Forum: The New Flu Wiki Forum IV

The old thread is here. And there’s some helpful hints on it here.

Dem-

I need to edit my bio. Didn’t finish when I hit post. How do I do that? Thanks.

Will the reset dump everything?

no, just go back to your personal page > profile

Is there a way to set for your specific time zone? I am SO lost. But thats OK, I’m alwayslost! :)

Ok just checked out the new forum from the perspective primarily of lurker/reader. I come here to catch up on the latest news, rumours and the general feelings about the threat level. What strikes me, and I apologise if this exists already or is being planned, is that it would be very useful to have a list that in organisation terms is similar to what happens here on old yellow, i.e. a list of diaries with the most recently commented on at the top (rather than the side bar which has the most recent diaries - this is subtly different).

At the moment it feels difficult to know where the activity is taking place. I know that fluwiki is different from other sites in the fact that it is used less as a breaking news type site, and more as a place for discourse, but some of us do use it as such and it would be great if there was a way to make that practicable.

Again apologies if I missed such a feature or this concern has already been addressed and I missed it

Just not explained yet. Think about how you use this forum. Do you come in on the Main page, or go right to the Forum list?

Think of the new page as a flu magazine. If you come in on the Main page at the new place, start in the middle and look for the news thread. It’s always there. and there are other features, like a new video, or the community sandbox where everyone gets together and chats.

If you come in at the Diaries, you see a list of all the latest diaries, like here, with differences:

• each diary (corresponding to a thread here) shows the title, author and a brief summary, and how many comments
• there’s no bump of “latest comment goes to the top”. It’s last written, top of list and you can scan down for new comments since you were last there (go twice to see what I mean about new comments).
• no diaries are closed.
• on the main page there’s an automatically generated index by subject so you can qucikly find the topic of interest to you. it’s call a hot ta (or keyword). On the main pagel, click all tags in the Hot tag box to the left.

Those are the basics.

Gladys – at 09:46

you can go to your personal page > profile >display prefs to set time zone.

Thanks

Different things people might want to be able to see, and how to get to them:

• most important things to know - Front page, center space
• new topics - Menu > Diaries
• most recent comments - Left column
• responses to comments you made last time you visited - Menu > Your comments > recent replies
• your favorite poster - in their diary, click ‘subscribe’, and it will go on Menu > Hot List
• your favorite subjects - Left Column > Hot Tags
• click the Flu Wiki birds up left to go home, if you ever get lost (you can do that here, too!)
• if it’s in blue, it’s a link, and if it is underlined whenever you put your mouse over it, it’s also a link

Posters using Internet Explorer who wanted to view the site with larger text were saying that they were unable to change the text size using their mouse or the IE Menu (View > Text Size).

Well, I figured out how to do so with IE 7 and perhaps with earlier IE versions. :)

To enlarge the text or view larger-sized graphs or images on a page, hold down both the CTL and the SHIFT keys while pressing the PLUS key on your keyboard.

To reduce the size of the text and eliminate the need for a horizontal scroll, hold down both the CTL and the SHIFT keys while pressing the MINUS key on your keyboard.

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I ventured over to the new fluwiki forum. I must say it is very very impressive. At first you may be a little concerned that you won’t be able to figure it out - but you will. Just give it time, and patience. It is 100% better than this forum. I’m really excited about it now. Make sure you read up on it before you start posting. There is plenty of links on the left side to help walk you through it. And it does help to read everything first.

Commonground – at 18:13

On Thursday, i will pos the links for reading over here, with screen shots for explanation. but we’ve added the Lookout Posts and storage food recipes, and it is looking good.

We are working on the Flu Prep series and a few other things. There’s a thread up here on what folks want to see imported there.

I can’t help but wonder - how many people is the new place able to accomodate? Also, we haven’t tried writing in “non-English character set” languages. We might have the “European” tag at some point in time.

The “sleeve” video made an impact on someone I had been nagging about it. This meme is bound to roll, I guess. What effect that would have on the R-naught I don’t know.

We now need an http://www.instructables.org video for simple masks (making and wearing them), maybe in Art Attack ® style.

