Get to know Eastleigh Online - what's your favourite feature?

Welcome to Eastleigh Online!

Eastleigh Online is a relatively new online discussion forum for local residents of Eastleigh Borough. The aim is to promote awareness of local issues, businesses, and better organise and share local information.

Since this place is new for everyone I thought I’d kick off a ‘get to know Eastleigh Online’ topic, so people can pick up some tips and learn some things. If you have any questions, just ask by pressing the big blue reply button at the bottom.

Eastleigh Online makes it easier and much more effective to promote healthy discussions that are open to all once you know how! Our brains have become very accustomed to facebook, which makes using alternatives seem complicated, but its really not that hard if you dive in. :slight_smile:

Some features only become available as you progress through the trusted levels. By getting involved reading and liking content you will progress through the levels and gain more of a voice within the community as to how it should be run.

Structure of Eastleigh Online

Once you get a hang of the structure, things make a lot more sense.

  • Topics are posts that are created by people like you and me that are up for discussion.
  • Posts are any responses to that topic.
  • Categories are the primary way of sorting topics, and you can view topics by category. This post is in the chit chat category, for example, but there are categories for each area of Eastleigh allowing you to set notifications on your local area if you want to.
  • Tags are a useful secondary way of sorting topics which can help people find relevant posts later. This topic is tagged as introductions and fun. shop-local is a very useful tag to list local business topics helping us organise local businesses together.

Useful features

Watch a topic, tag, or category and receive notifications on changes

Really want to keep an eye on something? Just click the little alarm bell, and choose watching
Really don’t want updates on something? Same thing, but choose muted.

Tags

Easy to glance over, these little boxes next to each topic are clickable, which will then show you all related topics.
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Badges

Getting badges for learning new things is nice brain Candy, and can quickly help you see if a community member is familiar with a feature or not.

User profiles

Clicking on a user profile, and then their name quickly lets you see what they’re into and and how much they likely know the community and what their previous posts are.

Latest Posts

Being able to see just the latest posts since you were last around I find really helps - rather than keeping up the endless scroll of facebook. Just click the Latest button at the top to see all the latest posts.
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Search

Who knew search could be so good? Click the magnifying glass in the top right and search for what you’re looking for and it actually works, and is super fast!
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Bookmarks

If you would like to remember a post and come back to it later, click the bookmark image imageat the bottom of any post to remember it, and then you can just click image in the header at any time and come straight back to your list. Try it now with this post! :slight_smile:

Make Wiki

If you make a topic that contains useful information like this one, you can turn it into a wiki. This then allows any trusted community member to be able to edit and improve the content, so we can all grow the information base here for others to share. To make a topic a wiki, you press the spanner icon, and then Make wiki
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Upcoming Events

If you are in any groups where events are posted, you can access a calendar of all events by clicking on the image “burger” menu in the top right, and then Upcoming Events.

Trust Levels

Trust Level 0 – New

By default, all new users start out at trust level 0, meaning trust has yet to be earned. These are visitors who just created an account, and are still learning the community norms and the way your community works. New users’ abilities are restricted for safety – both theirs and yours.

(We also want to hide any “advanced” functionality from new users to make the UI less confusing for them as they gain more experience.)

Users at trust level 0 cannot

  • Send personal messages to other users
  • “Reply as new topic” via Link button (UI removed)
  • Flag posts
  • Post more than 1 image
  • Post any attachments
  • Post more than 2 hyperlinks in a post
  • Have actual links in the ‘about me’ field of their profile (will be silently and temporarily converted to plain text)
  • Mention more than 2 users in a post
  • Post more than 3 topics
  • Post more than 10 replies
  • Edit their own posts after more than 24 hours

Admins can change these limitations by searching for newuser and first_day in site settings.

Trust Level 1 – Basic

At Discourse, we believe reading is the most fundamental and healthy action in any community. If a new user is willing to spend a little time reading, they will quickly be promoted to the first trust level.

Get to trust level 1 by…

  • Entering at least 5 topics
  • Reading at least 30 posts
  • Spend a total of 10 minutes reading posts

Users at trust level 1 can…

  • Use all core Discourse functions; all new user restrictions are removed
  • Send PMs
  • Upload images and attachments if enabled
  • Edit wiki posts
  • Flag posts
  • Mute other users

Admins can change these thresholds by searching for tl1 in site settings.

Trust Level 2 – Member

Members keep coming back to your community over a series of weeks; they have not only read, but actively participated long and consistently enough to be trusted with full citizenship.

Get to trust level 2 by…

  • Visiting at least 15 days, not sequentially
  • Casting at least 1 like
  • Receiving at least 1 like
  • Replying to at least 3 different topics
  • Entering at least 20 topics
  • Reading at least 100 posts
  • Spend a total of 60 minutes reading posts

Users at trust level 2 can…

  • Use the “Invite others to this topic” button for one-click onboarding of new users to participate in topics
  • Invite outside users to PMs making a group PM
  • Daily like and edit limits increased by 1.5×
  • Ignore other users
  • Edit their own posts for up to 30 days after posting

Admins can change these thresholds by searching for tl2 in site settings.

Trust Level 3 – Regular

Regulars are the backbone of your community, the most active readers and reliable contributors over a period of months, even years. Because they’re always around, they can be further trusted to help tidy up and organize the community.

To get to trust level 3, in the last 100 days…

  • Must have visited at least 50% of days
  • Must have replied to at least 10 different non-PM topics
  • Of topics created in the last 100 days, must have viewed 25% (capped at 500)
  • Of posts created in the last 100 days, must have read 25% (capped at 20k)
  • Must have received 20 likes, and given 30 likes.*
  • Must not have received more than 5 spam or offensive flags (with unique posts and unique users for each, confirmed by a moderator)
  • Must not have been suspended or silenced in the last 6 months

* These likes must be across a minimum number of different users (1/5 the number), across a minimum number of different days (1/4 the number). Likes cannot be from PMs.

All of the above criteria must be true to achieve trust level 3. Furthermore, unlike other trust levels, you can lose trust level 3 status. If you dip below these requirements in the last 100 days, you will be demoted back to Member. However, in order to avoid constant promotion/demotion situations, there is a 2-week grace period immediately after gaining Trust Level 3 during which you will not be demoted.

Users at trust level 3 can…

  • Recategorize and rename topics
  • Access a secure category only visible to users at trust level 3 and higher
  • Have all their links followed (we remove automatic nofollow)
  • TL3 spam flags cast on TL0 user posts immediately hide the post
  • TL3 flags cast on TL0 user posts in sufficient diversity will auto-silence the user and hide all their posts
  • Make their own posts wiki (that is, editable by any TL1+ users)
  • Daily like and edit limits increased by 2×

Admins can change these thresholds by searching for TL3 in site settings.

Trust Level 4 – Leader

Leaders are regulars who have been around forever and seen everything. They set a positive example for the community through their actions and their posts. If you need advice, these are the folks you turn to first, and they’ve earned the highest level of community trust, such that they are almost moderators within the community already.

Get to trust level 4 by…

  • Manual promotion by staff only
  • (Possibly via a to-be-developed election system in the future)

Users at trust level 4 can…

  • Edit all posts
  • Pin/unpin topic
  • Close topics
  • Archive topics
  • Make topics unlisted
  • Split and merge topics
  • Reset topic bump date
  • Daily like and edit limits increased by 3×
  • Any TL4 flag cast on any post immediately takes effect and hides the target post
  • Can send personal messages to an email address

That'll do for now! I'll come back and add more later. Let me know what you think.

Feel free to add some more yourself, or hit the blue reply button and suggest it or ask a question and I’ll add. :slight_smile: