Individual profile tools
From [[http://cpsquare.org CPsquare]], the community of practice on communities of practice.
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Definition
An individual profile page provides contact and descriptive information about an individual that is visible to the whole community. Profiles vary in terms of source of data shown and how access is controlled. System administrators may have access to information that others do not.
Uses in a community of practice
A personal profile page is a means of making a community's members known within the community, according its own norms. The page of information about an individual community member may enable contact, or just be a way to “look up” someone. It may indicate a person's role or status in the community; list their interests or accomplishments; or publish other things that are meaningful to a community. What's relevant and how it is communicated may be unique to a specific community.
Polarities
- Together/apart, Synch/Asynch: Because an individual profile is inherently asynchronous it may take some effort to get community members to complete one.
- Participation/Reification: Making the effort to complete a profile can be a good way of facilitating more more connections in a community.
- Individual/group: an individual profile is the singular of a Community entry page.
Features
- A personal photo can be a key element of an individual profile (although it may also be used in other places, such as a directory or with individual postings or sessions).
- An individual's photo may communicate many things about a person that makes collaboration at a distance more comfortable. Cultural, ethnic or bandwidth issues might make photos something to avoid.
- Augments information with bios and other community-specific information in additional data fields that can be added, entered and searched. Links from community directory, individual postings, or other locations.
- Communities have unique information needs like sub-specialties, certifications, historical characteristics, etc. aAlso useful if it is desirable to have uniform sets of data about people that’s readily available.
- Displays automatically gathered information beyond what’s shown in the community directory.
- Similar in function to the uses described in the community directory, but for use when looking up one person. Information that is inappropriate or won’t fit in other locations may be very useful in an individual profile page.
- Reputation or reliability scores given by others are posted. A sum of the feedback or reliability scores that members give to individual posts or other transactions are accumulated in the personal profile page.
- When a community is very large and membership includes people of widely varying backgrounds and professional standing, having a method of representing and aggregating "reputation" can be important.
- User can control how much information is visible to others. The information that is made public in a personal profile is jointly defined and controlled by the individual and the community.
- In some communities, a member may want to suppress contact information or mask an organizational affiliation. A professional association, for example, would keep information about dues payments that would not belong on a personal profile.
- Export individual profile information. Allows you to utilize the "official" information that a community member provides for themselves in a personal contact management system (e.g., by exporting it to Outlook).
- Reduces the effort required to manage contact information about community members by re-using what members provide.
See also: member directory tools.
