Help! (or How To Use This Site)

How do I contribute to treasureisland.org?
If you have an article, event, interesting news or other item you would like to share, select "contribute" in the upper left menu and fill in the requested information, following the instructions provided. Write a descriptive title. Choose the appropriate section and topic. Preview your submission to make sure it looks the way you want it to. You can then make changes if necessary before you submit it. Your submission will be reviewed for appropriateness by a site administrator before being posted.

What is a “blurb”?
Blurb is a highly technical term that means a piece of information or commentary too short to be called an article, that is neither a book review nor an announcement of an upcoming event or workshop. A blurb can be a "check this out" kind of message about a link, news story, website or other resource you've discovered. Or it can be a personal story or anecdote about an experience you had here on the Island. If your blurb talks about something you found on the Internet, make sure you include the appropriate URL (the site's address, e.g. www.nameofsite.com) in your message and at least a brief introduction or synopsis of what someone will find there. 

What is a article?
An article can be almost anything a blurb is, but longer. Usually an article contains useful and objective information on a topic, but it can also be a more in-depth account of some concern to Island residents, important announcement or experience of yours that would be of interest to others. You can even cut and paste some or all of a news story or article from another website as long as you give credit it where it is due and, again, include the URL. 

Can I publicize an event or happening?
Yes. Click "contribute," choose an appropriate topic and select "events & workshops" from the section menu. You may want to put the important date(s) in the subject line of your post.

Can I submit something anonymously?
Yes. In fact, submitting anonymously won't lessen the chances that your story or comment will be posted.

Why should I register and how do I do it?
By registering, you can customize treasureisland.org for faster or more discriminating browsing, identify yourself in comments and, if you are active in discussions, even participate in the moderation, or rating, system. Registering also helps us to find new site administrators. I can't post all this stuff by myself you know.

To create an account, click on the words "Login" or "Register here!" in the Login box on the home page and follow the instructions for new users. You'll be sent a password via e-mail. Although our server sends this out immediately, sometimes e-mail takes a while to deliver. If you want to submit something right away but haven't got your password yet, just click on "contribute" and enter the nickname you chose.

I forgot my password! (Or I never got it.)
I am having trouble logging in.
Make sure you have cookies turned on. Without them you won't be able to log in. To check if your browser is set to accept cookies, go to Tools>Internet Options>Security>Custom Level (Internet Explorer), or Edit>Preferences>Advanced (Netscape).

How do I get to be one of the Authors and post/approve posts?
I will be needing people to help add posts to this site. Island residents that have been active in posting articles and comments might be asked to be an Author who can post to the site. If you are registered with an email address, I might be emailing you about this.

My connection is slow. How can I speed up my browsing?
There are several ways to make treasureisland.org zippier. For those with slower dial-up connections, we've created TreasureIsland.org "lite" You still get all the news, reviews, and articles, but without the buttons and graphics. If you customize your page (you must be registered to do this), you can set preferences to show the lite version all the time. Even if you don't want to give up all your graphics, there are other custom settings that will speed things up. Limit the number of stories shown on the main page, turn off the icons, and limit the number of those little boxes on the right hand side of the screen. This won't speed things up, but if you are just not interested in some topics, you can exclude them from your home page. Likewise, you can exclude posts from certain authors and sections. And you can set preferences so you see only higher quality comments. Read on...

What are thresholds?
This is little bit confusing at first, but it's really a just a way to set a "threshold" or limit for the quality of the comments you see. Your threshold is the minimum score that a comment needs to have in order to show up on your screen. Comments are scored from -1 to 5 by moderators, and you can set your threshold at any score within that range. Setting your threshold at -1 will display all comments, 0 is almost all comments. Higher threshold settings reduce the number of comments you see, but should show only better quality posts.

What are flat, threaded and nested comments?
These are simply different ways of viewing what can be a long list of replies to a story. Choose flat to show all the comments in one gigantic list, without showing the relationships between comments. Threaded mode displays a hierarchy of responses, with replies as links to new pages. Choose nested to display the same hierarchy of responses, but show all of the comments. And, of course, choose No Comments to show no comments. If you have a log in, you can edit your preferences to set a default mode.

What is moderation and who does it?
Moderation is the process by which submitted stories (articles, events, reviews, etc.) and comments are rated for quality. Submissions are moderated by site administrators and by users. If you log in you can choose whether or not to be eligible to moderate. Moderators are chosen somewhat as jurors are selected from a pool of eligible citizens. When users become moderators they are given a number of points of influence to play with. Each comment they moderate deducts a point. When they run out of points, they are done serving until next time it is their turn. Users cannot participate in the same discussion as both a moderator and a poster. Moderation points expire after a certain period of time if they are left unused. The user's name then goes back into the pool and might someday be given moderation points again.

I have a question that is not answered in this help.
Email your question to mark@treasureisland.org. We'll try our best to get you an answer. And if it's a question we've seen before, we'll consider adding it to this help page.