Woodson’s manual’s translations are slowly building up.

The Early School Closure wikipage has the important stuff in it and could use some internal shuffling.

All the above will gain exposure with the new forum site, I think.

What else do we need to work on?

how many people is the new place able to accomodate?

As many as will show, up to 40,000 page views a day (twice here). Then, I rent more servers. ;−0

What on the wiki should be featured on the Forum? what on the forum should go to the wiki?

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you should also consider, who wrote the software, whether it’s maintained, updates are released or whether the authors maybe work for another conmpany now. A discussion forum about the software where the authors reply would also be an advantage.

I just peeked at the new forum. I’m just a lurker for the most part. But I do read here daily.

The new forum looks real pretty and I can tell a lot of thought and hard work went into it. It looks like it will be a wonderful place.

I doubt I will go there much, though. I find it confusing/hard to figure out and it takes forever to load the page. I don’t have high speed internet connection and on my slow dial up the graphics bog everything down. Sigh.

Oh, well…

Not much into the whizbang stuff like video.

Must be a generation X thing.

I find the new site confusing and difficult to navigate.

I love the new site and will probably migrate over there most of the time.

But, I am very used to places like the new site, and love the functionality of it.

Why is it that we now have to disclose our Email Address to use the new site? Sorry if this has been explained earlier. Also find the grey backround to be harder on the eyes than old yellow.

Thanks

Hi, Sailor! All the spam over here, and having various anonymouses talking to each other (or perhaps to themselves -only mods can tell sock puppets) should be avoided by the registration process. (I prefer the yellow, too, Sailor.)

I hope people will give the new forum site a try; I know it always takes my brain cells a couple of weeks to get used to new changes (I just upgraded my my silly browser and they changed the font slightly - why’d they do that? I liked it how it was!).

Little Owl, and others anon, best of luck to you all, wherever you are.

For the people whp prefer the non-bells and whistles, try coming into the site here as your home page.

We’ll try to keep the videos and high tech stuff off that page, for the most part.

Don’t forget, this place will stay around for a while, too. You can just put your toe in, or jump in the water.

Also,there’s always a community sandbox, open thread to ask for help with something.

I was just over at the new site and it is a confusing mess. I can’t see that I will have much use for it. I’m interested in the information, not the bells, whistles and cybercomraderie. My goal is to figure out when this pandemic is going to break loose. Remember H5N1? Not teribly cool and not a lot of fun. And, IMHO, being obscured by your new, pretty site. To me its a little like makeup on a corpse. Sorry, but I don’t think it’s too functional.

I know, I know I’s FAST!!!!

Gary – at 09:47

It’s more than fast. Right now, we are having housekeeping discussions that won’t dominate the site. It’s not meant as simply a news summary site, but if that’s all you want, you can go here for the news summary and still use the site, Gary. it’s very flexible.

Try it from within a discussion to see how it works from a community conversation. There are a lot of poeople liking it, and some that don’t. But fair warning… it can be addictive.

Here’s an entry directly into the preps section.

Gary, there are lots of ways to use the site the way you want. And given the 9,000 page views a day we’re already getting, I doubt everyone will agree with you about the site being nonfunctional. ;-)

Gary (and others with Gary’s concerns), I’ll admit right away that I’m used to the new forum’s set-up from other internet forums, which might make me a bit biased, but I do this this new forum can be better at conveying information. (The following adjusted from comments I made over there, so if it sounds familiar to some, it is.)

A big story can be put at the top of the Front Page and kept there, so no one can miss it.

If someone writes a diary about H2H in TSHTFistan, but it turns out the H2H part isn’t confirmed, the diarist can change the title right away. No more running to Ask the Mods and waiting for a fix while newcomers to the site panic when they see “H2H.”

The diary itself can be updated as important new information appears. This can be fantastic in the event of Breaking News kinds of stories. If a diarist posts frequent updates as new information emerges, a newcomer won’t necessarily have to read all the comments to find out what’s going on (and let’s admit it, we can be a talkative bunch and the most recent comments don’t always have all of the most important information). — And if the diarist isn’t around when something big happens, a mod can post updates as well, so diarists don’t have to always be there.

