CUNY Academic Commons

I think there would be three parts of this:

1. An "add to favorites" icon of some kind that allowed one to mark a given blog as a favorite;

2. A link somewhere in the nav or profile that would allow one to view a feed of recent updates to ones favorite blogs

3. An option somewhere that would allow email updates, if desired, of one's favorites.

Of course, happy to hear other thoughts and eager to think through UI considerations.

All the points with the exception of point 3 are done.

For point 3, check out the Github ticket where Christian has also provided some feedback. Could use some dev feedback from you, Boone, about the best way to proceed.

For point 4, see the attachment individual-site-follow-btns.png. The buttons are displayed on the bottom-right hand corner and the style is reminiscent of Tumblr. The "Followed Sites" button takes you to the URL you listed in point 2 - example.com/members/admin/blogs/following/. The reason I opted not to use the WP Toolbar is the Toolbar is already a little cluttered. But, if we don't like this, we can create our own buttons in the Toolbar for CAC.

If we can get it up and running on cdev at some point in the nearish future, we could get UX feedback from Chris on those bits.

Sounds good. I still need to separate the follow members stuff away from BP Follow Core, so it will be possible for CAC to disable the Follow Members module, while only allowing the Follow Blogs module.

Oh, I kinda like those buttons on the lower left. Neat.

But it does add another kind of interface to what is arguably already a confused set of nav options. Maybe we'll let Chris weigh in.

Thanks, Ray!

Follow Blogs is available for testing on cdev.

Navigate to the main Blogs directory and start following some blogs. Or you can visit an individual blog and a pair of follow buttons will be displayed in the bottom-right corner of the page.

Then, you can view the activity under "Activity > Followed Sites".

Excellent work, Ray!

A few thoughts:

Seeing the "Follow" button there, it's difficult to have a sense of what "following" means. It took me a while to notice that a new tab had been added to the top of the section nav. Once I saw it, though, it was cool.

I think we should do a mouseover tip that explains what Following is and how it works.

I also wonder whether we should consider adding "Follow this blog" to the BP Admin Bar when one is on an actual blog, but that is a separate discussion

Finally, I am hoping that we can work this functionality into the personal dashboard, so that one can see feeds from blogs one follows rather than just the title of the blog as one sees now under "Following." Speaking of which, would it be possible to include a "Latest post" excerpt under the title of the blog? Not sure we should do that; it might clutter up the interface. But it does seem like useful info to me. What do others think?

Again, thank you, Ray!

Hi Matt,

You can view your followed blog activity by:

• Going to the WP admin bar and navigating to "My Activity > Followed Blogs"
• Going to the main activity directory and clicking on the "Followed Sites" tab. In CAC's case, the "Activity Directory" is the "News" tab. However, it looks like there is a bug somewhere in the bp-nelo theme preventing activity directory tabs from being clicked. The plan is to use this functionality with the Personal Homepage.

Finally, I am hoping that we can work this functionality into the personal dashboard, so that one can see feeds from blogs one follows rather than just the title of the blog as one sees now under "Following."

I'm pretty sure this is in the cards - it was the whole impetus for this ticket!

Thanks for this, Ray. Looking very cool.

Hi everyone - Ray mentioned in today's call that he was looking for a bit more UX feedback here. Matt gave a few suggestions here http://redmine.gc.cuny.edu/issues/2563#note-9 (eg a mouseover) but it would be nice to get a few more details about what's required here. After, say, the end of this week, it'll probably be too late to fit in any significant UI changes before 1.7.

Another thought: The term 'Follow' would indicate to me that the 'Following' tab would contain the most recent posts from the blogs I follow, rather than just a list of blogs. That is how 'Follow' is used in other Wordpress spaces: http://en.support.wordpress.com/following/

The term 'Favorite', which was used earlier in this ticket, makes more sense to me. Therefore the button would say 'Favorite' and the tab would be called 'Favorites'.

Thanks, Samantha. I like your suggestions here -- that the tab should be consistent and that we should use Favorite instead of Follow

Boone, Ray: how difficult would it be to implement that change of language?

Thanks for the feedback, Samantha.

Samantha Raddatz wrote:

It would be good if the 'Following' tab appeared regardless of if the user was following anything. If there is a persistent tab then what the 'Follow' button does will be clearer. When the tab is empty (aka the user has not followed any blogs yet) it could contain some simple text to explain its existence, such as, "Blogs you follow will appear here."

Another thought: The term 'Follow' would indicate to me that the 'Following' tab would contain the most recent posts from the blogs I follow, rather than just a list of blogs. That is how 'Follow' is used in other Wordpress spaces: http://en.support.wordpress.com/following/

The term 'Favorite', which was used earlier in this ticket, makes more sense to me. Therefore the button would say 'Favorite' and the tab would be called 'Favorites'.

Regarding the "Following" tab, are you referring to the tab on the main "Blogs" directory page?

I can definitely make these changes, but if we change the "Following" string to "Favorite", we would probably have to rename the "Followed Sites" string to "Favorite Sites" on the "My Activity > Followed Sites" and the "My Sites > Followed Sites" pages.

