Topic: Fans · BuddyPress.org

Fans

@donnacha

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

It would be good if there was some way for people to indicate that they are a “fan” of someone, by clicking a button on their profile. Unlike “friends”, this would be a one-way relationship although, if two people fan each other, their relationship should automatically upgrade to friends.

An example of where this would be useful: in a community based around an Open Source effort, many users might wish to give props to a particularly prolific developer. The developer’s list of fans would appear on his profile page but separately from his list of friends. Sending that developer a friend request would be inappropriate, especially if the developer is trying to maintain a rational list of actual friends. The developer is likely to reject or ignore the friendship request, which no-one feels good about.

A much better solution would be if the user could simply express his admiration and gratitude for that developer’s contributions, without needing any actual interaction from the developer, by becoming a fan. Apart from generating good vibes, this form of recognition and reputation building could be an important motivator within projects that operate on a non-cash basis.

It would also enable people to establish, very quickly, who the most respected members of a community are, without diluting the usefulness of the friendship concept.

How hard would this be to implement? Is it something that would be useful as a standard feature or should it be a plugin?

I’d be very grateful for input on this suggestion.

Viewing 17 replies - 1 through 17 (of 17 total)

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

What a good idea Andy. Floating these feature trial balloons again? Well you don’t fool me for a minute Andy.

Not so private joke people. Never mind. Hello donnacha.

This is a good idea. I like that alot. Fans could have some twitter ‘following’ type of aspect to it. Kinda like an activity stream for the people I’m fans of. What would be the term you would apply to those people I’m fans of? Seriously. I don’t know what to call them.

@johnjamesjacoby

Keymaster

15 years, 9 months ago

I think making this a following rather than a fanning helped this make sense to me.

Burt, in theory this could be done quite easily with your Content tags idea. Make a tag called “Following” and make the tags aware of the kind of link it is, and spit out the feeds.

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

Hmm. A new kind of content type. Not ‘blog post’ or ‘url’ but ‘member’? hmmm…

@johnjamesjacoby

Keymaster

15 years, 9 months ago

Really, take this a step further to say that anything that is a plugin to BuddyPress could be a content type automatically, that could be turned on or off in the admin panel.

Groups, Blogs, and Members so far. Later on the Gallery could be part of it, so when the gallery is dropped into mu-plugins, it automatically populates new content types.

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

Yes, anything that is a component usually has content associated with it. That’s the purpose of bpContents. Associating any type of bp content with tags. Tags can then be place in these virtual containers called ‘containers’ that can be associated with any component.

So you can have any component’s content associated with any component. The content type ‘url’ covers content found outside of bp or the site.

@donnacha

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

Thanks Burt and JJJ.

So, logged-in user A visits the profile of user B and, under the “Add Friend” and “Send Message” buttons, there is a “Follow” button.

Pressing this causes:

1. User A’s avatar and name, linking to his profile, to appear in a section of User B’s profile called “Fans” or “Followers”.

2. User B’s avatar and name, linking to his profile, to appear in a section of User A’s profile called “Following”

3. Relationship is upgraded to Friends is user B ever happens to follow user A … OR request A’s friendship.

(4. Possible feature for later implementation, but not a priority – The activities of users you follow appear in a special Twitter-style stream section of your home page).

I am not a coder but, from your discussion, it seems it would be relatively straightforward, but would it put too much load on the server?

I figure it would be roughly the same burden as the Friends feature, but possibly more because people may well end up with more Followers/Fans than Friends i.e. your profile might display 3 of 3 Friends but 5 of 30 Followers/Fans.

@donnacha

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

Actually, forget #3, upgrading fans to friends if mutual, and forget #4, the whole idea of following the activity of people you become a fan of, Twitter-style (and, for that reason, I think it should be termed Fan, not Follow).

All that would be needed is for a “Become Fan” button to appear under the “Add Friend” and “Send Message” buttons, leading to fans’ avatar appearing in the Fan section of the profile, directly under the Friends section.

Would it be possible to simply copy the Friends plugin, stripping out all the unnecessary Friends functionality, retaining only what is needed to achieve the above?

@johnjamesjacoby

Keymaster

15 years, 9 months ago

If I was going to make this plugin, that is exactly how I would go about it.

@donnacha

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

I’m not really a coder but I guess I’ll give it a shot.

Thanks for the input.

@donnacha

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

Of course, if anyone with actual coding skills agrees that this is an important feature, feel free to give it a go – I’ll be your fan forever

@nicolagreco

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

I’m doing a thing like that for groups using the groupsmeta, you could do the same with usermeta o creating another table for connections

@gpo1

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

Its a good idea.I’m abit confused, Is it a follower like twitter or what?

@donnacha

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

@nicolagreco

That sounds like a viable solution, thank you for all the great work you are doing.

@donnacha

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

@gpo1

Sort of like following someone on Twitter, insofar as the number of followers someone has on Twitter is a good way to see how influential someone is.

In the first, simple incarnation of the Fans concept, however, I am NOT suggesting any sort of Twitter-style activity stream of the people you become a Fan of but that could be a more advanced feature at a later stage.

Right now, however, all I am suggesting is a way to indicate that you appreciate someone’s contribution to the community, like a sort of vote or thank you.

@jeff-sayre

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

@donnacha

The fans functionality, as you detail above, is a viable idea. Imagine a BP network of emerging artists. As you mentioned, it may not be appropriate to ask a favorite artist to add you as a friend but it would be easy enough for you to tell that artist, “I love what you do, keep it up!”

I see this idea as part of a larger necessity–mainly being able to provide members with a way to more accurately describe their relationships. Whether a true friend, a fan, a business partner, an intimate partner, a work colleague, a student, a professor, and many others, the ability to describe the type of relationship would add more power to the BP platform.

After all, I have many friends on the testbp.org site but I’ve never met them, I don’t know what most of them look like, and have never talked to them before. Are all of these really my friends? Whether or not they become actual friends in the future is not the issue. The issue is, what is the nature of our relationship at this point in time.

@donnacha

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

@Jeff

I see this idea as part of a larger necessity–mainly being able to provide members with a way to more accurately describe their relationships

Once again, you nail it – I admire your ability to step back and describe the bigger picture. This is exactly what I am saying but your example of a BP network of emerging artists makes it much clearer than my example of a BP network of Open Source developers and their users.

Hopefully, we will see BP’s abilities and flexibility rapidly evolve because that is going to be, surely, it’s strength.

@jeff-sayre

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

Thanks, donnacha!

Last night I added an enhancement request to trac for what I’m calling a Relationship Mapping feature.

Hopefully, we will see BP’s abilities and flexibility rapidly evolve because that is going to be, surely, it’s strength.

I have no doubt that BP will become a more flexible, sophisticated platform–and quicker than we expect. It is already quite a piece of work for a version one release candidate. Andy and the other developers have done quite a job!