WiserEarth Suggestions
Building a better WiserEarth together
A place for ideas and exchanges to happen. Please provide your feedback and suggestions to improve WiserEarth here.
GROUP DETAILS
Created: Feb 11, 2008
Updated: Nov 08, 2009
Membership: Open
Public
Topic: Integrating organization and group pages
Posts (1 - 9 of 9)
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Since the theoretical distinction between an organization and a group is not very definite as far as WE is concerned (see last section on the above link), what people might want is where they can have a listing on WE and add the WE group functionality anytime they want. In other words, the listing is the default or lowest level on WE. However, at any time they can add (via a simple checkbox, perhaps) the full functionality of a WE group.
This would effectively eliminate the WE distinction between a group and an organization. Instead, there would just be different options for a group/organization WE representation, which would completely resolve this issue (and my initial confusion between WE organizations and groups). I think this would help entice organizations and groups, who might just have an organization listing on WE, to use WiserEarth.org much more. |
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Interesting idea - we could make the current 'meta-data' page of a Group simply show the Org info (plus a few more fields?). But I wonder how many straight up orgs are using WiserEarth Groups - seems to me we seem more projects (parts of orgs), or partnerships (orgs working together), or just people (no orgs). Is this really a need? I can't tell - perhaps because we have made it hard for orgs they haven't used groups? Thoughts?
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Note that incorporating the option of group functionality into an organization does not affect people who want to keep the straight organization functionality, or even people who want to keep the straight group functionality for that matter. In this respect, the change is backwards compatible. What this change does allow, however, is an integration between organization and group functionality at the same time as giving groups the same visibility on WE as organizations get (part of that largest listing...).
Essentially, you're freeing WE organization/group functionality from any rigid definition of what an organization or a group is. People will be able to use the functionality as a placeholder (such as a WE organization listing today) or as something greater (WE group page today), as they see fit. This will not restrict people in their organization/group relationships on WE; people will be able to flexibly set up any hierarchy that they want.
As Jean-Luc would say... :) |
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I like the idea of keeping the listings separate but clearly offering every organization who has a listing on WiserEarth the opportunity to create and link to their listing to a 'community group' really easily. So they could effectively create a community space for their organization on WiserEarth (or link it to another community group that they may already have e.g. Yahoo). This would entail having the group functionality better integrated into the organization listing section.
What would also help users and organizational representatives to get more out of this functionality I think would be to allow people who work for an organization to be more clearly linked to the org listings on the site. At the moment any organization can be linked to any person, but you don't know whether they work for that organization or if they just like what that org does. Questions that could help. e.g. Do you work for this organization? And once you've identified that this person is registered on WiserEarth and works for this organization ....Would you like to create a community group (space) for your organization? |
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Yes I agree with Camilla. As well the clarity/distinction between users connected to groups/organisations is unclear. I know I've linked to orgs because I liked them, and others because I'm in them. Also at the moment there are some users listed, that really are not users but organisations, and it would be great for the choice to be able to be made as the group/org saw fit. Yes I like your last question a lot. Will I still be able to create a group even if I have no organisation behind me? Need to make the language clear about that so that it remains easy to see that a group can still be created by anone who wants to start one. |
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It seems there's an agreement for the need to better link/integrate the two, though I second Angus'es observations. On a related note, there are quite a few small organizations that use Yahoo groups as their website, and there are still others who don't even have a website. So I think the group page can be put to good use for these situations.
Here's some more ideas to think about:
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Hello Bowo et al. I was excited to see this thread today, as I've just made an organization page, and will be making a matching group page and would then like to merge them. The wiser earth pages in this case are defnitely not intended to replace an external website but might perhaps enable community building. I'm using a bunch of other tools which I like at the moment, but they're not joined up, so I'd like to see if this is the right place to bring it all together. Calendar is another related issue for me. |
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Hello Kat,
Thanks for stopping by. You made an interesting statement there:
"I'm using a bunch of other tools which I like at the moment, but they're not joined up, so I'd like to see if this is the right place to bring it all together."
In the context of the discussion here:
Thanks for sharing, Bowo |
Hello overyone,
In a conversation with Bret (sicjedi) on distinction between organizations and groups, it became apparent that we have some redundancies with our organization and group pages. They're similar in some respect, but distinct in others. Supposing that an organization have both, how can we better integrate the two? Should we?
Here are some ideas:
Anything else?
Best,
Bowo