Improve XProfile field visibility labels

[johnjamesjacoby]

XProfile field visibility is awesome, but the labels could benefit from a few minor improvements:

• Looking back, "Everyone" is weird. Maybe go back to "Public" ?
• Our current hierarchy is a bit random: Everyone/Only Me/All Members/Friends
• "Only Me" isn't entirely accurate, and grammatically weird in places like wp-admin
• These labels could use descriptions to help explain how they are actually used

[johnjamesjacoby]

​6342.01.patch does the following:

• Updates labels for all visibility levels
• Introduces description strings (unused by core for now, maybe useful with JavaScript – hint: I already need this)
• Reorders items into a top-down hierarchy of "Most Public" to "Most Private"

A few considerations:

• This breaks backwards compatibility with plugins that might be hardcoding numerical indices in bp_xprofile_get_visibility_levels()
• Is this verbiage actually better? I think so, but maybe not?
• Are we comfortable putting descriptions into core that are not currently used?
• Should we avoid touching these at all until we introduce more robust privacy controls?

[boonebgorges]

I assume that by "hierarchy" you just mean the order of the options? If so, I agree that your reordering is an improvement.

Regarding "Only Me" and other changes. The original reasoning behind the wording was that I wanted parallel grammar for all the options, with the heading being "Who should be able to see this field?" "Everyone", "Only Me", etc are appropriate answers. "Public" isn't really grammatical - it's more of a descriptor of the field than of who should be able to see it. So if we're changing the visibility labels to describe the field rather than the audience, we should change the wording for the fieldset label as well.

I don't care about breaking backward compatibility with plugins using numerical indexes.

I do agree that it's odd to have "Only Me" on the back end. Maybe a better solution is for visibility levels to have different labels for admin-facing vs user-facing contexts (or perhaps "me" vs "someone else" context).

Is this verbiage actually better? I think so, but maybe not?

I understand the motivation behind the changes, but I'm not convinced it's better. "Only Self" is not very natural sounding at all, and "Only Friends" is just slightly better. Again, having "my" vs "someone else" labels might help here.

Side question: Has anybody reported issues with the labels not being clear? Or is this your own bugbear?

[johnjamesjacoby]

Replying to boonebgorges:

I assume that by "hierarchy" you just mean the order of the options? If so, I agree that your reordering is an improvement.

BuddyPress has a profile field privacy hierarchy with diminishing visibility, which is reflected out-of-order in the UI.

Regarding "Only Me" and other changes. The original reasoning behind the wording was that I wanted parallel grammar for all the options, with the heading being "Who should be able to see this field?" "Everyone", "Only Me", etc are appropriate answers. "Public" isn't really grammatical - it's more of a descriptor of the field than of who should be able to see it. So if we're changing the visibility labels to describe the field rather than the audience, we should change the wording for the fieldset label as well.

That's helpful; I recall us talking this over originally, but I had forgotten the motivation. I think because the concept of "Everyone" doesn't exist anywhere else in BuddyPress, and because we don't really have public/private community designation, I'm looking for a more accurate description of what "Everyone" translates to.

I don't care about breaking backward compatibility with plugins using numerical indexes.

Same.

I do agree that it's odd to have "Only Me" on the back end. Maybe a better solution is for visibility levels to have different labels for admin-facing vs user-facing contexts (or perhaps "me" vs "someone else" context).

I had considered this also, and rabbit holed myself thinking of a gettext equivalent function for me vs. you:

_u( 'you', 'me', 'buddypress' );
_ue( 'you', 'me', 'buddypress' );

I understand the motivation behind the changes, but I'm not convinced it's better. "Only Self" is not very natural sounding at all, and "Only Friends" is just slightly better. Again, having "my" vs "someone else" labels might help here.

"Only Me" and "Not Others" ? What's the grammatical equivalent of "Only Self" that means "private" without saying so?

Side question: Has anybody reported issues with the labels not being clear? Or is this your own bugbear?

Not that I am aware of. Mine or otherwise doesn't change the spirit of the improving this bit of verbiage. It's easy enough to filter, and filtering it was good motivation to consider patching it.

[boonebgorges]

privacy hierarchy with diminishing visibility,

I guess "hierarchy" seems like a weird word to use for this, but it sounds like we're in agreement about the out-of-order bit.

