map not useful on individual user homepage

[Matthew East]

While the addition of the Google map to team pages is useful to see where in the world team members are, it is useless on an individual page.

The user pages are more difficult on the eye now, and the map uses up quite a lot of vertical space so I have to scroll down more often to see information that I'm actually interested in.

It's marginally useful to know a user's location, but it's not as useful as all the other information shown below the map. In any event, we already had that information in the text version: "Continent/City". I don't really see that the map adds anything. Could it be shown on a drop down basis, or not at all on user pages?

I asked on the launchpad-users mailing list how the map was intended to be useful for an individual's page, but didn't get any convincing responses, so I'm filing this bug for further discussion.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/launchpad-users/2008-September/004152.html

[Martin Albisetti (beuno)]

I don't agree it's "not useful".
It certainly is when someone is from, let's say, uzbekistan (picked random country, no pun intended), and you have no idea where that is.

I do agree that the amount of space it uses may be a bit much (or rather, that we could use the screen real estate better).

As part of the 3.0 re-design, I'll do some mock ups of the user page, and run them by you to see if they address the problem.

Sound good?

[Matthew East (mdke)]

On Sun, Sep 7, 2008 at 8:11 PM, Martin Albisetti <email address hidden> wrote:
> I don't agree it's "not useful".
> It certainly is when someone is from, let's say, uzbekistan (picked random country, no pun intended), and you have no idea where that is.

Even if I don't really think it's Launchpad's job to provide general
knowledge information, I'll run with your point for the sake of
argument.

I agree that there will be countries that many people won't be
familiar with. However, I think it's important to think about how
often this is going to arise. I think it will be extremely rare that a
user hasn't got enough information from the text of
"Continent/Country".

First, your point only applies to uncommon countries. Second, what one
really wants to know from this part of the user page is the user's
timezone, and a rough impression is already given by the "Continent"
part of the text. To give perfect information, the text would only
need to include the actual timezone (e.g. "GMT + 7") - although
perhaps that is another bug. Third, this is one of the least important
pieces of information shown on the page. Team and project
participation is much more important.

I just can't see any possible reason why the amount of screen space
used justifies the presence of the map and I think that there is a
temptation to provide the map simply because it demonstrates
fashionable technology, rather than actually being useful.

And even if the user isn't familiar with a particular country (and
note they might not be familiar with a lot of other words on that page
too, like a project name or group name), then it's simple to look it
up.

> As part of the 3.0 re-design, I'll do some mock ups of the user page,
> and run them by you to see if they address the problem.

Well, from my point of view my preferred solution would just be to
remove the map on individual pages. But I'm happy to look at a mockup
if that's the way that you'd like to address the bug. I'm a Launchpad
user only, I don't expect the project developers to agree with all the
bugs I report.

--
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

I have a branch that will enable/disable the small map embeded the user and the team pages. This feature request may be closed if users think it is acceptable that all small maps are disabled.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

I think there is one more change required to close this bug. I still see the map image asking me to set a user or team's location even though I have unselected the Display map checkbox. The page should not include that image in this case -- I do not want to see a pretend map and I am not inclined to reveal someone's location.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

The map is less intrusive in the new page layout, so I am closing this bug.