Discussion on Org-level Talk Boards (Notes From Nature)

[snblickhan]

FEM

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

NfN Labs (https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/md68135/notes-from-nature-labs) will become an FEM project when the next expedition launches, to beta test the DigiLeap OCR text-from-subject task. The Talk links on the project home page by default point to the project Talk board, but NfN prefers to use a single Talk board for all posts that aren't subject-specific (e.g. the Notes board or Done & Talk posts).

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like to redirect two of the Talk links on the project home page so that they point to the NfN team's requested Talk board (the 'main' NfN Talk board) instead of the NfN Labs Talk board. The URL for the 'main' NfN Talk board is: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/zooniverse/notes-from-nature/talk.

See screenshots below for which links the team would like to change:

Describe alternatives you've considered

None

Additional context

The team is hoping to take this workflow to beta starting September 6th, so would be very helpful if we can update these links before that.

[eatyourgreens]

If it’s useful, we should try setting up Talk for their organisation, so that volunteers don’t have to be redirected to a different project.

zooniverse/Panoptes-Front-End#5415

[eatyourgreens]

Here’s a discussion for an organisation, from that PR.
https://pr-5415.pfe-preview.zooniverse.org/organizations/eatyourgreens/my-first-organisation/talk/3164/2578806?env=production
(might need admin access if you aren't logged in as me.)

Here's public Talk for the NfN organisation (not NfN project) on that same branch:
https://pr-5415.pfe-preview.zooniverse.org/organizations/md68135/notes-from-nature/talk

[eatyourgreens]

In the code, you’ll want to override the project slug here to use a slug from a different project.

front-end-monorepo/packages/app-project/src/screens/ProjectHomePage/components/MessageFromResearcher/MessageFromResearcherContainer.js

Lines 53 to 57 in 5dc6506

	getTalkLink () {
	const { project } = this.props
	return `/projects/${project.slug}/talk`
	}

I’m not sure how you’d get that second project slug. Modify the project builder so that the team can add their own Talk link for a project? Hard code the NfN project into the FEM code (that seems like it would be hard to maintain)?

[eatyourgreens]

Here’s the code for the Join In link. Here you’ll need to override owner and project from the home page URL, and insert the NfN project name.

front-end-monorepo/packages/app-project/src/screens/ProjectHomePage/components/ZooniverseTalk/components/JoinInButton/JoinInButtonContainer.js

Lines 11 to 15 in 5dc6506

	const { owner, project } = router.query
	const linkProps = {
	href: addQueryParams(`/${owner}/${project}/talk`)
	}

[eatyourgreens]

Third option (might be more flexible): modify the Organisation lab so that organisation owners can add a Talk link for their organisation. Then modify project home pages to use the organisation Talk link when the project is part of an organisation.

[eatyourgreens]

Also noting that PFE projects within the NfN organisation don’t link to the NfN project Talk either eg. try the Join In link for Big Bee Bonanza!
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/md68135/notes-from-nature-big-bee-bonanza

If we change this for one of their project home pages, we should try to change all their project home pages. Otherwise, we’re in the uncomfortable position where the same link behaves differently on different projects. Link behaviour should be consistent and predictable so we probably don't want different NfN projects linking to different Talk boards.

EDIT: we'll need to keep in mind how Talk is used by other organisations. We probably want to keep this consistent, without making sweeping changes to all organisations.

Nest Quest Go! and Snapshot Safari projects each have individual Talk boards, so it seems like NfN are requesting a special feature that would only be used by this project.

Having this as an optional feature that can be added on the organisation lab page might be the most flexible solution.

[eatyourgreens]

At the other end of the scale, the very quick solution would be to change the project name to notes-from-nature in Talk links for all NfN project home pages.

[mcbouslog]

Noting currently in PFE for any NfN project, like Big Bee Bonanza:

• the project home page "Join in" link goes to the project Talk (not the "organization" Talk)
• the project home page External Links section includes a link to the "organization" (actually old NfN project) Talk
• the project home page includes a link to the organization home page above the project description and in the project sub-navigation items (i.e. About, Classify, etc.)

Changing the noted FEM "Join in" and "Go to talk" links to go to the old NfN project Talk would have to be hardcoded specifically for NfN projects which I don't think is a good idea. Creating organization Talk pages should certainly happen, but I think will require more coordination with researchers using organizations and in NfN's use-case we might need to transfer the old NfN project Talk boards to the new organization Talk (if that's even possible) to avoid two different NfN general Talk pages?

I think if we want to get the NfN Labs project to beta soon it might be best to focus on getting organization links similar to PFE above/near the project description and in the project sub-nav and keep Talk links as is (which would match PFE)? In FEM we can add a link the "organization" Talk in the "Connect with us" section (which is same as the PFE External Links).

[mcbouslog]

I created #3579 (formerly just a card within the DigiLeap GitHub project) to track adding organization links to an FEM project home page.

