[p2pu-dev] filters on the wall

Fri Jul 8 15:58:25 UTC 2011

In my course I asked everyone for a feed only of the course category (almost
all blogs can do this easily), unless they planned to set up a specific blog
only for P2PU. That worked great. However, there was still too much info
(and especially with an activity stream that takes too much space, and isn't
filterable / facetted etc), so we ended up using Netvibes, which shows all
the posts form all the people in a really nice minimalistic overview. (
http://netvibes.com). A number of students mentioned how crucial this was to
the class. So either we can experiment with different ways of showing the
information (it doesn't necessarily have to be each entry generating a line
with "Peter Johnson posted about "Blah blah" on his blog "A b" two days
ago", it could be represented way more compact) - or else, people can
continue using external tools like Netvibes in the future.

Anyway I think filtering is crucial... It's nice to be able to see what
people are up to, but when I click on a follower's link, I really want to
see if that person has done anything at all at P2PU, not the five-hundred
last tweets...

As for coloring organizer's posts differently, I'd suggest to make this
optional - perhaps coloring the ones that are "forced" differently, because
these are likely to be meta-level important announcements etc, but in our
group most of what I wrote were completely normal contributions, equal to
everyone else, and it would feel strange if they were colored differently
'just" because I happened to be organizer. (In a course where the organizer
was perceived to be the expert, that might make sense, but that was
certianly not the case in our course).

Stian

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 07:10, Jessica Ledbetter <
jessica at jessicaledbetter.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 5:09 PM, James Tatum <jtatum at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Would this be a good time to suggest that the external feeds just be
>> removed altogether? I'm really unclear on the value of these when they
>> aren't filtered for P2PU related activities, and the mechanism of how
>> such filtering would work is also unclear to me. As a user, I don't
>> understand how I'm supposed to use them.
>>
>>
> Personally, I like them. When I login, I see what people are up to and it's
> neat. I wouldn't mind filtering though to just get P2PU domain updates
> because sometimes it *does* get to be too much especially if one has github
> linked up. I pity my followers sometimes!
>
> If we do stick with them, I think their issues break down as:
>>
>> 1. Explaining to a publisher (someone who adds a feed to their site)
>> what to add and why - for instance, "don't add your Flickr account
>> (unless you're in a photography group), but do add your blog feed that
>> shows articles related to the topic you're studying"
>> 2. Making it easier to filter articles, as a publisher and as a follower
>> 3. External feeds in general I think need love, for instance the
>> initial add and update mechanisms seem to produce bursts of updates -
>> and perhaps something on the display side to filter them as well
>>
>> Yes, we have a bug report on that:
> http://p2pu.lighthouseapp.com/projects/71002/tickets/61-flickr-sync-is-a-deluge
>
> And I +1 :)
>
>
>> If the purpose of feeds is, "I think soandso is an interesting person,
>> let's see what they're up to outside P2PU," then whatever we implement
>> for these will trend towards the functionality of something like
>> FriendFeed or Google Buzz. Is there a use case for these that guides
>> the conversation about them?
>>
>>
> I think that's one of the purposes. Before we couldn't say "don't
> subscribe" when we added an external link. Now we can so people are choosing
> to publish activity to P2PU.
>
>
>
>
>> On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 1:59 PM, Jessica Ledbetter
>> <jessica at jessicaledbetter.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 3:44 PM, Philipp Schmidt <philipp at p2pu.org>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Suggested Default:
>> >> * Messages from course organizer (in separate color?)
>> >
>> > An easy way to see just the messages from the organizer would be
>> helpful. I
>> > think we'd talked about allowing an organizer to have an "important
>> message"
>> > on the group's main page. So being able to filter just for organizer
>> > messages would be fantastic.
>> >
>> >>
>> >> * Messages from other participants
>> >> * New tasks created
>> >> * New participants
>> >> Suggested Optional:
>> >> * New comment to task created (in task) - I'm a little undecided if
>> this
>> >> one should be default
>> >
>> > I like seeing the activity personally which would be comments. It shows
>> how
>> > the course/group is "alive."
>> >
>> >>
>> >> * External feeds (these are creating most of the noise I think)
>> >
>> > Yes. They are. And sometimes they're showing up multiple times. I think
>> I
>> > know why but haven't come up with a great solution to it.
>> >
>> >>
>> >> * New follower
>> >>
>> >>>
>> >>>    Can this decsion be made by the person who creates the group?
>> >>
>> >> I'll stick my head out and suggest that we do NOT give users the option
>> to
>> >> control this. I anticipate that this will cause a lot of discussion,
>> but
>> >> there is research on UX design that shows more options make users
>> unhappy
>> >> (and confused). Is there really a course where participants would not
>> want
>> >> to see messages from the organizers, other participants and task
>> creation in
>> >> the activity stream?
>> >
>> > I also agree that too many options cause confusion/unhappiness.
>> >
>> >>
>> >> If we notice that users struggle with the defaults - then we adjust (or
>> >> give more options).
>> >>
>> >>>
>> >>>    But what events/activities do we choose to display?
>> >>>
>> >>>    Zuzel will send a mail to the dev list to get feedback, but will
>> >>> need to implement something by Monday.
>> >>> ===============================================================
>> >>>
>> >>> There are 4 different kinds of activities in the wall:
>> >>>
>> >>> * messages posted to the wall by organizers and participants (soon
>> >>> threaded to allow discussions not related to tasks to happen inside a
>> >>> group)
>> >>> * activity related to tasks (creation of new tasks, non minor editions
>> >>> to tasks, threaded comments around tasks)
>> >>> * activity that is shared by the organizers from the external links
>> >>> the group is subscribed to.
>> >>> * activity related to new faces interested on the course (someone is
>> >>> following the course)
>> >>>
>> >>> We have to decide which of this will be in by default on the wall, and
>> >>> with can be seen or filtered for quickly access by clicking on
>> >>> predefined filters (e.g. See activity related to [everything],
>> >>> [messages], [tasks], [subscriptions], [people]).
>> >>
>> >> Filter options:
>> >> [Messages from Organizer]
>> >>
>> >> [All messages]
>> >> [New tasks]
>> >> [Subscriptions]
>> >>
>> >
>> > +1 to all this. Edits on tasks maybe but that's more helpful if someone
>> > makes a "placeholder" task that is empty. I figure the organizer would
>> then
>> > post to the wall that the task is now ready for work.
>> >
>> >>>
>> >>> Thoughts?
>> >>>
>> >>> --
>> >>> Thanks,
>> >>>    Zuzel
>> >
>> > --
>> > Jessica Ledbetter
>> > http://jessicaledbetter.com
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > p2pu-dev mailing list
>> > p2pu-dev at lists.p2pu.org
>> > http://lists.p2pu.org/mailman/listinfo/p2pu-dev
>> >
>> >
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>
>
>
> --
> Jessica Ledbetter
> http://jessicaledbetter.com
>
>
>
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>
>

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