hey paul,
in your easysocial backend -> privacy you can find a list of available privacy rules.
you can set a default value for each of them by clicking on the rule, also you can enable/disable the one's you think are confusing as well.

just as a general personal thought as I think this is related to what you're trying to do with search: once you give your users a privacy option then the system / admin / other users should accept and respect them. otherwise if they're ignored what's the purpose of letting people define their privacy in the first place?

hope that helps and have a nice day

Hi Alex

Yep you got it. It is me and my obsession with making the user profiles searchable. And I hear what you are saying about one set of rules for every one.

If:

a) I am visiting the Site for the first time
b) and see a box showing 30 Avatars
C) and am in what I like to call happy click mode ;-)
d) and only every second profile is viewable and for no apparent reason…

results in driving people mad and away from the Site

Alternatively what I am thinking about in the long run is a distinctive “Moderator” profile.

Like there are the little dots on the top right hand corner of a profile red or green. Online/offline. Maybe there could be a third option with a little star and a text somewhere saying something to the effect of you are seeing this profile because it is a moderator profile. Normally you have to login…

I am not sure. But yeah the most important thing is to keep things as simple and stupid as possible. I will look into the setting that you mentioned. If I can twist and lock things down so that everyone is searchable but only viewable when logged in I will be 90% happy and that is a lot and thank you for your thoughts

wishing you a pleasant day

Paul

Hi Alex

I have completed the first step as you suggested.
i.e. Who can search and look up for my profile = Everyone
So I would have expected that when I go here:
http://finalbug.net/search-profiles
and enter the word “final” that all 17 profiles should already be showing up
Like everyone means every one and anybody right. And no I am not logged in.
The 3 people who are showing are administrators and yes I might just dumb this down so that the situation is as black and white as you suggested :-)

thanks

Paul

hey paul,
that change you made will only effect new users. when you check the user's profiles (that you're missing in the search now) directly in your easysocial backend you will see that their privacy for search is still at "registered users" because this was the old privacy default setting.

therefore new users form now on have the default privacy of "everyone" - so unless they don't change it they can be searched by everyone, but again this has no effect for the old users - that's why you see that result.

hope that helps

Hi Alex

that helps...

I do not have so many active users so I can edit case by case per hand if need be.

But the real problem that I see is this...

In my case I think I would ideally need two rules as an administrator:

1) Who can search
2) Who can look up for my profile

For users:

3 )I would want to deny users the ability to make there profiles not searchable.

Logical as, as of now searching and looking go hand in hand

I can dumb down the user experience
But can not make the admin side of things more intelligent!
i.e. search but not look

Or have I missed something again?

best

Paul

in addition: if you really want to overrule your users and set a different privacy - for example the search privacy to "everyone" - you can also do this by going to your easysocial backend -> profile types -> then click on the profile type you want to change.

there select the tab "privacy", change the privacy option and click the box at top that says "Tick the checkbox to reset all user's default privacy under this profile. ( This will also reset previous privacy settings of items belong to the users.)" and to finish the operation hit "save".

OK

Have done as you suggested and also clicked the tick box and saved ;-)

But I am still only getting 3 users when searching "final" on the search page.

http://finalbug.net/search-profiles

Is there any thing else I can check?

Do these privacy setting on profile types take preference over privacy setting in the privacy privacy section?

If so this might actually work the way I want it to

hmm,
either I'm confused or I simply can't replicate it. I just went to the link you shared and entered "final" (as a guest, not logged in) - and I get a result of total 769 items.... of course not all of them are profiles, but clicking on the "people" tab there I already clicked "load more" 4 times which means there are more than 40 results at least.
so how can I reproduce the 3 results you get?

Maybe it was a cache issue. Now when I enter "final" I get a lot more results....

3 people who previously showed were all administrators and were searchable whilst the others were not searchable. Set on a profile by profile basis (per hand)

This must be related to the: easysocial backend -> profile types -> then click on the profile type you want to change etc

**** this might just work

Let me check it out some more...

OK now I am confused

The reason you are seeing 769 is because there are 768 people in the group.
Maybe admin does not count or there is a rouge profile.
I think you will agree the numbers are pretty close. But maybe significant!?!?!?!

