[Clipart] stuff done today

[Nathan Eady]

Francis Bond <bond at ieee.org> writes:

> do we really need to ask for gender?  

Not really, no.

Then again, we don't really *need* to ask for job or country or home
page or avatar, either.

There's a balance to strike.

On the one hand, people like to have some kind of identity associated
with their account beyond just the username.  Artists should be able
to get *some* kind of credit for their contributions to the library,
and letting them put a little bit of personal information on their
profile is one way to do a little bit of that.

On the other hand, it would certainly be possible to go too far and
turn the thing into Yet Another Redundant And Totally Gratuitous
Social Networking Site, which would be a real shame.

Personally, I think the current amount of detail is just about right,
but I don't feel strongly either way about the inclusion of the gender
field specifically.  I mean, between the avatar and the full name and
the home page link, there's plenty of room to disclose one's gender,
if it seems important, even without having a gender field as such.

-- 
Nathan Eady
Galion Public Library