty small...) wouldn't do much for "that image is still being loaded on a regular basis" costs, would it? (I could be wrong.)

Plus there's all the other problems you noted as possibilities...

[denise]

it's displaying them that's expensive - so saving a megabyte here or a megabyte there (at very most - icons are pretty small...) wouldn't do much for "that image is still being loaded on a regular basis" costs, would it? (I could be wrong.)

To be precise, it's "grabbing them from the DB", and this suggestion would likely almost always be in memcache, so there'd likely be no/fewer DB hits.

[cheyinka]

Hmm, okay, so I guess it could help in that regard.

[zvi]

I don't see what user problem this solves, and it breaks a lot of current usage patterns.

[denise]

Which usage patterns?

[zvi]

The number one pattern it breaks is icon as identity. I know that weconning is experienced as disruptive in fandom, because there's cognitive dissonance over who the poster is.

I think it's probably going to interact weirdly with icon as mood icon, doing what I'm not exactly sure.

I think it's also going to interact weirdly with icon offering and icontests.

It strikes me as really, really, really disruptive. I'm not a particularly visual person, and I feel as if this would put everybody in masks. Ugh.

[mskala]

"weconning"?

[zvi]

Wecon - when multiple people have a very similar icon because they've used the same cap as the base.

[torachan]

I don't see it as something that people would use for their main icon, but what about icons used for specific purposes? Protest icons, icons identifying oneself as part of a group, etc. all tend to not be individualised.

[kaigou]

It makes sense to me, and it's a pattern I've seen before on forums, where you can upload your own sig/icon or you can choose from a collection provided by the forum. I seem to recall for a long time, it was the same on AIM -- you could pick from a selection. I have no idea how many forum-users are still around that might see the connection between that use-pattern and this use-pattern.

But it also seems to me that this would be best as a service to free accounts, not paid, as it's free accounts who have limited icons -- what, six, in all? Having more icons accessible (if not personally-owned) is a plus. Just leaves open the question of whether that would put a damper on purchases of paid accounts, since it seems getting to retain a lot of icons is one major impetus for account-purchase -- and honestly, I can barely organize and track 110 icons, who knows how I'd manage to remember all 250, let alone 250 + however-many-more-public-icons.

I don't see much issue in whether people would start to feel proprietary about a publicly-traded icon; we're not quite as territorial when we know it's a public good (with the possible exception of parking spaces). I do see the likelihood of a lot of frustration in trying to mentally (let alone programatically) organize that many damn icons. Give that, I wonder how many folks would even use the full service, preferring instead to d/l the public icon, load it into their own selections, and ignore the public-icon library otherwise except when they're bored and want to trade out.

[zvi]

I think free accounts have fifteen icon slots, now.

[piscinarii]

I hadn't thought about this is the same way as AIM/internet forum sigs...

There were icons in the Dreamwidth wiki that were Dreamwidth specific, and there's also the "Dreamsheep" icons. If Dreamwidth offered a "community icons" pool I think it would have to be restricted to something along those lines - creative commons/dealing with Dreamwidth only - in order to apply to Dreamwidth free accounts so it doesn't interfere with paid account revenue.

As I understand it, Dreamwidth is working on (or has already? I live under a rock) employing a full time team for the site. Icon space is one of the main reasons people purchase paid time sooo, yeah.

This turned into a reply to both the main post and your comment :D sorry. I pretty much agree with your comment.

[hatman]

Interesting idea. Could be a cool supplement to more individual regular icon, though I do worry, as you mentioned, about how one would manage that in the UI.

I could see doing this with, say, the DW-related icons in the Wiki. What other kinds of icons were you considering?

[charmian]

It may be cheaper for DW to offer the same icon to every (paid?) user, in addition to offering slots in which people can upload their own icons.

I'm confused... Is it certainly so that it will be cheaper, or is this simply a guess?

[superluminal]

If identical icons really became a problem for DW, a similar (in fact, more effective) optimization could be introduced by storing icon data in a central place indexed using a cryptographic hash function. Then any particular icon would be stored only once whether or not it was part of a "communal gallery."

[ai]

I am not too sure if I see this as a good idea or not. There just may end up being far too many icons that are in the system not even being used. As an icon maker myself, if I have the chance to create an icon with the same scene/picture someone else has, I will always do so just so it's mine.

I see this being a great idea for users who don't know where to find icons themselves or are unable to make them though. It'd definitely be friendly to new users. There are several forums that have 'preset' avatars people can use, that sort of thing is good.

[dorkpie]

I think this sounds like it has a lot of potential, but my only concern is that it sounds very complicated, both in terms of application (though that could just be that my coding experience = nil), and in which icons to make "global" (especially considering that a lot of our icons are carried over from LJ, and most of the ones we use come from different and individual icon communitites/journals). I can see how global hodliday icons would come in handy, though (and this is kind of why I like this idea in the first place).

[callaoressene]

After reading the comments here, I have to say that I'm tending toward the "make the free users" do it, side of things. If icon usage affects expenses, then those who are already paying should be able to upload and use what they like; that's not to say that free users couldn't have some choice but perhaps limit it to: 5 of your own individual icons and if you want to have say 10, the remainders come from the general pool.

When it comes to the pool, what I see as potentially problematic is the sheer range of icons that would be necessary--especially when you start figuring fandoms into the mix. You'd almost need a selection of icons that would cover, say the top 100 to 1,000 interests. Art, music, books, colors, sexuality, identity, athletics, movies, tv, quotations, holidays, religions, countries, etc.

Also, who would be making the decisions about what icons to include? What the quality criteria is, what image would be used, what text, what design, etc.? For me that's part of what makes icons--and having them--so gratifying, the sheer range possible for expression emotion or subject matter with a nearly infinte variety of options (provided you've got a good supply on your own harddrive, or you've got a good community to tap).

That said, I like the idea with reservations.

[noxie]

That would make more sense to me, to have it as an option for free users.

[dancing_serpent]

I'd rather have the option to use community icons for members of a comm. For example, I'll upload 100 icons to the elfquest community, and all members can pick from that pool when posting entries/comments to the comm.

[cesy]

I'd like to see this as a central pool of things like seasonal icons or Dreamwidth-related icons, that could be used by free users as well as paid users. And I'd like to see it heavily policed and restricted to just a few approved icons with appropriate CC licenses.

[kyrielle]

:( I use icons to help id posters, and most people I read use icons as identity. I do not like this. However, I'm seeing that other people use it differently and I think my friends wouldn't mostly use it on their posts, so I am - hesitantly - going with no opinion instead of do-not-want.

[aurora]

I like the general concept, but I'm worried about the (inevitable) crediting wank that this system might bring along.

[inalasahl]

Rationally, I know that it's no skin off my nose if people want to use generic icons for their accounts. I might even use such a service myself for the occasional "Happy Arbor Day" or whatever post. Emotionally, though, the idea kind of grosses me out.