CUNY Academic Commons

Actually, in addition to the problem of spacing of group names, there's also the fact that I'm a part of so many groups that the dropdown only goes to from A-P. Don't know how many users this will affect given that most people haven't joined as many groups as I have, but there should some way to scroll through the listings if they all can't fit on the drop-down.

Fair enough. But since we are able to identify users whom this might effect, and since they are power users, I wonder whether we should consider reaching out to them. Would you be able to provide me with a list, via email of users who might be affected by this?

Yay, I'm in second place!

Not sure if it matters, but I can access all of "my blogs" via the drop-down using FireFox (not IE). However, I cannot access all of "my groups" using IE/FF. I also noticed that with IE everything is listed in 1 column only.

Best,
Sarah

I also noticed that with IE everything is listed in 1 column only.

Yes. That was a concession made during development, because nothing was working correctly in IE, and I didn't know how to fix it. So IE users just get the WP default, which is a single unscrollable column.

Not sure if it matters, but I can access all of "my blogs" via the drop-down using FireFox (not IE). However, I cannot access all of "my groups" using IE/FF.

Probably because your number of groups is above the threshhold necessary to go to a number of columns greater than your screen width.

Boone, if I'm going to email people whom this might affect, what is your best guess for a threshold at which to start (ie, is this likely to affect people with over, say, 25 groups? 20? 30?)

I have about 35 groups and I can't reproduce the overlap issue (though I can make the groups cascade off the screen if I make the window really really small). Based on that, I'd say 30+ will easily catch everyone.

If it were me, I wouldn't send an email. I'm not sure what it's going to accomplish - if anything it seems like it would confuse people more, and draw their attention to something they may not otherwise notice.

Thanks, Boone. What does the community team think?

I think we should let them know...

It seems in the spirit of the Commons to let people know how might be affected. But Boone makes a good point that the informing should not make things more confusing. However the solution is relatively simple, just click on the main My Groups or My Blogs link and then you can access all of them from those pages. Maybe we can do a couple of things:

Create the Troubleshooting section we've been talking about and add a quick item on this.

Figure out exactly how many people we think may be affected by this.

If the number is small enough then send them an email that explains the issue and solution and points them to the troubleshooting page.

If the number of people is really small we may take the opportunity to ask them for general feedback on the site as these are clearly power users who have invested in the Commons (the email may recognize and thank them as such too).