Zcom_simple

Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

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Paul Burrows's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/paulburrows
Bio: I am an activist and writer based in Winnipeg, Canada. In 1995, I helped found Winnipeg's Old Market Autonomous Zone (As She Shall Deem Just: Treaty 1 & the Ethnic Cleansing of the St. Peter's... (More)

All Burrows Blogs

Problems Uploading Book Reviews?

By Paul Burrows at Apr 28, 2011


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Just wondering if anyone else is having difficulties uploading book reviews?  I tried creating a "new book" entry for Bonita Lawrence's book "Real" Indians and Others (UBC Press, 2004).  I noticed that another ZNet member had created a partial entry for this title, but it was incomplete (had no cover image, for example), and more importantly, it implied that the user was the author of the title, rather than Lawrence.  So I figured I would create an alternate complete entry for the book, and then review it myself.

I created the new entry, then clicked on the "Review this Book" button on the book page I had created.

However, the review itself seems to have been sucked through the data base somehow and is attaching itself to the earlier, incomplete book page.  This has two consequences, it seems to me.  One, it suggests the title was written by the ZNet user in question.  Two, it seems to relegate my book review to a temporal past.  It's as if I posted the review in 2009, rather than this week -- so the review doesn't seem to show up either on my ZSpace page as "recent content", nor in any general locations where Z members might see it.  

I am wondering if anyone else has experienced such technical problems?  Or if this is a unique glitch to book entries / reviews that have had multiple entries?  

I will try uploading a new book -- one that no one else has uploaded this time -- to see if I fare any better the next time round.  But perhaps someone more familiar with the system can spot an error I may have made.

Cheers,
Paul


 
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Update

By Burrows, Paul at Apr 28, 2011 16:12 PM

Well, I may have answered some of my own questions.  I have successfully uploaded a book entry for a title NOT previously entered into the ZBooks data base.  And then successfully posted a book review of it that has remained attached to the original book page.  

This seems to suggest that the error with the Bonita Lawrence book "Real" Indians and Others was due to the presence of two entries for the same title.  I would not have entered a second book page for this book, if the original had not been incomplete and in some respects misleading (i.e., the implied author being a ZNet user, rather than the actual book author).  

I am wondering if there is any way that these kinds of mistakes can be corrected -- given that I have no ability to "edit" a book page for a title that was first uploaded by a different ZNet user (even if that user uploaded incorrect or missing information).

PB 

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Re: Update

By Administrator, Site at Apr 28, 2011 17:57 PM

Well, in this case, I guess writing either us, or the person who uploaded the book incorrectly, could have yielded changes. Not sure what else to suggest...

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Re: Re: Update

By Burrows, Paul at Apr 28, 2011 19:39 PM

Thanks, someone seems to have tweaked something as a result of all this .... 

Hey, I never claimed to be a computer whiz (nor even remotely adept) !

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Re: Re: Re: Update

By Burrows, Paul at May 01, 2011 15:27 PM

Is it normal for articles and book reviews uploaded on personal ZSpace pages to remain confined there, and NOT flow automatically to a) the general ZSpace page, or b) the general ZBooks page?

I am not sure if I am missing a check box or step when uploading content, and that is why the content seems to be confined to my personal ZSpace page -- or if one needs to request that content be included elsewhere each and every time it is submitted.

I have not seen anything in the video tutorials indicating the policy/practice on this either way, and I haven't received any replies to my e-mail queries.  So if anyone has any answers to these questions, they would be greatly appreciated.

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