CUNY Academic Commons

Hi All,

Given the discussion going on right now about new non-CUNY members, I'd like to see if we can take care of this relatively quickly.

So, a few issues and questions:

1. I'd like to propose, per Chris's suggestion in the Commons group, that we add "Non-CUNY" to the drop-down list of colleges.

2. Then, I'd like to set, as a required field, something called "Position," that would have the following options: Administrator, Faculty Member, Graduate Student, Other, Staff

Any objections? I'm on the fence about "Other" -- don't know whether it's necessary or not. It might be a choice that, say, errant undergrads might pick. But I'm happy to leave it out. Thoughts?

Technical Questions:
1. Boone, as I understand it, these changes will need to be made directly on the production server through the Network Admin > BuddyPress profile settings. Am I right about that? (ie., this would not be done through Git)

2. If we set these as required profile fields, what will happen to people who have not yet filled them out?

Thanks in advance to all of you for your thoughts.

I like the Non-CUNY title, simple and appropriate.

Looking at the original post, I think it might make sense to include "collaborator" or something similar in the drop-down. This could fulfill the role for non-CUNY members that might otherwise select "other." And then we might feel comfortable nixing "other."

And the original post mentions "role" versus the proposed "position." Somehow role seems a less hierarchical a term, not sure.

Yes, I like "Role" better than "Position," too. Thanks. Let's go with that.

My thought is that Non-CUNY members of the site are still likely to be faculty members, administrators, staff, grad students, etc. -- and so, they would choose "Non-CUNY" as a College and, say, "Faculty" as a role. Choosing "Collaborator" as a role, when the other choices are defined in traditional ways, might be strange. But I do agree with you that it's might be best not to include "Other"

And one more thing -- the reason I'd like to have even Non-CUNY people choose something like "Faculty" or "Administrator" is that it will still be useful for our statistical analyses to know how many faculty members, etc., we have on the site.

Boone, as I understand it, these changes will need to be made directly on the production server through the Network Admin > BuddyPress profile settings. Am I right about that? (ie., this would not be done through Git)

Correct.

If we set these as required profile fields, what will happen to people who have not yet filled them out?

See #643

Then, I'd like to set, as a required field, something called "Position," that would have the following options: Administrator, Faculty Member, Graduate Student, Other, Staff

CUNYites often drift between roles. I vote: make them checkboxes, so you can select more than one. Include an "Other" checkbox with a text field where someone can enter something else. The concern about undergraduates using such a box seems a bit misplaced; if an undergrad wants on the site, a dropdown's not going to stop them.

Thanks, Boone. I like the checkboxes; let's go with that, though one detriment to that approach is that the less constrained our choices, the harder it could potentially be to analyze the numbers of people in various roles. Then again, more constrained choices can lead to bad data if people are required to fill out a field that doesn't include a logical choice for them. So let's go with checkboxes.

FWIW, I wasn't thinking that dropdowns would stop undergrads so much as help us identify some of them. But, in the end, that's neither here nor there....

Someone else (Boone?) had already added "*Non-CUNY" to the College list

Not me.

I didn't see a way to have one of those checkboxes open out in a text field if selected

OK, this can be a further enhancement at some point.