Great point. I cringe when I'm on some site and content gets posted that the site owners take issue with and remove, when in reality there was actually nothing wrong with the content -- it just didn't fit the preconceived notions of what the owners had intended. "This is not how the site is supposed to be used, therefore this content is bad and must be summarily removed" seems to be the thinking; it's as if they're scared, but of what I don't know.
And yes, it's very refreshing to see GitHub allow this. Thinking about it further, ticketing systems could see many more uses in the real world, and it makes me wonder if this is where we're headed? Whether it be parents keeping track of their kids' chores, homework, and other activities, or perhaps it's a neighborhood that uses it to help foster a community-driven cleanup and improvement system, or maybe even a city taking bug reports for anything and everything: "Street light out on 5th street", "Leaky hydrant in Centennial Plaza", or even bug reports about the city's provided websites and services in general.
Hah, very cool! We need greater adoption. Reporting things to a city entity (especially technology-related) is often an exercise in futility... with little-to-no follow-up to be had, unless you happen to get someone who takes ownership and provides their personal extension so that you can call back and check on it.
Broken-window syndrome, people take their cues from what already exists. If you want to focus your startup in one direction you need to curate the content to ensure that it goes in the direction you desire.
What differentiates Digg / Reddit / HN isn't the technology but rather the content and the social cues and community that derive from that.
Sometimes it's nice if a site evolves in ways not foreseen by the founders. Usually it is not though.
I have seen countless internet forums devolve from being mostly sensible discussion around a particular topic to becoming a place for a small but active clique of users to post endless in-jokes.
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Great point. I cringe when I'm on some site and content gets posted that the site owners take issue with and remove, when in reality there was actually nothing wrong with the content -- it just didn't fit the preconceived notions of what the owners had intended. "This is not how the site is supposed to be used, therefore this content is bad and must be summarily removed" seems to be the thinking; it's as if they're scared, but of what I don't know.
And yes, it's very refreshing to see GitHub allow this. Thinking about it further, ticketing systems could see many more uses in the real world, and it makes me wonder if this is where we're headed? Whether it be parents keeping track of their kids' chores, homework, and other activities, or perhaps it's a neighborhood that uses it to help foster a community-driven cleanup and improvement system, or maybe even a city taking bug reports for anything and everything: "Street light out on 5th street", "Leaky hydrant in Centennial Plaza", or even bug reports about the city's provided websites and services in general.
I'm the Francis in the original article...
Some years ago, I helped make a bug reporting for cities too like you mention, it's http://fixmystreet.com/ - equivalent in the US is http://seeclickfix.com/
I wonder if subconsciously that was one of the reasons a bug tracker for my house felt like an obvious idea.
Hah, very cool! We need greater adoption. Reporting things to a city entity (especially technology-related) is often an exercise in futility... with little-to-no follow-up to be had, unless you happen to get someone who takes ownership and provides their personal extension so that you can call back and check on it.
Broken-window syndrome, people take their cues from what already exists. If you want to focus your startup in one direction you need to curate the content to ensure that it goes in the direction you desire.
What differentiates Digg / Reddit / HN isn't the technology but rather the content and the social cues and community that derive from that.
Sometimes it's nice if a site evolves in ways not foreseen by the founders. Usually it is not though.
I have seen countless internet forums devolve from being mostly sensible discussion around a particular topic to becoming a place for a small but active clique of users to post endless in-jokes.