LondonCommons.net Documentation

The Official Guide to using the Londoncommons.net

This page is the starting point for help on using LondonCommons.net. Because it is of the content type "book" anyone with an account can edit this page, its "child" pages or add new child pages.

LondonCommons.net is a web application designed for community publishing, information sharing and organizing. Some of its popular tools have been available on the site for a couple of years now, such as blogs and the events calendar. Recently a whole suite of new tools have been added, with the existing tools getting some enhancements along the way.

LondonCommons.net Basics

LondonCommons.net is a free service provided by and for members of the London, Ontario community. When posting, there are a few basic things to remember:

Using your real name as your username is required.
Do not post advertisements. The only exception is for the events calendar, in which case you can advertise an event that costs money ONLY if it is not run by a corporation.
Respect copyrights. If you post a creative work in its entirety that doesn't belong to you it will be deleted. The exceptions to this rule are if the creative work is available under a Creative Commons license, or if the work is in the public domain.
Material that clearly intends to incite hatred will be deleted.
This is a local site, the other users are your neighbours. Please try to be respectful in general.

Basic Technical Troubles

LondonCommons.net makes extensive use of modern web technologies. If you are having trouble accessing the website, signing in, or if everything looks distorted in some way there are a few things you can try.

"I signed up for an account but never got an email with my password!"

This sometimes happens to people who use Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail for their email account. Hotmail and Yahoo sometimes mistake email from our website as spam. If your welcome email has not arrived in your inbox, please check the spam or junk folder.

If the welcome email is not in your spam folder, you may need to sign up from a different email account (that isn't hosted by MSN or Yahoo). Google's GMail doesn't mark LondonCommons.net emails as spam. If you're still having trouble, you can email the moderators at info@londoncommons.net.

"Things don't look right on the site"

The site is designed to be as standards compliant as possible. If the site doesn't look right on your computer, you are probably using an old web browser.

The developers of the site use and recommend Mozilla Firefox. Firefox is a free web browser that is available Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The site should also look fine in Internet Explorer 6 and 7, and Safari on the Mac, although not everything is guaranteed to work all the time in those browsers.

Audio Playlists

Audio Plalists Audio has always been a key part of the londoncommons.net. Formly, users could only enjoy listening to audio uploaded to the site one track at a time, if they downloaded it. In the audio section, its discussed that each audio track has its own play button, so users can listen to the piece of audio without the need to download it. This chapter will cover how users can create a playlist of collected audio uploaded to the site, to play one after another in one player. This is very handy for bands and performing artists that would like to upload a copy of their album to the site. Also, interviews and podcasts can be arranged into chapters, each chapter being a track on the playlist. Along with having the player on the site, the playlists can also be streamed to a favorite audio player located locally on the users computer, to avoid interuptions incase the user moves to a different page on the site. This is done through the m3u and pls feed links, located below the player.

Step 1 - Creating an Audio Playlist

Creating an Audio Playlist Audio playlists are very easy to create and add to. The playlist itself must be created before adding audio to it. There are two ways to add audio to the playlist, which will be discussed in the next chapter. This chapter will cover the creation of a playlist. To begin, select from the Share menu, Create Audio Playlist (or click here, it will open a new window). There are some fields that need information inputted.

Title - the playlist needs a name, perhaps its an album. this is where to input that.
Tags - tags are used to sort content for searches and catagorization. enter the catagories the playlist fits into. if other content has the same catagories, they will drop down as you type.
Description - sometimes a desription is necessary, but not always. if it is, this is the place to input that. it will appear above the player.

Below these fields, is a group titled Attach audio files. It is not recommended that this method of uploading audio be used. It will attach audio to the playlist, and will publish the audio to the site, however, it lacks a lot of extra info needed when submitting an audio track to the site. If this is the prefered way of inputtin it, be warned that somethings will not display. See next chapter for details. This should not be compared to the Mass import used in photo albums. If the playlist belongs to a group, select which group(s) it belongs to. Also select which creative commons license should be applied to this playlist if the default share alike license is not correct. Once the submit button is pressed, the playlist will be created. The next chapter will cover how to add audio to the playlist.

