John Mc,
Has there been any thought/discussion to add one (or more) fields to
the member information?
There is one "extra" field. If you open a member's page there's the "Notes" tab.
Alas, that feature is rather out-of-sight-out-of-mind right now, there's no indication given in the list that it holds content, and there are no notifications when a moderator updates that field. At least the update does get logged in the Moderator Activity log.
Not trying to turn the member list into a full-out database - but for
some lists it's nice to have one more bit of information about a
person. What street you live on for the neighborhood list. What
your plot number is for the community garden list. Stuff like that.
I've often wished for functionality like this, but I've never come up with a proposed "best" way to do it.
Just adding more fields to the Members list is one approach. But it can make that list cluttered, which could ultimately be an impediment to its primary use cases. Maybe there would be a clever way to manage what is shown when there are too many columns to fit the user's window; a bit like Excel's split and/or freeze features.
I've also thought of having it be another selector, "Notes", in the Members list view button that currently selects Members, Moderators, Pending, Bouncing, or Banned. When "Notes" is selected then the custom fields are shown rather than the standard fields. But I think you'd have to have at least the email field automatically included, or both email and Display name. So you rapidly run into the same width problem as having them in the primary members list.
A pro or con of those ideas (depending on your use case) is that it would be available only to moderators.
Possibly one could do a similar thing built on the member Directory so that it could be made available to members if desired. In my classmate groups it would be desirable to allow members to add their current address, phone number, nick-name in school, activities, or other information to help everyone remember them. Even a second "then" picture to go with their current profile photo/avatar.
Couldn't find anything searching old topics - is this wish list
worthy?
I'd say yes. We could kick it around here some more if you like, or just go for it in beta.
Shal
Shal Farley