IFIWNenhancementlist

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[edit] Front page/article listings

I still think it's incredibly important to show who has posted items, and the date, on the articles (I think it's just editorials that don't have this - documents, for example, seem to have this option). It would help highlight both the members, and the general diversity of postings. Would also add some credibility to many of the postings, and help visitors know how current any of that information is. This isn't such a priority for a single organization (even tho listing authors is usually a good idea then too), but it seems almost critical for a network like ours.

And an idea... I'm also wondering what the next steps for the newswire are? I'm not sure where the most recent conversation is. I believe I remember hearing that we're working on bringing in feeds from other organizations too, in addition to BIC and BWP (only two currently listed as sources)? I'm increasingly wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea to try the tag cloud, pulling from Del.icio.us feeds? Perhaps this would enable us to promote a broader and more relevant set of items? I've just set this up on my own site, also a Drupal site, and it was quite easy. The feed is pulling items four employees have tagged as 'ncc' onto our homepage. We could pull feeds from SG and Animator Del.icio.us accounts. Would be an interesting way to spice up/make more representative that newswire content.

August 2 suggestions from Karen Hi everyone. Some thoughts: - I really want to add the ability to attribute editorials on the homepage to organizations or authors. BIC has lots of website 'updates' - short commentaries on new developments - that we can post there. But there's no formalized way to reflect the author, organization, or even link to more information. These would be huge incentives for organizations to post, and we shouldn't completely anonymize content.

Response:Karen, would it help to use the form for documents and add as document type "editorial"? We are trying to make the site easier to use. Magela

Response: Great - sounds like a good solution. Thanks

New questions--Kshowalter 11:04, 4 March 2008 (CST):

  • Can we remove the WB/IMF Annual Meetings box? That’s been over for a while. Same with the ‘corruption at the World Bank’ box.
  • Can we add a box for ‘member stories’ at some point? Assuming we decide to go ahead with this idea?
  • A new thought: can we embed media on the homepage? I have a Drupal site and can do that, so am hoping it’s possible. Would be great to have a window with an embedded video clip from the “eyes” site. Or some photo we’ve uploaded. I know this is a new idea, and it’s a significant design decision. But would be soooo nice to add some multimedia to the homepage. Again, on my site it would be quite easy but I’m not sure what it would involve on IFIwn.

Response from Zoe: Arturo said last week that ITeM is currently working on integrating media feeds from ifiwatch.tv into the main database. our new techie - kester edmonds - has been in touch with arturo about this. this process of buidling multimedia feeds into non-video-based databases will be key to the fuiture value of ifiwatch.tv and its search/keyword based media feeds, so I have asked kester and arturo to document the process clearly so that it can be recplicated in other sites in future. I'm not sure yet where this documentation is happening - i can't see anything about it in this wiki - so hereby offer [1] for documentation on the ifiwatch.tv working wiki. if this is occuring elsewhere eg on drupal.org please do link, and inform how we can help make non techie explanation of what is involved and the benefits for ifiwatchnet members. thanks!


[edit] Blogs

One of the main topics we need to discuss here, I think, is the IFIwn blogs. This is a key feature for us to use to make the site more lively, to get opinions out there, debates started, to make the site a place people have to visit. Big questions include:

  • is it possible to set up blogs which can be accessed by multiple users? 
Response:  Yes, it is possible.  I like the idea of having users' blogs that contribute to the issues' blogs as it gives the opportunity of reading someone's opinion on several issues or have an overview of opinions on a specific issue.  
Yet, I think that it would be good to allow non-users or users that do not want to have a blog to post to the issue blogs.  My proposal is to allow to post directly to the issue blogs and keep the users' blogs for those those that like to have a personal blog.  Magela

Sounds good Magela. jeff

  • how do we expand access to any site user (i.e., not just members)? 
Response:It is technically possible and quite simple.  We need to answer two questions: 
1) Do we accept anonymous users or ask them to authenticate? (I prefer to have authenticated users, it might avoid some non relevant content and will give us an idea of how many people contribute) and 
2) do we publish immediately content submitted by non-members or do we go through an approval process first?  I think that we could publish right away and if it doesn't work we can always decide to use an approval process.  
There could be a line 'Flag inappropiate content', so users can warn us when there is something we need to look at.  
Magela ::What is the current set-up with the 'submit a document' feature on the homepage? Is this moderated? I don't think it would inappropriate content would be a real problem- if we notice it is becoming one, then we could always add a moderation feature afterwards.