Step 2 - Adding audio to a playlist

Adding audio to a playlist Once the audio playlist has been created, there needs to be audio added to it. This can be done by two methods. Only one of these methods is recommended, while the other works, it leaves out crucial information about the audio being uploaded. Adding Existing Audio on the site The recommended way of adding audio to the site, is by adding already uploaded audio. It is both easier, and ensures that all the required information about the track is availible. To start, click on the audio node that is being added to the playlist. This is the page of the specific audio track. For example, the song La la la by John Doe is showing up on the recent audio page. Click the title to go to that songs page. Once on the page for that audio, there is a link below all the information. This is where you will find links such as "add a comment" "report this page" etc. The link needed for playlists is called "add to playlist". Clicking this link, will load a page with a list of playlists the user is allowed to add to. If the user has created one, they may select the checkbox beside the playlist being added to. Once submit has been pressed, the audio will be added to the playlist. The track will appear in the player, as well a link will appear below the player for that audio track. Uploading Audio directly to the playlist This method is not recommended, as essensial information may not be included, and will not appear correctly in both the audio page for the track, as well as on the player/playlist. When editing, or submitting a playlist, there is a group of information called Attach audio files. In this group there are a few option to fill out.

Existing audio file - this drop down lets you pick from a list of existing audio files on the site. the list may be rather large, but this method is safe, as the audio is already on the site.
Upload new audio file - this is where the user can upload a new audio file to the site/playlist.
Title - enter the title of the audio file being uploaded.
Published - select if the audio will be published or not. if not published, it may not be availible in some other lists.

Notice that only the only information availible for the user to input is the title. This is very limiting. The player does not use the title of the audio node, but rather uses the meta tags built into the audio file (mp3) commonly known as ID3 tags. If the file does not contain an ID3 tag, then the file will appear blank on the player. In past tests, its also found that even though a title was specified in the above, no title was given to the audio work after its uploaded. Meaning there was no way to edit the audio later once on the site. Also, there is no option for cover art, where as, in the main audio submission page, there are options for adding cover art along with the mp3. Cover art is displayed in the playlist player if its added to an audio file. All in all, its safe to say that this method is undesirable, and should not be used. The former method explained above, is the recommended method. The next chapter will cover sorting the playlist.

Step 3 - Sorting the Tracks on the playlist

How to sort tracks on a playlist Now that all the tracks are added to the playlist, the list may be sorted to the desired order. Only the owner of the playlist can change the order. Unfortunately, someone listening in, cannot choose the order the tracks play in, but they do have the option of clicking on each track, along with the basic audio player controls: rewind, stop, play/pause, forward. While viewing the playlist page for the playlist being sorted, click the edit tab link at the top of the playlist's page. Once on the edit page, scroll down to where the list of attached audio files is located. Beside each track in the playlist, there are 3 icons:

Down arrow - clicking will move the given track down one space
Up arrow - clicking will move the given track up on space
Remove - clicking will remove the given track from the playlist

Once an icon is clicked, the list will fade out and a rotating circly icon thingy will appear to show its processing the request. The page will not reload, and when the circly icon thingy (that is the techical term I ensure you) disappers the user may continue moving or removing the remainin tracks, until the desired order has been achieved. When finished, scroll to the bottom, and click submit.

Books and Collaborative Writing and Directories

Books are content types that any user with an account can edit. They are organized hierarchically, so that each book page represent a chapter of the larger book. Another advantages of books is that they have a printer friendly view for easy printing. The printer friendly view includes all child pages of the book page you want to print. They are the closest thing to a Wiki on LondonCommons.net.

