WiserEarth Editors
Collaboration in serving the greater WiserEarth community
As active community members, we would like to make this group into a gathering point where we can work together to transform WiserEarth.org into an effective platform of support for the global community of concerned citizens and organizations who are working to create a more just and sustainable world. ...learn more
GROUP DETAILS
Created: Nov 20, 2007
Updated: Nov 24, 2009
Membership: Invitation Only
Semi-Private
Topic: Tell us - what UI/technical issues make it difficult to use WiserEarth?
Posts (1 - 20 of 27)
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Responses from the editors who attended the meetup:
Bedy: Would like to add up to 150 new Brazilian organizations, but so daunting to add them one by one. Process is really tiring - would like have the ability to batch upload organizations Eric: Date/time for events is a nightmare - makes adding events really hard. Just wants to get in there quickly and copy and paste without having to sift through all the fields. AoF selection process is also really tedious and a big barrier. Deborah: The site doesn't do a good job directly people to the active "hotspots" on the site. Needs to highlight where activity is happening and funnel users toward those areas. Also, using FB connect services would make the sign-up process simpler and quicker. Bedy: The "My Groups" drop-down list is inefficient if you have a lot of groups. Would like the ability to customize the "My Groups" list that list so that you can put your most frequently visited groups up at the top. Timonie: Time/date is also an issue - really hampers creating new events on WiserEarth. The font size is also so small - it makes it hard to read the site at times. Kerry: Showcase connections for content better - it's really not obvious that things are connected right now. Would like to see some auto-linking to create connections based on keyword matches, AoF matches, people who have viewed or like this page. Roger: Match the features offered by Yahoo groups and others so that communities will be comfortable moving onto WiserEarth. Need email lists so they can transition as seamlessly as possible. Frank: Sharing information should be easier. Deborah: Have "guardian" volunteers to shepherd new users through the site. It's a very popular concept in 2nd life and has helped immensely. Peggy: more content delivered to her inbox - push content emails of what's new and relevant to her on WiserEarth Eric: Watchlist is too unusable right now. Overload of non-important information - needs to par down what's reported and only report interesting information. Roger: You can't respond to messages with the reply button in email. You have to go to the site. A list serv or the ability to message someone with the reply button would be better. |
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Fabulous job here, Honore. Hope other editors not in attendance will add their thoughts as well.
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Thanks Deborah, hope so too. What we collected at the meetup gives us quite a bit to reflect on and redesign, so we're certainly not short of ideas for improvement. But I want to hear more on what other technical issues the editors have run into, so please use this space to let us know.
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I'm still getting signed out at random, though I've got used to it. About half the time bulletin boards will appear as a half page of gobbledygook. Seems to fix itself when reloaded. The pull down list of 'my groups' will open and scroll down ok but won't let me select any beyond the first 12 or so that show up. Probably all just apple glitches but makes it hard to visit groups later on the list. Could fix by taking part in fewer groups as a workaround.
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I definitely think the events feature needs to be fixed asap. I think that if WiserEarth wants to be the community for nonprofits, we need to be a space where people feel like they can network - in person.
I think this is more important than fixing the UI for other features (watchlist, groups, content publication), because I really think that people these days are looking for ways to connect with others one on one. When WE is recognized as a niche destination for nonprofits/social justice/activist types to connect, i think it'll then become a more popular place to share content as well.
Sites like Facebook and Yelp make event publication and sharing very easy and very accessible. I hope it could be just as easy to publish an event on WiserEarth. I would love to be able to check into WE to see events which others are participating in. It would be great to more of the people I'm "connected" with on WiserEarth. |
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Hey James - I guess you must be using Safari for mac right now. The mygroups drop-down menu is a known issue with Safari - Apple can't seem to get their browser fully web compatible yet, but we did get a nice suggestion from Bedy to allow users to customize that my groups drop-down list. That way, you could re-order your favorite groups up top, instead of always having to scroll down. So when we are able to get around to addressing that issue, I'll have the team also look into fixing the scrolling issue.
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Honore,
When I recently tried to help with the new Food Sovereignty group page, I found that I could not link existing WE Groups or Organizations to that page.
Another ongoing annoyance for me is that my home page does not, open on the Profile option. This has been talked about before, and it was mentioned that an option for Dashboard / Profile probably could be created.
