My Account/Improvements

From OpenStreetMap

Now that the functionality is there in the current version of the site for having personal account information, I'd like to suggest some improvements to this and the user profiles, and will be attempting to add some of these things to the site in the near future.

Please help build this list with any suggestions/add comments where necessary.

Contents 1 User profiles 2 Login 3 Editing user account information 4 Diary entries 5 RSS feeds 6 Messaging 7 User Stats

User profiles

Each user now has their own profile page at user/username (e.g. user/dankarran) with links to various bits of functionality including user messaging, friends, diaries. This page could be cleaned up to make it more useful. Some of these things are already there, or may just be better in different places:

• should be largely the same whether logged in or logged out, or looking at your own profile or another user's
• should show 'user says:' information right at top of page, under username
• should show home location
  • location map
  • 'near [place name]' perhaps based on Name finder API
• should show latest messages in inbox and link to inbox (and RSS feed accessed from a randomly hashed URL?) (only to self)
• should show latest diary entries and link to full diary (and RSS feed)
• should have quick method of adding a diary entry (like Facebook/Jaiku status updates) (only for self)
• should list friends and link to their diary entries (and RSS feed) and maybe map of locations
• should list nearby mappers and link to their diary entries (and RSS feed) and maybe map of locations
• should provide preference editing
  • 'edit' link on each editable profile field, perhaps?
  • also a link to a preferences page for less profile-specific things? (as we do with the user/<username>/account page at the moment)
• a field for wished language (we can use it later on)
• a field for languages spoken by the user

Login

• could use the same login as wiki (same username/password, single login via domain-wide cookies)

Editing user account information

There is functionality on this page (such as nearby mappers) which doesn't fit here very comfortably. This page should just be for editing your own account information.

• should be able to set a default language for user - for when writing in their diary, and potentially other things in the future

Diary entries

• should have ability to associate a location with each entry (useful for e.g., 'Today I was editing these streets in Soho and was amazed at how many tiny alleyways and things there are.')
  • and provide that as GeoRSS tags in RSS.
• should be able to assign a language to each entry
  • use first language selected as default
• could auto link URLs in blog posts
• could show entries from users regular blog via rss feed set in preferences (eg http://my.private.site/blog/rss.jsp?tag=osm ), as users with existing blogs are probably reluctant to switch or write two blogs. This way osm would get much more exposure in established blogs, and journal would just aggregate those. Now there is a wiki page OpenStreetMap blog posts listing user's blog posts (and feeds).
• should allow for previewing a diary entry
• should allow modifying a diary entry
• needs some way of responding to diary entries (maybe just 'trackbacks' from one user's diary to another)

RSS feeds

• RSS feeds for individual user diaries
• RSS feeds for friends' diary entries
• RSS feeds for nearby mappers' diary entries
• RSS feeds for all diary entries
• RSS feeds for all diary entries in each language
• a meta tag should be used on each page specifying RSS feeds so that browsers will pick them up
• Add GeoRSS tags where applicable (personal diaries...)
• Recent edits in my area as GeoRSS (so it can be shown as markers on openlayers)
• Ping a blogging service to notify of updates

Messaging

• should show number of unread messages in top right of each page, next to username, with link to inbox

User Stats

An encouragement to many users is to see some stats of their activity. If we could pull the node, way and gpx data stats for the user concerned onto the user page, ideally with the position in the global scheme of things, then it should provide mapping motivation. Awards can then also be doled out automatically by the system. Blackadder 17:08, 12 June 2007 (BST)

I like this idea but I'm not sure of the most effective way to do it. I doubt we should be running these stats against the live database. Could we do something against Planet.osm and import the results? --Dankarran 18:42, 21 June 2007 (BST)