The one thing I think we're all in agreement on here is that after login the user should be taken to the Personal Homepage (unless of course there is a redirect action because they clicked a forum post in an email or something like that).
The two questions at hand are
1. Should the Personal Homepage completely replace the current homepage?
2. How to navigate to the Personal Homepage (and the homepage if we keep both).
1. Replace or not to Replace
Boone, I hear your arguments re Facebook/Twitter and usage but I disagree. The Facebook/Twitter analogies fall short because they don't have a history of having a public homepage with content on it. In both sites there's not much you can do if you're not logged in. It's different on the Commons. Here we would be effectively removing a page people were used to seeing and also giving a single navigation item, Home, two functions depending on whether you were logged in or not.
Your arguments about the use of the homepage are valid. Active users don't get much from the current homepage and the personal homepage is meant to address that. This is one of the reasons that users should be directed to the personal homepage on login. There may be times however when logged-in users would want to see the current homepage. Newer users may get more from it (if they haven't joined groups or made friends then there won't be as much info on their personal homepage) and there are other possibilities.
2. Navigating to the Personal Homepage
What I would like to propose is that we think about two groups of pages, Commons Pages and Personal Pages. The Commons pages are public pages and are the ones in the current main navigation (Home, People, Groups, Blogs, Wiki, News, Help, About) and the Personal Pages only accessible to logged in users and are the ones we are putting in the new template (My Homepage, My Groups, My Sites, My Friends, My Messages, My Settings, My Activity, My Notifications, Send Invites).
These two groups would be reflected in the navigation.
- Commons Pages: The current main navigation and the current leftmost navigation in the WP Admin Bar.
- Personal Pages: The new right side navigation in the new template and the rightmost navigation (under the avatar) in the WP Admin Bar. Once we sort out the naming and the order these two navigations should have the same names and be in the same order.
In following with that I disagree with Matt's proposal to add a navigational element for the personal homepage to the current main navigation as it would confuse the two groups. Ray's suggestion of adding a link to the WP Admin Bar is in line with the groups and I would also recommend that. I would make the name My Homepage and have it both in the WP admin bar and in the right side navigation in the new template.
I would like to keep the action of clicking an avatar consistent so I would not recommend and avatar linking to the personal homepage but rather keep all avatars linked to the portfolio page.
There is one last piece that may cause discussion: what to do when the user enters http://commons.gc.cuny.edu (or cuny.is)?
My proposal is to keep the system Ray currently has in place which sends logged in users to the personal homepage and non logged in users to the Commons homepage. Then I also suggest adding a new page replicates the Commons homepage and that the two Home links (in main navigation and left dropdown in the WP Admin bar) link to this new page instead of just commons.gc.cuny.edu.
This solution would hopefully address Boone's concern that power users need not see the Commons hompage. They would only see it if they clicked on one of the Home Links. At the same time it keeps the two navigational spaces separate.