CUNY Academic Commons

I find portmanteaus, especially of the camel cased variety, to be quite unpleasant. Maybe that's just me.

In that case, a camel-cased portmanteau it is! Let's call them BooneDocs.

Like I said, I think my suggestions are pretty terrible. "Pages" might well be the way to go, though I worry about confusing people who are used to Pages on a WordPress blog.

I generally second the impetus to use words that are in the dictionary, though writespace might work. I register the concern about "pages" being a reserved word, though something like pages would be good. "Documents" is also reserved... whiteboard instead of WriteBoard? The trick is that in an academic context the whiteboard is a place for teaching, rather than a place for brainstorming (as it is for the BaseCamp audience.)

Group Docs? -or maybe for Boone "groupDocs"

I like Group Docs

Perhaps we can use the term "Files" instead of what is currently referred to as "Documents".

GroupDocs? Group Workspace? Workspace?

Changing the name of "Group Documents" to "Group Files," and then naming this new feature "Group Docs" seems promising to me.

I couldn't get online yesterday (epic nine hour megabus trip) but I saw the emails about this and wanted to play! I emailed Matt and suggested 'Workbench.' Personally what I like about writeboard and basecamp is the way they call to mind physical spaces. Conceptually I liked 'Workbench' because its this stationary tab on the group's page where each member would theoretically go to to do some work. It doesn't really call to mind the collaborative aspects of the function so it's not the strongest option but still...

Staying off the collaborative aspects for just a second, we could also conceptualize it a space where projects are stored. So you could call it the GroupBox or the GroupBank (Vault, etc). I mentioned calling it 'Stacks' as a play on library terms. Woot - academic puns.

For the collaborative angle if we don't want to be too literal there are lots of places where people collaborate that are quirky enough. For example we could call the space a 'CardTable' like how when you have people over to play poker you pull out the card table. Admittedly weak but its a vein to explore. DraftingBoard? Draftspace?

If we're really going to stay on the straight and narrow then 'WorkSpace' is pretty good. 'Connect' is part of our 'Create, Connect, Explore' campaign so calling it Connect or Connection isn't a bad way to go either.

I'll keep at it - shoot down whatever is in the wrong direction though!

I like 'workbench'.

Workbench has a nice ring to it, as does Pages.

I like workbench but it does have the implication that there may be other tools as well. Are we planning on adding other tools?

I don't share Boone's aversion to portmanteaus (WordPress, BuddyPress?) but I do think it should be relatively straightforward. Pages and Documents by themselves do imply other software but perhaps something simple like Collaborative Pages or Collaborative Documents, Collaborative Docs.

We've also been calling it private wiki so perhaps Private Pages, Private Documents, Private Docs.

In the end however as long as it has a name to distinguish it then it should be fine.

Is there any reason why in the future we couldn't fold more features under the 'Workbench' tab? There's no telling what we'll be able to do in a couple of years that might fall under the umbrella of 'collaborative' features. Video conferencing, phone calls, etc?

I like including "private" in the name. Private Pages seems workable, though I see the reasons for Workbench (extensibility)

Bringing this discussion back to life.

The new plugin that I have developed for this purpose is called BuddyPress Docs. It uses Docs throughout, on a par with Google Docs. We can, of course, change this for our installation, but nothing definitive has come out of the discussion above.

Workbench was the best I could do. If we're scrapping it and picking from the list I vote for Pages. We already have a Documents tab so it seems like it could get confusing introducing a new tabbed feature called GroupDocs that's distinct from Documents. Of course we could rename documents to something else and then do a blog feature on all the changes. We could also tuck the new feature into the existing documents tab, but its such a cool new thing it seems a shame not to highlight it better.

"Docs" sounds great -- I like the echo of another similar, well-known tool. Nice job.

Re "Workbench," I'm way of elaborate, site-specific metaphors that require people to learn new vocabularies for commonly used functionalities. I'm reminded of suggestions for our site navigation that were based on rooms in a house). Let's not reinvent the wheel.

sorry, Brian -- didn't read your post closely enough. I agree that we need to disambiguate Docs and Documents.

How about files and collaborative documents?

Wasn't trying to reinvent the wheel, just wary of the word docs. It's literally everywhere: GoogleDocs, WordDocs, Document, Upload your document here, and so on. What is produced by the new feature is materially a document, but the actual act of collaborating, which is the novelty of the function is something in and of itself. I take your point on clarity though. Why don't we leave Documents alone and juts put the new feature under "Collaborate"

Even if we go with something like Collaborate or Workbench, we need a count noun for strings like "create a new x"

Re-reading the thread - this isn't really the kind of thing I should have dug my heels in over. 'GroupDocs' works great and it's a great tool for our community.

But I think you're right, Brian, that we need to disambiguate the collaborative group docs from group documents.

Here's a thought: the group documents as it currently exists is really a repository for uploaded documents.

What if we named the two areas like this:

GroupDocs (for our new collaborative space in which people create multi-authored documents)

File Repository (the space that lists all documents uploaded to a group).

OR, is it possible that we can combine these into one, so that, for instance, there is only one space that lists group files, but then allows some of them to be clicked on and edited? Does it make sense, from a user's perspective, to have documents in two separate sections of the group interface?

Eventually I think that combining the Files area with the Docs area is a possibility, but such a move has design and technical considerations that are too big for the current scope.

I vote for Docs and Files.

Will docs appear in the Files list, or only on the Docs page?

At the moment, there is no connection between Docs and Files. That is a possible future area of development.

Is there a release date for this by the way?

There is no hard release date but it will be in a, low, number of weeks (Boone you can correct me here).

In terms of the names of the locations I agree that Docs and Files makes the most sense.

A couple of caveats. Docs may need something like Group Docs or BuddyPress Docs or Collaborative Docs so people understand what they are better.

Also Files means changing the name from the current Documents. We'll have to make sure we announce that and maybe even put a little note in the sidebar to tell people it's changed. It could have a link to a blog post where we explain all that's changed (and maybe that means no need to name Docs anything more).

I'm against calling them BuddyPress Docs, since 'BuddyPress' would be just as appropriate a prefix for any other part of the interface. Group Docs seems overly restrictive, as future versions will let people use the docs in a way that's not tied to groups. Also, we use one word descriptions for all of the existing group components, and it'd be nice to keep it that way if possible.

I'm thinking that for the reeducation bit, we can have a box that appears on every group page for every user - maybe just under the group description header - that says "You might have noticed some changes around here..." and a description of what's changed. The box would have a Dismiss button, which would remember, on a per-account basis, whether a user had seen the message. That box should probably be brief, and link to more detailed descriptions, like Chris suggests.

How about LiveDocs?

Boone Gorges wrote:

I'm against calling them BuddyPress Docs, since 'BuddyPress' would be just as appropriate a prefix for any other part of the interface. Group Docs seems overly restrictive, as future versions will let people use the docs in a way that's not tied to groups. Also, we use one word descriptions for all of the existing group components, and it'd be nice to keep it that way if possible.

I'm thinking that for the reeducation bit, we can have a box that appears on every group page for every user - maybe just under the group description header - that says "You might have noticed some changes around here..." and a description of what's changed. The box would have a Dismiss button, which would remember, on a per-account basis, whether a user had seen the message. That box should probably be brief, and link to more detailed descriptions, like Chris suggests.

Sounds good, Boone. Let's just go with "Docs" and "Files" and create the explanatory box to provide more info.

Language file added and 'documents' swapped with 'files' in https://github.com/castiron/cac/commit/78b4b4443fd8517d5631dc4008d13ec40ac41741