Also, I could use feedback about the buttons that are located at the bottom-right corner of every site.

eg. http://testscribd.cdev.gc.cuny.edu/

The buttons are meant to emulate Tumblr. Also, just to keep in mind that the plugin was originally created for another project, so we can change any aspect of these buttons for CUNY.

For example:

• We could link the "Followed Sites" footer button to link to the "My Activity > Followed Sites" tab or the "Sites" tab on the "My Commons" page
• We could remove the footer buttons and have the "Follow / Unfollow" button located in the WP admin bar instead.

I can definitely make these changes, but if you change the "Following" string to "Favorite", we would probably have to rename the "Followed Sites" string to "Favorite Sites" on the "My Activity > Followed Sites" and the "My Sites > Followed Sites" pages.

I do think we should make this switch (if it is not too much trouble) and I would say that "Followed Sites" should be changed to "Favorited Sites" (using favorite as a verb)

I'm interested in hearing Samantha's feedback on the look and positioning of the following buttons. To me, they look good but I wonder whether they are positioned in a place where people may miss them.

'Favorited' works well, Matt.
And yes, it should be implemented throughout, including within the My Activity dropdown. Thanks for catching that, Ray.

Regarding the buttons that are located on bottom-right of every site (http://testscribd.cdev.gc.cuny.edu/), I have to admit that it took me probably 5 minutes to spot them. But, I am not a frequent Tumblr user and others may be able to spot them right away. I think that these buttons are a good candidate to be included in the upcoming user testing to see what the users think and could be left where they are for now.

I don't have strong feelings about where the "Followed Sites" footer button links to, but if the goal is to encourage the use of the "My Commons" page, I would be inclined to link it to there.

Thanks, Samantha. To keep the 1.7 release on track, let's keep the positioning as it is and do user-testing as you suggest.

Ray, if changing "followed sites" to "favorited sites" and "follow" buttons to "favorite" buttons isn't too heavy of a lift, can you please implement? Thank you and please let us know about any problems or concerns.

All strings are changed from the "Follow" context to "Favorite".

Let me know if I missed a spot.

I have a couple more spots that need to be updated, Ray, but before I make you double up work, I want to get some clarification on something:

In my further exploration today, I found that the word "Favorite" also appears in My Commons Friends and Groups as well as a 'Favorites' filter within a user's Commons Profile. I think we've created too many types of favoriting now!

• We've already discussed deleting 'Favorite' from the Groups in My Commons. Is there cause to remove favoriting from Friends in My Commons as well? Does anyone have any sense of the popularity of favoriting within the Commons Profile Activity Feed now?
• If we would like to leave the option to 'Favorite' in the My Commons Groups and/or Friends, then the Site favoriting functionality should be called something different.

Sorry for the back and forth on this! Bear with me while I become acquainted with all of the Commons' pages and terminology.

I found that the word "Favorite" also appears in My Commons Friends and Groups as well as a 'Favorites' filter within a user's Commons Profile.

My original goal was to remove the "Favorite" button throughout the My Commons page. I think we should remove it from the My Commons page entirely, unless we reintroduce "Favorites" as an activity tab next to the existing filters on the My Commons page (Everything, My Groups, My Sites, My Friends).

Yes, the word "Favorite" is also used on a user's Commons Profile page - "My Activity > Favorites". I'm happy to change the follow site text again once a decision has been made.

First, Ray thanks for your work on this.

I'm worried this is opening up to be an issue that will be difficult to do for 1.7. But I do think we should sort it before we release this feature and have to rename it and the other favorites.

1. a user wants to mark a specific item so that she can get back to it. This is what favoriting a post allows
2. a user wants to get access to the activity around a Group, Site or Person. This is more time sensitive (what's going on now?) and the list may contain items of no interest to the user.

These actions are different enough that they don't comingle well and should have different names. If you put favorited posts together with posts from favorited sites the feed would mostly be new posts from the favorited sites.

I'm going to tread into new feature territory here but I think it is worth looking at our end goals to help know what to do in the immediate future.

Perhaps "bookmark" or "pin" are better names for the first case where you want to save a particular item and access it later. The items I think could be bookmarked/pinned are:

• Site Posts
• Site Post Comments
• Site Pages
• Forum Posts
• Docs
• Files
• Wiki Pages

For the second type where you want to generally access activity we already ways of accessing the activity and have some names. Sites is the new feature that needs the new name.

• Person: friend (add favorite option?)
• Group: join (add favorite option?)
• Site: favorite/follow

We have talked in the past about adding favorite/follow for groups and people. If I recall the arguments for were something like
Person: you might want to see what someone is doing on the Commons but feel like Friending the person is not appropriate, perhaps someone like Kathy Davidson.
Group: There is a public group that you have a passing interest in and may occasionally look at but don't want to officially signal a more intense interest by joining.

The arguments against were that favorite/follow in this way might circumvent general community building joining and friending encourage and so we might have more "lookers" and less "doers."

