How to use and improve this website
This page collects tips, guides, and documentation about using the Public Lab website. As a collaborative community, we are always refining our collaboration infrastructure. Please read on to learn how, and leave a comment if you'd like to help out -- thank you!
Basic workflows
- On this website, people can browse, sign up, follow some topics, write a post, leave a comment.
- More experienced users can create new topics, host discussions and knowledge bases around them, post activities, tutorials and events, and create Q&As.
- Public Lab's Moderators guide community interactions according to our Code of Conduct.
Overview
PublicLab.org is a content management system for the Public Lab research community. The website hosts a collection of forum-like groups of people, posts, and wiki pages, each focused on a topic like water-quality or disaster-response. It includes a variety of features that help the Public Lab community collaborate on environmental activism, research, technology design and documentation, and community organizing.
Audience & accessibility
The website's code is organized and structured around inclusive and welcoming community values, as part of our efforts to ensure that historically excluded groups are centered and supported in the crafting of this software project. Designed for a general audience with no particular familiarity with web conventions, priority is given to very low barrier interaction — low floor and wide walls over high ceiling.
Key features
- Rich text authoring environment with image upload for creating posts and wiki pages
- Subscriptions and notifications for followed content
- Dynamic inline collections, maps, and tables using short-code-style inline power tags
- Embeddable interactive listings of activities, posts, and questions on external sites
- Geographic tagging of posts and profiles for place-based organizing, with location privacy
- A Q&A portal for peer-based problem solving
- Content moderation systems and dashboard of comments and posts for logged in moderators
- Print, screen reader, and mobile display accessibility
- Usage statistics system with graphing per-timeframe analytics
- Threaded comments, emoji reactions, and reply-by-email
- OAuth-based login with Twitter, Facebook, GitHub and Google accounts, and OpenID-based unified Single-Sign-On (SSO) for MapKnitter and Spectral Workbench
- Customizable profile pages, posting templates, internationalization, translation into 10+ languages, standard API
Subtopics
Title | Updated | Version | Views | Likes | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Power Tags | over 2 years ago by laurel_mire | 75 | 3,993 | 11 | |
Authoring Help | over 2 years ago by laurel_mire | 59 | 7,074 | 5 | |
Website Basics | over 2 years ago by laurel_mire | 15 | 1,054 | 3 | |
About Tags | over 2 years ago by bhamster | 2 | 434 | 2 | |
Write an Issue Brief | over 2 years ago by liz | 33 | 5,609 | 3 | |
User interface design | over 4 years ago by liz | 26 | 1,608 | 4 | |
Sitemap | over 4 years ago by liz | 10 | 7,566 | 0 | |
Contributors | over 4 years ago by liz | 2 | 2,653 | 0 | |
Topic Pages | over 4 years ago by liz | 5 | 436 | 2 | |
New Projects | over 4 years ago by stevie | 20 | 1,183 | 15 | |
Wiki Templates | about 5 years ago by warren | 23 | 7,041 | 3 | |
Issues | almost 6 years ago by gauravano | 23 | 9,414 | 11 | |
Web Working Group | over 6 years ago by Bronwen | 6 | 866 | 2 | |
Summer of Code | over 7 years ago by warren | 2 | 525 | 0 |
Authoring
These pages provide documentation on creating content on this website:
Utility pages
Title | Updated | Version | Views | Likes | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Chat | almost 3 years ago by warren | 55 | 433 | 12 | |
Location privacy | over 3 years ago by warren | 16 | 4,116 | 4 | |
Locked pages | over 3 years ago by warren | 5 | 1,367 | 0 | |
API | almost 4 years ago by warren | 2 | 592 | 0 | |
Features | almost 4 years ago by warren | 21 | 454 | 0 | |
Region | over 4 years ago by liz | 17 | 693 | 1 | |
Issues | almost 6 years ago by gauravano | 23 | 9,414 | 11 |
Questions
Title | Author | Updated | Likes | Comments |
---|---|---|---|---|
How can the account be deleted? | @tupaschoal | over 3 years ago | 0 | 0 |
How can I delete a User Account? | @niklasjordan | over 5 years ago | 0 | 3 |
How do we address the issue of people posting the same or very similar questions? | @stevie | over 6 years ago | 1 | 5 |
Social Integration of Public Labs with FB | @bansal_sidharth2996 | almost 7 years ago | 0 | 3 |
Is it possible to generate a word cloud based on a tag's related tags? | @pdhixenbaugh | about 8 years ago | 0 | 2 |
Activity Grids formatting - what will be their final form? | @pdhixenbaugh | about 8 years ago | 1 | 10 |
Activities
Title | Author | Created | Updated | Likes | Views | Type |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Refine and improve an existing topic or project page on PublicLab.org | @warren | over 5 years ago | 2 | 1 | note |
Learn about Activities | @liz | over 5 years ago | 5 | 25 | page |
Writing a topic page on PublicLab.org | @warren | over 4 years ago | 1 | 1 | note |
Add an activity or request an activity guide you don't see listed
More pages related to the website
Title | Updated | Version | Views | Likes | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Welcome to Public Lab | about 2 years ago by bhamster | 40 | 18,190 | 2 | |
Website Basics | over 2 years ago by laurel_mire | 15 | 1,054 | 3 | |
How to use and improve this website | over 2 years ago by laurel_mire | 21 | 12,017 | 2 | |
About Tags | over 2 years ago by bhamster | 2 | 434 | 2 | |
Topics | about 3 years ago by bhamster | 22 | 19,247 | 3 | |
Translation | about 3 years ago by warren | 21 | 5,678 | 4 | |
Location privacy | over 3 years ago by warren | 16 | 4,116 | 4 | |
Locked pages | over 3 years ago by warren | 5 | 1,367 | 0 | |
community development | over 3 years ago by liz | 98 | 1,279 | 2 | |
API | almost 4 years ago by warren | 2 | 592 | 0 | |
Features | almost 4 years ago by warren | 21 | 454 | 0 | |
User interface design | over 4 years ago by liz | 26 | 1,608 | 4 | |
Sitemap | over 4 years ago by liz | 10 | 7,566 | 0 | |
Website projects | over 5 years ago by warren | 12 | 550 | 1 | |
Issues | almost 6 years ago by gauravano | 23 | 9,414 | 11 | |
Requesting responses | about 6 years ago by warren | 4 | 570 | 1 | |
Web Working Group | over 6 years ago by Bronwen | 6 | 866 | 2 | |
Summer of Code | over 7 years ago by warren | 2 | 525 | 0 | |
Streak | over 8 years ago by warren | 3 | 543 | 1 | |
plots2: the Public Lab 2.0 website | over 10 years ago by warren | 20 | 624 | 1 | |
New Comer Landing Page | almost 11 years ago by liz | 12 | 316 | 0 | |
plots2 Alpha | over 11 years ago by warren | 9 | 385 | 0 | |
Public Lab helps people create great Data | over 11 years ago by liz | 6 | 670 | 0 | |
Notes for new Get Involved sequence | over 11 years ago by liz | 24 | 282 | 2 |