:))
There are good arguments for each side. I still believe it is an important feature, yet I understand without someone willing to implement it it’s not very relevant (as I see most developers here wouldn’t want it). Since the discussion is ongoing and we’re divided I’m extending the closing date by three days. After that if needed I will make a revised proposal and see if we can better agree.
BTW I think the current proposal answers all privacy concerns so privacy alone should not be a reason to vote it down. Please address specific issues (not everyone did it).
@itai I didn’t address any specific issue, because I figured it was not a requirement for voting.
Personally, I would never EVER want to see photo’s tagged on D*. The ONLY time it would ever be even remotely of value, is if it was for your own personal reference only.
Everyone seems to forget that it would only take a single nefarious entity to start a Pod. Then they would have access to practically all relationships between accounts.
This is just another way to trace relationships. Epic privacy fail.
@starblessed those with concerns similar to yours - which I honestly understand - could simply not tag themselves and disable requests. Then it would is just like photo tagging doesn’t exist in d* at all for them. I said earlier that we should think about what is important in a social network to many and implement it while maintaining d* values and privacy. Honestly I think it is a little selfish to prevent a popular feature when it can be disabled individuality. There are privacy concerns with almost any action in a social network, but it should remain social. My 2c.
@itai - Perhaps, but you’re missing the point. D* is about privacy and freedom. It is not about creating as many links as possible so that it can open up the system to possible data mining. We want to minimize the problem, not create more ways people can be traced.
Please explain how it would be possible for someone unwanted to use photo tagging as suggested here to link person A to person B, when he will not be able to see person A tagged in a photo unless person A he added him (the unwanted guy) to an aspect. And please if you don’t trust your contacts or the podmin (which can see everything) then don’t use d* in the first place.
I AM a Podmin.
For your proposal to work, every tag on every picture would have to be distributed to every pod where a tagged user is located.
As a Podmin, you can see almost all of this data without too much hassle.
As I stated in my original post, it wouldn’t take much for a person/group to create a pod with a few users, and gather all this data. A few connections later and they would have a small but growing connection map.
While what you’re saying could be true (I’m not expert on d* security), it is the same for any action a user makes in d*. You’re basically saying forget about the privacy measures of d*, there is rouge pod and he knows everything. The only with solution with this approach would be not use it…
Call it what you will. I’ve cast my vote.
No problems, I wanted to understand better.
I’ve been thinking about a simpler and more private way to do that and would like to hear your opinion, especially of those who voted no. Basically, the idea is to use the @ mentioning system for photo tagging as was suggested here, and that only you could mention yourself in a photo (no requests etc). This mentioning will be visible to just yourself or to selected aspects, if you choose to do so.
At its base this feature could be by one (privately) just for keeping track of photos he appears in.
A proposed UI is attached.
Any other comments? 
Or should we vote on this?
not sure how much value we’d get from that variant.
would that be possible on all photos or just your own?
what if I wanted to misuse the feature to annoy other people by tagging arbitrary images?
If you were going to have a feature like that, the person who uploaded the photo would have to authorise the ‘mention’, otherwise people would spam mentions of themselves on many photos, as Florian points out.
I just don’t like photo ‘tagging’, I’m afraid. I really dislike it in social networks that have it, and wouldn’t be keen to see it in Diaspora. I know I mentioned ‘mentions’ before, but I wasn’t suggesting we should extend mentions to have a ‘tagging’ function; I was rather saying ‘we already have mentions, let’s not have tagging’.
I think we should consider what are the best possible features to have in a different type of social network, rather than merely aping the rubbish features of established networks. I don’t think tagging people in photos is one of the best things about social networks, and therefore I don’t think we should copy it. There are better things we can do to make Diaspora an attractive network to join and use. Let’s dare to be different!
@goob , I for sure don’t see photo tagging as a rubbish feature that we only need because Facebook has it, but as something vital to a social network (I said that a few times). I understand your view but I guess we can agree to disagree here.
@florianstaudacher , about spamming or misuse which Goob mentioned too. This should not be different than other forms of spamming (e,g commenting on many posts) and can be dealt accordingly by podmins.
My intention was to allow users to mention themselves in any photo visible to them.
Those who don’t like tagging could just use this feature to keep track of photos they appear in, or not at all.
Boy I’m late to this party, but this conversation was kind of a bummer to read through. I’m not personally that into photo tagging either, but I recognize that a lot of people do like it, and it does have a lot of social value for those people. Seems like there’s a good amount of self-sabotaging going on in this community by over-reacting to privacy worries and shutting down the conversation instead of trying to find a better way forward. Why is it hard to understand that some people DO like to be tagged and some people DON’T? Are individual privacy controls really not an option?
Most of the “no” votes seem to come with reasons like “I personally don’t like it” or “It will be too difficult to do right”. Both sound like awful reasons to shut the conversation down right out of the gate. This discussion should have gone on for months, not days.
No, the goal is not to be facebook (powerful features that invade your privacy) but the goal is also not just to be the anti-facebook (weak features that respect your privacy). The real goal should be trying to build the powerful features without the evil stuff. Very difficult, yes, but isn’t that the whole point of this project??
I came here because of openness, and I’m finding closed minds.
But again, I’m new here, so somebody set me straight…
I hate to be tagged on the photos … But I understand that people are interested. I think it is more or less the same style of debate for smileys ! If there is an option to disable and prevent others from tagged me in a photo, I do not see what the problem is !
Excuse me, but for me such feature is a major threat to users’ privacy.
Be tagged in a photo or cited in the commentary to the photo, to me it’s almost the same thing … Being on a social network is to be confronted with the risk of spreading his private life. I am of the same opinion, I do not absolutely love someone other than me talking about my private life. But sometimes it can be an important and practical for various reasons.