WiserEarth Help Desk
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GROUP DETAILS
Created: Feb 23, 2008
Updated: Nov 20, 2009
Membership: Open
Public
December 26th, 2007
Happy Holidays to all our members and visitors. We just put up 3 major overhauls across our site - one to our user profile pages, another to our "Watchlist" feature, and the last to our "Networking" interface.
- User Profile pages - we consolidated our tabs down to a much more cleaner and intuitive set. Users will just see "Main | Inbox | Photos | User Settings | Activity Reports " when viewing their own profile page.
- Watchlist - now watchlisted items are emailed to our members via an email digest that they can set to be daily, weekly, monthly or off. To do so, go over to the "User Settings" tab on your profile. If you are looking to add items to your watchlist, look for the grey eye icon on the upper right, usually placed next to the "Created" field. We'll work on making this more prominent and more easily findable in a later revision.
- Networking - we've instituted "Permission-based" networking across our site when connecting from a person to another person. Now, if someone wishes to add you to their network, they'll have to send you a friend invitation request, which you can accept/decline.
Also, one change that was small but heavily requested was the ability to remove discussion topics
from the group's main page. Now, group administrators can click on the
"Manage Content" tab and they'll be able to remove topics as needed.
December 20th, 2007
Last month's statistics were quite interesting.
-For
the first time, the number of visits from people in the US was almost
equaled by the number of visits from people outside the US - 51% US
visits vs 49% International visits. One of the goals for WiserEarth is
to serve the global community rather than just the community in the US,
so this is a major milestone.
-Out
of the 49% international visits, the most non-US visits came from the
UK (7% compared to 3% the month before). Both Mexico and the
Netherlands have doubled the number of site visits since the previous
month (from 1% of all visits to 2% for the month).
-The month of November saw the greatest increase in community members to date.
-There are 59 discussions on WiserEarth covering a total of 249 topics. There are 220 WiserEarth groups.
December 5th, 2007
We'd like to welcome and introduce our latest addition to the
technical development team, developer Rehan Iftikhar. Rehan's first
major project will solely be focused on preparing our source code for
release, so that the open-source community can finally download our
source code and take a peek under the WiserEarth engine. We anticipate
that this could take anywhere from 3-4 months (hopefully by March 2008) for Rehan to familiarize himself with the code base, and to prepare it for release.
November 29th, 2007
For this release, we focused on enhancing features on the site that
were heavily used, such as the user signup process, the commenting
section, and making it easier for people to access their groups. We
also laid some groundwork for our upcoming Email Alerts Notification
feature by implementing an "Email Confirmation" request on our site.
The
reason for this to ensure anyone who signs up with an email address is
the actual owner of that email. Only after the user has confirmed
their email (by clicking on a special link), will they then be able to
receive email alerts. This helps prevent someone else from using
another person's email address and using it maliciously to forward
unwanted alerts to the unsuspecting person.
Without further ado, here's a list of updates on the website:
- My Groups - hovering over the link brings a drop-down menu to show what groups you can jump directly to
- Users - Confirmation message after signing up to verify their email is eligible for receiving alerts
- Comments - Now, when users type in a web address, that web address (i.e. www.google.com) will become automatically a hyperlink for them. Anyone who reads it will be able to click on that text and go to the webpage address
- Areas of Focus - We added Up and Down arrows on the right side of the Areas of Focus selection box, which allows them to rank their Areas of Focus as desired
- Homepage - Updated our homepage with our latest survey link
- New User Sign-up - We noticed a lot of users being frustrated with having to type in the security code again when they were trying to sign-up. Now, if they've entered it correctly the first time, it'll be "remembered" and they won't have to enter it again
November 21st 2007
For this release, we addressed some of our most common usability
issues, including the Areas of Focus selection process and the ability
to invite multiple people to join WiserEarth or join your group:
1.
Areas of Focus selection process - Users can now select multiple Areas
of Focus by holding control key (on a PC) or command key (on a Mac)
keys and clicking on each additional AoF. We redesigned the interface
using left and right arrows to make the selection process more
intuitive.