But you should voice your concerns about functionality. That’s one of the things we’re working on, getting the kinks out and trying to find the best way to arrange information and make the most of the new system’s possibilities.

There have been other complaints about the bells and whistles — pictures and maps and video on the front page, for instance. Personally, I have no use for that either. I like seeing it once, but don’t need it there all the time. But I can get over that. As I see it, that part of the site isn’t as much for us, but for all of those people who aren’t with us yet. If someone new happens by the site, Okieman’s map or the Hospitals Full video might make realize the seriousness of a pandemic more than a bunch of us talking about the grid collapsing or arguing about Niman.

ouch. Where I said, “Personally, I have no use for that [the bells and whistles] either,” I didn’t mean it to sound that harsh. I meant that the maps and the video are fantastic to look at and useful as teaching tools, etc, but I don’t need them on the front page for me. But the site isn’t about me. We are trying to catch new people with all of that.

But you get it. I’m going to stop blathering now and go make more coffee.

gardner – at 11:31

we need to make a Useful Links list.

Main entrance
Preps entrance
Lookout Posts entrance
News Reports entrance
Diaries entrance
MaMa’s entrance
Index entrance

save your fav, and use it the way you like.

Is there a way of reducing the amount of indenting that occurs on comments? Some of the comments are being squeezed down to 2 or 3 words per line, take up a lot of vertical space, and are hard to read.

“Here’s an entry directly into the preps section.”

I just tested that section to see if adding a new comment to a diary would bump that diary to the top of the list in that section. Unfortunately it doesn’t.

I noticed the same thing on the page which shows all the diaries.

So, I suggest that everyone make a habit of adding diaries (i.e. threads) that they find interesting to their personal Hot List or to their Recommended List so that they can more easily find these diaries again. I think the two lists will indicate if there have been new entries since they last read the diaries concerned, but I’m not sure.

Mari - at 13:06, the indenting shows who the comment is referring to. If you give it some time, it will make more sense. Also, if you hit “Parent” (next to Reply) it will move it back over on your screen for you. If the indenting is driving you wild, you can go to “Mari’s Page” (box on the upper right side). Then to Profile. Then hit “Comment Pref”. In that, scroll down to Flat (Unthreaded) and everything will appear on the same margin. Remember though, it will be harder to understand who is responding to who. Try it both ways. Remember to hit “save” afterward.

Mari - at 13:06 - this is under the “New - Start Here” link on the left side of the screen:

“If you click on Post a Comment and you are a registered user, you can leave a comment in the comment area. But if a comment is already there, you can Reply to the comment, and instead of your reply showing up at the end, your comment will be placed directly below the one you replied to, and slightly indented. This is called nesting and threading, and allows you to have a conversation with someone in the middle of a series of comments, even if you arrive late.”

New comments do not bump diaries the way they bump threads here. However, the latest diary will appear first, with some exceptions, older one next, oldest at the bottom. Try preps entrance and you’ll see that flu preps I is on the bottom, then II up to XXV almost on top, but that the storage food prep is the very top. We set the storage thread prep with all the links to be the topmost diary always.

If what you want is news, go to the news entrance and the latest news thread is at or near the top.

I like the way you can see whether there are new comments in red to diaries since you were there last, and how many, on the right hand sidebar. That is really useful.

I also like that you can choose where to come in by bookmarking certain places like things tagged with news.

You can also follow the comments and diaries of a particular person by clicking on their ID. That is really useful if you find someone has information that you are really interested in.

Once you get used to it, you can bypass things you are not interested in and go straight to the “meat” you that you are interested in. That solves the problem for those that don’t have the time or inclination to wade through the “chatter” that sometimes breaks out.

mountainlady - at 16:34 - I tried today to figure out tags. It’s confusing me and I got no where. My profile says I have no tags, but I don’t know how to make a tag. Ugh. I use the feature of “new replies” in the Commonground’s Page. It is extremely beneficial.

Commonground. On tags. when you write a diary, you list tags for the diary. It is just a few words that the diary is about. So for a diary about cooking on a woodstove during outages, the tags might be “cooking” “alternate energy” or something.