I've written perhaps too much but Samantha I wanted to give some background.

• Hold on releasing favorite/follow site until we can work out the naming
• Change type 1 where a singe item is referenced to bookmark
• Change type 2 referencing the activity of site/group/person to favorite
• Add tickets to look into "bookmarking" things other than posts
• Add a ticket for a bookmarks interface where you can see and sort/search/filter your bookmarks
• Add tickets to discuss favoriting people and groups

If we can agree on names, make the changes on the currently working features (bookmark a post or comment and favorite a site) and write documentation for the release great, but that seems like a heavy lift.

I hate to recommend holding off on a working feature, again great work Ray, but naming is important in this case and we should be clear on it.

If I'm missing a simpler solution I'm all ears.

In all of that I didn't say, that I'm OK with either favorite or follow or bookmark or whatever as long as we make a choice and go with it. On WordPress.com and twitter you follow blogs or people. You also favorite individual tweets on Twitter. If we leave favorite to mean mark an individual item and follow to mean see the activity on a site then we are using the Twitter model.

So a possible simple answer to my own question would be to leave favorite and follow as they are.

I do still think it's worthwhile to talk through whether my mark an item vs access an activity feed separation makes sense and plan future features.

If we do like that separation then I would also say go with Ray's suggestion to add another filter to the everything/sites/groups/friends filters on the My Commons page.

Hi all -

I think this ticket has spun out of control a bit. I'd like to suggest we step back for a second before making any more broad changes, and consider the following:

1. The My Commons feature is the headline feature for 1.7. Removing the Follow Sites feature as suggested by Chris http://redmine.gc.cuny.edu/issues/2563#note-24 will greatly decrease the utility of My Commons.
2. It's true that the use of the word Favorite is a bit unclear on the Commons. But let's remember that the ambiguity between site "favoriting" and other kinds of favoriting arose because we changed "Follow Site" to "Favorite Site". If we find the "favorite" overlap confusing, we should go back to "Follow Site", which is, IMO, clearer anyway.
3. Chris's thoughts about changing the language and behavior of favorites more broadly are interesting and valuable, but they should get their own ticket against a future milestone, and should definitely not hold up this ticket.
4. Let's also remember that activity favoriting is not very visible throughout the Commons, so the potential for confusion between that and this new feature is probably pretty low. We're looking at these features with a critical eye that our users don't have, and I think in this case we're anticipating a potential confusion that probably isn't going to arise in real use.

I strongly recommend that we break the "favorite" discussion out into a new ticket, make a decision about "follow" or "favorite" as regards the Follow Site feature, and then go with the feature as-is for Commons 1.7. It would be a real shame to punt it, and thereby to decrease the usefulness of My Commons, over a hypothetical terminological confusion.

Thanks, all, for this discussion. In the interest of marching towards our 1.7 release date:

1. The My Commons feature is the headline feature for 1.7. Removing the Follow Sites feature as suggested by Chris http://redmine.gc.cuny.edu/issues/2563#note-24 will greatly decrease the utility of My Commons.

Agreed. Let's not do that.

2. It's true that the use of the word Favorite is a bit unclear on the Commons. But let's remember that the ambiguity between site "favoriting" and other kinds of favoriting arose because we changed "Follow Site" to "Favorite Site". If we find the "favorite" overlap confusing, we should go back to "Follow Site", which is, IMO, clearer anyway.

Retracting my opinion above, let's go back to "Follow Site"

3. Chris's thoughts about changing the language and behavior of favorites more broadly are interesting and valuable, but they should get their own ticket against a future milestone, and should definitely not hold up this ticket.

Chris, please start a new ticket as Boone suggest. Thanks!

4. Let's also remember that activity favoriting is not very visible throughout the Commons, so the potential for confusion between that and this new feature is probably pretty low. We're looking at these features with a critical eye that our users don't have, and I think in this case we're anticipating a potential confusion that probably isn't going to arise in real use.

Good point.

I strongly recommend that we break the "favorite" discussion out into a new ticket, make a decision about "follow" or "favorite" as regards the Follow Site feature, and then go with the feature as-is for Commons 1.7. It would be a real shame to punt it, and thereby to decrease the usefulness of My Commons, over a hypothetical terminological confusion.

Agreed. Thanks again, all -- this discussion is very important and we will move it forward into the next feature release.

So, for now, Ray, please go back to the old "Follow Blog" model. Thank you.

So, for now, Ray, please go back to the old "Follow Blog" model. Thank you.

I've reverted the previous string changes from "Favorite" back to "Follow" in commit ff1377e.

Also, for those of you that are not aware of the My Commons labelling ticket, I would ask that you take a look at #3526.

Aside from the labelling changes for the activity filtering tabs, I made one change to the Sites filter based on Chris' feedback. It now filters activity from blogs that you are a member of as well as blogs that you have followed. Please provide feedback on that ticket and not this one as this ticket is starting to get a little long. Thanks!

Great - thanks, Ray