Roles and their impact on author browse & search
Submitted by
manpreet.
on 2007-05-14 17:20.
While looking at the author browse subcategories (Content By, Other courses Using, Derived Copies, Also Maintains) - the following issues came to light:- Author browse currently lumps Editors and Translators in with Authors without giving any clue as to whether the content is authored work, edited work or translated work by that person
- The subcategories contain two role based views i.e. "Content By" (Author, Editor,Translator) and "Also Maintains" (Maintainer). The other two subcategories - "Other courses containing" and "Derived Copies" - are more of a "content lifecycle" type where they bring to light works based on this authors work.
- Should all roles be supported in the browse interface? Currently
these are: Author, Maintainer, Copyright Holder, Editor and Translator.
Upcoming: Illustrator. There might be others over time.
- In the current browse system - Maintainers are not in the author browse. But you can get to the browse list of a maintainer's content from their member profile. This list then hangs in no-man's land because the member name is not listed in the browse author pane 2. See "Kevin Duh" as an example.
- Member profile only gives information about authorship and maintainership, none of the other roles or subcategories.
- Do all roles have content lifecycle? e.g. we know an author's
content can be used in a course by anyone, as well as copies can be
derived and modified. We keep track of this information and display it
in the two lifecycle subcategories mentioned above. Does the same apply
to edited works? Translated works? We know that maintainers lose
maintainership once a copy is derived. Is a derived copy that is
modified in any way different from a derived copy that is essentially
the same but translated?
- Current Search treats Author, Editor and translator as the same. Maintainer and Copyright holders are not searchable.
- Member profile should include everything i.e. Author of, Translator of, Editor of, Maintainer of, Copyright holder of and Content based on works by.
- Search should include everything - all roles. Search should also display related author profile, member lists, endorsements etc. when the match is on one of the roles.
- Advance Search should allow the selection of role to search.
- Author browse should support "All Content | Authored |Edited |Translated |Illustrated" as the subcategories i.e. only role based subcategories. If it is a singular case i.e. there is only authored content or translated content - then only that category should display. The other subcategories should only appear if there is any content under them. "All Content" should appear in the case of 2 or more subcategories.
- Authors, Editors, Translators, and Illustrators should show up in the author listing in Pane 2.
- To support the lifecycle based subcategories - Pane 3 should have an additional link "View Content Based on this person's work" next to the "view profile" link. This link will take readers to a new page type which provides a listing of content based on the author's work - including the ability to see "Other courses using content by" and "Derived copies". This new page will also be linked to from the member profile.
Everybody else - please comment if you see any missing interactions/dependencies. Or even if you have any positive or negative thoughts on this new direction.
Re: Roles and their impact on author browse & search
Posted by
jenn
at
2007-05-22 17:12
I think I agree with everything!
Didn't quite follow this, though: "Search should also display related author profile, member lists, endorsements etc. when the match is on one of the roles."
Do you mean that types of information other than content should show up in the search results -- i.e., return an author line with profile info, or an endorser line with the endorser's blurb, inline with the courses and modules? Frightening thought. Or are you just talking about extra snippets of metadata showing up so they can be highlighted as having contributed to the matching?
Didn't quite follow this, though: "Search should also display related author profile, member lists, endorsements etc. when the match is on one of the roles."
Do you mean that types of information other than content should show up in the search results -- i.e., return an author line with profile info, or an endorser line with the endorser's blurb, inline with the courses and modules? Frightening thought. Or are you just talking about extra snippets of metadata showing up so they can be highlighted as having contributed to the matching?
Re: Re: Roles and their impact on author browse & search
Posted by
manpreet
at
2007-05-23 10:00
The search results should have an additional category of information - what I am calling "Content Related" results which include member lists, profiles, lenses etc. The intent is not to display these inline with the actual content results but some other visual solution where they show up as related but do not interfere with the actual content results. Max & Sebastian are working on this as we speak.
Re: Roles and their impact on author browse & search
Posted by
reedstrm
at
2007-05-24 10:21
I talked this over w/ Manpreet, and also agree with everything (Which is good, since I'm implementing it :-) ) The logical separation of direct (contributing) roles from lifecycle roles is good. Note that _none_ of the roles carry though a derived copy, by default. The issue of rights holders of parent works is one of attribution: we currently attribute the author, but if the author is not identical to the rights holder, what's the right thing? I'm not sure.

That having been said, I do like your idea of keeping pane 3 as having links by allroles, role1, role2, etc., and moving the "life cycle" content out to another space. I think it would clear up some current confusion and give more room (on the separate page) to explain exactly what those other life cycle things are. I'm curious as to why maintainers and licensors are excluded from panes 2 and 3, though.
Also, regarding whether things other than authorship do/should carry on in a work's life cycle, I think that authorship should probably be the only role to carry through, since that's the only role that counts in terms of carrying through, AFAIK, in terms of the attribution license.
I think we should have browse over members and search should definitely search everything.
On the derived copy issue -- I wonder if this really ought to be following the copyright holder and the author.
I don't see why the Copyright Holder needs to be shown as having content derived from them since they might have had nothing to do with the creation/originality of the work, in the same way that at the top of derived content we don't write "Based on: _Module X_ by _Author Y_, copyright _Author Z_.