09 November 2012, 15:21

Hello,

I'd like to throw out my sketchy ideas about exporting and importing feedback via Leap2A and would be interested in knowing what others think.

Currently, you can export feedback comments in the HTML export because that produces a static export. If you export your portfolio as Leap2A file in order to import it into another Mahara, the feedback does not come along because the new system doesn't necessarily have all the users set up who commented on the original portfolio.

That is an understandable limitation for logged-in users, but I wonder if we could / should overcome that. Feedback is very important for portfolios and thus if it is lost in the Leap2A export, a vital component of the portfolio is not exported.

Therefore, I thought the feedback could be exported for Leap2A by turning it into "anonymous" feedback, like you can give through a secret URL-shared page or a public page. There you provide your name and email and off you go.

My questions are:

• Would that be OK for the feedback givers? Suddenly their comments are not just on the original site, but appear on another Mahara site and they may not really know about that because the portfolio author doesn't have to tell them.
• In that case, should the comments be turned into private comments only? Should the portfolio author have the possibility to decide whether public comments should be turned into private ones upon export or should the setting stay the same? The general feedback export setting I imagine would be along the lines of the current HTML setting: Export feedback: Yes / No.

I'm looking forward to your comments.

Cheers

Kristina

02 November 2015, 15:33

Hi Kristina,

I'm all for comments coming along in the Leap2A export.

My opinion is that once a comment is made on someone's portfolio it is part of that portfolio and the owner of the portfolio should have rights to distribute where they like. It's the same as if owner shared the page with someone new after the comment was left, which is - of course - already possible.

I agree that there should be the ability to make selected imported comments private - the more choices the better from a user's perspective.

Wouldn't it be useful if the owner had the option to link the comments to a user on the new system, for situations where (i.e.) a whole group have been migrated from one installation to another? In the case where a set of users has come to a new system it would be great to be able to re-establish the connections.

I would imagine the owner would select comments to be linked, select the user on the system to link them to, then the proposed commenter would be sent a request to confirm or deny the association.

This type of functionality (while probably tricky to manufacture) could also have reach into importing/exporting groups and friends and maybe even institutions.

Cheers,
Jeremy

02 November 2015, 16:16

The idea of users "endorsing" imported comments by them is an interesting one. One of the main reasons why we'd need to transform imported comments into "anonymous" comments, is because imported comments could easily be forged. A leap2a file is, at its heart, just an XML text file, which a user could open up and edit by hand, to make a comment say whatever they want, from whatever user they want.

But, if you added a step where the imported comment could "look up" whether its author is present on the import site, and ask the author to confirm "Yep, that was me", then it would get around that issue.

There would be some tricky technical aspects to it, though, and it might be a little hard for end users to understand exactly what's going on. So I think it'd only really be worth doing if you had a specific need for it.

03 November 2015, 16:13

It's also interesting to note that when a new user is created using a Leap2A file, the comments/feedback DO come across. The comment contributors are made named internal - the same as comments made by someone viewing an secret URL.

23 December 2015, 13:09

Hello Jeremy,

Thank you for this. I updated the user manual for 15.10 to that effect and also filed a report to make this setting more flexible: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1528122

Cheers

Kristina