Can we have at least an anti-spam feature? Then I would be OK with experimenting with a more open policy and deal with problems if/when they arise. I like the 'inappropriate content' flag. jeff

  • A question I also had recently is can we make RSS feeds for one specific blog by topic, in addition to users. For example, I would like to be able to subscribe to the IMF leadership selection blog, not just pchowla, nmolina, or alex.wilks blogs- is this already possible? (- David H) 
Response:It is possible, we will try to have it before the annual meetings.  Magela
Status: Finished.

19 July Additions by Peter Chowla

Blogs: The IMF leadership blog has started off well. A couple of teething issues I have had in getting this off the ground that I think could be improved for the next round:

  • Agree that we could use RSS feeds for each blog
  • When making a blog post - users should be able to create a new blog automatically somehow - not have to ask administrators to do it for them. So the nice drop down box on the blog post page could include a "new blog" entry which would then have a text box to fill in. 
Response:It is technically feasible.  I am not sure it would work well.  We might get many blogs with a couple of postings each.  What do others think?  
Magela::I think having many blogs with a couple of postings is a problem we would like to have. If the blog entries  become extremely cluttered on the site, I would be willing to volunteer to do some house-cleaning- reclassifying posts, merging similar blogs etc, but I think we should cross that bridge when we come to it.

I'm OK with risking blogs with few postings if it makes it more encouraging for users to set them up. jeff

  • If the above is not yet functional I hope the Admins can create the blog topics of Annual Meetings 2007, Spring Meetings 2008, AM 2008 etc now, not halfway through the meetings! 
Response:The Annual meetings 2007 blog is available. We didn't create blogs for 2008 but will be happy to do it if you think that we need them now.  Magela

Status: Now is available to board and regional animator group members the possibility to add blog topics. To create a new blog topic, you should use the "Taxonomy" command in the right column menu, and clicking over "Add terms" in the "Blog Topic or Event" line. Please, be careful using this command, as it could affect the appearance and performance of the whole site (especially deleting items). Editing the corresponding item in the list (clicking over the Edit link), you can add a description of the blog.
  • Dynamic tagging - I know that one way most blogs on the Internet work is to have keyword tagging for each blog post. So that within IMF leadership blog I can label posts that mention Dominique Strauss-Kahn with the tag "DSK", then these tags are clickable to find all posts tagged the same. 
Response:We are working on that for blogs and all kinds of documents.  You might have seen that the target institutions pages have tag cloud now.  It is not the final version, we are still working.  Magela
Very cool feature!! 
Status: Now it's ready the tags field in blog forms, under "Tags". The tag cloud will be activated when new terms are added.


Response:Do you remember which title it was.  We need to know that to see what is wrong.  Magela
  • In general I think the first blog page should not just dump all the blog content. It should provide descriptions and links to the specific blogs (perhaps a table summarising how many posts, comments, most recent post date etc) At the bottom of the page you can say "show all blog posts" - which I am sure NO ONE will want to do anyway. 
Response:I agree.  Right now what we will have is the issue blogs highlighted in the right bar but I certainly agree that the blogs could look better.  Magela
Also agree that some redesign of the main blog index page would provide some needed clarity. I like Peter's idea for a summary table of sorts.
  • The public commenting facility is one way to get more people involved. 
Response:It is available to anybody.
  • The real thing needed is to get more people knowing and using their IFIwatchnet logins. I will get to that below.

30 August from Jeff Powell Blog - just tried to comment on a blog post (without logging in first). After posting, I got a 'this is being moderated' message. Then when I logged in to try to find it and approve it, I couldn't find it. I'd prefer that we go for unmoderated with responsibility to bloggers to check on comments.

