Content Curators
Thank you very much for offering to curate content on the Howie Hawkins for President Map.
The Republicrats know how to spend large amounts of money (and lots of energy) on Big Data to manipulate votes. We take a different approach: Very high quality, lovingly curated Small Data. (Think slow food.) But for that we need caring curators, people like yourself.
There are a number of things we would like to ask your help with. In decreasing order of importance.
1. Make sure all of this year's Green Party candidates are entered on the map.
2. Make sure that all of the data is correct. That includes Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Email Address, Phone number, their home page, and the Ballot Access page. Cross check our page against their home page, and the Ballot access page. If you can, dial their phone number, make sure it is correct. While you are at it, tell them about the page, and ask them if they have someone who would be willing to manage their state party or politicians web pages. If you find a state party or politician who does not have a web page, invite them to contact me, I will be offering a training class on creating a few simple web pages for their group.
3. Check the content for their page. In addition to the data, there is a WYSIWYG ckEditor, which allows you to edit text about hte party or candidate. Usually what I do, is to copy the about section from their website.
4. Upload an image. A logo for a green party, or an image for a politician. Call it Logo. It will then display. In order to not load this site, it is best to just use the ckEditor to add a link to their image, but often, because of cross site scripting issues, such images will not display. There is also a field for entering their image URL, but I belive that the software does not currently display it. That will be fixed very soon.
5. Add events. The Green Party web site has a Google Calendar of Events. Their state party must also. Maybe some are listed on their Facebook page or their Twitter TimeLine. Eventually I hope to automatically import the Google Calendar entries on a daily basis, but sadly software development takes time.
7. Add Videos and News. You can already add news items. Here is the page of News for the whole site. If people want, we can also display the newest News for any Politician or State party, or by topic. News by topic, and local news are hugely important in a censored internet, but sadly most people still think of this software as "just a map". If anybody wants it, we can easily enable adding videos. Here is an example of a Video.
There is a lot of work here, but not that many volunteers. So let me remind you, the items at the top of the list are the most important.
On Mentoring
Every curator will have a mentor. Initially, Christopher Lozinski, the software author will be your mentor. He knows the software best. He can answer your questions, update the documenbtation with your answers, and make any changes needed. As the user base grows, we will ask the original curators to mentor others.
On Monitoring
Very soon the software will do the following. When you login, you mentor will receive an email. When you create or edit a page, you user name is attached to the page, and the edit time is attached to the page. I will also add a search page, to show all of the pages added or edited by you, most recent first. It is also possible to cut, copy, paste, rename, retitle and delete pages. The database tracks those events separately.
On Management
Okay, so how are we going to manage all of this? The software has great security. It is easy to assign permissions for any branch of the tree. Say State Party or Politician. So I think we should create a Google Spreadsheet with the different states listed, and who is responsible for each state. Amd columns for which content curation task has been completed. Then it is possible to track that everything has been done.
On History
When you are editing an object go to the Manage ->Node->History
and you can view and restore previous versions of objects. Very helpful.
On Backups
The server is backup once a week. I try to back up daily. The situation is improving. You can also backup your branch of the tree.
Manage -> Node -> Backup
On Bugs
I do not know of any bugs or they would have been fixed. I can't promise a bug free experience, but I can promise that any bugs you find will be fixed quickly, often within a few hours, certainly within a day. The problem is that everyone uses the software differently from how I thought they should use it. But I expect that very quickly the software will become quite bug free. At least until the next software release, when the cycle repeats.
On Time Zones
I am a dual US-EU citizen living in Europe, so I am not available evenings, US time.
On the Future
"We will change the Logo to the Green Party Logo after the election" said Andrea Mérida Cuéllar, Howie's campaign manager. So I think that this data is really targeted at the Green party long term. I want to offer the software to green parties around the world.
On Chatting
My girlfriend and I are practicing social isolation, so life is a bit lonely. I am always happy to chat and answer your questions. And I am very open to suggestions on how to improve this software. How can I help your state party, or your favorite politician?
Read More
You can learn more about this software on the Forest Map Wiki Home Page.
Built using the Forest Map Wiki
This Map is a volunteer effort, separate from the Stair Party.