OutSized v2.6: Post Feed, Licenses, and Asset Attribution, Oh My!

Hey fellas, apparently I wasn't kidding when I said I wanted to get back to site improvements after Audio and Video went live. Say hello to OutSized v2.6! This update is focused on making posts easier to find, making our rules around reuse a whole lot clearer, and making sure the folks who contribute assets actually get credit when somebody uses them.

A Better Community Feed

The Community Feed now has a proper place in the main navigation, right below the Blog, and the page itself has had a full overhaul. You can browse posts from Friends, people you are Following, or Everyone, select more than one post type at a time, see when a post type filter is active, and jump straight into any of the available post composers from the same toolbar.

You can choose your feed defaults from the new Posts section in Settings. By default the feed now opens to Everything from Everyone, but if you mostly want Stories from your friends, or Videos and Images from people you follow, you can make that your starting point instead.

Licensing, In Plain English

Creative posts can now carry a license that says what other people may do with your work. The composer explains each choice instead of handing you a pile of abbreviations:

• ARR - All Rights Reserved: people need your permission to reuse the work, except where copyright law already allows it.

• CC0-1.0 - Public Domain Dedication: people may copy, change, share, and use the work commercially without credit.

• CC-BY-4.0 - Attribution: people may reuse and adapt the work, including commercially, as long as they credit you.

• CC-BY-SA-4.0 - Attribution-ShareAlike: the same as Attribution, but adaptations must use the same or a compatible license.

• CC-BY-NC-4.0 - Attribution-NonCommercial: people may share and adapt the work with credit, but not for commercial use.

• CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0 - Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: people may share and adapt the work non-commercially with credit, and adaptations must keep a compatible ShareAlike license.

The goal with this change is to prevent what happened when CoiledFist went offline: By choosing how others may share and reuse your content, it can be preserved going forward in case anything were to ever happen to OutSized. I would hope our community members would respect creator's wishes on this matter.

The same Posts settings page lets you choose a default license for new work and, after a confirmation that repeats exactly what it allows, apply that choice to your existing posts. There is also a new Choosing a License guide if you want help deciding, and you can contact support if none of the options fit your work.

Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

The Assets section was always meant to help people make things together, and now the rest of the site understands that relationship. Bookmark an Asset you want to use and you can select it from any regular post composer. You can attach more than one source, so a montage built from three community Assets can credit all three.

Asset pages also have a new Create a Post Based on This Asset button. Pick what you are making and the composer opens with that Asset already selected. Once the finished work is published, its source Assets are shown with it so the original contributors get a clear, permanent credit.

While I was in there, the Download control moved from the crowded Asset index cards onto the Asset page itself, right beside the Create button. File details and licensing now use the same Info boxes as the rest of the site, so it is much easier to tell what you are downloading and how you may use it.

A Bunch of Smaller Improvements

• The Home page now shows four recent Blog posts, gives the newest one a proper featured slot, and supports header images without leaving giant gaps around the other cards.

• Image, Video, and Audio cards now size consistently by row, keep their labels readable, and always show view, like, and comment counts in the compact action bar.

• Special labels can appear as stacked corner banners on a card, and VR videos automatically keep their VR label for as long as their projection is set to a VR format.

• The Help, Policies, and Info pages have been redesigned and updated with newer, more clear information.

• Realtime follower and presence updates no longer trickle users in one at a time, and leaving a chat room now takes you Home instead of dropping you on a broken Conversations page.

For Professional Content Creators:

Pro content creators are no longer required to post in a single thread in The Market forum, you guys are now welcome to post in the normal post sections, just make sure your advertisements have the Ad label so users can filter them appropriately. Please excercise your best judgements on what and how you share your work, but importantly, please share it!

There is a lot packed into this one, so please try the new feed, check the licenses on your works, and let me know if anything feels confusing or broken. You can leave feedback in the forums, use the Feedback chat, or reach us at support@outsized.social.

Thank you everyone for continuing to test this stuff, post your work, and help make OutSized better.

GGC