[edit] Documents/other list enhancements requested

  • Ability to search and sort IFIwatchers list. If I want to find an IFIwatcher in India I have to scroll through the whole list. Bad news! Make it searchable and/or sortable by country. Magela 
Response:I agree that the list would look much better if it is organized using some criteria, for example by country or by name of the organization.  Still it is not necessary to scroll through the whole list,  using the browser's search facility will easily allow to search a country or an organization.  Magela
  • Date-limited searches on documents 
Response: The forms that IFIWatchnet has been using since it was based at BWP do not include the publishing date of the document.  There is a field for the date it was added to IFIwn.  Do you want to use that date? It might be confusing.  Magela

The original meaning of 'pub date' was when the document was published - not when it was added on IFIwatchnet (which we should have a record of when the entry was made, no?) If still confusing, the dates shouldn't be all that different, and we can do it correctly from here forward. Most of the time users only want a 'rough grain' filter - ie, year, or at most, month. jeff

  • Multiple search from the front documents page - ie combine a category search with a keyword search at the start. Shouldn't be hard to include two conditions. 
Response:  Yes, we can include an advanced search.  Magela
  • Sort order changes on documents results list: ie I can click buttons to sort by publish date, author, relevance, title etc 
Response: Usually search results are sorted by relevance.  Probably documents could by sorted using different parameters but we need to see how much work it would take.  Google only sorts by relevance.  Magela
  • Email a document/link - a simple pop-up that lets anyone email the attached document or the link + abstract to someone else. Will increase traffic to the site. Can go for calendar events, documents, blog posts, anything! 
Response:  Yes, we will do it asap.
  • Public submission of calendar/documents/contacts - I know this creates spam problems. There are two options for solving this: require users to do one of those "type the letters from the image" confirmations. Or an email to the person submitting asking them to confirm the submission by following a link. Don't know which of these is easier to implement in Drupal. Of course it should be moderated for people not logged in, but using one of the above helps to eliminate the spam that makes moderation difficult. 
Response:  We already have a public submission form for documents, and we can add forms for calendar, contacts, etc.  We have a spam filter, it is not the one that asks you to type the letters, it a fancier one,  there is some text that is not visible for the human eye but it is 'visible' for computers, if the field if filled it is a machine.

17 August comment from David

  • I've noticed that the number of characters entered into the title fields of 'submit document' on the homepage and under 'create content'/'document' is limited (maybe it is in other places as well?) Can this limit be changed/removed? Maybe there's a reason for keeping it I'm not considering?

20 August small note: On the add document form, the sub-title field is now above the URL and title field. Oh, and in the wiki article view, the 'response boxes' aren't wrapping ... annoyingly heading off into infinity on the right-hand side. Tom - have you had a chance to think about improving formatting? As I'm still finding this not very user-friendly. jeff

[edit] Contacts

This is a really important and useful feature to be able to find contact information for other IFIwatchers. I started encouraging people to get this in the database for the spring meetings only to realise that it was not maintained or managed and not updated! This was a disaster. Things needing to be done:

Comment: IFIwatchers that are attending the meeting are the ones that have to update the contacts list. Magela

  • A link to "Contacts" comes up in the top menu bar when you log in
  • A nice form for updating contact information
  • In ADVANCE (not after meetings start) the options to select meeting attendance and contact info during the attendance. Like the blogs above - it would be nice if this was user-generated. IE we don't have to wait for admins to add a category. Any user could add a meeting and then submit local contact information for this meeting. Could be VERY useful for organising during things like the World Social Forum...
  • And someone to moderate and monitor contacts submitted. Last time so many went into a holding bin and were never retrieved until I started wading through the SPAM and pulling a few out.

Comment I am not sure I understand you. It seems to me that you are talking about contacts and the agenda. We will be using tags (free language) instead of categories, so anyone will be able to add a tag.

Think there is some confusion here. Peter is talking about the 'who's in town' type feature that we have used at the WB/IMF spring and annual meetings (distinct from both the calendar and the list of IFIwatchers). This allows IFIwatchers to tell others where they will be staying, their contact details, when they will be in DC, and what meetings they will attend. jeff 

Status: A tag field has been added to the events form, so when adding an event each member can specify new tags for it. 