You can use tags if you’re looking for diaries about a subject. If you click on tag for “China” over there, you’ll get all the diaries that discuss China.

Tags are sort of like an index for all of the diaries.

Hope that helps.

Oh! Well, that certainly helps a lot. Thanks gardner!

Hi all. Just to register my 2 cents worth. I was skeptical about the new site at first but determined to give it a chance. I had difficulty following the indented threads and couldn’t find a view that seemed easy to follow.

I decided to make the most of a situation I didn’t like and get my feet wet learning enough html to build a table (about the only useful thing I contribute here.)

After a few days of checking in and getting used to the place, I really like that site better than this one now (except it doesn’t have all of you there yet.) The important information is being built up, and it is much faster. Replies can be directed and located right next to the comment you were addressing. You don’t need to know html… just hit the reply button, type in a subject, and say what needs to be said.

It asks for an email to log in, but that information isn’t available to other posters. Your privacy is still yours to keep. You can input bio information on your own page where you set preferences, but I’m not sure if this is accessible to anyone but the mods.

Ok, more than 2 cents, but I’m really impressed with all the thought and effort that is goint into it.

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Hello everyone!

Well it’s certainly been a learning experience trying out all the goodies on the new forum (well not all just yet, but sooner or later:-) It is different in some ways from here, the appearance is different and it’s loaded with features that make it so easy and fast to find exactly what you need. And it is really fast!

You don’t have to learn html at all if you don’t want to and in some ways it’s simpler to post than here, for instance- no triple backslash necessary to get space between paragraphs, you can just press enter to get a space between lines. And you get to preview your comment, which is very very nice.

Alot of people have been working to get things set up so that we all will have a great place to go to together. When you get there you’ll recognize plenty. We’re moving the Flu Prep thread info(thanks BB!); likewise Lookout Posts(thanks Nimbus and AnnieB!), Daily News and all of our specialty news threads (Egypt, Indonesia, Nepal, etc.), Ask the Mods and what’s your PPF?, among others.

Anyone who’s registered can start a ‘diary’ which is really the same as a thread, so anyone can start a new topic as needed and away we go!

IMO the best part of all is that it’s stable, so we don’t have to worry about losing it on a busy day.

When you do get over there if you have any questions or difficulties at all please just ask, those of us who’ve been puddling about (love that term AnnieB!) there will be able to help you out.

Oh, and no more spam- thank God!

We’ve just been attacked by a mob of spam out there on the main forum page (sigh)…again.

Commonground – at 13:52 - Thanks for the tip. I hadn’t done my profile at the new site yet.

I’ve been looking at the Storage Food Recipes diary. I went to another page, then tried to get back to the Storage Food Recipes diary by searching for “recipe”. Nothing was found. I then searched for “recipes”, and the Storage Food Recipes diary came up along with several others. Doesn’t the search recognize singular & plural forms of the word?

I’m surprised it doesn’t, it’s supposed to. But if you look in the Subject box to the left, recipes is a subject (i.e., an important keyword). That work you did at the wiki on recipes is awesome, Mari!

I can assure you that there is already so much going on over at the new site that trying to catch up after being out for a day or so takes some time - mind you, everything is so new that you want to look at it all - that’s why it takes time - we haven’t learned to be ‘selective’!

I have to reinforce how easy it is to use for everyone. When you click on ‘post a comment’, you put in a subject - there is a box for that, tab to the comment area (yep, that has a box too), put in what you want to say, put in a link if you want (it is automatically shortened to fit) and then you can choose preview (so you can see what you have put in before you commit to it) and/or then choose post. That’s it.

Doesn’t come much easier than that!

Highly recommended ( any text you enter should be without the square brackets or quotes shown here - they are in to delineate actions ) - when you first arrive, in the Menu Area - top right box, choose [your pseudonym] Page (for me that is AnnieB’s Page). Now select New Diary from the same Menu and give it the Title “[your pseudonym]Very Own Sandbox”. (In the Tags box, put in “Sandbox”). In the Main Text Box put words to the effect that this is your practise and play area so you can check things out. Then in the Extended Text box, try typing in a few practise paragraphs - gibberish is highly acceptable. Now preview and/or post.

