Group-Specific User 'Flair'
Matthew Cropp PublicSeen by 88I've recently started a group from representatives of different local employee-owned companies to collaborate on planning community service projects, and the group is new enough that many of them don't know each other by name yet.
This got me thinking that the ability to tag themselves just in that particular group with Reddit-style 'flair' with the name of the company they represent might help build in additional context for who is talking without having to review the Introductions thread. In other groups, such 'flair' might be useful to identify where people are from, gender pronouns, and/or other key bits of personal context that are relevant to particular groups.
An attempt at answering my own question, thoughts?
This looks really good!
Interesting! I've had the issue setting up my profile, where my introduction field was not so relevant for a second group. But I made it more generic and didn't feel it was an issue. It might become confusing for new users to set up their profile and memberships, and not sure it will be used a lot...
Wouldn't putting the introduction field in a tooltip on name or avatar pic in discussions, polls and members page be a good way for users that don't know each others to get context, without adding new settings or UI distractions for groups in which everybody knows everybody?
If the title proposal goes forward, I'd prefer it to be named "role" or "function", to better reflect participative methodologies instead of more conventional practices, where the title on your business card is all that matters to assert your contribution value...
Any progress or timetable on this?
I think James' suggested item in the group settings menu is neat and would use it.
Like Julien I've had awkwardness where "introduction field was not so relevant for a second group". He felt: 'I'd prefer it to be named "role" or "function"'. This feels a bit dry and formal to me. I would say I wanted to specify specific context or motivation for any group. So, combining these . . . how about calling the field 'connection' - to be interpreted either as connection with others in this group (= role) or connection with other dimensions of my life (= rationale for this membership)?
Query: if transgroup threads are being implemented see here does this field have to stick to the thread? And how about when a person is a member of both groups?
I like your 'connection' idea and its meaning, but I think the user interface has to be as self-explanatory as possible: there is already a lot to understand for newcomers and setting up a profile shouldn't require interpretation of an ambivalent word...
I'll write up a feature proposal today, which is the first step in the process.
This is awesome.
There is a lot of setup I agree. Perhaps the person who wants to provide a local context for a second group isn’t exactly a novice, and so might handle this? In the first (and at first, only) group, perhaps the profile field would supply a default ‘connection’ field? However, even setting a profile is too much for some users! But I guess they don’t mind too much about context, role, connection, whatever - and just get stuck in?
I really want to add a 'title' that users can customize (and might be open to allowing images into that), but the thing is that we have to do it per membership, rather than per user (IE, just because you're a 'Cat Herder' in one group, doesn't mean you want that to be displayed with your user all the time.)
We currently don't have an obvious mechanism or place for users to alter their memberships at the moment (in fact, there's not much you can do with your membership to a group, other than revoke it, or change your notification settings), although I reckon this feature would be a good place to start with that. Maybe @matthewcropp or @robertguthrie have a design up their sleeve as to what the form for this might look like in the interface?