I also think that standardizing date/time info to meet international standards is a good thing, but I do not think that an events starting and ending times are necessary on the Events feature if there is a link to the events webpage.
Another feature I would like to have for all categories of information on a Group site is the ability to either create an Index and/or alphabetize the entries. Not a problem finding things if there are few entries, but as the resources increase in size finding things can be a chore. This also might require some sort of standardized format for listing entries, such as having "The" appear in brackets at the end on a title.
jp
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Hey Michael,
Awesome - thanks for that lead-in with event adding and simplification. We're wrangling with the tech team a bit on data quality versus creation ease, and I'm much in favor of Facebook's rather open-ended and simplistic way of adding an event. People do not like filling out fields, so the less is def better! |
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JP, sorry for the inconvenience of having the network connections taken down. We had to bring it down initially because we were porting over to a new search engine, and it's taken longer than we thought to bring it back. The main problem is the previous interface to add network connections doesn't work well with the new search. We could hammer away at it and use some chicken wire and duct tape to cobble a working system together, but we're instead taking this opportunity to revisit how to make connecting information easier and more intuitive. In short, we're taking a hard look at how we'd like to redesign this system, and getting input like this about what our users actually want to do has been invaluable to the design process.
And I'm glad you voiced that idea of being able to order information as you wish for groups. It's definitely not the first time we've heard of it, and if we want to promote greater use of groups, we will definitely need this feature. |
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Yes, less is more for the events action. I would go for a single list sorted by date and time that automatically filters for the user's home metro or rural area, and according to the portal with the option once you are on the list to do a search on the event text and to select another locale. Thus at the WE home page level, all events are included. At the Nuclear Disarmament portal, only nuclear disarmament events are listed. If there are no future events to show, suppress the events button.
Just brainstorming -- this kind of thing needs to be talked over more than discussed by email. |
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Yes thanks Honore, safari on a mac. I understand this is a mac problem and have cut down my group memberships (to 13) to fit the size of the pull down window.
Please could we have a little time-saving thing on the messages page so when I click to say I've read them (on email) I don't have to click again to say "yeah I know this will also mark old messages as read". I know each click doesn't take long but when you get told the same little thing hundreds of times it adds up. Maybe a little tick-box option in that window offering "don't remind me again"?
Could groups have an editable standard invite message (rather than having to edit each invite) and could we invite a bunch of people at a time (rather than just the one) please?
I've also found JP's glitch of being unable to add existing groups as a connection to my groups. So my new systems group for example appears to have no related groups even though there are a bunch on wiserearth. Great that you're onto this.
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Thanks for having this discussion and sorry for jumping in late. Here are some of my main technical issues/frustrations (in random order):
1. I would like to see the e-mail functionality more like that of gmail. I know gmail saves drafts as you are writing so that if something crashes, you don't lose your draft. I know I will save this before hitting send, because I have written e-mails previously on WE and have had them totally lost after hitting send. Even Word will be able to recover after a crash. It would be nice to save draft and then come back to it later.
2. Another way to do e-mail would be to set it up like they do on meetup.com. When you send a message from within meetup to someone else, they receive it in their own e-mail system. I receive e-mails from them in my gmail and then I can respond directly from gmail. With WE, I get an e-mail from WE that gives me the message and then I need to go back into WE to respond.
3. I would like to be able to forward messages and pick recipients from a list. Right now I don't see anywhere to go to just send a message and then decide who to send it to. I see that I can send to an individual, or I can go to a group and send a group message and then pick from the members of that group.
4. When I am viewing a particular event or resource, I would like to be able to share or send an e-mail out from that event or resource to people I think would be interested.
5. We need to streamline the event posting. The time format is particularly frustrating. We should be able to enter the numbers directly instead of scrolling through. The default time interval is also 3 hours. Events are commonly 2 hours, so I have to scroll through 23 hours to set the ending time. The minutes seem to correlate with the time that I am creating the posting. If the minutes are at :05, then I need to click my mouse 55 times to reset it to :00. There are too many areas of focus. I don’t bother selecting them because it takes too much time. People should be able to post events quickly. I would like to be able to add attachments to an event posting. I have had some events that don’t have a web address, but a pdf exists of the event posting. If I can add a pdf as an attachment to the event posting, that would be helpful.