Unlike a Wiki, there is no Wiki markup for adding links to a document. Links are done the same way as everywhere else on the website using the TinyMCE editor. Similar to a Wiki, book pages have a revision history. To see past revisions of a book page (and most of the other content types too) click on the revisions tab above the title of page.

Comments do not show up in the printer friendly view. This means that the comments area of each book page can be used by its authors to discuss the document. Editorial decisions, brainstorming, and even disagreements can be kept out of document itself by keeping them in the comments.

Book pages by their nature are very flexible. They can be used for collaborative creative writing, because there are no limits on size and any users is allowed to edit. They can just as easily be used to create a user contributed directory. Each child book page could be a category or letter from the directory.

Chatrooms

Londoncommons Chat Part of the new londoncommons.net, are the presences of chatrooms. There are currently two of them.

General Chat
Support

The General chat, is for just average any-day chatting, nothing specific, but friendly interactions with other users. The support chat, is for quick help with using the site. There are a couple commands inside the chatroom that may come in handy. These are entered into the main submission line below the chat box. /me /msg Both of these can do some neat things. Here's an example of how each one would be used:

"/me likes going to the store to buy computer parts." would display in the chat window as if your name was john doe: "john doe likes going to the store to buy computer parts".
"/msg john doe hey hows it going, I have a secret", would send a private message to the user john doe. only john doe (or the person you are sending a message to) will see the message.

Alternately, you may click on a users name from the list of users in the chatroom at the time, and the /msg command will be filled out with the users name automatically, and the rest of the message can be entered. A user can also set their status in the chat to "away", so that others know they may not respond right away. Users can also be kicked out of a chatroom, or banned if their behaviour is horribly uncivil.. so best behave while in it :)

Comment Viewing Options

One of the most notable and important features of the London Commons is the threaded discussions of it's users. Some of these discussions can become very long and confusing. With replies the original post and replies to replies, it can be difficult to discern who is replying to whom and to follow flow of the conversation. With the comment viewing options provided for threads on the London Commons, users can customize how comments and discussions are presented to suite their style of web-surfing.

Comment Listing Options:

The following options are available:
Flat list - collapsed
Flat list - expanded
Threaded list - collapsed
Threaded list -expanded

"Flat List" means that all comments are displayed in the order they were posted (Oldest to newest by default but this can be set to display comments from newest to oldest, see below). The main drawback to a 'flat list' is that as it showes comments in the order they were posted, it may make it more difficult to discern which comments are replies to which.

The above is an example of 'Flat - collapsed' view.

"Threaded list" means that Replies to the original post are displayed chronologically (Oldest to newest by default, but this can be set to display comments from newest to oldest. See below). Any replies to a previous comment will be displayed below (and indented from) the comment it is replying to. Think of a tree: the tree trunk is the original post, the limbs are comments replying to the original post, the branches are replies to the comments about the original post, twigs, leaves and so on... Replies to a given comment will also be displayed chronologically.

The above is an example of 'Threaded - collapsed' view.

"Collapsed" means that only comment titles are displayed. Clicking on a Comment's title will bring you to the comment itself.

"Expanded" means that the full text of all comments are displayed to be read on the same page.

The above is an example of 'Threaded - expanded' view.

Date Options:

Oldest First: Comments will be displayed with older comments or sub-threads (depending on whether you are viewing the discussion in 'Flat' or 'Threaded' mode) towards the top of the page and newer comments towards the bottom. In longer discussions that span multiple pages, Older comments and/or sub-threads will appear on the first pages and comments will become more and more recent as the pages progress. Having the oldest comments first makes it easier to read the discussion as it unfolded.

Newest First: Comments will be displayed with newer comments or sub-threads (depending on whether you are viewing the discussion in 'Flat' or 'Threaded' mode) towards the top of the page and older comments towards the
bottom. In longer discussions that span multiple pages, the most recent comments
and/or sub-threads will appear on the first pages and comments/sub-threads will
become older as the pages progress. Having the newest comments displayed first makes it easier to find new developments in a discussion, reducing the need to scroll or go to subsequent pages.