Annual Meetings and Who's in town: We added a link from the Calendar that shows the events list related to the Annual Meetings 07. Contacts can be related to events in the calendar, which also can be displayed in the Who's in Town list. Also, there's a printer friendly link to generate a printing sheet from the Who's in Town list. Members should start to list themselves for the meeting.

Membership: I complained at the time of the switch over to Drupal that no notice was given to IFIWatchnet members. I am still not convinced that ever happened. I never got an email. And based on the number of people I asked to contribute to the blog but who couldn't log in because passwords no longer worked - I guess no email ever went out! This should be fixed up immediately. 

Response: We certainly informed about the switch to Drupal.  Let me try to convince you.  The whole concept of IFIWatchnet was hierarchical, ifiwatchnet, regional animators, member organizations (one contact person in each organization).  When we sent the newsletters or mail messages,  they went to the list of contacts, you probably were not in that list.  The contact person in each organization was responsible for distributing ifiwatchnet information among those interested in the institution, if they failed to do so, then information didn't reach anybody.  Now, after the Colonia meeting, we have decided to have a different structure, and hopefully this will allow us to reach people interested in IFIs without intermediaries.  That is one reason why it would be good to ask people to get a user name, when there is something important to communicate we can send it to the whole community.
  • So an email to members informing them of changes to the site and giving clear and detailed instructions about how to reset passwords from the old site. 
Response: Contact persons from member organizations have been informed.  Anyway,  the possibility of getting a new password exists, see http://www.ifiwatchnet.org/?q=en/user/password and http://www.ifiwatchnet.org/?q=en/user/register

Magela

  • A membership form! This is so important! A simple form that lets people sign up to IFIwatchnet and gives them a login and password. Drupal should have an absolutely standard system for doing this so it should be really easy. If someone wants to join but has to write an email and go through a bunch of steps they are maybe 1% likely to do it. Whereas if they have a simple membership form they are 99% likely to do it. It can be moderated so that accounts have to be approved by someone to verify that they really are IFIwatchers. 
Response:See http://www.ifiwatchnet.org/?q=en/user/register
  • How about a recommend a friend form. So that I can fill in the form and the web sites sends an invitation email to someone else I think should use IFIwatchnet. Removes a lot of moderator work because with a recommendation link from a current member we can trust the new member.

Response: It is a very good idea. Magela

  • What ever happened to our member newsletter? I saw a template long ago but nothing more. Would be a great way to remind people that IFIwatchnet is there and waiting for them to use it. 
Response: Someone has the newsletter in his/her mailbox in BWP and didn't distribute it! We have been sending it, the one that is going to be sent this month is in the wiki.  It was possible to make suggestions, additions, revisions, etc. until Aug. 10th.

Other

  • What ever happened to having ifiwatchnet host mailing lists? Why do we have to use things like dgroups, yahoogroups and/or others. This was supposed to be implemented years ago but don't think it ever happened. 
Response: We have mailing lists for the coordination group.  We could create as many as people want. The dgroups were created when IFIwn was hosted by BWP, a long time ago.  Still, we should tell people that it is possible,  perhaps a form to ask for a mailing list, but that would be for members only.  Also,  it should be announced in the next newsletter.

We can delete those dgroups if they're no longer needed. Just let me know. jeff

  • Links from IFIWN to wiki and a link from the wiki to IFIWN - I am lazy and want to click not type these.

Priorities: I know this is a long list of things to do. Here would be my priority order: (1) Membership form (I would call this one URGENT) (2) email members/newsletter (3) Contacts links and forms improvements (4) Document search/sort improvements (5) blogs list/front page (6) blogs improvements like tagging/RSS (7) email and recommend a friend forms (8) public submissions forms (9) IFIwatchers list search and sort

23 July

  • Is it possible to generate RSS feeds by specific tags? For instance, if I want to subscribe to any EIB related materials coming from the site, could I do so? I think this would be a very helpful service for groups.

