Here's a proposal for the basic profile system. Certainly it will be really cool to have more features than those listed below but these I think are the sine qua nons. Consider this the profile "kernel."
The first six features will go up pre-populated. If members don't want this personal information up they will need to go in and take it off. The additional contact numbers and picture will need to be added by the members after the system goes up.
We can use that info in other places
Would there be a way to make this information to be easily imported into gmail contacts? I am not sure how the coding behind that should look, but it would be sweet if at least the email and names were synced into gmail contacts. That way we could have all the branch members right there if you need them.
Ben
Question Worth Asking
That's an important question, Ben. It would certainly be convenient to be able to import a spreadsheet with everyone's name and e-mail in the community into another address book with a few clicks of a button. There's a security risk, though. The easier we make it for us to import lots of e-mails the easier we make it for spammers and other hackers to do the same if they get into the system somehow. It's one thing to have to search specifically and painstakingly for every contact (no spammer has that kind of time) it's a different thing entirely to be able to import the whole list instantly. What do y'all think?
nick
Another downside to easily
Another downside to easily downloading everyone's email is abuse by legitimate users (not just those who break in). Some folks love mass emails and forwarding jokes. Easy access to lots of email increases the likelihood of this type of email. There's also a greater possibility of disgruntled members airing their dirty laundry to the whole POP on their way out.
What about making it possible to export your whole area or division at once, but not the whole POP. This would contain the possible abuses and still allow fast access to the most needed emails.
mike w
privacy
That introduces a large discussion about privacy... what is the purpose of the directory, who is our audience? If it is for POP members only, a basic export feature may be safe, perhaps giving you only those people who are in your area. If this is an open directory, though, information should definitely be limited. Even having to click through the site to obtain email addresses will be too open to spammers.
We have successful projects like Facebook and LinkedIn to learn from about privacy. The internet can unite us more closely, but this should always be an intentional choice by those involved, not necessarily something assumed on all levels. It helps to think of it in real world terms: all information we get is context-sensitive, based on who we are, who our family is, what household, area, branch we are in... and it will be a wonderful thing to be closer yet to those geographically removed from us, but it introduces many privacy, security, and efficiency concerns.
Perhaps somewhere to start could be with an outline of the issues to deal with... i.e., the internal structure, the policies to adhere to with each piece of information, the methods of accessing the information. Then very specific discussion can bring about a spec that most accurately expresses what we think, and will be easier to illustrate for the overall community and the board of governors.
Thoughts?
Facebook is interesting
I thought the analogy to facebook was interesting. I think that when used correctly, a facebook profile is a great way to stay in touch non geographically, and if they are kept up to date the profiles on there would be a really nice. However, there is always the risk of only spending time on facebook, and privacy is still an issue. I don't know for sure, but I think facebook is fairly secure, and there is a lot of restrictions of public access that should one choose can be very specific.
Some of the possibilities: You could get to know someone in your branch or in other branches because there would be pictures and people could write their history down. After certain events you could post pictures for all to see. Or if you need a lawyer you could see who the lawyers are in the branch, or something like that. We can use the knowledge of everyone in the branch. Like posting recipes.
These are just brainstorms, but I think we can find a way to use this for some really big things.
Facebook Analogy
I like the facebook analogy too. The way it is structured, you can see all the info you want of the people going to the same college as you, unless they hide their profile. For people in other colleges, all you can see is a thumbnail of their image, and some basic info about their major.
Going off the "people could write their history down" idea, can we host a blog for each person(if they want)?
Collaborative documents?
Does this site support any wiki-ish plugins? Discussing this project could get cumbersome as we have this massive tree of comments, trying to keep track of what exactly we're talking about. I'm just thinking of some kind of document for each topic pertaining to the project, that has versioning or at least open editing for people to propose & markup together. Er.. or something like that. Maybe I'm just wishing too much and should just get to work. :)
Sure
Although the Drupal system doesn't seem to have an easy-to-use Wiki-style system from what I could find, we could install a MediaWiki site if deemed useful. Actually, I'll play around with a document repository that can be edited by users - now that I think about it, Drupal can do that pretty easily. I'll try to work on it sometime this weekend.
MediaWiki
I'm really like MediaWiki idea, although of course it would seperate this website a lot.