Design principles for user visibility

Here is an illustration for how hx has currently designed the default visibility of posts and event items for different user levels.

Conceptually, there are seven levels of usership by current design:

1. Anonymous

This is the average Joe Schmoe that navigates to tongde.us randomly on the internet. This classification is assigned by default to anyone on the internet. Posts specifically assigned the WWW tag are visible to these users.

2. Unverified

Any average Joe Schmoe can sign up for an account through the Request Access form. When they do so, and validate their account by clicking on the confirmation link that is sent to their provided email, their account enters an “unverified” status. There is very little that is different between the visibility for Unverified accounts compared against the Anonymous user. However, small inconsequential posts assigned the Public tag are currently visible to Unverified accounts (such as meaningful ancient quotes that have no direct relationship to the temple).

3. Verified

Only after an account is manually verified by a website administrator do they reach this account status. This is to ensure that we do not accidentally start allowing access to our content to random people on the internet. These accounts are currently coded to see posts from the following categories: Announcements, Ancient Classics, and Quotes. They are also able to see any posts and events that are specifically tagged with WWW or Public, but are unable to see any other posts or events by default.

These accounts can also see posts in the Class Resources category targeted toward their specific class(es), as long as their accounts are added to the additional permissions groups for that class. Detailed instructions for this are provided in a prior post here.

Accounts in this category must be manually assigned additional permissions to view specific calendar events. This can be done on an event-by-event basis, or by adding the account to a permissions group, which will allow viewing of all posts & events allowed by that group assignment. No additional documentation is provided for this at the time being; for further details, please consult with Phil directly.

4. Staff

These accounts, by current configuration, are able to view posts categorized as Podcasts and Reflections in addition to all categories viewable to Verified accounts above. They are also able to view, by default, all non-staff classes in the events calendar—examples include such classes as 新民班、明德班、成全班、複習班、and the English Seminar Series. By default, they are not able to view any staff-level events or logistical items on the calendar; such activation must be done via the same mechanisms described above.

5. Senior Staff

These accounts can see all the above mentioned post categories and can see all staff-level events and logistical items on the calendar. They are still only allowed to see only the Class Resources posts for classes that they are assigned to. If it is preferred that they gain access to content from all classes, then they may be added to the “CLASSES: ALL” permissions group.

6. Manager

Managers can view all content described thus far, including content from all classes, even without direct assignment in the “CLASSES: ALL” permissions group. In addition, these accounts can also see posts categorized under Website Governance (such as this one). These posts are critical to the management of the website at large. Some of these posts may contain technically sensitive information, so this capability is limited only to a handful of temple relatives. At the moment, only Manager accounts may edit or create content (such as posts or calendar events). This capability may be expanded to select Senior Staff accounts at a later date, but the timeline for that build-out is not yet clear.

7. Administrator

These accounts have access to the entire back-end for the website, including all technical configurations and raw code. People who hold this account level must absolutely know what they are doing, or they have the potential to break the entire underpinnings of the website. Currently, the only website administrator is Phil. This is likely to be the case for some time, until we have another Dao relative in the future who is both committed to the Dao spirit and is also facile with technical intricacies.

Questions, comments, concerns? Please post in the Slack #website channel and mention @Phillip Tseng. Thank you!