27 July by Peter Chowla

[edit] The Shared Area

Also just been wondering what is going to happen to the shared area that hours and hours of development (and thus lots of money) went into?? Will that be dropped in favour of this wiki?? Seems silly to do that to me. I think leave the wiki for IFIWN development issues - like we are using it here, but keep the Shared Area. However here are my suggestions for making the shared area work:

  • Rename it. It isn't so much about sharing but about having discussions. So call it that. Like "Bulletin Board" or "Discussions".
  • Promote it. Like other things it needs to have a link at the top of the IFI Watchnet page, right next to "Documents" and "Events". It also need to be promoted as a key feature of IFIwatchnet as a membership drive rolls out to get individual users. You need buy-in from the animators that they will spend time promoting it and contributing to it.
  • Stop double logins. If someone is already logged into IFIWN why do I have to do it again when I click on the forums. Lets get that integrated. (Same for this wiki)
  • Redo the forums. At the least reorder them. So that a first group of forums is perhaps project related (not IFIWN project but IFI projects like Chad Cam). I can suggest the following categories for the Forum: IFI Projects (Chad-Cam, NT2, Botnia, etc), Institutions (WB, IMF, ADB etc), Themes (Education, Gender, Health). The key is to get one group of people active in one of these areas to start using it. There has to be a test case. Put the IFIWN development stuff at the bottom as the last category.
  • Alerts. Most of the bulletin board software allows things like email alerts - so that when a response is posted it gets email to the original poster. That is key to getting long threads with many replies going.
  • Feed it. Set it up with RSS feeds for those who use RSS
  • Pull the image galleries out. I mean promote it separately as a separate category on the front of IFIwatchnet. Right next to "Documents" and "Events" and "Discussion" And "Campaigns"(the campaign in a box feature which we have all been waiting for) should be "Gallery".
  • Clean it up. Dump the "Downloads" and "Support" sections as those functions are now elsewhere (main documents or here on the wiki or in the discussion areas themselves. That eliminates confusing headers and navigation. IE there is one navigation for all of IFIWN - discussion boards and documents etc included. The "Discussions" link in the nav bar goes to a list of forums with sections and forums broken down as I described above.

Note to really make any of this work requires some effort to get people to use it. I suggest we have to start with one group of users we know who would benefit. The target group would be: dispersed by geographic area, mainly corresponding by email now, but large in numbers, and who do not have or use an email list or who are finding the email list too cumbersome because of large volume. Can anyone think of a good start for this? Maybe the EIB people or the ADB activist people? Or people from a specific project perspective?

Just tried playing with the shared area (my first time since it went to Drupal). Is there any way to add a new forum topic? What looks like that ('post new forum topic'), actually requires you to post under one of the existing topics. Also, is it possible to add users? (in the past we had been hoping that we could set it up so that moderators of each topic could add/delete members, even if they weren't IFIwatchnet members). btw. link to IFIwatchnet home from the shared area is broken.

--Kshowalter 11:04, 4 March 2008 (CST)* Can the SA and wiki somehow file/move away older conversations. There’s so much on there, and only a few recent threads. I know newer items move to the top, but would still be nice to archive some of the really old stuff we likely won’t use again?


3 August by Peter Chowla

[edit] News:

I noticed the other day that someone posted a news item from a media outlet as a document on the front page (http://www.ifiwatchnet.org/?q=en/node/2906). I was of the impression that IFIWatchnet was for member-generated content. I particular I think mixing News with documents produced by members is not a good idea. That said, I know there has been discussion in the past of IFIWatchnet serving as a news repository - tracking what happens in IFIs. Here are some ideas keeping in mind that we have experience of this: see the newswire on the BWP homepage and a separate and searchable page (http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/resources/newswire.shtml):

  • Set up a separate newsline category/section/content type
  • Take incoming RSS feeds and let each organisation contribute. We have a feed already for the newswire which covers most English language publications.
  • Combine feeds/filtering for big news aggregaters. So that you automatically import any item from the Google News RSS feed that mentions the World Bank, the IMF, the RDBs etc.
  • Reexport this as an RSS feed or a news ticker or some other such tool that people can put on their websites. Similar to the calender function.
  • Set up an alerts system (like Google News) that sends out as-it-is-posted, daily, or weekly alerts of new newswire items. Perferrably with a language choice.
  • Of course the newswire should be fully searchable.

Comment: The BWP news feed looks great, why not use it for IFIWn instead of doing something that a member organization is already doing.


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