Just a few brain-storming ideas.

Some people might consider this an invasion of privacy, but I think these statistics can be useful. I would like a way to monitor what each classmate/guest is doing on the website. Keep track of which links are visited the most, who is regularly signing in, who is updating their profile. The same data could be used to find out who hasn't logged in for quite some time. Information about the content of the e-mails that the classmates make to each other would not be kept track of, just the fact that they created a new message.

Data about people who are browsing the website and don't sign in could not be recorded.

I would also like to have a report of the different e-mail broadcasts that I have made to the class. This would include the subject of the e-mail, date/time, etc. Have I already sent this classmate an e-mail about this subject? I don't want to be guilty of spamming the classmates. All of this information could be kept in an individual audit record for each user that the e-mail went to. I don't know if it is possible to keep track of which e-mail addresses returned as "Bad E-mail Address" after the message was sent.

The date/time information about when the classmate/guest signed in, different links clicked on, profile updates, etc. The specific times spent on a page would not be recorded.

I would like to have a report that could be "per classmate" or "all classmates" , per date range, that I could use to display/print the data in the audit records for the users.

My banking program can give a "session receipt" before I log off of the program. This receipt shows all of the activities I have been doing - sign on time, transfer from-to account, amount, date/time, bills paid, etc. A bank employee can also use the informaton stored in the audit records to do reports to find out who transfered money, etc.

Anyway, just some ideas I thought I would record somewhere before I forget them.

Thanks Kyle. We have had some requests for some of these things, and will consider doing some additional reporting. Especially on stuff like which emails you've sent out, which Classmates they've gone to, etc. In the future you'll be able to save emails before sending, test to your own box, and revisit previously sent emails so you an send them again to new signsups, etc.

Having said that, we're always going to keep an eye on privacy issues too, as you also aluded to. For instance we've turned down requests in the past to show such things as "Last Classmates to log in" publicy on the home page for example. In general people don't like having their tracks scrutinzed, and especially reported on in a public way, so we're going to keep this in mind on any decisions we make about tracking and reporting.

So -- we will revisit this sometime in 2009. Literally hundreds of things to do before we even sit down to discuss these things in further detail, but as always I apprecaite you sharing your good ideas and suggestions. I've saved your entire post on file for later review when we get to additional reporting issues sometime in 2009.