Add welcome page for first-time posters (while held in moderation)

[NiklasJordan]

Problem

I clicked on the "Ask a question" button under the text on the "Start a chapter" page (https://publiclab.org/wiki/start-a-chapter). Then I came to the form and entered my question and sent the question. Now I was redirected to my dashboard.

However, I can't find my question anywhere. Neither on the question page (https://publiclab.org/questions) nor on my profile. However, my profile shows that I have published 2 Research Notes, but I did not do so. I suspect that my questions have been classified as Research Notes and can no longer be found.

Please show us where to look

https://publiclab.org/questions/new?tags=question:chapters,chapters&template=question&title=How%20do%20I...&redirect=question

What's your PublicLab.org username?

niklasjordan

Browser, version, and operating system

[ebarry]

Hi @NiklasJordan ! sorry for the trouble on this! It's very helpful that you wrote back explaining the experience of this.

As a first time website contributor, your question was held in moderation. In fact, as one of the moderators, i just approved it a minute ago. Sorry for the delay that "human loop" caused, and the lack of clarity about what was going on in the meantime.

With this explanation, can you describe what you would have preferred to see after you clicked the Button to "Ask a question" and clicked Submit...instead of being redirected to your dashboard?

Your input will help make this better, thank you!
Also, great to meet you :)
Liz

[NiklasJordan]

Hi @ebarry, don't worry. Maybe I missed that message.

I made a suggestion once how this could be made a little clearer. However, this is only a very rough prototype. I stole the lyrics from your message and the answers to my question.

This page has two main tasks:

1. Transparency: It must become immediately clear how it will go on, how long the procedure will take and what the reasons for it are. So I would use an extra page for that. If this is only communicated via a hint on the dashboard, there is a risk that this will be easily overlooked and the user will be confused (like me). This seperate "feedback page" immediately communicates prominently what it is all about. The risk of overlooking this is so very low.

2. Motivation: The page should of course motivate the user to continue. Therefore, I would make the first contribution a small, joyful experience. That's why I tried to make the headline look very nice and thrilled. I also took up other forms of participation directly so that the user is immediately encouraged to participate further.

I would be happy if I could continue to support you with such optimizations of the user experience.

I hope you like the proposal and I could help you with it.
-Niklas

[ebarry]

I love the proposal, let's do it just like this! @publiclab/community-reps what's the next step we can take on this?

FYI, For tracking purposes, i also added a link to your proposal as an answer to @jywarren 's question: https://publiclab.org/questions/warren/11-14-2017/what-s-one-thing-that-could-be-better-for-newcomers-about-the-public-lab-website
See all user interface questions and current ideas on https://publiclab.org/wiki/ui !

[jywarren]

This is awesome. Let's make the page as an editable wiki page at http://publiclab.org/first-time ! Then we can wire up the redirect once you've posted. Can someone volunteer to make that wiki page? This is amazing!!! Thanks so much!!!!!!!!! 💪💪🎉🙌🎇🍄

…

On Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 9:38 AM Liz Barry ***@***.***> wrote: I love the proposal, let's do it just like this! @publiclab/community-reps <https://github.com/orgs/publiclab/teams/community-reps> what's the next step we can take on this? FYI, For tracking purposes, i also added a link to your proposal as an answer to @jywarren <https://github.com/jywarren> 's question: https://publiclab.org/questions/warren/11-14-2017/what-s-one-thing-that-could-be-better-for-newcomers-about-the-public-lab-website See all user interface questions and current ideas on https://publiclab.org/wiki/ui ! — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#2627 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AABfJ4Lm1fzfN5XSvW-I1FVkJlvaIB-1ks5tp0GugaJpZM4TXyqV> .

[NiklasJordan]

I would be happy to help you! So if you want, I can do it.

[ebarry]

Yes please!

…

On Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 1:55 AM Niklas Jordan ***@***.***> wrote: I would be happy to help you! So if you want, I can do it. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#2627 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJ2n7bhYv5ngdreaYzbvj4WV2RRjfKJks5tqCbigaJpZM4TXyqV> .