[snblickhan]

Idea that came up when Mark and I were chatting about this today: rather than a separate, org-level board, what if we tried an approach that would allow a board (or boards) to appear on all projects within the organization? This could be set via a collaborator-level tick box when creating a board, indicating that board should appear on Talk for all projects within that org. That way, orgs can opt into this rather than having to use a structure that will be helpful to NfN but maybe isn't necessary for other orgs like Nest Quest Go, etc.

[eatyourgreens]

That’s what I had in mind here. Modify organisations so that the owner can specify an optional link, which would override the default Talk board on the home page. Maybe add some constraints so it can’t be abused for spam links.

Third option (might be more flexible): modify the Organisation lab so that organisation owners can add a Talk link for their organisation. Then modify project home pages to use the organisation Talk link when the project is part of an organisation.

[mcbouslog]

I really like the idea of board(s) that would show on multiple the projects' individual Talks! I'm not super familiar with Talk API, but I think it'd be fairly straightforward (maybe even no changes needed?). From the the frontend perspective, I think it'd also be fairly straightforward - on a project talk page, if the project is linked to an organization, then request "organization-level" boards, and show "organization-level" boards on the project talk page of that project (as well as all other projects in the organization). I'm sure there are complications, but sounds good to me.

I think projects will always have to have the related subjects (Notes board) board, so this option brings the general/organization level boards to the projects.

[edits attempted for clarity, though may or may not have helped]

[snblickhan]

That’s what I had in mind here. Modify organisations so that the owner can specify an optional link, which would override the default Talk board on the home page. Maybe add some constraints so it can’t be abused for spam links.

Third option (might be more flexible): modify the Organisation lab so that organisation owners can add a Talk link for their organisation. Then modify project home pages to use the organisation Talk link when the project is part of an organisation.

I think I confused the terminology here. This isn't really what I'm talking about -- I'm talking about an approach where you wouldn't even need a separate Talk page for an Org. In this line of thinking, we would allow teams to set specific discussion board(s) to appear across all project Talk pages (nb by 'Board' in my original comment I was referring to a Discussion board, sorry if my terminology confused things!).

So a team could have their own Talk page, with various discussion boards like Notes/Troubleshooting/Introduce Yourself/etc. but then there would also be a discussion board called "Org Updates" or whatever the team wanted to call it, which would also appear for every project in the Org.

A benefit is that this wouldn't require volunteers to juggle separate Talk pages, as they do currently (i.e. going to the Project Talk for the Notes board, going to the Notes from Nature Talk for everything else).

[eatyourgreens]

Ah right. The Talk code, in PFE, doesn’t load organisations so, right now, Talk pages don’t have a concept of projects being part of an organisation.

[eatyourgreens]

You probably can’t easily load in a discussion board from another project, but you could use the PFE PR to create a Talk discussion board at the organisation level, then request that board from the project Talk of any project within the organisation.

zooniverse/Panoptes-Front-End#5415

[eatyourgreens]

Basically, create a board whose focus is the organisation ID, rather than the project ID. I think that might work, and it should be easy to get the organisation ID for a project.

[eatyourgreens]

The default section for a project Talk is set here, so maybe modify this to allow a project Talk to have more than one section? I’m not sure. 🤔
https://github.com/zooniverse/Panoptes-Front-End/blob/606680259004b988cb9599706f878794c57dc8cc/app/pages/project/talk.cjsx#L44

EDIT: once the section is set for a Talk page, this is the API query that loads boards for that section, so this is the query you’d want to modify to load extra boards.
https://github.com/zooniverse/Panoptes-Front-End/blob/606680259004b988cb9599706f878794c57dc8cc/app/talk/init.cjsx#L59

The section gets passed to other API queries eg. the query that fetches user roles for a section. Those queries would need to be updated to include the new board.

The organisation Talk PR that I’ve got open on PFE already has these code changes for organisations, so you could look at that to see which queries would need to change.

Creating a discussion, and replying to discussions, might also need changes to allow posting to boards outside the current project. Those API requests should be in that PFE PR too.

[eatyourgreens]

Permalinks for comments use comment.project_slug. That would break if a comment could be displayed across multiple projects, with different slugs. Something to watch out for.

[goplayoutside3]

@mcbouslog @snblickhan is this an Issue to keep open? I noticed it's sorta in the digileap "someday" project board, but wanted to double check.

[mcbouslog]

Is this an Issue to keep open? I noticed it's sorta in the digileap "someday" project board, but wanted to double check.

Just my opinion - it is still an important topic, and the comments here are very helpful and still relevant, however, I don't think this GitHub issue is the best place for a discussion about organizations, talk, and how they're related/linked to continue. Though I'm not sure where the best place is for such a discussion (which could link to this maybe closed issue, as well as zooniverse/Panoptes-Front-End#5415 , and maybe there's a few other related issues out there).

[snblickhan]

I agree with Mark -- there's definitely a much bigger Organizations discussion to be had. It was related to getting the Org level project link on FEM, which we did complete, so I think this is actually a good candidate to either stay open or get wrapped into a Org-centric discussion somewhere else.