'degeekify' the diaspora UI

I think the real problem with the placeholder is, that it's not really different from acutal text, visually.
If it was light-grey there would be no doubt about it being a placeholder, regardless of the contents. :)

Maybe adding some "geekifiers" recognizable by other cultures would be good. And/or perhaps some alternatives dependant on location and language of user? It could be a part of translation process.

Let's translate Diaspora first, then Goob can add whatever "culturally appropriate" references he wants on his own pod.

Well, Star Wars is one of the very few movies, which is known by at least three generations of people. Of course, I can only speak of Germany/Europe. Don't know, whether people from Asia know it, too.

I tried to get my mother to register yesterday, and she got puzzled by the placeholder text.
She obviously thought she HAD to type jedi_guy in the username in the box (and did not know how to type "_"… no comment).
There seems to be a potential for improvement of the user interface here.

D* UI in general is quite complex even for me, male, tech-aware in his late 20's. I took me some time to fully understand how D* works.

@flaburgan I agree on the point that diaspora* should be friendly, but I think that it really should be culturally neutral, and also respectful. The references are nice, as long as they're just kept to the background (like placeholders).

I wouldn't want diaspora* to be overly familiar, though. As examples, the registration text "Hey, make something!" didn't make sense to me, since I was there to join a social network, not a workshop. And when I registered a while back, I had diaspora* in czech language, but it roughly said something like "Woo, hello there!"

My point is that while diaspora* can be friendly and different, it shouldn't be way too familiar and informal. To some point it's nice, but if it's too much, it can easily get annoying and repellent.

Make something felt not appropriate anymore (even if I really like the idea behind it: to be an actor, not simply a user) so we dropped it in the 0.5 which is coming really soon.

@goob

I invited people to Diaspora* for many years, never ever, even once, it has happened that small references to Star Wars cause problems, I know many fans of war stars, then we are indifferent, but I know not a single who hate him, people are stupid, but not so much, know what a simple example, and this is a small Diaspora tradition worth preserving.

@ryunoki

I was born in Argentina, I live in Spain and visit other countries, I watch television, radio and newspapers around the world not only for news, also looking at other cultures, I can be absolutely sure that stars war is known in most of the planet, if at any side do not know, they know the first day they have internet access, if not internet not diaspora, if yes internet shure know that movie.

I don't think this is a priority issue, but I do get the point.

As for now, I don't seem any harm in adding an podmin page to configure this placeholders (if there is somebody who has the time to spare for the implementation.). It could add some charm to individual pods.