Question: How do you write and post in the public lab community? Asking for our developers!

1) What is your workflow? I typically only write on PL when I am actively working on projects, since that's when I'm on the site and paying attention. when posting I try to break posts into smaller chunks that are linked vs. one giant research note, and I try to break research notes into distinct sections so they are easy to digest. I don't tend to search by tags unless I am looking for something specific, typically a wiki page that I am trying to reference.

2) Do you draft somewhere? Write from a computer, tablet, or phone? I draft in Google Docs over a couple of sessions and then post. Usually once it's posted there are only minor edits.

3) I'm new here, how should I go about posting and asking questions? I recommend checking out questions first and then looking through some of the topic pages!

4) What parts of our site are you using to write? Wikis? Posts? Questions? Comments? Are there things that feel different to you about them? I use wikis, comments, and questions. I use research notes less often, but tend to use research notes and activities in conjunction with each other to do walk-throughs and structured activities.

5) Is there media you are looking to share when you post? Photos? Maps? A table? I would love better guidance on how to integrate tables! (right now I mostly screenshot them and drop them in as images, which is not the best way to do this). I've also struggled with power tags, as someone who is not super familiar with markup.

6) What do you find frustrating? Do you have work-arounds to avoid software behaviors from posting to Public Lab? I've been having difficulties getting tags to work in the way they are designed to, and I by and large have not used power tags because the learning curve is a little steep for me.

And lastly, 7) are there any buttons or tools or ways the editors work that you're not sure about? We can help clarify these for you! I love that there is sample text to guide people. I think that's really helpful and makes editing a lot more inviting.

Cool stuff here!

Thanks for your response! @kgradow1

I think an 8th question will be helpful too, if anybody thinks they can provide some feedback on it.

8) How do you usually use the toolbar? The toolbar comes in handy when you need to format your contents. Like adding a header or making some texts bold.

For persons creating content that is long using posts or questions, reaching for the toolbar at the bottom to format text at the top of their content can be a bit annoying, so https://publiclab.org/post we have introduced a floating toolbar, wondering if you can tell us your thought on this, and if anything can change about it?

Thank you!!!

If too much time passes from when i begin a draft note to when i can return to it, finding that draft can be near impossible. One idea is to display a list of your drafted notes on your profile page. Heard from @mimiss that before the recent update to profile pages, there was a place to see your draft content; without that, @mimiss keeps their own text file of URLs in order to be able to find their own draft content again later.