Well, it’s quite discouraging for me to see how this fairly obvious “identity 101” moves also start to add long posts.
Guess who uses a tiny icon instead of its wordmark for the header: Facebook. Why? Because they can afford it, because (sadly) every one knows how the f··k Facebook looks.
Maybe I’m not clear enough, of course I’m trying to catch those (maybe very few) “over the shoulder” users, the ones that don’t know diaspora*, and even further, I would love to see people sharing screenshots or screencasts with the logo on it. As I see it, it’s an strategic move. And an extra reason for me: I really like the logo, the word diaspora in small caps with the asterisk, gets to me. This is quite subjective, but I think it also looks good on the UI. It’s a beautiful logo. I have absolutely no trouble in having the logo all the time on my screen.
The rest of the work you mention is of course needed, but it’s already on its way (I hope):
Foundation: I already made a proposal for the foundation site ( http://pablocubico.github.io/fosdem2015/img/diasporasite-new.png ) , and I would love to have some help to finish it, I also started an Identity project on Github (
https://github.com/pablocubico/diaspora-identity ).
Identity: Last days, I got an email from @elliotlepers , he mentioned he was very interested in overhauling identity, would love to have his feedback on this.
Start pages: I mentioned Elliot the need to do something beautiful about those pages you mention (start, creating profile, first time users, etc), and I saw some of his work and I have to say I would really love to see those pages redesigned with an identity overhaul.
So, that is all coming next, I’m sure diaspora* will have a strong foundation site and nice pages.
So, maybe I’m wrong, maybe we should take this discussion out to Diaspora, and make the actual Diaspora users somehow vote on this topic, because I feel that we are all making assumptions here.