[steviepubliclab]

Hi this is awesome!!
One text edit:: under the Open Call header, instead of saying "there's one today at 7pm GMT (and every Tuesday)" change that text to "there is one every Tuesday at 7pm GMT"

Thanks for opening this issue and working on it! Commenting back on your question on Public Lab soon :)

[NiklasJordan]

Hey @steviepubliclab,
I try to creae the wiki page (first-contribution), but everytime I try it, I've got an error. But here is the markdown code of the page to copy and paste it:
first-contribution.txt

[steviepubliclab]

Hi @NiklasJordan,
Can you walk me through how you got that error message? What page did you go to to try to create the wiki page from?

I thought you might have gone to the page I showed you earlier: www.publiclab.org/tag/germany to try to create the wiki page for Germany. When I went there and hit "the add one now" button for making a wiki page on it, I was able to create a page. There's one there now for https://publiclab.org/wiki/germany if you want to work on editing it.

Thanks! Also I saw you in the IRC chat room, I'll be in there on and off today if you want to sync up there.

[NiklasJordan]

Hej @steviepubliclab,
yes I tried that too ;-) Thanks to create this page for me.

But for this issue I go to https://publiclab.org/wiki/first-contribution

Then I put my content on it...

...press "publish" and get this error page:

I am off for the next two hours. But I try to check my phone for your response! Hope this help to find the bug.

[grvsachdeva]

hi @NiklasJordan, I have tried creating the page with your content and got the same error, but when I changed the content, the wiki is created. @jywarren can you please see the logs as no such problem arises in localhost. Thanks.

[jywarren]

Ooh, that's no good! Thanks for catching this. Let's break it out in another issue and we'll try to dig up the logs for it.

[jywarren]

Opened an issue here! Thank you!!!! #2665

[jywarren]

With @Gauravano and @namangupta01 and @icarito's sleuthing, we can now get a non-emoji version up:

https://publiclab.org/first-contribution

Done! Now, we can redirect there. However one last clarification -- in this flow, people would be directed to this page INSTEAD of to their just-posted note. This should be fine, but I wonder if we want to make it possible ALSO to let people see and edit their post, which is now hard to find, as you pointed out.

Could we add to the wiki page a line like:

To see and edit your post even before it's approved, view it on your profile

We'd have to ensure that when viewing your own profile (or we could do it on the dashboard), you can see unpublished notes. But that way, we don't have to like insert a link to the new post into the wiki page, we just show you where you can normally find it.

What do you think?

[jywarren]

And a note to whoever wants to solve this -- here's the line where we'd redirect instead of showing the current notice:

plots2/app/controllers/notes_controller.rb

Line 119 in bfff566

flash[:notice] = I18n.t('notes_controller.thank_you_for_contribution').html_safe

Good first-timer issue, i think!

[ebarry]

hi @cesswairimu , can you evaluate if this feature has already been implemented elsewhere in another way, and if not, can you evaluate it for GCI? Thank you! Looking forward to your thoughts.

[cesswairimu]

Hi @ebarry, on it...thanks

[cesswairimu]

We added the page for first-timer contributions which I believe was the main essence of creating this issue https://publiclab.org/tag/first-time-poster ..Another issue though that emerged in the process was an error #2665 on emojis on new wiki page creation which has a pull request here #3007 ...I will test on the website and see if the bug is still there. If so, I will escalate the pull request and get it reviewed and possibly merged. I guess its safe to close this @ebarry what do you think? Thanks

[ebarry]

Hi Cess, thanks for looking at this! This issue is unique even compared to the ones you pointed out, and it's still worth implementing this one. Maybe this could be re-written as a FTO?

