CUNY Academic Commons

Only public sites appear in the site directory. This means sites with either 'Allow search engines...' or 'Discourage search engines...' at Dashboard > Settings > Reading. See #19658 for a recent discussion and justification.

It may be possible to make some modifications to the site directory so that 'Visible to Commons users...' sites are visible in the directory when you are logged in. However, it's probably not technically practical to have full support for the other privacy settings. That is, for technical reasons, it's not feasible at this time to show 'I would like my site to be visible only to users I add to it' sites to users who are, in fact, members of those sites. For these technical reasons, it's therefore not possible to provide full support for all the site privacy options. This is an argument for leaving it as-is, since partial support may be more confusing to users than the current public/private binary. But I'm happy to hear thoughts from others on the team.

Only public sites appear in the site directory. This means sites with either 'Allow search engines...' or 'Discourage search engines...' at Dashboard > Settings > Reading. See #19658 for a recent discussion and justification.

Okay, this is what I was unclear about. Thanks for the clarification.

It may be possible to make some modifications to the site directory so that 'Visible to Commons users...' sites are visible in the directory when you are logged in. ... This is an argument for leaving it as-is, since partial support may be more confusing to users than the current public/private binary.

I think users are expecting that the privacy setting selection "'Visible to Commons users...' means that logged in users will be able to find their sites and so I would be in favor of this partial support set up for these settings. This is the case I am dealing with now on the HELP desk- the admin assumed that this privacy setting would allow the site to appear in search.

But I would also be interested to hear from others as well.

Relatedly - do the search settings work differently in the courses tab? When I search for "Introduction to Psychology Fall 2023" to find https://pdevspring2024.commons.gc.cuny.edu/ the search result do return the site, marked "private" and the
privacy settings are set to "'Visible to Commons users...'

Relatedly - do the search settings work differently in the courses tab? When I search for "Introduction to Psychology Fall 2023" to find https://pdevspring2024.commons.gc.cuny.edu/ the search result do return the site, marked "private" and the

No, this works differently. All courses appear here, but the links to the site/group are labeled private when appropriate (or don't appear at all in the case of hidden items). And you can filter to show only those items that are "public", ie those that have at least a public site or a public group. The way that Courses are represented in the underlying infrastructure is very different from the way that Sites work. I agree that some work could be done to align expectations, though tbh I'm not totally sure what those expectations ought to be.

What does "Visible to Commons Users" mean if it does NOT mean visible in the directory? Does it mean that users can see the site if provided a direct link to it? Something else?

I see Boone's rationale for not going down a confusing/slippery slope with directory visibility and the more restrictive settings. Maybe there's a way to avoid that if we just update the "Visible..." language to better explain what it means.

What does "Visible to Commons Users" mean if it does NOT mean visible in the directory? Does it mean that users can see the site if provided a direct link to it? Something else?

Yes. The primary purpose is to restrict who can visit the site when visiting the site URL. This is a default behavior that we inherit from WordPress Multisite. The Sites directory is not a default part of WPMS, but comes from BuddyPress. Moreover, we use a plugin More Privacy Options to add options 3-5 to the blog_public list - only the first two come from WPMS itself. BuddyPress errs on the side of caution when deciding what to show its directory; by default it shows only those items with 'Allow search engines...', and we made a modification in #19658 to broaden this a bit.

I see, thanks Boone. What if we just added some language to clarify? Maybe in the Note that is already there about search engines? Add a second sentence like this:

Note: Neither of these options blocks access to your site — it is up to search engines to honor your request. These options also allow your site to appear in the Commons Site Directory, but the below options do not.

That kind of text change you suggest is probably pretty straightforward to make, if that's all we want to do.