2. Invite emails - both personal and group invites:
We redid the layout of the invites, so that now you'll see the person's
name in the "From" field, and also their email address in the
"Reply-To" section. For the personal invites, we added a header that
says something like "[Username], a member of WiserEarth, has sent you
an invitation" to better introduce who's sent you the invitation.
3.
Ability to invite multiple people at once - as part of our first
iteration, we expanded the text box field so that now you can type in
multiple email addresses at once (separated by commas). You can use
this to invite people that are both members of WiserEarth or have not
signed up yet - our system is smart enough to check email addresses and
send invitations to both.
4. New users going straight to
invited groups - To address the issue of people who sign up and can't
find their way to the group they were invited to, any new user that has
been invited to a group will be taken directly to the group's homepage
after successful registration.
November 16th 2007
A summary
of the WiserEarth survey that has been running on the site is now
available in the WikiPage section. Please take a look and share any
observations or comments you may have.
November 13th 2007 - Usability Fixes
We were fortunate enough to be invited to the FLOSS (Free/Libre/
Open Source Software) Usability conference, where we came with many
terrific and immediate ideas on improving our user interface. One big
particular area we've been focusing on is improving our search engine,
and the way results are presented to users. Thanks to all our FLOSS
usability experts for their feedback - here's the latest batch of
tickets we pushed live to production.
Search:
We added
more options for people to customize the look of their searches -
namely allowing them to show more than 10 search results per page,
adding a list of page numbers along the top, and adding a "Relevancy
Match" meter to show how accurate your search results are.
Also,
one big change is that people were clicking on the entities under the
main search bar [All | Organizations | People | etc] and not getting
anything out of it. We made those links "action-able", so that clicking
on them will initiate a search. A small change, but really will address
the first clicks people are doing when searching.
Email my messages:
We've
changed all profiles to have the "Email my messages" turned on. Since
most people don't realize they can turn it on or don't know where to
go, we'll make it turned on by default.
Sign-in Prompt:
Now,
when an unsigned-in person clicks on an edit link and gets the
"sign-in" prompt, there's a few sentences explaining why they have to
sign-in. What we noticed was that organizational reps would come to our
site wanting to edit their profile, click on edit, get a sign-in prompt
and would think they needed a special username/password to proceed. In
other words, they would never realize WiserEarth is a wiki-site where
they would need to create their own profile to edit content. These few
lines of text will hopefully address that scenario.
October 31st 2007
[Enhancements] Search module added to Groups!
Our latest addition
to Groups is a Search module that only searches through the content of
your group. To add this feature in, go to a group that you're an
administrator of, mouse over to "Admin Tools" and check "Customize
Layout". If you click on the "Add Content" link, a sidebar will pop up
and you'll be able to drag and drop over the new Search module anywhere
on the page you like.
October 25th 2007
[Enhancements] Groups continue to develop and change. Last night the tech team made their latest work live, so you may see some changes when you are viewing your groups.
- The Top Header which usually contains the search bar is now replaced with your groups title and introductory information. That environment will remain as you work within your group. You will not be lead out to WiserEarth. All the information contained in your group will be viewed as a separate entity yet still remain in WiserEarth, hidden. This assists for those of you who wish to use WiserEarth as a main organizing tool for your Organization. Talk to me about incorporating your WiserEarth Group into your existing website.
- For further organizing you can create Related Groups, which reside within a group.
By adding a new group, you are creating a sub-group that maintains all
the normal function of your current groups. The only difference is its
inherent location to the group from which it was created.
The image on the right depicts the structure of how the new Related Groups feature works.
If you are an Admin of a group you can add a Related Groups module to the homepage of your groups. These new groups will always be linked to the original and have no limit to how many within each that you create. If you wish to create a new group separate from your others, return to WiserEarth and select Create a Group from the left menu.