Number of Comments per page:

This menu allows you to set how many comments you want to appear on a single page. Selecting fewer comments per page will break up longer discussions onto multiple pages (This may make it harder to find multiple new post, as they may only be marked "New" on the first page you're brought to from the recent comments page). you can select 10, 30, 50, 70, 90, 150, 200, 250 or 300 comments per page.

Rated comment options:

This option allows users of the London Commons to decided whether or not they want to display and read comments that have been deemed rude or hostile by other community members (see the Karma and Rating Comments documentation for more information on how comments are determined to be rude, hostile or offensive by the community).

Show low-rated comments: Comments with low average ratings (i.e. those that have been rated as hostile/less civil) will be displayed along with comments with high average ratings (i.e. comments rated as polite/more civil) and unrated comments.

Hide low-rated comments: Comments with low average ratings (i.e. those that have been
rated as hostile/less civil) will be removed from your view, leaving only comments with high average
ratings (i.e. comments rated as polite/more civil) and un-rated
comments. This setting can have the effect of making heated threads difficult to understand, as replies to low-rated comments will not be accompanied to the comment they reply too and other references to low-rated comments may lack context.

Groups

Groups on LondonCommons.net

Groups are a new feature on LondonCommons.net, and hopefully the community will find great use in them.

The groups on this site are similar to groups on sites like Google Groups or Facebook. They are intended to replace or supplement mailing lists as a tool for people to communicate as a group. Here's an overview of some of the more useful features of groups on this site:

Posts to a group are private by default, but can be made public too
Each group gets their own page, just like the front page, that contains all the recent posts to the group
Each group gets their own events calendar
You can also post blogs, images, audio, polls and recipes to your groups
Just like a mailing list, groups can be open for anyone to join or new memberships can require approval
Group members can choose to get new posts via their email

Joining and Creating Groups

The list of available groups is available at the groups directory, which is also accessible with the groups icon in the left sidebar. To join (aka subscribe to) a group, simply click on the 'subscribe' link for that group. You will be asked to confirm that you'd like to subscribe. If approval is required for subscription, the group admin will need to approve your request before you become a member.

Creating a group is done the same way as posting blogs, images or any other type of content to the site. Go to the "Organize" menu (underneath the LondonCommons.net logo at the top of the page) and select 'Start a group'. Simply fill out the form to give your group a name, desciption, mission statement and choose the desired subscription options. More information is available on the help page 'Groups for Group Admins' (to be written soon).

Karma and Rating Comments

LondonCommons.net has a new system to help with moderating discussions. The new system is called Karma, which is designed to allow discussions to be moderated by regular users. In other words: all LondonCommons.net users can now take part in moderating discussion, decreasing the need for formal moderators.

The basics

The whole Karma system is based on user participation. Every user contributed comment now has a Karma drop-down menu. The options on this menu let any signed in user choose a sort of "neighbourliness rating" on a scale of zero to five for the comment in question. The rating is ment to rate the Civility of the comment, rather then it's substance.

0: Hostile comment
1:
2: Nutural Comment
3:
4: Polite Comment

How the ratings are used

Karma keeps track of the average ratings of every user on the
site. The Karma system gets its name from this average, which is
displayed under the Karma section on user information pages. Hopefully
people will want to have high karmas, and try to write comments that
will get high ratings. Karma also lets users decide whether they want to see comments with low-ratings. Signed in users can choose to show or hide low-rated comments in the comment viewing options which are alway directly above the start of any comments section and are displayed below. If you don't want to see comments that other users have rated low, the site will hide them for you automatically. <picture goes here>

Protection against constant flamers

Every new comment starts out with the user's current karma as its initial rating. This means a new comment from a user who has consisently been rated as a hostile neighbour will be hidden until the comment is rated higher by another user. Low rated comments are only hidden when the option has been set in the comment viewing options pictured above. Choose "Show low-rated comments" to see all comments no matter the rating. Once a comment has been rated, a link is available to to see individual ratings. This is to keep users accountable for the ratings they've made on other people's comments. If an individual is abusing the karma system other users will be able to detect it.

