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A little frustrated – Sharing resources with the Organizer
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Ok, I’ve been a bit frustrated over the last month or so with people that have edited my resources that I shared in the organizer – the ones that I’ve put the AO weeks in.
I’ve had people remove the week numbers. I’ve had someone edit one to a different edition of the book (without making an edition.) And just in general people messing up my resources.
There is a bug (that I reported) that I can’t “copy” an older version of a resource. There was a bug that I couldn’t even schedule an earlier version (looks like that has been fixed now)… but overall it has made my reusing the resources I carefully created last year much more difficult for the next child.
If you are going to do extensive changes to a resource someone else edited (ie, not just fixing a typo or something like that) – would you please make your own copy and do those changes to YOUR copy?
Otherwise, I’ll just have to stop sharing the work I’ve done to use the organizer in the way I’d like with the AO resources and other people doing AO would just have to do it themselves as well.
Sorry for being snarky – but when I went to mark off the readings for The Child’s History of the World for my daughter, I realized that someone changed the divisions to match the OLDER edition (but didn’t even change the edition information, so it doesn’t even match) – and I’ve had to go in and schedule an earlier version – which needs a minor edit, but I can’t edit it… ARGH! And this kept coming up with various resources – people having removed week numbers, or other things like that, instead of scheduling an original version (they are there) or making their own copy.
Let’s have some discussion about how we could improve this. Jordan and I just brainstormed some possible ideas to get us started. What about some of these?
- Allow a resource owner to lock a resource from editing.
- Allow rolling back to an older revision of a resource to effectively undo changes. You can now go back and use any revision but this would allow making that revision the current one.
- Add an optional editing note area to top of a resource where instructions or comments from the creator could be added.
- Force it so changes to a division type require a copy be made instead of a simple edit, like with editions.
- Display an editing warning with some guildelines when changes are made.
- Display a warning when too many changes are made to divisions to consider making a copy.
So I’m confused (still on my 30 day trial – And loving it so far), I thought the only way you changed the resource for everyone in the database was if your clicked on the Share Publicly Share with other CM Organizer users. box?
I believed you could tweak the resource for your family and it wouldn’t impact the resource in the database?
If you click on the Share Publicly to share with other CM Organizer Users, then other people can use your resource – but they can also change that resource. I don’t know if you could change it to not share if you didn’t create the resource to begin with….
You can tweak the resource for your family by COPYING the resource then making the changes (and either sharing if you think your changes would be useful for others – because I added the AO weeks I felt it was useful for anyone doing AO – or clicking to not share….)
- Allow a resource owner to lock a resource from editing.
That might be an option – but would make fixing a simple typo a pain….
- Allow rolling back to an older revision of a resource to effectively undo changes. You can now go back and use any revision but this would allow making that revision the current one.
Actually, that could cause “wars” between people…. Right now you can use an earlier edition – but what I’d find handy is if you could COPY an earlier revision (right now it always copies the latest one, no matter which I’m viewing…) – So then if someone changed my resource I can at least make a copy with what I want and make additional changes. (For instance with the CHOW example I gave – I could copy my original… and also edit the changes the other person made to reflect the right edition….
- Add an optional editing note area to top of a resource where instructions or comments from the creator could be added.
That could be helpful – I could explain what the week numbers I’m adding mean and how to use them effectively, and maybe suggest that there are other versions out there without them if they prefer that….
- Force it so changes to a division type require a copy be made instead of a simple edit, like with editions.
That would make sense. (Note that no-one changed my division types – so it wouldn’t solve my problem – but may solve other peoples…)
- Display an editing warning with some guildelines when changes are made.
Might be useful…. or could be annoying – may depend on wording….
- Display a warning when too many changes are made to divisions to consider making a copy.
That would probably be helpful….
And btw – I think overall the sharing feature is really great. This type of annoyance does happen when people share resources, so it wasn’t a surprise….
I tend to lean toward solutions that don’t get in your way too much, take advantage of community self-policing, and make it easy to fix if there’s a problem. For example, Wikipedia does a nice job with rolling back changes and having discussions about changes.
We’ve previously talked about adding a little description area to describe changes when editing. What if we made rollbacks possible and added that description feature? Then if there’s a problem you could roll back, explain why in the description, and instruct others to make a copy or use some other variation of the resource. When editing we could show the existing edit history notes in an obvious way. A note area on a resource along with could might work the same way.
I think this would stay out of the way for the vast majority of edits that never have a problem but make a way to deal with problems without too much pain.
Regarding the warning idea:
Display an editing warning with some guildelines when changes are made.
Might be useful…. or could be annoying – may depend on wording….
One way of doing that is to only show the warning at first. You could be given the option to make go away permanently after you’ve made a few edits.
What if you could share and others use as written, but if they want changes it only does that if you copy first?
@missceegee, That solves the bad changes problem, but it takes away the ability of the community to make good corrections like filling in missing details or fixing typos. I think some of the solution might be coming up with a way to help everyone understand that what they are changing affects others too so they can learn to collaborate in a helpful way.
I forgot we already added the field to describe your edits. Maybe we need to just make that history more visible when editing.
Suzukimom – What if you entered the resource you want to share, but then instead of scheduling it, you make a copy and THEN schedule it. Then you will be able to share but without having to worry about someone upsetting your carefully planned resource. I’m guessing the problem is that most people don’t realize way their changes affect others. (I’m glad that I don’t use AO because I’m hoping that means that I wasn’t the one that messed up your resources unintentionally) But I can imagine your frustration… especially with the time that I’ve spent entering some specialized resources with the intent of saving others the “work”.
Oh nuts – I’m noticing that they added that feature that I was on board with of letting us know who entered or edited an item – I guess that means you’ll know for sure if I’ve been messing with your resources~ Well, I’d better start paying better attention to copying the resource as opposed to outright editing.
Kind of excited to be able to see who entered and edited resources though! Now I know who to thank!Hey Rebekahy – I was actually thinking that I might have to do that in the future… I just hate to use up extra space to have duplicates of identical resources…
Oh – we can see who is editing now?
Oh – we can see who is editing now?
Yes, the Compare All Edits link on a resource will tell you a few things about each edit. You should see the author of the changes, which fields were changed, and any notes the editor may have added to describe the changes.
Uh oh!! I’m one that didn’t know…… It seems like I had to enter all my resources so I could have them llike I wanted, but if I’m messing with your resource pm me and I will stop. 🙂
I shared all my stuff, so now I guess if stuff gets screwy I will know why.
Kind of excited to be able to see who entered and edited resources though! 
Now I know who to thank!
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