Also, hi @NiklasJordan

[cesswairimu]

Hi, @ebarry sounds good..thanks

[jywarren]

Hi, so the main remaining concern is that:

Redirecting to this new page instead of the post itself makes it hard to find the note. So we need to:

1. ensure that unpublished notes appear somewhere, like on your profile, or at http://publiclab.org/notes/author/liz for example, for the author themselves
2. we add a link to that page (which could itself be challenging because it may need to be a dynamic link incorporating your username if it's http://publiclab.org/notes/author/liz -- but if it's profile, you can just link to http://publiclab.org/profile, but our new profile no longer shows a time-ordered listing of posts)

Once we resolve this issue, we can just change this line to redirect to the "Welcome" wiki page at https://publiclab.org/first-contribution:

plots2/app/controllers/notes_controller.rb

Line 116 in f7908c3

flash[:notice] = thanks_for_question

We may need to add a return statement or something so we aren't redirecting twice in that method, or otherwise address the existing redirect on this line:

plots2/app/controllers/notes_controller.rb

Line 135 in f7908c3

request.xhr? ? (render plain: @node.path) : (redirect_to @node.path)

Finally, we'll adjust the tests to account for this change in redirection, as they'll break once we make this change.

@ebarry what of the "where to show unpublished notes" options above (or other ideas) do you prefer?

[ebarry]

Ok after workshopping this with @emilyashley and @jywarren , we are now thinking to keep the current workflow of showing the first time poster their own content when they hit publish. HOWEVER ☀️--
We wish to increase the size and improve the design of the Alert message shown so that it can't be missed, and add the link to https://publiclab.org/first-contribution in the alert itself. 🌳🚀

Here is the text for the existing alert texts...notice that there are separate messages for each type of new posting (notes, comments, etc):

plots2/config/locales/en.yml

Lines 853 to 863 in 2a4af95

	thank_you_for_contribution: "Success! Thank you for contributing open research,
	and thanks for your patience while your post is approved by <a href='/wiki/moderation'>community
	moderators</a> and we'll email you when it is published. In the meantime, if
	you have more to contribute, feel free to do so."
	thank_you_for_question: "Success! Thank you for contributing with a question, and
	thanks for your patience while your question is approved by <a href='/wiki/moderation'>community
	moderators</a> and we'll email you when it is published."
	question_note_published: "Question published. In the meantime, if you have more
	to contribute, feel free to do so."
	research_note_published: "Research note published. Get the word out on <a href='/lists'>the
	discussion lists</a>!"

The approach

Here is the style of alert we would like to use....notice the big lead text: https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.4/components/alerts/#additional-content

Next Steps

• Rewrite the alert wording, specifying what text should appear large, what the rest of it should be, and including the link to https://publiclab.org/first-contribution
• Create HTML for these edits and add into the code

[jywarren]

Awesome. If you'd like to take on writing the text, I'm happy to refactor it into HTML!

Success! Thank you for contributing open research, and thanks for your patience while your post is approved by <a href='/wiki/moderation'>community moderators</a> and we'll email you when it is published. In the meantime, if you have more to contribute, feel free to do so.

[ebarry]

here's how it could be -- I welcome further improvements

Success! You did it! Hooray!

Thank you so much for contributing open research and being part of our community.

Here's what's happening now:

Your first contribution is awaiting approval by community moderators. If you have asked an urgent question about an environmental concern, we will prioritize reviewing it. Thank you for your patience, in the next hours your contribution should be public. We'll email you when it is published. In the meantime, if you have more to contribute, feel free to do so. Visit the Welcome Page to discover more ways to connect.

[cesswairimu]

Great 🎉

[stale]

Hi 😄, this issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. Don't worry you can continue to work on this and ask @publiclab/reviewers to add "work in progress" label 🎉 . Otherwise, it will be closed if no further activity occurs in 5 days -- but you can always re-open it if you like! 💯 Thank you for your contributions 🙌 🎈.

[cesswairimu]

Tried locally:

Input is welcome on how we can improve design/text ☝️ and we can do it in a follow up issue. I have created a FTO for this to get this started

notes for the next steps:

• french version(fr.yml) of the above
• thank_you_for_question should we use the same text?:- sample with little edits from the first one 👇 (please help improve)
• Explore how to increase flash duration??

---

Success! You did it! Hooray!

Thank you so much for contributing with a question.

Here's what's happening now:

Your first question contribution is awaiting approval by community moderators. If you have asked an urgent question about an environmental concern, we will prioritize reviewing it. Thank you for your patience, in the next hours your question should be public. We'll email you when it is published. In the meantime, if you have more to contribute, feel free to do so. Visit the Welcome Page to discover more ways to connect.