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Feeback from usability testing

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Comments

  • LincLinc Detroit Admin
    @tester13 Nope. It's a separate app.
  • judgejjudgej
    edited March 2011
    @Lincoln I'll try "Closed" and see how that goes (hopefully it won't affect ProxyConnect registration of users). The admin page for registration only has Basic, Approved and Invitation as options - no Closed. Is that simply overlooked in the admin page, or something new in 2.0.17?

    Edit: Hmm, I've set it to "Closed" rather than "Invitation", but the method is still showing up as "Invitation" in the admin screen. I'll have to trace this through.
  • edited March 2011
    @tester13 Nope. It's a separate app.
    I know that this is separate app now.
    My point is that we really do not need separate app.
    As it contains redundant code mostly.

    Good idea is to think about small database changes and Auth changes to allow us to click on Conversations tab and see them as discussions list (and being discussions internally).

    Such approach also makes it possible for authors or moderators to make public thread (if necessary) restricted or vice versa (you have interesting conversation, and want to go public).
    You'll have special input field in each discussion (combined with tags, may be).
    And you could write something like (#Developers+#Moderators-@Oleg+@Mike) to allow Mike, all Developers and all Moderators to see this discussion, but Mike, even being developer or moderator won't see it.
    I tested this approach few years ago (on usability tests), and it works pretty good. people get this idea fast.
  • LincLinc Detroit Admin
    edited March 2011
    @judgej I don't think it was overlooked, as you typically don't want to shut down registration. It's always been in Vanilla afaik.
  • LincLinc Detroit Admin
    @tester13 So I should just re-code the entire private messaging system real quick?
  • @judgej
    Vanilla is full of such things that did not made their way to UI.

    @Lincoln
    No, I never said that.
    But may be you want to do it if you ask? :-)
    You could introduce SpecialRightsID field, like in category table today (PermissionCategoryID).
    And new table with SR_ID, User_ID, Role_ID fields that'll have all Users and Roles for each SR_ID.
    It requires some coding (not extremely big).
    But it allows to remove large amount of code that must be maintained and now looks outdated (no formatting in conversations, etc).
  • judgejjudgej
    edited March 2011
    @Lincoln Setting the registration to "Closed" does the job nicely - the "My Invitations" link is gone from the user's profile, new users cannot register directly, but ProxyConnect is still able to create new users as necessary.

    The "Registration" admin screen shows the three types of registration that can be selected, but none of the radio buttons are ticked. That should not happen - a radio button in a group *must* always be ticked. If "Closed" is not included in the list on that screen, then either the radio buttons should be removed when registration is closed, or better still "Closed" should be added. It would be a useful addition anyway, since an admin may want to close further registrations on any forum at any time, even if it is a temporary measure during some special circumstance.

    Edit: it looks like it should be on the list, but someone has commented it out fromapplications/dashboard/controllers/class.settingsconroller.php:


    // Registration methods.
    $this->RegistrationMethods = array(
    // 'Closed' => "Registration is closed.",
    // 'Basic' => "The applicants are granted access immediately.",
    'Captcha' => "New users fill out a simple form and are granted access immediately.",
    'Approval' => "New users are reviewed and approved by an administrator (that's you!).",
    'Invitation' => "Existing members send invitations to new members."
    );

    There is also no hook here to allow a plugin to extend that list (or other lists in the seettings screen). Maybe that could be added to allow workarounds if the decision remains that "Closed" is not to be an option in the vanilla Vanilla?
  • I do not see any problem including Closed option.
    Can't understand how this can make any confusion or prblem.
  • Also thanks for your tip, I added it to http://www.vanilla-wiki.info/Code/Authorization
    So other users could find it later.
  • @ottorobba That locale file has proved very useful - thanks.

    The full set of user testing results is not due back to me until tomorrow, but I'm sure many of the wording choices in that locale will be used.
  • I know this is going to be a long thread, but here are a few more points brought up by the usability testing.

    Firstly noone, and I mean NOBODY, was able to find how to add discussions to their favourites (sorry, "bookmarks") so that they could get email notifications. The phrase coming back was "what star, oh *that* - I've never noticed that before".

    I have to admit, I am in that same camp. I realise also this is a theme issue. The BBC doe it very well IMO on their iPlayer site:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00zm833/Wonders_of_the_Universe_Stardust/
  • I'm not sure where this one fits in, but we have a "send this user a private message" (sorry, "start a conversation") link in our CMS, outside of Vanilla. Once a user clicks and sends a message, it would be great to be able to redirect them back to where they came from, ie the page on the external CMS and not just leave them in the inbox.

    I guess this could also apply if a "send a private message" link was available on the discussions and comments (though I could imagine that may use an AJAX pop-up and not require any redirection at all).

    So I guess the point here, is the need - or desire - for a generic "redirect" mechanism, perhaps just passed in as a GET parameter, and which gets invoked once the main action is complete.
  • We have "latest posts" fed through to a page on out CMS using the RSS feed. The users have said it would be great to see what category they were posted under on that page. Checking the RSS feed (discussions/feed.rss) there are no categories listed in there.

    This is Vanilla 2.0.13, so it may be different now, but in general the categories for each discussion could do with being included in the feed, along with permalinks to those categories. Maybe the newer JSON read-only APIs have this already (haven't checked).
  • So I guess the point here, is the need - or desire - for a generic "redirect" mechanism, perhaps just passed in as a GET parameter, and which gets invoked once the main action is complete.
    Agreed, would be nice if there was an option of "return to referer" or something similar :)
  • judgejjudgej
    edited March 2011
    Even if the mechanism were to be a standard or consistent hook right at the end of a successful operation, then it would give plugin and theme developers the opportunity to add this functionality (so long as the "return URL" is not lost somewhere en-route to that operation endpoint).
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