ATTN: The Related Group, Map, and Bulletin Board modules are not defaulted. You must add them to your home page in order to use them.
Here are some basic instructions on how to add the group module to your group in order to begin creating groups within groups. The following explains how administrators of a group can do this.1. 
Mouse over the "Admin Tools" link on the right and select "Custom Layout".
2. Then on the left, next to the "Save Changes" and "Cancel" buttons, choose "Add content". 
After you have successfully moved the module(s) into your group's home page, if you haven't already, this is a good time to move the modules around. You can arrange them as it suits your group's activity and you may also decide not to use a particular module by clicking the x in the top right corner of the module itself.3. 
A menu will popup on the left from which you can drag the "Related Groups" (or "Map" and "Bulletin Board - not shown") module into your group's home page. - Dragging and Dropping modules have been enhanced and made little easier for you that are Admins of groups. Go to the Admin Tools >> Custom Layout.
- Inviting People to your groups has been developed further as well. You can now invite people from WiserEarth more efficiently and invite people directly to your group who have not yet heard or signed up for WiserEarth. Look for the Group External Invite and you may invite other via email addresses which also searches for them in WiserEarth, in case they are already a member. You can also now invite users of WiserEarth more easily by clicking the link on their profile Add to Groups.
As always if you have any questions or need assistance you can contact Adam.
October 17th 2007
- [New Feature] The groups remains a focus of our current development effort, and more is yet to come. We, here at NCI, have heard a lot of suggestions from the users and hope to continue to hear about how the Groups can best serve them. The most recent updates include a bulletin board that can be added to a groups home page, a visual map that reveals location of group members, and an easier interface for organizing the groups content. Look at some of the public groups for ideas on how you can make your group more useful.
October 9th 2007
- [New Feature] The groups have been enhanced and users now have more control of the data in their groups. Administrators and Editors have may notice a new tab when viewing their group page called Manage Content. It features an automatically generated list of all the information on WiserEarth related to your group's chosen areas of focus. This means that you no longer have to search for relevant data to post to your group. it comes to your doorstep. Just add to group or exclude from list. If you add or subtract an area of focus in your group the list of Suggested Content will change accordingly.
In addition, administrators have two new tools that provide more options for their groups. A Manage Members tab and more Admin Tools which includes a customizable layout.
Using the Customize Layout,
you may drag the modules into any location on the group home page and
select which ones are active and how many results are shown. If you
have any problems please contact adam.
- [New Feature] Also, as promised you can now more easily Invite Friends to WiserEarth. On your personal profile, you will see the tab to invite up to five people at a time.
- [Another New Feature] A Gallery tab for images and photos has been added to every entity across the site. That means event postings, resources, jobs, and wikipages can store a photo library. This can be really cool particularly for events. Showing off the previous related events people and things or highlighting what is to come. The gallery tab also includes all the images that are uploaded intended to be in the about section but you may use this just to show off interesting photos as the name infers.
October 3rd 2007
- [coming soon]Users will be able to invite friends and collegues easily to join WiserEarth. If you have suggestions about this feature please give them.
- [coming soon] With the advent of Groups came many new ideas for how to make this an even more valuable resource. In the next wave of changes administrators of groups will be able to customize the homepage of their group. The next release is expected to be in two weeks.
- [coming soon] A restored and renovated portal is long overdue. The new design will be functional and available to users in two weeks. The redesign promotes the vast knowledge of our users and offers a simple interface for communication and awareness of the issues. Check your areas of focus portals in a couple weeks.
October 1st 2007
- [Media/Outreach] Postcards in English about WiserEarth are available for download on our Spread the Word page.
September 25th 2007
- [Update] Groups are continuing to be redesigned. The layout and functionality will continue to be enhanced for the next few weeks. You can join in on the ideas and developments by making a suggestion.
- [Community] We have begun the taking on the task of inviting all the organizations listed here on WiserEarth. If you would like to know more about our outreach efforts contact peggy or melinda.