For keeping it civil, not for censorship

It should be said that the new comment rating system is designed for moderating discussions based on civility or good neighbourliness. Comments should be rated low if they are inflammatory, insulting or disrespectful. Comments should not be rated low because they contain opinions or arguments that you disagree with. Likewise, comments should be rated high because they are helpful, written in a respectful tone, or otherwise contribute to the participatory nature of this website and not simply because you agree with them. The goal of the Karma system is for discussion areas on the site to be self moderating. It is meant to be a tool to help users deal with bad internet behaviour. It is not meant to be used for hiding comments you are opposed to. There are no limits to how many comments a user is allowed to rate, and users should feel free to participate as much as they like. Two final notes: focus more on rating high than rating low, and help welcome new users to the site by rating them as good neighbours.

Showing or Hiding low rated comments

Show or Hide Low Rated Comments Members of the site, have the option to show or hide comments with a low score. By doing so, "flamers" and "trolls" can be easily ignored. To adjust this option, there is a dropdown above all comments attached to a page, called show low-rated comments, or hide low-rated comments. The user must choose to hide low rated comments, as this option is turned off by default. Once the option has been selected, the setting must be saved. Once the setting is saved, all low-rated comments will no longer appear, or will appear depending on the setting chosen by the user. This may be turned on an off whenever the user decides, with the above action. It is very handy when site moderators are not around to help moderate a discussion turned-flame war.

Photo Albums

Photo Albums Along with posting a picture (image content), users can create photo albums to showcase a collection of pictures easily. These albums will display all the images attached to the album, in a grid form with small thumbnails. When someone clicks on these thumbnails, they expand in a larger form without directing them to a new page. (thanks to a feature called lightbox2). The images are also published individually from the album, so they can be rated seperately and commented on seperately. To move to the image's page, simply click on the title of the image from within the photo album.

Step 1 - Creating a Photo Album

Creating a Photo Album Lets create a photo album. Start by clicking on the menu item entitled Make Photo Album located under the Share menu located at the top of the page. (you can also click here to open a new window) Creation of a photo album should be done before adding images, as an photo album contains a mass import feature, to allow users to upload a batch of images at once. It it possible to add images to an album later, but the user would need to edit the image node of the image they want added, which can be difficult and time consuming with larger albums. This will be covered shortly. Now that the page has loaded, we need to fill in the required information for the photo album.

Title - this is pretty self explanitory, like anything it needs a name.
Parent - we may not need to do anything with this. Its used to place an album inside an album.
Tags - enter in catagories relating to the topic of the album, seperate them with a comma (,). if there are existing catagories similar to the album, we can select them as they appear (they will show up as more text is entered)
Sort Album by - the album contents can be sorted a few ways, the default is by most recent.
Body - enter a description if one feels it is needed. It will display above the image thumbnails.
Allow others to post to this album - this check box enables other users of the site to add images to the album as well. which is handy for collaborative projects.
Default album view - choice between grid view, or a list view (grid is default for a reason haha)
Weight - numeric value for having more than one album. the higher the negative integer, the higher up in the list it will be (eg. -10 would be at the top, 10 would be at the bottom). if its on its own, this setting is left default.

If the photo album, is part of a group, we can select which group to post it in (only those groups we are subscribed to), by the audience chechboxes. We can also choose from a few types of licenses if the default "Share Alike" doesnt fit. Hit Submit and the album will be created. If you wish to preview it to make sure its the way we want it, then be sure to hit preview first, then submit. The photo album, will not be added to the site, until the user hits the submit button. No images will be displayed yet, move to the next chapter to learn how to add images.

