User Guidelines and Formatting Tips
[Please note that the guide below has not (yet) been updated for our new wordpress site]
How do I create an account?
All content is available to all visitors without the need to log in. To post a diary or a comment, you’ll need an account.
- To create your personal account:
- Click [Create New Account]
- Enter a user-name and valid e-mail address (for confirmation purposes only–we won?t publish or share your e-mail address!)
- After you enter the “security code,” you’ll receive an e-mail providing you with a randomly-generated password.
- Check your e-mail, and log in using the password you were sent.
How do I change my password to something I’ll remember?
Once you are logged using the randomly-generated password, you’ll see a link on the on the topmost left-hand menu to [Your Name’s] Page.
- Click on it.
- Click on [Profile].
- Click on [E-mail and Password].
- Enter the password GMG assigned you, then the one you wish to use (be sure to write it down!)
- Enter the security code and hit [Save]. And be sure to write it down!
What are “Diaries” and “Comments”?
All of our content is user-generated, and falls into two categories:
- “Diaries” are original posts.
- “Comments” make up the threaded discussions that follow each post.
The menus on the left-hand side of the page contain links to:
- “Recent Diaries”–a list of all recent posts, along with author, date, and number of comments. For a more descriptive list, click on “Diaries” in the topmost menu at left, which will bring up all recent diaries along with some introductory text.
- “Comments”–a list of all recent comments made on specific posts.
You can also find all posts and comments made by a particular author by clicking on her or his name.
How do I create a diary?
On the topmost menu, click “New Diary.” This will open a page with three fields–“Subject,” “Main Text,” and “Extended text.”
(The purpose of having “Main Text” and “Extended Text” is to prevent longer posts from taking up too much space on the main page. Think of the GMG home page as the front page of a newspaper, with articles continued later on elsewhere ).
[Subject]: the headline for your post. You’ll need to fill it in.
[Main Text]: that part of your diary which will show up on the “Diaries” page or, if promoted, on the featured diaries which show up in the center of the homepage each day. Enter enough text here to give your reader a sense of your subject and your style–one paragraph is usually sufficient. Interested readers will click [There?s More] to read the rest of your post.
[Extended Text]: text which follows “the jump.” Readers access it by clicking [There’s More].
How can my post be promoted to the front page?
Our daily editors determine whether there are posts that they want to promote. We recommend that you put some thought into what would be interesting to the Green Mass Group community at large. Of course, the more you contribute, the more likely it is that come of your posts will be promoted to a prominent spot on the home page.
How do I format text?
We recommend using our WYSIWYG editor–just highlight the text you want to appear in bold or italic, click [Bold] / [Italic], and the auto-editor will insert the proper codes.
If you’re including a chunk of text from another source, highlight it and click “Quote.” This will set it off from the rest of your text, indented and highlighted.
How do I include a link?
To link to another web site or online story:
- Choose a short phrase in your sentence that will link to the other site. Put in in brackets. Add one space between the end of the phrase and the close-bracket.
Example: You can read more about this on [Naomi Klein?s web site ] as well as in her most recent book. http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2010/01/haiti-disaster-capitalism-alert-stop-them-they-shock-again
- Copy and paste the URL of the site to which you?re linking (from the address bar) after the text in brackets.
Example: You can read more about this on [Naomi Klein?s web site http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2010/01/haiti-disaster-capitalism-alert-stop-them-they-shock-again] as well as in her most recent book.
How do I embed a video?
Each YouTube video contains a string of code on the right-hand side of the page labeled “embed.” Copy that and paste into your post at the point you’d like the video to appear..
(Many video clips, even if they appear on another page, have been cross-posted to or from YouTube. If you wish to embed a video from a source other than YT, get the correct title and check to see if it’s on the YT site).
How do I insert a picture?
To insert a picture, it needs to have been posted on a photo storage site online (you can’t upload directly from your computer). We recommend Flickr. Basic Flickr accounts are free (allowing up to 100 mb) and make it especially easy to embed photos.
- Once you’ve uploaded an image to Flickr, log in to your account and open the image you wish to embed.
- Click on [All Sizes] immediately above the image.
- Select a size and click. [Small] usually does the trick.
- Underneath the photo, you?ll see the phrase ?Copy and paste this HTML into your webpage? followed by a field of code. Copy the code (be sure to capture it all).
- On your GMG text field, position your cursor where you?d like your photo appear and paste the code.
If you have a URL for an image, such has “http://www.site.com/image.jpg”, you can insert an image using the following html:
<img src=”http://www.site.com/image.jpg” width=250px” alt=”some text that’s visible if someone has trouble viewing the image”>
Help! I’m still having trouble.
Write to the editorial team at greengroupmass@gmail.com. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can!
Tips for Posting:
Many experienced bloggers prefer to write their post in a word-processing program before pasting text into the “Main” and “Extended” fields.
If your post deals exclusively or at length with another article that has appeared online, do your readers a service and link to it!
We suggest that when you do include links, you scroll to the bottom of the page and check the box that says “open links in a new window.”
Green Mass Group Posting Policy
Green Mass Group exists in part because the political discourse has been so badly damaged by manipulative forces who gain by divide-and-conquer techniques. We want to honor everyone’s contribution to the political conversation, so we ask that you avoid personal insult, and treat each other with respect. The internet represents a wonderfully democratizing technology, but it has also emboldened people to behave anti-socially. Our basic goal is to create an online community for Green dialogue in Massachusetts.
Please follow these basic rules:
- Users can post on a wide variety of topics with a wide variety of styles.
- All posts will be publicly available through a “Recent Diaries” sidebox.
- GMG editors can promote to the front page any post they deem worthy of promotion.
- GMG editors can remove any post from the site that violates GMG editorial policy.
- GMG editors can delete any user account from the site who has violated GMG editorial policy repeatedly.
- Re-posting of copyrighted material will be removed from the site upon request by the copyright holder. Please seek permission where possible. Please attribute quotes and provide links to original sources.
- GMG editors can remove suspicious or fraudulent links at their discretion.
- Users are encouraged to provide background information about themselves in their profiles.
- Users must disclose information about any vested interest in the content of their posts.
- Users may not post external links for commercial/business purposes.
- All registered users can comment on any post. There will be no anonymous comments.
- All registered users can participate in online polls.
- Treat others as you would want to be treated, or at least as you would treat them if you were talking to them face-to-face
- Hate speech will not be tolerated
- Users will be warned for disrespectful posts, comments, and trolling and may lose their account after repeat offenses.
- Our posting policy may change at any time