Democracy for Vancouver (D4V) Guidelines
Register on D4V
Anyone can register and post on D4V. Click on the link “Register” on the upper right-hand side of the site under “Post Content” and follow the instructions. You’ll need to read your email and respond to the message that is sent to you before you can log in for the first time. initially your posts will not appear on the website until your account is upgraded to “blogger” status by the admin. Please send us an email requesting “blogger” status after creating and saving your first post. If you have questions, write us by clicking the “contact us” button on the menu bar below the header.
Posting on D4V
Anyone who has registered with D4V and has an account can post content. We invite you to register, post content and comments. You do not have to register to post comments but you must provide an email address.
Snap Shots from Snap.com
This site has Snap Shots that enhance links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.
Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you “look ahead,” before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.
Should you decide this is not for you, just click the “Options” icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out. If you delete the cookies on your computer, you will have to turn the Snap Shots off again by means of the “Options” icon.
Post content can be about anything of interest.
Please post anything of interest. If it has to do with politics, that’s preferred but not required. If it has to do with SW Washington, that’s preferred too. We monitor the site for abusive content and reserve the right to delete material at our sole discretion.
Post or comment editing or removal
We will delete what we think are troll comments and ban people whom we think are being repeatedly disruptive.
We reserve the right to remove material. We do recommend that you maintain copies of your work, as we cannot guarantee that editorial decisions or technical problems won’t result in its removal.
User or writer (blogger) guidelines and tips
Before publishing your post, click the “save and continue editing” button. You can then preview your post by clicking on the “preview” link (upper right corner of the page) and check to see that the links work and that it is reasonably reader-friendly in its layout. You can preview and edit as many times as you wish before submitting the story. Comments, once submitted, cannot be edited. Please note that D4V uses a cache to speed the site up so if you are editing an already existing post, it may take up to an hour for the change to actually show on the website.
In your user profile, you can turn on the “rich text editor” (checkbox on the upper left of the user profile). You may find it easier to create posts using the “scribefire” firefox extension directly in your firefox browser (see below).
You may also find it helpful to write and save your post in a word processing program like Wordpad first (Word converts your html formatting, so is more difficult to work with). If you cut and paste from Word, you should first paste the post into notepad and save the file with “wordwrap” unchecked. Then cut and past from notepad into the D4V editor. This will strip html formatting that may mess up your D4V post.
There is also a firefox extension called “scribefire” which has its own editor and supports posting directly into d4v without signing into the site. You must set up the scribefire add on to recognize the site as a “WordPress” site. You cannot however embed videos using scribefire. You can send your post in “draft” status and then log into the D4V site to add the video.
All posts default to the category “uncategorized”. This box will automatically uncheck when you select a category. Please check all categories that apply to your post. There is a category called “UnPolitical” for content that is not political in nature. If you desire a new category, please make your request using the “contact us” form below or on the menu bar. In order to avoid having too many categories, we may not act upon your request.
To embed a video on the site, click on the video quicktag on the menu bar in the write editor and follow the directions. Pasting the embed code from “you tube” or google video directly into the editor will not work correctly.
If you are a “contributor”, you will only be able to save a draft of your post. Once you are finished creating and editing your post, please click the preview button. The administrators periodically check draft posts for publishing and this will tell us that you want the draft published. You may also send us a reminder by using the “contact us” form. Once we determine you are not a troll or spammer, we will upgrade you to “blogger” and you will be able to publish posts on your own.
The administrators of the site reserve the right to remove content of any kind and to ban anyone from posting content or comments. The administrators also reserve the right to edit any content to correct grammatical or formatting errors.
Gravatars and Wavatars
Gravatars and Wavatars are the small images that you see at the top of each comment. You can personalize your gravatar by going to gravatar.com and signing up for your own gravatar. Our site will automatically find and use your gravatar based on your email address that you provide when making a comment. This enables you to have your chosen image appear on other gravatar enabled websites also. If the email address you supply is not registered to a gravatar on Gravatar.com, a Wavatar will automatically be assigned to your email address. Wavatars are computer generated and are unique to your email address. There are 56 million possible face combinations that can be assigned to your email address. If you go to other Wavatar enabled websites, your Wavatar face will remian the same unless the site operator has altered the face image combinations.
