Offline feedback from a fork owner: when they're heading to a convention, they want every social account to say "馃敎 ", and once the con starts, to flip to "@ ". Right now that's manual work across several platforms, and the flip has to happen on the con's opening day.
Convention mode already knows the dates and the shortname, so it knows which of the two states applies at any moment. The question is what "mark my socials" should mean in a self-hosted site.
Two readings, both worth costing
- Sona renders the marker on its own surfaces. The /connect page, /about, and any social link list show the prefix next to the handle while convention mode is on. Fully under our control, no external accounts involved.
- Sona writes the marker into the display name on the external accounts themselves (Bluesky, Telegram, Twitter, Mastodon, and so on). This is what the feedback literally asks for, and it's the part that needs research: each platform needs its own OAuth app, write scope, and stored token per fork, plus a way to restore the original display name when the con ends.
Reading 2 pulls in the rollout cost that Working Style 7 covers. Every fork owner would have to register their own app credentials on each platform, on an account we can't log into. Before designing anything, work out which platforms have an API that can set a display name, whether a single shared app registration is possible or each fork needs its own, and what the failure mode is if the restore step doesn't run.
Open questions
- Which platforms are actually in scope? The site's social settings list is the starting point, but not every one of them exposes a display-name write.
- Does the transition fire on the con's local opening date, or on the operator flipping a switch? Con dates are bare calendar dates in the event's own timezone, so "when the con starts" needs a timezone answer.
- What happens to a name that's already at the platform's length limit once the prefix is added?
- Is the emoji fixed, or does the operator pick the marker text?
Next step
Hold this until there's enough real usage to justify the research pass. When that lands, run the platform survey with Fable and come back with a per-platform matrix before any design work.
Offline feedback from a fork owner: when they're heading to a convention, they want every social account to say "馃敎 ", and once the con starts, to flip to "@ ". Right now that's manual work across several platforms, and the flip has to happen on the con's opening day.
Convention mode already knows the dates and the shortname, so it knows which of the two states applies at any moment. The question is what "mark my socials" should mean in a self-hosted site.
Two readings, both worth costing
Reading 2 pulls in the rollout cost that Working Style 7 covers. Every fork owner would have to register their own app credentials on each platform, on an account we can't log into. Before designing anything, work out which platforms have an API that can set a display name, whether a single shared app registration is possible or each fork needs its own, and what the failure mode is if the restore step doesn't run.
Open questions
Next step
Hold this until there's enough real usage to justify the research pass. When that lands, run the platform survey with Fable and come back with a per-platform matrix before any design work.