[RFC] Personal notes about other users

[callumacrae]

I have two problems with that proposal.

First, it's not really a custom profile field; CPFs are generally things that the user enters about himself. It could perhaps be implemented as a CPF, but special coding would be needed to access only the viewing user's notes about the other user.

Second, a "tag" implies a short (one or two word) phrase to allow finding something (in my opinion, of course). This feature is more likely going to be used for longer notes than tags ("Has a son that goes to school with my daughter") and probably won't be searchable, just like signatures aren't searchable (although it would be nice if both were searchable).

I think that "User Notes" sounds more reasonable. I would display something like "My Notes About [Member Name]" in the profile.

You would also probably need a permission to allow saving User Notes. You could also extend this into providing a "wall" with a permission like Allow sharing User Notes with others and an option in the User Notes field like Allow others to see my notes (which would display the names of the users who posted public notes). Two birds, one stone.

Steve

CPFs are used for plenty of things! I think that they'd be perfect for this.

User notes is already used for notes left by moderators, and I think that it would be confusing to have the term used for both. Tagging is used on other websites to do what this RFC suggests, which is why I suggested the term.

[Pony99CA]

I have two problems with that proposal.

First, it's not really a custom profile field; CPFs are generally things that the user enters about himself. It could perhaps be implemented as a CPF, but special coding would be needed to access only the viewing user's notes about the other user.

Second, a "tag" implies a short (one or two word) phrase to allow finding something (in my opinion, of course). This feature is more likely going to be used for longer notes than tags ("Has a son that goes to school with my daughter") and probably won't be searchable, just like signatures aren't searchable (although it would be nice if both were searchable).

I think that "User Notes" sounds more reasonable. I would display something like "My Notes About [Member Name]" in the profile.

You would also probably need a permission to allow saving User Notes. You could also extend this into providing a "wall" with a permission like Allow sharing User Notes with others and an option in the User Notes field like Allow others to see my notes (which would display the names of the users who posted public notes). Two birds, one stone.

CPFs are used for plenty of things! I think that they'd be perfect for this.

CPFs are used for admins to keep data about users (like the old anti-spam method) and for users to use as profile fields. Nothing like this use exists as far as I know.

But tell me what options the admin would define the CPF with to have it display on your profile when I'm viewing it, but not when you were viewing it? I believe that some new options would have to be added to CPFs and even then it would be forcing it in.

Creating a separate table (or perhaps using the Moderator User Notes table if possible) allows more flexibility, I think. As I said, you could use the field for a wall and/or for personal notes about the user.

User notes is already used for notes left by moderators, and I think that it would be confusing to have the term used for both. Tagging is used on other websites to do what this RFC suggests, which is why I suggested the term.

It may be a little confusing for a moderator, but that can be handled with a little renaming ("Moderator User Notes", perhaps?).

As for "tagging", I'm not much into social networks, so I'm not familiar with that usage. However, as I mentioned above, as this could also be used for implementing a wall, you could call it "Public Wall" or "Private Wall" depending on whether the admin allowed comments made by users to be visible to others. A Private Wall would only show you comments that you made; a Public Wall would show you everybody's public comments and your private comments (flagged to indicate which comments were private).

Steve

[Jules.LT]

Just curious: what's the next stage in the process for this to maybe happen?
Do RFCs get systematically evaluated and transferred to a TO DO list somewhere?

Cheers,
Jules

[imkingdavid]

Just curious: what's the next stage in the process for this to maybe happen?
Do RFCs get systematically evaluated and transferred to a TO DO list somewhere?

Cheers,
Jules

Assuming there has been a general positive consensus toward a feature being included in the core (including such from development team members), the process involves the creation of a ticket on our tracker, and the eventual submission of a pull request against the phpbb github repository. Anyone is welcome to do so (it does not have to be a development team member) assuming they follow the guidelines in our wiki pages (1, 2, and 3, among others) and are confident that they can properly implement the feature as described in the RFC/ticket.

There is no real, official "to-do" list, per se, (though you could argue that the tracker itself is a to-do list) but development team members generally browse the RFC forum to see if there are any features they would be interested in implementing. Because we're all volunteer, it's really based on how much time we have for working on a given feature. Obviously, if a community member wants to see something done sooner, rather than later, it may be more worthwhile for them to do so themselves.

[Jules.LT]

ok, thanks!

[Jules.LT]

So... no interest, then?

[Jules.LT]

Is there a point for me to go and try to understand the ticket system and add this there myself?

[DavidIQ]

Well the point of these RFC topics is two fold:

1. Gauge interest for the suggested change. If interest is high then someone might pick up the task of implementing.
2. If no interest then it would be up to the person suggesting the change to effect the change and create the ticket.

If nobody has interest and the original suggester is not going to do the work then the ticket will simply exist for no reason and be closed some time after.

[Jules.LT]

You guys keep saying that the original suggester could do the work, like learning how to do it isn't a huge barrier to entry.
It's a bit annoying.

Bah, too bad.

[EXreaction]

There are hundreds of tickets to fix bugs, make improvements, and create new features. This is a volunteer organization and the development team doesn't have the capabilities to address every feature that every one of our users wants. We try to do our best to address the features that are highly desired by our community, but we don't have the capabilities to even address all of those.

If there is a feature you want, but you are not able to code it yourself, there are still a few options. You can use the mod requests forum at phpBB to see if anyone in the community is interested in developing the feature as a mod, or as a final option you can always hire someone to write the code for you, either as a mod, an extension, or even to write the code to create a pull request to try and get the feature in phpBB.