If I enter “final” here:

http://finalbug.net/component/search/

I get basically everybody!

I know for a fact that this is not true.
Anything between 17-50 would be realistic. Closer to 17 ;-)

Here is a case e.g.:

http://finalbug.net/connect/969-false/about

You will have to

a) login to see the above (as e.g. “otherguy” ditto p-word.)
b) search for false
c) Click view full profile
d) Click “Tools&Co”

False has no “final” in the tools section

alternatively

http://finalbug.net/connect/500-archy/about

and you will see:

Final Cut Pro Classic
Final Cut Server

Also AVID

Turn this the other way around and enter “AVID”

here

http://finalbug.net/search-profiles

Gives me no results!!! Which is weird.

If I use the Offlajin plugin to search for AVID I get 6 results

And if I use the Offlajin plugin to search for final I am still at 17 which is probably a realistic number…

here are 2 attachments that I can not attach to the post above..

yeah, that's all very weird - seems like something's messed up in general.
however I saw another post from you about a broken update to 1.2.17 at your site. I think we should first get that right so that the system runs correctly and then go on investigating here.

Hi Alex

Yes the other issue is fixed thank you.

I know this is probably a little off the wall. I just imagine how these things could work. See screen shot finalBUGmockUP001 & finalBUGmockUO02 for offline and registered mode! No doubt this is easier said than done. Just thinking aloud :-)

Back to the point. With respect to the search. If we take two co-ordinates: "final" and "AVID" it still makes no sense. In a strange twist of fate if you really want to get a true picture of what is going on the Offlagin plugin tells the truth final = 17 and AVID = 5

all the best

Paul

hey paul,
just looking at the 2 examples final and avid - after doing some testing on other instances as well it looks as the reason is this:
your profile type has "final" in it and therefore you get that high number. I just re-checked this on another site with a different profile type name and there I got the same result when the search term includes part of the profile type name. now some might say that this makes sense if they want to search for a particular type, others (including me to be honest) would say it's not that good when I always get all users as a result when the profile type name is included...

for avid it looks as nobody's starting with that term and therefore the search doesn't get back with a result. when I change this to david for example I do get some results. for now it looks as this is the default behaviour, however I'm going to discuss this with the devs and see if we can come up with some improvements on the search area in the next versions.

Hi Alex

If I understand this correctly there are two issues.

a) The user profile type has the word final in it. (To be honest I would be hard pushed how not to include the word final)
b) The standard search only looks for the first instance of a skill.

It would be great if you guys could remedy this situation. In the mean time I have switched of the “Search” menu and disabled the go “Easy Social Landing page” in the Offlajin plugin. They Implemented that :-)

I am just thinking aloud here but would it not make sense for people to be able to chose a default search landing page. In my case I am into profiles. So I want the search page to start on profiles. As of now I go to the main page and a search for final gives me stuff in groups and other distractions.

Options for a default landing page could include, Show All, Photos, People, Albums, Groups, Articles or Advanced Search. Maybe even a pre defined advanced search. i.e. a search with criteria ABC that an admin can set up. FYI if I switch the advanced search and enter avid I get 12 hits. So at least that might not be so tricky.

thanks

Paul

hey paul,
well as said there are always pros and cons for different scenarios and it's not a right or wrong thing. as I already agreed for example retrieving users because of the profile type name wouldn't be my personal choice as well. at the other hand I'm sure others that have different profile types in use - think about a sports site with football, basketball, tennis etc. - will absolutely want this...

for your other thought about having the profile landing page at profiles I think this would only make sense as an optional choice, not as default. because if you use the search for your entire site including blog posts, forum discussions etc. then having all results on the main page is for most actions the right way to go - it's also the way google behaves that gives you a global result set and then you can filter.... and they're obviously not bad at how to do search but again, when things are done with options then this might be an idea.

however, for these ideas and perhaps even others please put them onto the voices page as that's the place we're monitoring when it comes to feature implementations. we'll see what we can do in general for our search in the future, for now when offlajn does the job the way you like it then there's nothing wrong with using it