New Feature Request - Who am I Following in addition to Followers

This came from a member and I think it's a feature that any Ningster will want.

He wants to know who he is following, not just who is following him.

I don't see it anywhere in the UI or in the documentation.

I would simplify the UI/UX by removing the "Followers" menu item from the profile's menu and make Followers and Following items in the Stats area.

If that's not an (easy) option, then I would add to the Followers page a Following group and change the visual display to what the Galleries page looked like if there were only two galleries - one named Followers and the other named Following. I would even think of adding the lightbox feature.

On related notes, but not strictly relevant to this post, not sure why there is a "delete" button permanently visible. This could be a mouse-over trash can icon and appear in the upper-right corner to make it consistent with behavior in comments, etc. It would also be very helpful if there was the same controller as in image galleries that allowed me to change the size of the images by selecting the number of images in a row, from 4-8.

updated by @claygordon: 02/27/15 06:20:10AM

"He wants to know who he is following, not just who is following him."

Yes. That seemed odd to me as well...especially if both people need to be following each other if private messages are to be possible.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Jamroom already supports this, it's just not "showing" anywhere.

There are no plans to remove the followers option from the menu, since the "stats" section is skin dependent (i.e. we don't use it here on Jamroom.net).

So really it comes down to where we want it to be shown at. It's a user level item, so my first inclination would be to place something in the user drop down menu.


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Brian -

In the top nav makes some sense as that's the place where the Private Notes feature shows up. It also sounds like a pretty modular piece of code that someone could easily copy and paste into the existing menu code.

OTOH, if it's a really concise piece of code I'd prefer to see it in the Stats section of a member's profile because it's a kind of measure of participation in the community and it would be fun to see the number of people I am following in that context.

My .03, adjusted for inflation.

-- edited to add --

It may go without saying but I will say it anyway, but the people I am following should only be visible to me if this goes in the Stats section. This makes it a little more complicated than if it's in the menu nav which does that test already.
updated by @claygordon: 01/24/15 01:54:09PM

Linking to it from Stats would be a skin setup, so that's not hard - it's just an extra template that would need to be created for the NingJa skin.

Having a "Profiles You Follow" option in the user menu is doable to, so we'll check that out.

Thanks!


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Brian -

Why wouldn't I just do it inside the existing stats.tpl that's already called by sidebar.tpl?

Wherever module that's in. I couldn't find it.

There is no stats.tpl - the stats are part of the profile_sidebar.tpl. While you could put a link to the "profiles you follow" there, we would not want the actual display of WHO you are following to display where the stats are. Does that make sense?


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Makes no sense to display everyone there. I was thinking of having a button, like the number of images I had uploaded:

Following:###.

Click on the button and see everyone you're following.

Correct - and that would link to a page that we would need to create (unless you feel like doing it yourself on your site).


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Brian -

The page in question is something that I think all Ningsters are going to want. I am not an expert on these matters and I trust the JRTeam's ability to do it right (and do it faster) than I do mine. lol

The next question is what capabilities that page has.

I think the ability to change sizes of the images - as on a gallery page - would be very cool (and should be added to the Followers page). Default sort order might be by last log in with those who'd logged in most recently at the front of the list.

Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't it be easier to send out a follow request, and have the person either accept it or decline and make this a mutual event instead of maybe having this be a one way follow?
And I agree that people are going to want to see who they is following them.

Perrie -

Following in JR is set up more like following on Twitter. You can follow someone, but they don't have to follow you.

Facebook has a hybrid system. You can be friends with someone but not follow them, which means that you won't see their stuff in your timeline but you can do other stuff that friends can do (like invite them to play Candy Crush Saga).

On JR, when you follow someone they get a note that you are following them. They can go to your profile and follow you back.

Or not.

The way I have set up my system, members can only send private notes to people who follow them. This reduces private spam and you can choose to stop receiving it by un-following someone who's sending you private messages you do not like.

At least that's the way I understand it to work.
updated by @claygordon: 01/24/15 04:44:52PM

Yes, it was explained that the JR follow method also helps prevent possible hacking somehow...can't remember the details though.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

It's less about hacking than spamming. If we (community moderators/site admins) make it impossible for members to send Private Notes to people who don't follow them then members are protected from that form of spam. They can still spam in comments but those are usually easily outed and I can take care of those as the moderator.

I've also had members ask me if I could make their profiles private as they were showing up in Google search results and they were worried about potential stalkers. This could not be done in Ning. However, in JR, here is a Global Privacy setting in each Profile which enables members to make their profile visible only to themselves and to their followers. I don't know if this keeps their profile from being indexed by search engines but it does mean that the profile content can't easily be viewed unless the profile owner accepts a follow (there's an "approve followers" option in the account tab) from someone. I have also limited the location data to a country (edited sidebar.tpl) whereas in Ning city and state were displayed which could be used to help locate someone. So that issue is at least addressed to some extent.

As community moderators I think we assume a lot of responsibility in making the community a safe place for our members. At least it's important to MY members. And I am happy that JR has some good tools to help me manage these important details for my community.

Clay is right - the followers setup is designed to prevent spamming - we had a more traditional "friends" model in JR4 and it was an issue with many of our sites.

A profile set to private (or followers only) won't be indexed by Google (unless it was public for a while - I'm not sure how long Google takes to "expire" pages from it's index).

Hope this helps!


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Brian -

That bit about private profiles not being indexed by search engines (not just Google, right?) is really good news for some people.

I commend you on the decision to architect the system this way. Good job.

Thanks! The privacy setup was a big deal for us early on, as in JR4 it was kind of an "add on" so didn't function the same everywhere. In JR5 it's actually part of the core - every single query through a datastore has a privacy check to ensure what is being returned to the requesting user is only what they have permission to access. Its pretty cool, so thanks for noticing


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net