As an experiment, I'm setting up an instance of http://GOGS.io (sort of a GitHub clone written in Go) where your user and org must be two kanji characters (used in Chinese, Japanese, Korean languages). Over time, I'm hoping to add more significant changes:
- hiding the git concepts
- accepting pull requests automatically within a week
- inviting a user to edit a section of a file, and automatically accepting that input
- inviting members of the public to contribute content (not code) in some way, without signing in
I've always had mixed feelings about git and GitHub, from exploring GeoGit two years ago, to last year saying we needed an "Ello for GitHub" (do you remember Ello?). Generally great tools are great, but then we start to think that they are the only way of doing things. We start thinking that GitHub is the place for writing, 3D design, free expression, transparency, etc, too - while you see little enthusiasm for git from people native to those fields. I believe this was the downfall of Ushahidi for example - it could very well be the best platform for disaster response and news gathering, but did that make it the right tool for election monitoring, snowball fight maps, photo blogs... when someone believes they have the right tool for all of these disparate things, they avoid new ways of meeting users and accommodating their real needs.
I started with random kanji names for a couple of reasons. First, it was an easy change to make while learning the platform. Second, I read and talk to many people about participating in open source. Their fears usually revolve around being identified, about being rejected, about not being a member of this exclusive club. While a username can be a pseudonym on other sites, GitHub has a culture of using names and profile pictures. We think differently about pull requests from well-known coders, and an issue filed by a new account asking how they can change a name or a picture. Imagine what happens if I can put aside who the person is and focus on their question or their code.
Of course it is easy for people to use a repo or message to identify themselves ("hello it's nick"). It's also possible that people would take advantage of anonymity to send offensive or unhelpful content. For this, there should be some sort of approval for one's first pull request (not automatically merging), and shadowban any flagged users. If someone says "that isn't fair", tough.
Obviously this wouldn't be a good place to put MISSION CRITICAL code, but I think it would be great for little projects like web maps, art pieces, collaborating on markdown and simple web pages. Cases where you don't need GIT, just PARTICIPANTS.
Update: I'm also going to allow Unicode repo names! This breaks git. But having a different internal git address should be OK if I can get seamless, git-free editing working on the frontend.