Comment by rakoo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rakoo | Hacker News Reader

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This is partly what weboob (http://weboob.org) wants to solve, or at least work around. Its goal is to pull the web out of browsers (hence the name):

- each website is handled by a module that does all the scraping, or uses the api if needed

- each module provides one or more capabilities, such as "list an account transactions" (typically for your bank or your mobile provider) or "receive and send messages" (such as HN or reddit or tinder)

- applications plug into those capabilities and give the user functionalities, regardless of the website. You can list the schedule for your bus just as well as the schedule for carpoolings.

One of the applications is actually a daemon with the capability to send and receive messages (with threading and all) and sends messages to the email adress of your choice; you can also configure it as an smtp mta, which means you can use any mail client and interact with all your discussion websites without ever opening the browser.

Obviously this is not a perfect solution for OP's problems, but it seems to me it's going in the right direction. Oh and it doesn't stop at websites; I use it for sending RSS feeds to my email in the background.

The technology and concept are interesting, but the branding is a non-starter. Even if you forgive the overall project name, the individual applications are worse. They include:

- QFlatBoob

- QHandjoob

- Boobcoming

- Boobsize

- Flatboob

- Wetboobs

This naming convention undermines the project's potential. I can't take this to my boss & colleagues. I don't want it on my github profile or my resume. I don't want to talk about it at my meetups.

I suspect that you are surprised and disappointed to find that naming objections are the dominant response to your project. I assume you want the project to find a broad audience and didn't name the project badly on purpose. So let me try to explain why you're getting this reaction.

1. Boob jokes are juvenile.

They remind me of school buses full of sweaty pubescent boys, drenched in Axe body spray and crudely trying to discuss sex. I already lived that once and I really don't want to go back. Leave it on r/blunderyears/

2. Boob jokes sexualize needlessly.

Sex is a wonderful, healthy part of life. People's bodies are beautiful. But sex is also distracting. You don't want to be thinking about sex when you're trying to focus on building software. It's just counterproductive.

3. Boob jokes undermine community.

THIS is the biggest problem. By naming all your software after bad boob jokes, you make it very uncomfortable for women to participate in your project. Imagine a woman with great Python skills and a desire to improve the web finds your project. Do you want her thinking about how 14 year old boys talked about her adolescent body, or do you want her thinking about what cool applications she can build with you?

======

I hope you take this feedback in good faith and rebrand the project. I'd love to see it succeed.

PS. I'm writing this from the USA. It appears that weboob is developed out of France. Cultures are different, maybe this is more ok in France. But in the US, we're really trying to avoid this kind of thing.

Thanks a lot for this feedback, but this is not my project. I merely know about it (ansd contributed a module). It is true that coming from France, the issue is probably less important.

By the way, here's a piece the creator has written explaining their point of view on the whole thing: http://laurent.bachelier.name/2013/12/weboob-the-asshole-det...

Cool, which module?

Thanks for the link. It's fascinating to me that the name has been an issue since at least 2013 (when the post was written).

  There’s no denying they’re childish. What they are not, however, is sexist. [...] it’s all about friendly jokes.

I agree -- I don't see ill will or discriminatory intent here. It's just unprofessional and kinda off-putting.

  Weboob is a formidable tool to detect people that are part of the “be offended first, think later” crowd. Interestingly, the crusaders are to date all male, and often assert that women can’t like jokes about breasts or sex in general.

I'm sure that happens, and I'm sorry. I hope this discussion feels more productive. Culture wars are no fun for anybody. For the record, I am male, and not offended. Just disappointed. I agree that wetboobs is a funny name for a weather thing. But it's much funnier in a comedy movie [1] than a collaborative software project.

Seems like the project is well aware of and content with the current state of affairs. I wonder how much more it could have grown already without the brand as a stumbling block.

  They will always make a scene on how they’re never going to use Weboob because of names. Guys, here’s the thing: we don’t need you and we certainly don’t want you.

Most of this discussion is about the value of small communities, so maybe it's for the best. Personally, I want to read a bit more about the tech despite the name. Still, the name will likely prevent me from using the tech as broadly as I would otherwise. And that's the disappointment.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG_LL9m7cl4

Am I the only one who read the name and thought this was a porn site?

I think the service would reach a greater audience with a simpler name.

(Btw I still don't get how the creator wants me to read the name and what it means)

I suspect the name was deliberate (look at the site's logo).

Either way, it definitely might struggle to get a bit more traction with that name/domain. It's like a modern day Pen Island or Experts Exchange.

The name stands for WEB Out Of Browsers. The naming thing is always the first point people take about and, unfortunately in most cases, the only one. Which is a shame because the project is useful, and using a software for what it is rather than for how it's called or presented is what hackers usually do.

Interesting. I've thought basically the opposite for years. At one point it seems that the web was standardizing, more applications were able to run in the browser, things like XUL were developing; but then along came mobile devices and things split apart into Apple and Google siloes, and every company started to need to hire (extra) mobile developers to develop special apps. I've been waiting for the equivalent of a standard mobile "browser" to re-unify all the apps. We had mouse click and drag events, etc., already; is it not possible to add other user interactions -- such as finger swipes or device rotations -- as a standard across "devices", as browsers were doing for (desktop/laptop) computers?

The real problem that weboob wants to solve is that websites tend to provide both the content _and_ the presentation layer, with no way to separate the two. Even though all the elements are standardized, it's impossible to fetch only the data and display it the way you want, unless the website provides APIs which is far from common. Weboon wants to provide that.

This looks really cool, but I found it distracting to see the word "boob" in all the app names.

I'd be inclined to ignore it, but then I saw this on the carousel:

"QHandJoob - You are unemployed? Use this application to search job offers!"

This naming convention is a sure-fire way to lose a big chunk of potential users.

Quite possibly the worst named project ever.

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