Improve UI for navigating large [camptix_attendees] lists

[coreymckrill]

In #1760, @s1m0nd says:

With WordCamps Europe and US now expecting thousands (plural) of people, we're beyond a point where simple alphabetical presentation makes sense.

... it's probably time we were looking ahead to a proper, ideally faceted, search function.

I agree, so here's a proposed solution:

• For lists over a certain number of items, include a search box at the top, powered by ​List.js (MIT licensed) or something similar.
• Show a random subset of the attendees by default, perhaps with a toggle for sorting alphabetically.
• Typing in the search box instantly replaces the random list with the attendees whose names match the search term.
• Include a "Show More" button at the bottom of the list, so if you want to browse instead of search, you can click the button to reveal a subsequent chunk of attendees, similar to Jetpack's Infinite Scroll functionality when there are footer widgets.

The implementation of this would be to still load the markup for all of the attendees list items (since it's cached and the Gravatars are now lazy loaded), but initially only reveal a certain number of them. The functionality could be adjusted with additional shortcode attributes.

@s1m0nd is this in line with what you were thinking?

[s1m0nd]

I'm not sure about random presentation of the initial set. I like the potential for serendipity, but I suspect predictability will work better for people, especially if alphabetical presentation is the norm. I doubt users will realise that the default presentation changes above X attendees.

Text-based searching across names is certainly one method we'd want. Which 'names' though? I can think of several key WordPress folk whom I know only by their usernames on various platforms.

But I suspect the searches which would be more valuable at large scale are more vague ones: 'I wonder who's attending from that city/state/country? or that company?' Of course, that's at least as much about the data we capture, and the way we store it, as it is about how we present it.

[coreymckrill]

I'm not sure about random presentation of the initial set. I like the potential for serendipity, but I suspect predictability will work better for people, especially if alphabetical presentation is the norm. I doubt users will realise that the default presentation changes above X attendees.

Good point. So it would be better for alphabetical to be the default. And, I do think it would be nice to have an option where it's not always just the "A" names above the fold.

But I suspect the searches which would be more valuable at large scale are more vague ones: 'I wonder who's attending from that city/state/country? or that company?' Of course, that's at least as much about the data we capture, and the way we store it, as it is about how we present it.

Unless we add a lot of complexity for the person setting up the page via additional shortcode attributes, I suspect the search will just be for whatever content is visible in each attendee list item. The shortcode does allow that info to be customized.

[iandunn]

There's a related discussion going on at ​https://make.wordpress.org/community/2017/03/23/improvements-to-the-attendees-shortcode/

[coreymckrill]

Closing this in favor of this GitHub issue:
​https://github.com/WordPress/wordcamp.org/issues/374