September 18th 2007
- [New Feature] WiserEarth groups are LIVE on the site. WiserEarth groups offer the ability for two or more people who share a common affinity within the nonprofit community to come together. Each group is able to create its own unique space where it can set up dicussions, share or post resources, collaborate on projects and engage in ongoing conversation. Existing networks can link to groups on WiserEarth from their website, or use a WiserEarth group to replace the need for a website altogether.
For more information about groups, WiserEarth Groups.
August 28th 2007
- [Coming Soon] WiserEarth groups. Through groups, WiserEarth members will be able to have access to a growing body of information flitered in the group on an ongoing basis. You will be able to grow your network, participate in discussions and create content relevant to your interest.
August 3rd 2007
- [Enhancement] New home page design. Let us know what you think by adding your comments to the User Feedback page.
July 13th 2007
- [Enhancement] We've added a couple new fields to Job Postings, such as Level of position, Salary, and Duration of position. Salary is an open-ended text field because some positions pay weekly, monthly, etc.
June 22 2007
- [Enhancement] A lof of you suggested that we enhance the registration process. It is now shorter and much simpler. More improvement is possible, share your suggestions with adam.
June 20 2007
- [New Feature] The wysiwyg function is now live on the site. Any editing in the wiki-text can be accomplished without knowing any html code at all. If you find any bugs or run into a problem using the new feature contact adam.
June 15th, 2007
- [Update] We are currently working on making the sign up process easier so please be patient with us. Coming soon, you will be able to easily invite your friends on WiserEarth.
June 1, 2007
- [BUG ALERT] Editing your About section of your personal profile issue. If your edit button does not open up the box, scroll your page down to the bottom left then press the edit button. For more help contact adam.
May 30, 2007
- [New Feature] My Network automation and is complete. Check out the My Network Guide for more information.
- [New Feature] Forums are now up and running. The community of users may now begin conversations about any topic and relate them to areas of focus, keywords or entities. For more on how to use the Forums, read the [a::Forum Guide].
May 29, 2007
- [transparency] The Editor's Page has recently been updated. Search through the links and find your way to make this website work for the whole community.
May 24, 2007
- [Community] WiserEarth has more than 1000 people signed up!
May 23, 2007
- [Community] Translations of the site are underway. Please visit the Multilingual page to see what is available now or to see how you can help.
- [BUG ALERT] The comment section is temporarily disabled for reconstruction. It should be back online tomorrow.
- [BUG ALERT] Sign-in recently disabled. Currently enabled to full working status. If you are still having difficulty contact adam.
May 16, 2007
- [transparency] All major features in development and conversation by NCI are visible to the community.
- [transparency] A new section has been added to the editor's page, Standards and Procedures. This houses the library of resources which define the structure of the site.
- [transparency] The tech teams activities are now completely transparent to the community and viewable in the General Tech Report.
- [community] Partcipate in creating WiserEarth and ad your opinions to the Deliberations. They are ready to go forward. Also view the method to the madness flowchart.
- [tech] The Bugs Report Page is working for you now! check this page for updates and postings of problems on the site.
- [Organizations] We have made it to 100,000 Orgs!!! Congratulations to all those who contributed to the directory.
- [Personal Profiles] Update small avatars by viewing photos and reselecting the image by clicking set avatar.
- [Community] The democratization process has begun being developed. Check it out.
- [Community] The suggestion box and the question box are fully formatted and ready to collect info from the community. This will bring us closer to the ability to make decisions about the site collectively. Access it right here on the editor's page.
- [IRC] The IRC channel is fully functional and can be accessed by all.
- [Community] invitation email has been sent to the beta testers on Yesterday April 4th!! Congratulations everyone on your hard work!
- [Technical] We have just finished the process of setting up 6 dedicated servers for WiserEarth.
- [User profile] We are currently working on the registration process, hoping to make it easy and fast, while respecting your privacy.
- [Internal messaging] You can now exchange internal messages with community members within WiserEarth
- [Editor's community] There are now 36 active editors within our community.
