Introduction

OpenForum.com.au is a non-partisan site that aims to stimulate focused discussion on social, political, economic, ecological and cultural issues facing us today.

The site accomplishes this in two significant ways; by promoting time-limited (and often outcomes-based) discussion on forums, and through less formal blogs, written by and for users of the site.

This page provides a limited set of instructions for using the site, broken down by category. If your questions are not answered here, please contact the site administrators.

Registration

First and foremost: to contribute to this site, you must be a registered member. Registrations are controlled to ensure that discussions stay focused and on-topic. For further information on joining the OpenForum site, click here.

The Forum

Introducing The Forum

Users unfamiliar with forums may find them somewhat baffling initially. A good way to think of a forum is as a traditional spoken-word debate - albeit with much freer rules on participation and an open-slather approach to who can contribute and when.

Typically, one user (generally a site administrator) will kick off discussion on a topic by posting a brief essay-style expose on that subject, with relevant background information attached to that expose.

Other users can then comment on this expose and reply to it as they see fit. Typically, a large thread will ensue, with users commenting on both the original material, and one anothers' comments, until some general consensus is reached, participant interest wanes, or the time limit for the discussion (if there is one) elapses.

Accessing the Forum

Forums can be reached from the OpenForum home page by three methods. Firstly, users can click the red 'Forums' link at the top of the page. Secondly, users can click the 'Forum Topics' link on the left hand side of the page. Finally, users can see a list of active forum topics on the front page, and be taken directly to a particular forum discussion without browsing the full list of available forum topics.

The Forum is divided into topics, also commonly known as 'threads'. Each thread pertains to a particular subject; it is considered poor form to derail a conversation with irrelevant or off-topic discussion.

When presented with the list of topics (see above), users can click the title of the topic to be taken to the forum topic view. This will list the original post, plus comments form other users, ordered from oldest to newest.

A set of controls at the bottom of the page allow users to navigate through the comments; 10 comments will be displayed per page.

Posting a Comment

Each initial post and comment has a 'post a comment' link. Clicking this link (see below) will take the user to a page that lists the same content, with a set of input fields allowing the user to comment.

 

 

All comments can have a title, and can be formatted much like a typical word processor. You can select text, apply font and paragraph changes, change text colour, insert images and adjust indentation. Facility is also provided for bullet points and numbered lists - these work just as you would expect from using a typical word processing application.

You must preview your comment before it can be successfully posted; take this opportunity to check for spelling and grammatical mistakes, formatting errors and so forth.

Blogs

Blogs (a contraction of 'web logs') are often described as being similar to journals. This definition is considered somewhat anachronistic by many; a blog can take many forms - daily or weekly journal, editorial column, a simple archive of essay-style writings; some derivatives consist of little more than photographs of events with a slim commentary.

Blogs on OpenForum are intended to be spaces for users to editorialise and discuss contemporary issues, with an eye to stimulating further discussion and positive outcomes. They are not really intended to be an outlet for people to discuss their daily comings and goings, so they should not be considered 'blogs' in that respect.

Nevertheless, they are a less formal discussion space than the forums, and users should feel free to be more or less verbose on issues as they desire.

 

Reading Blogs

Every user on the site has a blog. You can access a particular user's blog by clicking on their name wherever it appears in blue (in forums or on the front page, for example).

Recently written blogs are accessible from the front page, as is the Blog of the Day. The Blog of the Day is chosen by the site administrators, and posted on an irregular basis when something they consider worthy is encountered.

The Blogs page, accessible by clicking the red 'Blogs' link at the top of the site or the 'Read a Blog' link from the left of the site, lists the most prolific bloggers, the terms used most often to categorise a blog post, and then all blog posts in chronological order (from newest to oldest).

If you want to find your own blog, you can click the 'My Account' link on the left hand side of the site, and then click 'view recent blog entries'.

Commenting on a Blog

Blogs can be commented on, just like a forum thread (see above, under 'posting a comment').

Writing a Blog

You can add to your own blog by clicking 'Write a Blog' on the left hand side navigation panel of the site. This will load a page that asks for a title for your post, the text of your post, and a teaser or summary. It's usually best to leave the teaser blank, and the site will then take the first one or two paragraphs of your blog entry to use as a teaser; but if you want to write something more specific, you have the freedom to do so.

The editing controls work much like you would expect in a typical word-processing application. You can select text, make it bold or italic, change paragraph layouts, add numbered or bullet lists, etc.

When you have finished writing your blog entry, click the 'Submit' button at the bottom of the page.

Editing your Blog

Once you've submitted a blog entry, you may find yourself wishing to edit the entry. When you view the blog entry, you will see a pair of tabs at the top of the page - 'view' and 'edit' - assuming you have permission to edit the entry.

Editing works much the same as writing a blog.