I think because the concept of "Everyone" doesn't exist anywhere else in BuddyPress, and because we don't really have public/private community designation, I'm looking for a more accurate description of what "Everyone" translates to.

If the question is "who gets to view this profile field?", I think the answer "Everyone" (or maybe better, "Anyone") is pretty clear, even if it's not a formalized concept from the point of view of BuddyPress.

I had considered this also, and rabbit holed myself thinking of a gettext equivalent function for me vs. you:

Oy, let's not overarchitect :) We use if ( bp_is_my_profile() ) to swap "My" labels throughout BP. We can do the same thing here. I think that visibility levels should be registered with 'label_me' and 'label' properties to correspond to the difference.

"Only Me" and "Not Others" ? What's the grammatical equivalent of "Only Self" that means "private" without saying so?

Who can see my data? Anyone; logged-in users only; my friends; just me.
Who can see John's data? Anyone; logged-in users only; John's friends; just John (just the profile owner?)

These seem like the most natural ways of speaking, IMO.

[johnjamesjacoby]

Replying to boonebgorges:

I guess "hierarchy" seems like a weird word to use for this, but it sounds like we're in agreement about the out-of-order bit.

I don't think it's weird. These visibility types go from fully-open to fully-closed, with a few steps in between. It's not a fully fleshed out tree like we are used to in WordPress, but it's not a simple ranking system either.

If the question is "who gets to view this profile field?", I think the answer "Everyone" (or maybe better, "Anyone") is pretty clear, even if it's not a formalized concept from the point of view of BuddyPress.

I find "Anyone" to be equally ambiguous – r7510 :)

Oy, let's not overarchitect :) We use if ( bp_is_my_profile() ) to swap "My" labels throughout BP. We can do the same thing here. I think that visibility levels should be registered with 'label_me' and 'label' properties to correspond to the difference.

BuddyPress does the pronoun dance in enough places where I'm open to a separate ticket to try and solve that problem. I'd rather not litter the codebase with bespoke approaches to solving the same central verbiage problem. In fact, in the past we've done our best to avoid & clean these usages up IIRC.

Who can see my data? Anyone; logged-in users only; my friends; just me.
Who can see John's data? Anyone; logged-in users only; John's friends; just John (just the profile owner?)

These seem like the most natural ways of speaking, IMO.

I do like the idea of using the display name; hadn't considered that here.

[boonebgorges]

I'd rather not litter the codebase with bespoke approaches to solving the same central verbiage problem. In fact, in the past we've done our best to avoid & clean these usages up IIRC.

I disagree that it's "littering the codebase", but as you note it's an argument for another ticket.

Your screenshot is helpful in showing your motivation for the changes: in your custom theme, you've removed the "Who can see this field?" question, and the implicit question is "What is the visibility level of this field?", so your suggestions make sense. In the context of BP more generally, we need to be consistent: either the labels should describe the audience, or they should describe the fields, and the question/prompt should match. If we go with the change in grammatical orientation, I would suggest: "Public", "Members Only", "Friends Only", "Private". "All Members" is not an adjectival phrase and so is not parallel, and "Only Self" is very awkward IMHO. (Bonus: this phrasing works equally well in the first and third person.) The fieldset legend would then have to be something like: "Field visibility" or maybe just "Visibility".

[r-a-y]

FWIW, Facebook uses "Public", "Friends" and "Only Me":

[karmatiger]

is there any way one could change the order via a function? Having "Only Me" at the bottom of the list, rather than the middle as it stands, is more intuitive.

[DJPaul]

We're closing this ticket because it has not received any contribution or comments for at least two years. We have decided that it is better to close tickets that are good ideas, which have not gotten (or are unlikely to get) contributions, rather than keep things open indefinitely. This will help us share a more realistic roadmap for BuddyPress with you.

Everyone very much appreciates the time and effort that you spent sharing your idea with us. On behalf of the entire BuddyPress team, thank you.

If you feel strongly that this enhancement should still be added to BuddyPress, and you are able to contribute effort towards it, we encourage you to re-open the ticket, or start a discussion about it in our Slack channel. Please consider that time has proven that good ideas without contributions do not get built.

For more information, see ​https://bpdevel.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/our-awaiting-contributions-milestone-contains/
or find us on Slack, in the #buddypress channel: ​https://make.wordpress.org/chat/