Week 6: Consentful Technology

Week 6: Consentful Technology

Today:

  • checkin
  • warmup: GitHub issues
  • Discussion: Ross Douthat’s Op-Ed
  • Version Control: Git on your own Computer
  • Guest speaker: Xin Xin
  • Workshop: Togethernet

This week’s social software: Togethernet

Warm-up: The Vocab

Repository

Fork

Commit

Issue

Pull Request

Warm-up: We’ve Got Issues

Last week we got started with GitHub. We made an account. Lee created a repository called Class Playlist.

Each student made a fork of that repository to their own server account on GitHub. Students added a song to their own copy of the playlist, then they committed so it’s permanently saved in their repository’s history. Afterwards, they did a pull request so that I would check it out and then merge it into my original Class Playlist.

One of the features that’s unique to GitHub is the “issues” section. This lets you make a bug report, make suggestions for enhancements to the software, or point out problems. This is a major part of modern open source workflow for lots of software projects, though it is not the only one. Projects that don’t use GitHub may use an email discussion group for example.

Issues are often the main location for a software community to communicate together. Many software projects have a listed code of conduct with their expectations for how people should communicate together in a project.

Method: GitHub Desktop

Last week we used the GitHub.com website and interface and only worked on the remote server. This week we will use GitHub Desktop so that we can pull the software onto our computer and more conveniently work on it.

Download

Discussion

Homework

Listen and Read

Listen to Code Newbie: How Newbies Can Contribute to Open Source

  • Note: There is also a transcript on the podcast page.

Read Understanding User Support Systems in Open Source by Nadia Eghbal

Code: Complete your GitHub issue

Each student will have at least one issue that they are working on. Use the ‘issue’ to continue discussion. Submit a pull request when you have work ready to merge into the main project. You may need to pull new updated changes from the main project, or refer to other issues or even other students.

Write: Analysis of Togethernet

Now you have some experience trying out the alternative social software Togethernet. Write a post on your blog about it including its purpose and how it functions. Analyze how the concept and goals of Togethernet align with your experience when you use it. What about the concept do you find compelling? What are your critiques of the platform/project? What alterations would you make to this software?

Code: Setup Development Environment

Install Node.js and NPM on your computer in prep for next week’s class.

Resources