Bugs and feature requests

Add bugs and feature requests here

Lara's Noticed Bugs and Design Comments 12/5

(2) I can't find a way to save my "about me" information in my profile so that others can see it as public info when they click on me.

(3) When I click on the links that are the "positions" on the debate tab, I get a range of strange things. Some of those link to positions that are not the one I'm trying to get to, and "rich lead the way" is a broken link.

(4) This page is hard to find; I think this is fine as long as people can comment through the feedback box (but if you want it to be easily accessible to people, might put it more prominently under the "community" or "resources" tab).

(5) Whenever I see a "child" page, I think it's going to have Mickey-Mouse climate information. Is there a better way to label child wiki pages so that people won't think it's a page for kids?

:):) Thanks!

Items from Tom

1. Should we make the default view of proposals be sorted by Votes?
   1. Advantages:
      1. Most people seem to look first at the proposal listed first. By having this proposal be a good one (rather than a random one), we increase the chances that people will understand what proposals should be (and form a favorable impression of the system.
      2. This also helps answer the question of how to show people how to sort columns. When they see one column already sorted, people are more likely to notice the possibility and figure out how to sort.
   2. Disadvantages:
      1. The "Duncan Watts effect*": the proposals that get an early vote lead will have an "unfair" advantage. (I think I'm willing to put up with this problem for now.)
         

Technology development/design proposal, 12/3/09

• ongoing fixes
• backend engineering of current code base
• new features

Short term items

• bug tracker/feature list and traffic analysis (with open sourcing and licensing decisions soon afterward)
• quick fixes to help users without climate knowledge (with more user tests after those fixes)
  • move "First time users button" to more prominent position
  • pop-up definitions above column headers on proposals table
  • "what are proposals?" link on proposal index page, with similar links on model index, debate & discussion pages
  • add prompts to all debate categories along the lines of "Add a new question" so that users are prompted to contribute
• capacity to identify which users visit in response to which email/outreach efforts
• MIT Museum migration

Longer term design/technology development

• earlier entry points for participation
• redesign of debate/discussion functionality
• mechanisms to enable community input into design
• improve current models
  • C-LEARN optimization
  • extend CCSP models to 350 (and validate)
• new models
  • Berkeley climate model
  • McKinsey technology model (with EPPA?)
  • models to enable proposals around U.S. cap and trade legislation
  • counrty-level disaggregation of C-LEARN inputs

List from pre 12/3/09

(21) Replace "Text Verification" with "Please type the characters you see in the box: (Why is this necessary?)" "Why is this necessary" should be a link to a page that says something like: "To prevent automated computer "bots" from pretending to be people and registering on this site, we ask you to show that you are a real person by typing the characters you see. The characters are distorted in a way that makes it almost impossible for automated computer "bots" to do this correctly."

(22) NOT NEEDED FOR LAUNCH, but we should consider adding here a link to the Terms of Use and something like a check box that says "I agree to the Terms of Use."

(25) If it's not too hard, I think it would be better to include units and other exproposalations of the column meanings in separate pages (or maybe pop-ups of some kind) linked to "?" symbols at the right of each column heading. Here is the text I would suggest for those pages: TM: Let's talk about exactly how to do this. e.g., it could be a link right above the table that says something like "What do these column headings mean?"

1. 1. *Name - Name of the proposal
   2. *Votes - % of votes for this proposal
   3. Creator - Creator of this proposal No InterWiki reference defined in properties for Wiki called "Question"!
   4. Date published - Date proposal was published (For proposals under development, this should be "Date proposal was created")
   5. Positions - Positions on key issues that are embodied by this proposal
   6. Emissions change (Developed countries) - % change in emissions from 2005 to 2050(?) in the developed countries. Developed countries includes many of the most developed nations: US, EU (27 countries), Norway and Sweden, Russia and the former Soviet States, Japan, Canada, South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia.
   7. Emissions change (Rapidly developing countries) - % change in emissions from 2005 to 2050(?) in the rapidly developing countries. Rapidly developing countries include many of the fastest developing and larger nations: China, India, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, and other large developing Asian countries.
   8. Emissions change (Other developing countries) - % change in emissions from 2005 to 2050(?) in the rapidly developing countries. Other developing countries includes smaller developing nations in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
   9. *CO2 concentration - Atmospheric CO2 concentration in parts per million (ppm) in 2100(?)
   10. Temperature change - Global average temperature change in degrees Celsius (C) from pre-industrial values to 2100(?)
   11. Sea level change - Sea level change in millimeters (mm) from 2000(?) to 2100(?)
   12. *Mitigation cost - Cost of efforts to prevent climate change (e.g., by reducing emissions). Costs are shown as a % of World GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Values shown are the lowest and highest of the estimates produced by three models of these costs.
   13. *Damage cost - Cost of damages caused by climate change (e.g., damages from rising sea level, hurricanes, droughts, etc.). Costs are shown as a % of World GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Values shown are estimates of the 90% confidence interval for these costs. That is, the models predict there is only a 5% chance that the costs would be less than the lower number and a 5% chance that the costs would be greater than the higher number.

(30) Should not require users to create an unchangeable proposal name as the first step of creating a proposal. Why not just skip the dialog box that asks for the proposal name and go straight to the Proposal page with a default proposal name (e.g., "Proposal 17")? Then there could be a small "edit" button next to the Proposal name, just like the one on "Position". ((I know Josh and Rob didn't think this was needed, but I still think it would be useful. Remember that this is how common applications like Word and Excel work. We can discuss further.))

