Using EmpowerThyself
You can learn how to use EmpowerThyself.com the same as any other skill in Skillpedia.
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EMPOWERMENT IS IN ßETA DEVELOPMENTHere's how you can get started:
- Create an account. You can read a lot without logging in but to really participate you need to register. It takes less than 5 minutes.
- Explore The Pedias: Ideapedia, Skillpedia, Mediapedia, Toolpedia and Missionpedia.
- Add Things You Like To Your Profile. Add the ideas, skills, tools and missions you like to your personal profile. Find ones you personally have
opinions or thoughts about. You already know what you are interested in and passionate about. Let the rest of us know as well!
- Click "Add Personal Item" and add this idea to your own profile.
- Name it whatever you wish and include your own take on this subject.
- By doing this you contribute to the idea naturally while letting people know a bit more about what motivates you!
- Groups. Look over the list of groups and subscribe to any that you think you may already be apart of! If you subscribe to a group all ideas and campaigns posted to that group will come to you via your subscription notification settings or rss feeds. Groups are not so much a commitment as an interest in reletave subject matter. Get ideas by watching what your peers are doing!
- Contribute Pedia Writing. You can edit everything on this site by clicking Edit at the top. Do you know of ideas, skills, tools and missions you'd like to contribute? The Empowerment is an open and participatory project. Write about what you know. Don't be shy about adding information! If you make a mistake, editors may help clean up.
- Talk to us. Contact Alex, introduce yourself and ask 20 questions. lxpk@empowerthyself.com. Use the web contact form. Post a comment this story.
- Help Develop the system. Get in contact with us and let us know you're interested. We need web developers to build the Drupal system and writers to create content.
Adding To Your Profile
There are several types of things you can add to your profile.
| Personal Addition Type |
Explanation | Examples |
| Post a blog entry | Write your personal thoughts and opinions as blogs or comments. | "Today I thought of a cool idea for a shirt..." |
| Personal Idea |
Post ideas that you believe in, are interested in, or criticize. Write what you think about it. | DIY Shirts Rock |
| Personal Skill | Post skills that you have, want to learn, or want to teach. Write details about what you know how to do, how you learned and what you want to learn. | Shirting |
| Personal Tools | Post tools that you have, things you want, things you'll share, things you've lent to others, things you want to give away or sell, or things that failed you. | My new custom t-shirt |
| Personal Mission | List a mission to do or one you've already done for yourself or others including general tasks, feature requests, bug reports and support requests. | "Get T-shirts printed." |
Adding Personal Ideas
When you see an idea you like, click the Add to my personal ideas button next to its title to add it to your profile. If you have an idea that isn't listed in the Ideapedia feel free to post it!
You can write your own words here about what the idea means to you.
You can also add personal ideas of your own without linking them to a larger group idea. Just leave the "Idea Group" field blank.
Posting New Things On Empowerment
There are a few guidelines you should be aware of when posting content on Empowerment.
Types Of Posts
There are many kinds of things you can post on Empowerment. Each type of post has a particular purpose and the following list explains what the content types are for and gives examples of how they might be used.
| Action | Explanation | Examples |
| Add/give/want items | List your stuff, create a wishlist, offer things others might need. | "shirts to be printed, request your size" |
| Doable Actions Task List | See what actions are listed |
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| Post a Mission | List a mission to do or one you've already done for yourself or others including general tasks, feature requests, bug reports and support requests. | "Get T-shirts printed." |
| Invite all your friends | Think of everyone you know like a giant checklist. What could each one of them get out of Empowerment? |
"Hey, you're into memetics too so check out this site I'm on, they have sweet t-shirts..." |
| Combine ideas into clever and targeted messages. | "A new slogan" | |
| Craft material | Translate messages into slickly produced materials for dissemination. | "A new shirt design with the slogan on it" |
| Document a medium | Mediums are methods of communicating. Document a new channel of communications to help others use it effectively. Written in nonpersonal style. | Shirting, Advertising, Videoing, Tabling |
| Document an audience | Audiences
are groups of people with something in common. They are the targets of
communicated message material. Written in mostly nonpersonal style.
Always rememeber that your audience may read this. |
"People on the street" |
| Document an idea | Ideas are for explaining in succinct encyclopedia style what an idea is so that someone can quickly understand it and choose to adopt it. If you want to talk about an idea at length, post a blog and address it to the Idea's group. Written in nonpersonal style. | Wear Message Shirts Every Day |
| Document a skill | Teach people how to learn to do something useful. Written in nonpersonal style. | "Shirt Making" |
| Document a technology | Document a tool such as a piece of equipment or software and explain what it does, how well it does it and which skills it relates to. | "DIY Screen Printing Press" |
| Log a communication | Document every actual delivery of material to audiences. For example: Record phone calls, hand-outs, advertising placements and track results. | "I wore the new shirt at school today and a lot of people asked me about it..." |
| Make a promise | Promise to do something and optionally request that other people do it too like a petition. | "I'll wear 7 message shirts every day for a month if at least 20 others do too." |
| Post a forum topic | Discuss anything. | "Does anyone know the answer to this?" |
| Post an event | Let people know about an upcoming event. | "We'll be giving out free shirts at the campus library." |
| Post a news link | Share an important news story. | "The newspaper has written a story about our shirts." |
| Start a campaign | Create a coordinated multi-medium campaign | "Help Communicate Our Message" |
| Start a group | Create your own group to free associate with anyone to do anything you choose. | "Local Communicators" |
| Write a quiz | Create a test to help people self-evaluate their skill levels or ideological opinions. | "Shirt making test", "What do your shirts say about you?" |
| Write a page | Write a page and place it in the hierarchical menu outline or start a new menu. |
Addressing Posts To Groups
You can address posts to groups of which you are a member.
Remember, group posts get emailed to most of the groups' members.
Only post to groups for which the content really seems appropriate.
Don't address posts to the "The Empowerment" group. I can't block it yet, but just don't do it.
Hierarchical Content Organization
Putting Content Into Hierarchical Menu Trees With Outline
You may notice that most of empowerthyself.com is organized into a hierarchical tree menu on the left hand-side.
Most nodes within this tree are "book" type nodes and have "Add child page" links in their footer that allow you to instantly create another book page under them in the hierarchy. This is convenient but what if you want to put other types of nodes into an outline tree like skills and groups?
You can assign any type of node to the tree after you have created it. First submit it and view it. Click the Outline tab and select a parent node to place your node under. The node list is vast so you may have to scroll around a bit to get a sense of where to put your node. If you want your node in the hierarchy but are unsure where to place it, ask in the forum.
Creating New Outline Menus
You can also create a new outline seperate from the main outline by placing a node at the top level without a parent. This is a good way to place documents underneath an organic group or idea so that you have your own independent menu structure.
Seeing Revisions And Comparing Differences
When you start collaboratively editing things, you will often see that a node has been updated. You can click Revisions and click Diff to see the difference between any two revisions of the node to see what has been added and removed. For example, here are the differences between two versions of an idea.
http://www.empowerthyself.com/node/272/revisions/view/3945/4121
You can see the difference between each edit. It is great to be able to click "What's New" and see that some ideas and skills you know are updated, clicking Revisions and clicking Diff and seeing what has been changed.