Profiles and Social Features

Sharing

As a user I want to make sure mapstories can be played on different websites besides mapstory.org.

• Make sure animated gif thumbnails show up in Twitter and Facebook cards
• Enable MapStory to be shared to local servers as a file, including all components:
  • MapStory Configuration Options
  • StoryLayer(s)
    • StoryLayer Metadata
    • Style(s)
    • Version(s)
  • Chapter(s)
  • StoryPins
  • StoryFrames
  • Story Metadata

geospatial and temporal search/discovery

• Allow users to search StoryLayers by time, perhaps by constraining a timeline and showing layers with start/end dates that fall within those bounds
• We should also consider the use of Eras in temporal search as a way to standardize time outside of conventional cartesian time
• Allow users to search StoryLayers by geographic areas, perhaps by drawing a bounding box on a map interface and showing layers with a bounding box that falls inside those bounds.

Social Components

MapStory Detail Page

• Add space with cards under the heading “more stories like this one”
• Add space with cards under the heading “more stories by this storyteller”
• Find place to add social features to MapStory Detail Page: flag story; rate story; comment on story; send message to story author

Personal Profile Enhancements

• Add “Playlists” feature. With playlists, Profile owner can give Playlist a name and add MapStories to the Playlist. A Playlist can then play continuously without user intervention, like “Loop MapStory” but for multiple MapStories. Use case is a museum displaying a series of Maptories on a display.
• Add feature on Individual Profile showing user activity density (IE Editing, composing, etc.), similar to Github activity graph
• Let users control the order and display of their StoryLayers and MapStories on their profile
• Add a new “Dashboard” or "Drafting Board" view for the Profile owner that is distinct from the public facing Individual Profile. The Dashboard will be the place to manage the public profile, to track notifications and messages, and to launch activities, such as authoring Journals, uploading data, starting MapStories, etc. It will become the “home page” for users.
• Let me see my notifications in a section of the dashboard, as well as by email notification.
• Add back integrated login to Wiki and Warper

Organization / Initiative Profiles

For Organization Pages, the goal is to promote participation by organizations who are thinking in terms of curating an organization page over the long term, not as a short term project management tool. Users that simply want to pool content under an Organization heading can use Tags for that.

The basic pitch to an Organization is that registering an Organization Page provides:

• a public presence at a secured URL that is easy to find and share
• an opportunity to present content not as a real name, but as an Org name. MapStory has a real names policy, but understands that oftentimes organizations prefer to present content under the header of their org not an individual.
• Ability for users to search for the Organization in the Explore
• a way to group all members of the Org in a common space
• analytics and notifications (down the line)

MapStory administrators will work to make sure Organization URLs are only given to those Organizations registered with that name. For example, I can’t secure mapstory.org/organization/worldbank just because I requested it first. To enable this, there should be a manual activation of an organization page once the requesting org has submitted payment information.

Since the goal is primarily to provide Organizations with a public channel, and not to provide them access to lots of proprietary software, the price point will be low. Organizations are in the habit of subscribing to Social Media like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for no cost. In our marketing, we can emphasize that subscribing to an Organization page is part of what sustains MapStory and ensures that content on MapStory is not subject to commercial influence.

As a starting frame, we recommend 3 pricing points:

• Nonprofit/educational
• Small business (under 10 employees)
• Corporate

If a nonprofit/educational or small business org page were to exceed a certain threshold of data added to it, we would automatically move them into the Corporate pay level.

We want to encourage Organization Pages that are long-standing, rather than lots of quick pop-up and take-down pages created for time-bounded projects. Again, for this users could just create a Tag to group content. Thus, the payment model would encourage long-term commitment.

Organizations Profiles

• Add subscription/payment workflow to Organization Pages
• Let Org Page administrators control the order and display of StoryLayers and MapStories on the Org Page
• Let Org Page administrators track notifications in the manage profile area, as well as by email notification.
• Integrate an Analytics section into Org Page manage profile area.
• A pre-req is that multiple authors be able to be assigned as authors of a story. This will enable an organization to represent a story as being by a storyteller, and by the Organization. This will also be helpful in situations where an agency or organization funds someone to produce stories. They will be able to be credited as an organization owner/author of the story.
• Stretch goal: Provide organization profile owners with an "analytics digest" that can be shared with Org Page administrators. The analytics would provide intel on use of layers by users across the site, edit history, stories published, data downloads, and other items of interest to Org Page administrators as we learn needs over time. This is an "Org Page" specific set of notifications.

Initiatives Profiles

In future, Initiative Pages will likely emerge features distinct from Organization Pages that are appropriate for building community and promoting 'crowdsourcing' (i.e. leaderboards, activity stats, etc). Also, importer upgrades that will increasingly make Initiative "content" more rule-based and automatic, rather than arbitrary and manually defined as it currently is.

• Create workflow whereby Initiative Leads can establish ‘schema rules’ that newly uploaded layers can be merged into in order to promote large-scale common layers.
• Schema information will be articulated on the Initiative Page
• Schema information for active Initiatives will be promoted in the Importer to encourage users to tie new data uploads to Initiatives rather than create duplicate layers
• Create Leaderboard section within Initiative Members area to highlight users that have made the most edits to layers in the Initiative

Social Interactions

Messages

Nothing new planned

Community Blog/Journal

The community blog is designed as a place for all registered users to author posts that can be shared with the community.

• Add WYSIWYG editor (bold, italics, underline, headers, ordered and unordered bulleted lists, blockquotes, hyperlinks)
• Let author upload images as part of their post.
• Let any author add tags to their post. Have auto-complete for tags to promote common spellings
• Let administrator add tags to any post
• Let administrator set select posts as "featured", which keeps them at the top despite publishing date
• Let reader target posts by clicking on tags and filtering content

Notifications

• Let user control whether they are notified by email, or via my personal profile, about certain actions that occur on MapStory.org
• review and update notification options currently allowed for in GeoNode
• Create a notification summary space on the profile so the user can see notifications there as well as receiving email
• Make sure users can track any activity on content they created
• Make it easy for users to follow activity on issues they care about ("Watch this StoryLayer"). This means they would be notified any time a layer or story with the interest tag is published
• Support both Email and in-site notifications

Likes/Favorites/Ratings/Flags

Implement these for stories and on Story Detail Page (currently only on Layers). Otherwise, nothing new planned.

Storyteller Leaderboards Filters

Users should be able to easily see which users are most active.

• In Storyteller tab, create “Sort By” fields for ‘Storyteller with Most Edits’ and ‘Storyteller with most viewed stories’

Initatives/Organization Pages

Add field for “Interests” on Initiatives and Organization Pages. Clicking an “Interest” should spawn a search with the Interest filter in the Team Type (Initiative or Org)

Activity Graph

Add feature on Individual Profile showing user activity density, similar to Github activity graph

• Show the frequency and density of edits on a layer (like the Github heatmap and sparklines on repos and user profiles) on the viewer page, and provide similar summary information on the Layer card.
• Show edits by the usernames that have the most edits, in addition to showing by most recent edits made
• Let any user that contributes an edit to a StoryLayer also edit the metadata (all metadata edits need to be versioned and tracked by users)

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