PLAN PAGE / MEMBERS TAB (42) As we discussed, it would be nice to be able to add new members without them having to request membership.

PLAN PAGE / ADMINISTRATION TAB (48) Should probably add an editable field in the upper left corner of this tab that is called something like "Proposal creator". The default entry in the field could be the name of the person who first created the proposal, but any member of the group could edit this to show other names (such as a team name or a list of the individuals on the team).

PLAN PAGE / DEBATES TAB (60) NOT NECESSARY FOR RELEASE, BUT PROBABLY DESIRABLE SOON: As I think we discussed, it would be nice to have a Debates tab here that shows the Positions this Proposal embodies and the arguments for and against them. This would just be showing a subset of the same items that are also viewable from the overall Debates tab. For completeness, there should be one additional issue in the overall Debates tab called something like "Which Proposal is best?". This issue would have one entry for each proposal, and that is where arguments that are unique to the Proposals (rather than to overall issues) would go.

MODEL INDEX PAGE (62) NOT NECESSARY FOR RELEASE, BUT WOULD BE NICE SOON: It would be good to have a button on the Model index page, exactly analogous to the "Create a New Proposal" button on the Proposal Summary page, called something like "Add a new model". When people click on this button, it would take them to the wiki page Add new model

DEBATE INDEX PAGE (84) Following the idea of consistent treatment of subscriptions (item (80)), maybe we should add a subscription button to Models, too. It could go in the upper right of the Model Summary page. If people subscribe to a model they would receive updates whenever there is a discussion entry for that model. They would also get updates in the (rare) cases where the model itself is changed.

New items

1. I notice that the "Create a New Proposal" button appears only for logged in users. I think it would be much better for this button to appear for all users, then if a non-logged-in user clicks it, they would have to register before proceeding. Doing this will make it much more obvious to non-registered users what they can do (and tell them when they need to register to do it). As is, many users might never know that they could create proposals.
2. Same comment for voting: Vote buttons should appear even to non-logged-in users.
3. I see that the second level numbered items in the wikis are roman numerals, not letters or things like "1.2". Is this something that is easily changeable somewhere (like in the CSS stylesheet)?
4. Proposal page/Impacts tab: Physical impacts accordion tab: should have some blank space (or some other graphical separator) between Tyndall Center impacts and IPCC impacts
5. If we are going to restrict editing of argument maps to moderators (at least at the beginning), then I think we at least have a link from each entry in the argument map (debate summary) to a discussion about that entry. Perhaps it could be something like a link called "Discuss" that would go to a threaded discussion for this item. If no discussion for this item exists yet, one would be created automatically the first time someone clicked on the "Discuss" link for the item. Two other things here would be nice but not necessary:
   1. some kind of graphical indication on the item to show whether there were any items in the discussion for this item (or perhaps a count of the number of items in the discussion).
   2. A back link from the discussion to the item

Following items added after 11/20/09

1. Not needed for launch, but right after launch (and before we start advertising to mailing lists), we should explore what kind of traffic analysis tools are available and pick one for our initial use.
2. A question: I assume that people are going to want to link in to specific pages in our site (e.g., a particular proposal or wiki page), and I assume we want this. I'm also assuming that at some point in the future, we may want to change the host on which our site is running. My question is, if people create links to a URL for a specific page on the first host, and then we move the site and put a redirect on the old site, will the old URLs work correctly?
3. For community management purposes, it would be good to have a way of seeing new users who registered in the last day or week. That way, we could send them greeting messages, etc. I can imagine several ways this could happen: (a) automatically generate a report and send to moderators, (b) make a spreadsheet available manually each day or week, (c) make the list of other users sortable by "Member since" date (this way everyone could see users by date of joining. And maybe there are other better ways.
4. I just realized that there is (as far as I can see) no way to directly contact another member of the community. Shouldn't we have some way to do this? For instance, on each profile page for another user, there could be a link called "Send message to this user".
5. I just realized that the question we had at the top of the proposal page in the old version "What proposal should be adopted at the UN climate talks in December 2009?" doesn't seem to appear anywhere in the new system. Have you thought about how to include it? Here's one proposal: We could create this as a new issue in the Debate index and have one position under that issue to correspond to each proposal. For now that could be done manually. Maybe later it would be done more automatically (e.g., when you create a proposal, you specify what issue it pertains to and the system then automatically creates the new position and makes the appropriate links).
6. If you can look at my activities log, you will see something like: "9:36 PM GMT malone sent reply <unavilable> to <unavilable> in <proposal deleted> proposal's discussion board". I assume something can be done about the "unavailables". NOT AN EASY FIX - "UNAVAILABLES" ARE DUE TO DELETED ENTITIES - NO SOLUTION UNTIL FULL JOURNALING FOR ALL RELEVANT TABLES. TM: Not urgent. Okay to wait.
7. There's something strange going on with the permissions on the blog entries. Several times, I have reset the permissions to give read access to guests, etc. But each time, the permissions seems to revert to only giving permission for all actions to the Owner. Have you been doing something to the site that could have reset these permissions as an unintended side-effect? If not, I guess this is some kind of bug.

For review/need input

Questions from TM

1. ** The imported arguments don't seem to have prefixes like "PRO" and "CON". Weren't we going to do this? I guess it's not critical, but I was curious if you had a specific reason for not doing it. ROB ADVISED NOT NECESSARY. FLAGS ARE IN DB AND CAN BE DISPLAYED IF WE WANT. TM: Rob, I'm curious why you said this.? TM: Sounds like Rob thinks we should do it, if possible. But I don't think it's critical for launch.