And you are into it just like that. You are not on the ‘mainstream’ stuff so you don’t need to worry about putting something in the wrong place or anything else that might ‘frighten’ you.

We (all of us ‘early adopters’) will probably be setting up a Diary with a title like If you need help, come ask here. So you can post a comment in there and we will respond as soon as we can. Or you can put a cry for help in your sandbox and we can come help you over there.

I know DemFromCT will be posting further ‘instructions’ before the grand opening so keep watching.

I still find it very difficult to navigate.

I posted a “diary”, or whatever it’s called, on the Russia/EU food fight and then went back looking for it later and it took me almost a half an hour to find it.

I’m giving it a go, but I’m still not too happy with the user friendly part for the non-geeks.

Need a darn WebEx on how to navigate the place.

To quickly find any diaries you have created, or any recent comments you have made, go to your personal page. If you are signed in to the site, your personal page is one of the links listed on the Menu Box at top of the right column.

If there are particular diaries you are following which were created by others, you can add them to your personal Hot List, which is also one of the links listed in the Menu Box. To add a diary to your Hot List, click the plus sign to the right of a diary title. The diary is then added to your list and the plus sign becomes a minus sign. Click the minus sign if you wish to remove a diary from your Hot List.

I like the idea of the new wiki and can’t wait to jump in. Just tried it out and it is going to take some time to get used to it. The thing I like about this site is that you can follow a thread down from top to bottom in the order it was added to. I am trying to set up on the new one to do the same. I wonder though if someone else has a nested view and they reply to something near the top but my view is set up oldest to newest, will I be able to follow the conversation? If it’s set up the default way, I have to read the entire thread to see if anyone added (replied) to something in the middle. Is that correct? Just trying to figure it out, train my eyes and brain for this new wiki.

Bird Guano

If you created the Diary then by going to your own HomePage - Top right menu, any Diaries you create will show there.

On the fence …

If there are ‘replies’ or ‘comments’ there that you haven’t seen (the clever thing tracks what you have seen and not seen) the there will be a [NEW] beside the subject. This makes it easy to scroll down and just catch the ‘labelled’ stuff.

I hope that helps.

On the fence and leaning – at 01:56

What AnnieB said. I’m pretty clueless with things like that, but I keep it in ‘nested’, open up the thread (diary), and just go for the NEW posts. It’s much easier to keep track of the conversation that way. However, be aware that if you don’t read all the NEW posts that are showing, then next time when you open, they won’t show up as new.

Not only that, but at a glance on the main page, you can see which threads (they are called Diaries there) have new comments (in red) and which ones don’t.

Pic to follow to illustrate.

Check the numbers:

This is a screen shot of the Main page, or the Front page (the fp). Come here to see what the community is saying. You’ll find Area Preppers, MaMa’s News thread, Lookout Posts, and topics of interest, including videos!

1. your home page. To find your own diaries, click here. And by clicking comments, you’ll see your own and if anyone has responded.
2. Above your page is the Diaries page, a title scroll just like here, but:

• it’s in order of last written at top
• it gives a brief summary. Below your page is New Diaries. Click there if you want to write one and jump right in!

3. This is a cool feature. Unread comments in any of the diaries are in red, so you know at a glance something new has been written.
4. If you ever get lost, click the pic and it takes you to the front page again. Did you know the pic here does, too?
5. The About box has useful things like AnnieB’s Simple HTML and gardner’s Simple HTML II. You don’t need to know HTML, but it’s how we make things green or blue there.
6. All the FP diaries have a way of seeing at a glance whethr there are new comments, and how many comments there are.
7. The subjects box is a keyword index. Hot tags, just below are added to any diary for searching and sorting. The Mods will make an important hot tag into a subject so people can find topics of interest.

More to come…

So many spam threads here (on Thanksgiving! -I never like spam!) certainly not going to miss those, even if I have to get used to the new forum…

new thread here… and i won’t miss the spam.