User directory feedback

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

For the longest time, there was no way to see a directory of users on a given Discourse site*. But thanks to @eviltrout, now there is!

Goals:

1. This is by no means a primary page for Discourse, it’s more of a nice to have. So we don’t have to agonize over getting it just right.

2. Show who’s most active on the site (kind of a low-intensity “leaderboard”), your core users.

3. A basic directory of people who exist on that Discourse

Check it out at

https://meta.discourse.org/u

Feedback welcome. Are we showing the right data here? Does it make sense? How could we make it clearer, or better?

* other than search, sort of, but that assumes you already know the username of the user you want to find…

[NomNuggetNom]

Looks awesome! I think it would be nice if your name appeared in the actual list in addition to it displaying at the top. Other than that, I can’t think of anything. It’s exactly what it needs to be .

EDIT: I take it back! I thought of something. How about filtering by group or badge?

EDIT 2: Any reason you can’t sort by time read?

[watchmanmonitor (Allen Hancock)]

This is very interesting… having our own record at the top is nice, but it makes it hard to see in-context. Any way to have an option? if not I’d prefer it in-line.

Other information which would be neat to see would be an rank column (1,2,3,4,5 etc) or a percentile

Nice Job @eviltrout

Oh, and maybe a column of @ mentions?

[dbm]

I wouldn’t touch nothing… it looks clear enough right now!

[tobiaseigen]

@codinghorror

Discourse Meta

love love love

So exciting. Thank you @eviltrout!!!

@NomNuggetNom

filtering by group or badge

+1 on filtering by badge and by group. This would be very useful.

Would also very much like to be able to search by location and bio, and perhaps even by custom field.

[tobiaseigen]

Two more thoughts:

• no browser window title for the directory? I expect the title to be “User Directory - Discourse Meta” like Badges
• I’d prefer “Directory” to “User Directory” to steer clear of the “User” terminology.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

Personally I prefer a simple title of “Users” no need to add that directory word in anywhere. Missing title is a good catch.

[downey (Michael Downey)]

Definitely a great development.

@watchmanmonitor

This is very interesting… having our own record at the top is nice, but it makes it hard to see in-context. Any way to have an option? if not I’d prefer it in-line.

Agree on this one … I was trying really hard to sort to see where I fell, but it was rather painful to do.

@watchmanmonitor

I would imagine an admin option to hide or protect it with group permissions would be an expected feature.

Definitely agree. Since the list is just numbers, it might cause some unnecessary guilt in our community because it clearly emphasizes quantity over quality. (Yes, even quantity of likes is a “quantity” thing.) It’s not about privacy, it’s about focus.

@sam

Personally I prefer a simple title of “Users”

Agree on this one too.

It would be really great if admins could specify columns here (like location, or a custom field).

Also, a badge count (that links to the user’s badge page) would be great.

[elberet (Jens Maier)]

@downey

It would be really great if admins could specify columns here (like location, or a custom field).

Or select a different column to sort by by default…

[DeanMarkTaylor (Dean Taylor)]

I really like it - it surfaces numbers which my forum users should find helpful.

Reported a bug with dark colors:

User Directory Feedback - dark theme colors

User directory needs a couple of tweaks for dark themes. Note table numbers are unreadable and user count: [image] After a couple of tweaks (some specific to my theme): [image] Quick work-around for dark themes: .directory table td .number, .directory table td .time-read, .directory table th .number, .directory table th .time-read, .directory .total-rows { color:white; }

[badevguru (Brian Adams)]

@codinghorror

Discourse Meta

Does it filter out trust_0 level users? If not I do propose that by default you have to be trust_1 to be viewed in the directory.

I have those spammers that create clever names that I don’t want to give the satisfaction of a google indexing to

[DeanMarkTaylor (Dean Taylor)]

@badevguru

I have those spammers that create clever names that I don’t want to give the satisfaction of a google indexing to

They can try and be clever - but this is what Google sees (or similar) for the User Directory:

User profiles are also not indexed.

[Mittineague]

@DeanMarkTaylor

User profiles are also not indexed.

Unless they are linked to elsewhere?

[DeanMarkTaylor (Dean Taylor)]

@Mittineague

Unless they are linked to elsewhere?

They are still not indexed - check robots.txt:
https://meta.discourse.org/robots.txt

Note line:
Disallow: /users/

[tobiaseigen]

I am on board with that, though for our site they’d be called members.

[kensims]

I agree with idea of a minimum trust level (preferably configurable) to be included.

Additional things to consider showing: trust level name, time as a registered user; with the latter being sortable.

[lisajill (Lisa Wess)]

Will this page be extensible so we can add in information from plugins, etc?

Absolutely love the page and it clears out one thing we were going to try to figure out how to do. Thank you!

[downey (Michael Downey)]

I suppose it’s still early, but it goes without saying that the mobile CSS needs work.

[mbs (Michele)]

Seems just perfect. Nice feature.