Revealing identities
Please do not reveal the identity of anyone who hasn’t chosen to already make his/her identity public on the site. Your email address will only be known to the administrators unless you choose to reveal same in a post. Any information that you put in your profile besides your email address and password (all passwords are encrypted and not viewable by anyone) will be considered public information. Comments require an email address and the email address given by you will be viewable to the administrators. If you comment on a blog post (article), the email address you gave when you either registered for the site or the email address you entered on the comment form will not be published.
Fair use guideline
Please avoid pasting other people’s published material in its entirety in your posts and comments. Please post relevant sections of articles from other sources and then provide a link to the underlying source material.
Subscribe to D4V
You may subscribe to D4V by clicking the “subscribe” button in the menu bar under the header or on the right sidebar. You may also subscribe to receiving emails of any comments to a post at the bottom of the comment section.
Identifying yourself
You may choose to remain completely anonymous to the public on the site. For an article about how to make sure you remain completely anonymous, go here. You must provide a valid email account in order to register with D4V. That email address will be available to the site administrators (unless you use it to make a comment ), but not to the public. That information is confidential and we will not share it. You are not required to provide your actual name or other information. However if you choose to provide your name or other information in your user profile, that information will be considered public information. If you comment on a blog post (article), the email address you gave when you registered for the site or the email address you entered on the comment form will be not be published however it will be viewable by the author of the post, other contributors and bloggers as well as the administrators. Democracy for Vancouver and its administrators do not assume any liability for any harm caused by the disclosure of your identity or email address on the site.
When you first apply for an account, D4V will send you an email. By responding to this email, you will be activating your account. At that time, you will have a chance to set up your publicly available information and can choose to share your name, email address, home page, or other information – or to keep it private by not entering anything in the profile page fields.
How to make a comment
Click on the story title and scroll to the bottom of the page and there will be a comment section. You can also click on the “discuss here” link at the bottom of each post.
How to add an activity/event
There are event listings and calendars on the left sidebar of the site. Creating an event is done the same way as creating a post. In order to make the post show up as an event, you click on the “event editor” line at the bottom of the write screen. By entering the date and time of the event, your post will automatically be categorized as an event and show up on the calendar and event listing on the sidebar. Click the plus sign for multiple dates. The post will show up on the main blog, but not on the front page and also on the sidebar activity/event listing. You can also enter the name of the location and the address in the “Geopress” section of the”write” screen and a map will automatically be appended to the post.
Editing or removing comments or content posts
Blogger accounts can edit their own published posts at any time. Accounts don’t have the capability to edit comments once they are posted. Be sure to look at the preview below the text window and make any corrections before submitting the comment. Certain comments may be moderated and will not appear until approved. The administrator may choose to correct or delete a posting/comment upon your request.
Here are some examples of how to make html links. Here’s an example of how to include an image. Your images will need to come from links that reference pre-existing images on the Internet. If these tutorial links don’t work, try going to Google and searching on the terms, “html tutorial”.
Titles for your posts
Here’s an article from Politics and Technology on considerations to keep in mind when creating a title.
Post length and width
It is recommended that you keep the first part of your post, which shows “above the fold” 3 paragraphs long or shorter. You can click on the “more” button in the editor to shorten what shows on the front page. The administrators reserve the right to shorten your post using the “more” command as deemed necessary. If you post a link to an image, please make sure the image is 425 pixels wide or less so that computers set at 800—600 resolution or higher will view the site correctly.
Please participate
The purpose of this site is to build and strengthen our community, our country and our world in positive ways and provide information of interest untainted by the corporatism that is rampant in “lamestream” media today. Having fun is OK too. We encourage everyone to participate. Please contact us with recommendations, improvements, criticisms, etc. concerning the site. We want you to think of this site as YOUR site and become an active, frequent participant by providing posts and comments. Please address any questions/concerns about this site by clicking on the “contact us” button on the menu bar or by using the contact form below. Democracy is not a spectator sport.
Thank you for making D4V a great website and thank you for being a part of the Democracy for Vancouver blog community.
D4V Administrators
