Difference between revisions of "Weblog/PotentialPosts/Users"
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| − | + | Just Say No! | |
| + | ...to calling people users. | ||
| − | + | We are certainly not the first to publicly ask this question. But why do so many sites call their contributors users? User are passive. Users are not contributors, they are passive. The title does little to convey the sense of ownership that the creators of today's community-curated online works feel. We were ecstatic we found [http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/123/an-alternative-term-for-user-generated-content Brianna Laugher's efforts] at exploring pieces of the problem. Ted Ernst then opined about it on the [http://blog.aboutus.org/2008/08/28/user-generated-content-community-curated-works/ AboutUs Weblog] back in August. | |
| − | This | + | This rejection of "users" definitely seems to have struck a cord with many folks. Brianna followed up with [http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/137/community-curated-works-ccw Community-curated works (CCW)], Josh Bancroft joined the fray with [http://www.tinyscreenfuls.com/2008/08/i-hate-the-term-user-generated-content-how-about-community-curated-works-instead/ I Hate the Term “User Generated Content”. How About “Community-Curated Works” Instead?] and this month, David Pogue of the New York Times recently lambasted it in his list of [http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/tech-terms-to-avoid/ Tech Terms to Avoid]. |
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| − | Josh Bancroft [http://www.tinyscreenfuls.com/2008/08/i-hate-the-term-user-generated-content-how-about-community-curated-works-instead/ I Hate the Term “User Generated Content”. How About “Community-Curated Works” Instead?] | ||
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It is hard to imagine for most tech people to think that user is anything but a good term - it is for whom they do their work for. This industry grew up around these engineers - they drove it, so obviously it is their legacy language that still is common, but that doesn't mean it is a good thing. | It is hard to imagine for most tech people to think that user is anything but a good term - it is for whom they do their work for. This industry grew up around these engineers - they drove it, so obviously it is their legacy language that still is common, but that doesn't mean it is a good thing. | ||
Revision as of 00:38, 22 October 2008
Just Say No! ...to calling people users.
We are certainly not the first to publicly ask this question. But why do so many sites call their contributors users? User are passive. Users are not contributors, they are passive. The title does little to convey the sense of ownership that the creators of today's community-curated online works feel. We were ecstatic we found Brianna Laugher's efforts at exploring pieces of the problem. Ted Ernst then opined about it on the AboutUs Weblog back in August.
This rejection of "users" definitely seems to have struck a cord with many folks. Brianna followed up with Community-curated works (CCW), Josh Bancroft joined the fray with I Hate the Term “User Generated Content”. How About “Community-Curated Works” Instead? and this month, David Pogue of the New York Times recently lambasted it in his list of Tech Terms to Avoid.
It is hard to imagine for most tech people to think that user is anything but a good term - it is for whom they do their work for. This industry grew up around these engineers - they drove it, so obviously it is their legacy language that still is common, but that doesn't mean it is a good thing.
There are smart people out there User Centered Strategy being one of them - saying and posting with clearly opposing understandings of the issue.
The subject gets some meta talk on Metafilter: Users are people too about changing it on their site.
In the spirit of the Typo Eradication Advancement League which I found through New York Post: Weird But True (and the article was deleted at Wikipedia for not being notable.) and Learning By Doing: I made several edits to Vidoop.com's about us page, as if it where a wiki (wouldn't it be great if the whole web was a wiki... wait, that is what we are doing here at AboutUs!) and changed the way their page would read if they removed the "User" language - here is the change and here is the diff. (looks like the page changed a bit, but the writing is similar)
A challenge to, my own company AboutUs.org, Metafilter, Vidoop - really any other Portland based technology company - let's start the language / people revolution here.
LinkLanguage is important to me. It is hard that my own company still uses the User Namespace like Wikipedia and not like wikiHow, which has it but hides it.
