There's absolutely no description anywhere on those pages about what it is. I happen to know what Diaspora is, but if this link gets passed around outside of this community people will be confused and immediately form a negative opinion of the service.
At least put up a "What is Diaspora?" link to their homepage or Wikipedia or something...
people will be confused and immediately form a negative opinion of the service.
Trust me, if they understood it was supposed to be the privacy-aware Facebook alternative and started using it, they would have a much more negative impression within, oh, I give it less than 48 hours.
For whoever downvoted Patrick, he's referring to the gaping security holes that are in this release. Nobody should be running publicly accessible seeds yet unless they want their boxen to get pwnt.
This is a good idea, but on the flip-side this is only really meant for people in the know. I can also reason logic where confusion tends to not leave much of an impression at all, thus merely confusing people about what this is is only slightly damaging, while also forming a natural barrier to keep them from figuring out how to sign up and finding a 404 page every few minutes because it is all still buggy. But still, a bit more info on the default page is a good idea. add it to the github stuff?
The page should also mention that this software is pre-alpha release. Even on HN people are freaking out about things not working properly, sucks that this is already giving people bad feelings.
Is this an official site of the project or someone just running their code on a new domain? The DNS registration doesn't even come close to the joindiaspora.com domain. Seems there's at least a few sites like this:
<title>We're sorry, but something went wrong (500)</title>
...
<h1>Please, stop that.</h1>
<p>We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly.</p>
At least put up a "What is Diaspora?" link to their homepage or Wikipedia or something...