Step 2 - Adding images to photo albums

Adding Images to Photo Albums Once a photo album has been created, the user can now begin adding images to that album. There are two ways of going about this. The first way, is probably the most desired way, and can be used for adding multiple images at a time. This is more suited for a brand new album, or when a new batch of images needs to be submitted. This is also used, if the images being added to the site, are not currently published to the site. If they are already on the site, they will be added the second way. This first way is the Mass Import method. Mass Importing images First step is to make sure the photo album page images are being added to is loaded. Click on the MASS IMPORT link tab at the top of its page. Beside it there should be a "view" "list" and "edit" tab links. There are some fields that need to be filled in, so the system knows its adding the images properly.

Parent - leave this as default, so the images are sure to make it to the correct album.
Tags - enter in the catagories the images fall into, the same as performed with creating the album. the catagories will be applied to all the images being added.
Files to upload - there are 5 boxes with a browse button beside each. use these to select the images being added.

Pay attention to the size of the images, as there is a file size limit on the site. Apparently, there is also the option of uploading zip, or tar files containing images, which will be added, but as of yet this writer has not tested this out. Hit Upload and the images will now be added to the photo album. To add more like this, simply repeat this step. If adding one more image that is already published to the site, the second method will be more suited. Adding images already published on the site To add an image thats already been on the site to a photo album, click on the image to get to that images page. You will need to be the publisher of the image you wish to add. Once on the image's page, click on the tab link called "edit" at the top of its page. Once the page is loaded, there is one thing that needs to be done. Locate the box that says Photo Albums. Select the photo album that the image is being added to. Scroll down and hit submit. the photo is now added. Congratulations, you've created a photo album.

Tags and categorization

Tagging

On the old version of LondonCommons.net, if you wanted to put your content into categories so that it would be linked with similar content your only option was to select from a list of sections (e.g. Art, Politics, Life etc).

This has been replaced with "tags". Tags are common on many modern websites, including for example Youtube and Flickr. Tags are categories. They're used to link similar content together. The new thing about tags is that new tags (or new categories) to be created on the fly. If the category (or tag) you think your content belongs in doesn't exist, simply typing it into the tags field on the content authoring form will create it.

With tags, users can create new categories that the site developers could not have thought off. Simply type in the tags you want attached to your content separated by commas. A single tag can be multiple words, but if you use a comma it will be divided up into two tags.

Please don't create duplicate or meaningless tags

However, the thing about tags is they only work if people re-use existing tags. The website will help you with this automatically. When you start typing in the tags field on the authoring form, it will drop-down with a list of suggested existing tags based on what you've typed into the field so far. For example you could type the letters "ar" and it will show you a list of existing tags including art, art-show, party etc.

If you create a duplicate tag that is simply spelled differently, your content won't be bunched in together with the original tag. For example, if there is already a series of articles with the tag "city hall" and you tag your new blog post "city hall politics" you new blog won't get shown along with the other content tagged with the original spelling "city hall". In general creating duplicate tags is counter productive. It's best to re-use tags as much as possible to make your content easier to find and cause less "tag pollution" on the site.

Another guideline to follow is that new tags should more general than specific. Since the point of tags is linking content together, it does not make sense to create a tag that will only ever have one lonely piece of content in it.

Combining Tags

Tags can also be combined. For example, if there are already two tags, one called local, the other called art, it doesn't make sense to create a third tag "local art" when you could just use both of the existing tags (by typing "local, art" into the tags field).

Example

Voting on Content

Voting on Content The front page contains content that has been voted highly by users of the site. The only way for content to be displayed on the front page, is by recieving a high vote average. Formly, voting content to the front page has been somewhat confusing, with titles such as "node moderation". Now, voting is much easier! The site uses a fancy 5-star rating system. The more stars, the better the chances of it making it to the front page. To vote something, click on a star. Stars on the right are higher scores. Stars will also shade in yellow as you hover over them Thats it. One click and its done.