"Where spam's so thin, it's transparent"

  1. News
  2. FAQ
    1. What is the Shrubbery?
    2. A note is not a message
    3. A Quick guide to relations (The F words)
      1. Fancy
      2. Friend
      3. Fan
      4. Fnord
    4. Is this system spamless?
    5. So isn't it better than email?
    6. Where can I see a shrubbery?
    7. Can I run one on my own PC or from a server that supports cgi?
  3. Group members
  4. To do

News

  • Oops. link to source was bad. Fixed. It's taking longer than expected to release 0.0.3 because there's a major rewrite and also I had a bit less time lately, but I'm still on it.
  • FAQ looks quite decent now

FAQ

What is the Shrubbery?

One of the things missing (IMHO) in Jyte is a messaging system. The Shrubbery is (or at least intentds to be) a (sort of) messaging system for Jyters where spam is useless by definition.

A note is not a message

As opposed to mediums like email or SMS, where you can send your peer many messages, even if all of them are "when are you coming home?" or "buy my product", you can only leave a single note to each peer. You can change it whenever you you like (if it's yet another vriation on "when are you coming home?!?", why bother?), your peer always see the latest version

In some cases, there might be an indication whether a note from your peer has changed, but recipient wouldn't be able to tell whether the note's content was changed once or 20 times since last time.

Now that a single user can't spam me, all I need is to decide who gets to me in the first place :)

A Quick guide to relations (The F words)

You can have the following relations with other Jyte users based on you and your peer's contact lists at Jyte, as well as whether you have left notes for each other.

Fancy

If Alice has Bob in her contacts but Bob doesn't have Alice in his, Bob is a fancy of Alice.

  • Alice can leave a note to Bob, but it will appear under his Fan folder
  • Bob can't leave a note to Alice until he adds her as a contact at Jyte
  • If Alice removes Bob from her contact list, her note to Bob will be deleted

Friend

If Bob is a fancy of Alice and Alice is a fancy of Bob, each is also a friend of the other.

  • Both can leave a note to each other, and the note will appear in the peer's Friend/Fancy folder
  • If the content of a note between friends is changed since lat viewed, the peer gets an indication

Fan

If Alice is a fancy of Bob and Bob leaves Alice a note, then Bob is a fan

  • Alice can see Bob's note in the Fan folder, but doesn't get an indication whether the content of the note has changed. If she's interested in what Bob has to say, she can add him to her contacts and turn him into a friend

Fnord

Fnords are - among other things - things that people ignore, so think of it as an "F word" for "ignored".

In the context of the shrubbery, you can mark a fan as a fnord. All it does, is move his/her note (if there is one) to the Fnord folder. You don't have to look there if you don't want to.

Is this system spamless?

Almost. Spam can still trickle in thin, virtually transparent slices.

A spammer has to work pretty hard in order to send you a single message:

  • Obtain an OpenID
  • Pass Jyte's BotBouncer test and open an account there
  • Add you to his/her contacts
  • Leave you a note at the shrubbery
  • Keep you in his/her contact list (or the note gets deleted)
All you need to do is:
  • Fnord the bugger
It's true that a spammer can try and use the same Jyte account in order to spam many users, but since the spammer's contacts are publicly known, having a large fancy/friend ratio can usually mean trouble. The shrubbery might eventually let you auto-fnord people above some fancy/friend ratio, or at least compute and show the ratio in order to help you decide how "true" this fan is :)

So isn't it better than email?

Not at all. With email you can follow up on your correspondence history, forward messages to others, attach files and more.

One of the reasons why a Shrubbery is spamless is because it does less :)

Where can I see a shrubbery?

See http://zzzen.com/shrubbery (not all functionality is implemented yet, but you'll be the first to know :) )

Can I run one on my own PC or from a server that supports cgi?

Use the source (v 0.0.2), Luke.
(oops. link was bad. fixed)

Group members

  • you?

To do

  • messaging (goes without saying :) )
  • credits
  • legaleze
  • darcs? sourceforge?
  • setuptools (+ windoze setup.exe)
  • cache stuff we get from jyte api
  • anything else?


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