6. We need to have a better way to cross reference between handles (GreenEric) and names (Eric Olson). It would be good to have all the contact info more easily referenced. I think if we can model more along the lines of gmail, LinkedIn and Facebook, then people would stay more.
Well, those are my comments for now. I'll chime in again later with anything else.
Thanks,
Eric
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Another perfect example of technical difficulties. What is all that garbage at the top of my posting? I pasted into Word because I was afraid of losing it when I hit send. Maybe it got messed up because Word chose a different font for new text than the font that appeared when I pasted the text from WE.
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Dear Eric:
This is an issue with Word. When you put something in Word it adds a whole load of extra formating infromation before the HTML. When you paste it directly into the wiki editor that garbage becomes visible. Fortunately there is a simple solution. In the Wiki Editor bar you will see an icon on the second role four from the right that has a 'W' on it. Click on that before you want to paste anything from Word into the wiki - that will clean it from the garbage Word adds in. Hope that helps.
Best, Angus
PS. To edit anything that you already uploaded unfortunately you have to click on the HTML button. It isn't edittable using the regular visual view. We should look into seeing how we can get rid of this problem in a more simple way. |
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Angus, I see now what you are saying. I have noticed that 'garbage' on other people's e-mails where they must have pasted something from word into WE. I don't know how anyone would know to use the 'paste from Word' button. I know that people have gotten frustrated about sending e-mails on WE when all that 'garbage' gets added. Is there some way to automatically remove that? I got an error message when I hit send that said something like "html elements were removed", but it still looks messed up. Since Word is the most common text program, it seems like there could be some autofix. I would never have known what that 'paste from Word' button was for.
Thanks,
Eric |
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A couple more thoughts:
This is a time when a lot of people are looking for jobs. If WE can be a good resource for posting and searching jobs (like Craigslist) then it will bring a lot of people to the site. On the main page in the upper left hand corner if I click explore, then Jobs in the drop down menu, it lists all the jobs in the world, with the most recent first. This isn't very helpful. It would be better to open a search window like you get in the main search function. Then when you get a list of jobs, it is meaningful.
Now that I see how explore works, I don't think it's best to have the most recent in each category first. I think it would be better to have a search window first. Once you get the search results from your desired criteria such as geographical area and keyword, then newest first is meaningful.
I also think that within the My Groups drop-down menu on my page, I would like to arrange the groups within the drop down menu. I remember someone at the editor meeting mentioning this also.
Thanks,
Eric |
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Couple more things: -I don't like getting a watchlist alert for my own activities. -I would like the flexibility to arrange my 'home page' like I can with groups, such as adding or removing modules, moving them around, etc. -I think it is important to remove or hide zombie groups and individuals. Also, just adding a connection to a group should not be considered group activity to keep it alive. For example, if someone connects to a group a couple of times per year, but nobody is adding any content to the group, then the group is still inactive. If somebody is a member of 10 groups, but doesn't visit them or do anything, they should be hidden or removed. I would like to see only active people on my site. Unfortunately, my group might shrink at times, but at least when someone joins and they want to connect to someone else in the group, they will have a better chance of connecting with an active person instead of a zombie.
Thanks,
Eric
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When I post a link I always set it to open in a new window. A message pops up saying that some html was stripped out for security and then the link replaces the current page, which I'd hoped to avoid. Does that make sense?
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@Eric: Lots of good ideas. Some of which have been said before but bear repeating. As for customizing your personal Dashboard - we've deliberately not allowed that - fearing rightly that this section will be evolving and that we would annoy members if we forced a change to a custom layout. At the moment our thinking is to go with the new layouts - with a status update, and friend feed on left and recommended content on the right.
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But first, we wanted to report back on some steps we're already undertaking. The problem with creating content was the biggest issue vocalized, and we're already working to simplify the content creation process. We created a wikipage in the Suggestions group to house the steps we'll take to address the content creation process, so please visit that page if you would like to help out in that process.
But we also wanted to keep this discussion going by continuing to gather feedback from the editors, and to see what other technical frustrations are inhibiting our users. We'll definitely jump in to working on the creation process to first make it easier to post information, and then we'll look into the email reply feature to make it easier to communicate through WiserEarth.
So, please take a look at the responses we noted down - but let us know in this discussion topic other technical frustrations you've come across. Let us know what you want to do more that is currently difficult to do, and we'll use this feedback to help prioritize our development goals this year and next.