Advogato
Encyclopedia
Advogato is an online community
and social networking site dedicated to free software
development, and was created by Raph Levien
. It describes itself as "the free software developer's advocate." Advogato was an early pioneer of blog
s, formerly known as "online diaries", and one of the earliest social networking websites. Advogato combined the most recent entries from each user's diary together into a single continuous feed called the recentlog, directly inspiring the creation of the Planet aggregator
somewhat later.
Several high profile members of the free software
and open source software movements are or have been users of the site including Richard M. Stallman, Eric Raymond, Alan Cox
, Bruce Perens
, and Jamie Zawinski
.
Because Advogato was the first website to use a robust, attack-resistant trust metric
and to release the underlying code for that trust mechanism under a free software license, it has been the basis of numerous research papers on trust metrics and social networking (see the list below for specific examples). Advogato's early adoption of an XML-RPC interface led to its use as an example of how such interfaces could be used by web programmers.
Advogato is still used as a testbed for social networking and semantic web technologies. Tim Berners-Lee, who is an Advogato user himself, included Advogato in a short list of sites that should be noted for their early adoption of the FOAF as a method of exporting user RDF URIs.
s, having users certify each other in a kind of peer review
process and use this information to avoid the abuses that plague open community sites. Levien observed that his notion of attack resistant trust metric was fundamentally very similar to the PageRank
algorithm used by Google
to rate article interest. In the case of Advogato, the trust metric is designed to include all individuals who could reasonably be considered members of the Free Software and Open Source communities while excluding others.
The implementation of this trust metric is through an Apache module called mod virgulehttp://www.advogato.org/proj/mod_virgule/. mod_virgule is free software, licensed under the GPL
and written in C
. It is used by several websites other than Advogato.
Despite the trust metric,
posting privileges to the front page of Advogato have been gained by an individual notorious for his self-proclaimed but allegedly discredited claim to be an "AI theorist", illustrating just how complex the problem of trust is.
Misunderstanding of the purpose of Advogato's trust metric is common, often leading to assumptions that it should exclude specific individuals on the basis that they have no right to express their ideas.
Advogato has a wiki
, called AdvoWiki (see below), that applies Levien's theory to sort wiki pages by interest level.
Online community
An online community is a virtual community that exists online and whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership ritual. An online community can take the form of an information system where anyone can post content, such as a Bulletin board system or one where only a restricted...
and social networking site dedicated to free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
development, and was created by Raph Levien
Raph Levien
Raphael Levien is an influential member of the free software developer community, through his creation of the Advogato virtual community and his work with the free software branch of Ghostscript. He is currently employed by Google...
. It describes itself as "the free software developer's advocate." Advogato was an early pioneer of blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s, formerly known as "online diaries", and one of the earliest social networking websites. Advogato combined the most recent entries from each user's diary together into a single continuous feed called the recentlog, directly inspiring the creation of the Planet aggregator
Planet aggregator
In online media, Planet is a feed aggregator application designed to collect posts from the weblogs of members of an Internet community and display them on a single page. Planet runs on a web server. It creates pages with entries from the original feeds in chronological order, most recent entries...
somewhat later.
Several high profile members of the free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
and open source software movements are or have been users of the site including Richard M. Stallman, Eric Raymond, Alan Cox
Alan Cox
Alan Cox is a British computer programmer who formerly maintained the 2.2 branch of the Linux kernel and continues to be heavily involved in the development of the Linux kernel, an association that dates back to 1991...
, Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens is a computer programmer and advocate in the open source community. He created the Open Source Definition and published the first formal announcement and manifesto of open source. He co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric S...
, and Jamie Zawinski
Jamie Zawinski
Jamie Zawinski , commonly known as jwz, is a former professional American computer programmer responsible for significant contributions to the free software projects Mozilla and XEmacs, and early versions of the Netscape Navigator web browser...
.
Because Advogato was the first website to use a robust, attack-resistant trust metric
Trust metric
In psychology and sociology, a trust metric is a measurement of the degree to which one social actor trusts another social actor...
and to release the underlying code for that trust mechanism under a free software license, it has been the basis of numerous research papers on trust metrics and social networking (see the list below for specific examples). Advogato's early adoption of an XML-RPC interface led to its use as an example of how such interfaces could be used by web programmers.
Advogato is still used as a testbed for social networking and semantic web technologies. Tim Berners-Lee, who is an Advogato user himself, included Advogato in a short list of sites that should be noted for their early adoption of the FOAF as a method of exporting user RDF URIs.
Trust metric
The motivating idea for Advogato was to try out in practice Levien's ideas about attack resistant trust metricTrust metric
In psychology and sociology, a trust metric is a measurement of the degree to which one social actor trusts another social actor...
s, having users certify each other in a kind of peer review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
process and use this information to avoid the abuses that plague open community sites. Levien observed that his notion of attack resistant trust metric was fundamentally very similar to the PageRank
PageRank
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page and used by the Google Internet search engine, that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set...
algorithm used by Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
to rate article interest. In the case of Advogato, the trust metric is designed to include all individuals who could reasonably be considered members of the Free Software and Open Source communities while excluding others.
The implementation of this trust metric is through an Apache module called mod virgulehttp://www.advogato.org/proj/mod_virgule/. mod_virgule is free software, licensed under the GPL
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
and written in C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
. It is used by several websites other than Advogato.
Despite the trust metric,
posting privileges to the front page of Advogato have been gained by an individual notorious for his self-proclaimed but allegedly discredited claim to be an "AI theorist", illustrating just how complex the problem of trust is.
Misunderstanding of the purpose of Advogato's trust metric is common, often leading to assumptions that it should exclude specific individuals on the basis that they have no right to express their ideas.
Advogato has a wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
, called AdvoWiki (see below), that applies Levien's theory to sort wiki pages by interest level.
Advogato and mod_virgule references
- Raph Levien (2004). Attack Resistant Trust Metrics. Early draft of abandoned PhD manuscript.
- Raph Levien (2007). Lessons From Advogato (video) (abstract). Google Tech Talks, June 25, 2007.
- Jesse Ruderman (2004). A comparison of two trust metrics.
- Mary Tyler (2004). Behind four Linux community sites. Linux.com feature.
- Even better than Slashdot, Salon.com
- Social Forces and Constraint in the Attainment of Community Status
External links
- Advogato FAQ
- http://perldesignpatterns.com/?AdvoWiki -- AdvoWiki site
- http://advogato.org/proj/mod_virgule/ -- mod_virgule project page
- Rusty Foster, 2004. 'User Sponsorship and Managed Growth'. Kuro5hinKuro5hinKuro5hin is a collaborative discussion website. Articles are created and submitted by Kuro5hin's users and submitted to queue for evaluation. Site members can vote for or against publishing an article and, once the article has reached a certain number of votes, it is then published to the site...
article.