Suggestion: visibility drop down

Suggestion: instead of showing the visibility drop down by default. Have a button at the top turning on visibility settings.

The privacy/visibility by each email is really prominent. Is this deliberate? It makes me wonder should I give access this to this like I'm _supposed_ to change it. Speaking from an organizational level, email and mobile phone numbers are the way to connect so I would rather members not hide from each other unless they have a reason. Unless this is policy-driven, I'd suggest not having visibility settings displayed by default.

[Moderator note: This thread was split from the Directory 2013 Beta Released announcement thread because it is a different topic.]

syncretic wrote:The privacy/visibility by each email is really prominent. Is this deliberate?

I am guessing you are describing what you see when the Directory initially opens. As you will note this is the "My Household" selection. You are seeing your household in the edit mode. The top item displayed is the "Household Visibility" setting. It sets the overall visibility setting for the household. Then there is a visibility setting each for the household address, household telephone number, household e-mail address individual telephone number, and individual e-mail address.

syncretic wrote:It makes me wonder should I give access this to this like I'm _supposed_ to change it.

Only if you want to. This after all is the edit display for your household.

syncretic wrote:Speaking from an organizational level, email and mobile phone numbers are the way to connect so I would rather members not hide from each other unless they have a reason. Unless this is policy-driven, I'd suggest not having visibility settings displayed by default.

The purpose for displaying this is so members can edit the visibility settings. Id does not make sense to hide this capability.

syncretic wrote:Suggestion: instead of showing the visibility drop down by default. Have a button at the top turning on visibility settings.

The privacy/visibility by each email is really prominent. Is this deliberate? It makes me wonder should I give access this to this like I'm _supposed_ to change it. Speaking from an organizational level, email and mobile phone numbers are the way to connect so I would rather members not hide from each other unless they have a reason. Unless this is policy-driven, I'd suggest not having visibility settings displayed by default.

In some countries (in Europe, for example), the default visibility settings are for leadership only due to privacy laws. In those countries it makes sense to make the visibility settings fairly prominent to encourage people to opt-in and make their information visible. That seems more important than the fairly small probability that users elsewhere will change their settings simply because it's easily accessible.

I agree that it's really prominent on the new directory. As I indicated in another post, I also have concerns about the way it's been done now.

With this additional post, I went back to compare how it's done currently and how it's done in the rcdirectory beta. After reviewing your concerns and those in my previous post, I'm thinking I like the way it's currently done better than the proposed new way. It's not as prominent, and if you click on the Edit link, you get a better explanation of what you're doing, along with a link to the help page right there in the bubble that pops up (rcdirectory has a help link at the top of the page).

eblood66: what do you think about the way it currently works in production? Anyone else have thoughts?

mevans wrote:I agree that it's really prominent on the new directory. As I indicated in another post, I also have concerns about the way it's been done now.

With this additional post, I went back to compare how it's done currently and how it's done in the rcdirectory beta. After reviewing your concerns and those in my previous post, I'm thinking I like the way it's currently done better than the proposed new way. It's not as prominent, and if you click on the Edit link, you get a better explanation of what you're doing, along with a link to the help page right there in the bubble that pops up (rcdirectory has a help link at the top of the page).

eblood66: what do you think about the way it currently works in production? Anyone else have thoughts?

I think they are trying to make it more obvious how to change visibility settings probably for opt-in areas and I think that's probably good. But I agree the meaning of the drop-downs could be clearer (as you indicated in your other post) and additional help could be useful (maybe a help icon beside each drop-down with tooltip help when clicked or hovered over?).

Really the biggest problem with the beta in my mind is that it goes directly to the My Household view. When I go to the directory, I almost always want the Households view (which is where it goes in the production version). Perhaps there should be a special 'setup' screen when someone first visits the directory that asks them to set the visibility settings and gives better help. And perhaps that screen would only show up for areas with an opt-in default policy. That would probably satisfy the OPs concern while hopefully making the directory more useful in opt-in areas but at the expense of significantly more development.