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

Starting the social capital experiment

By Garrett Wyse at May 25, 2010


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 I have been talking to a number of academics about the development of a field of study of social capital in Ireland based on some commonly agreed criteria.

Basically I have been talking to people in Trinity College Dublin (TCD), specifically in the Centre for Non-profit Management (CNM).  Also I met with some academics from Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) about them possibly participating in the project.

We need to get metrics agreed as soon as possible so that a proper programmes can be worked out.  There needs to be pre-radio on air surveys carried out to assess current levels of social capital in the town.  Hopefully these surveys will be carried out by people from the local college and analysed by them and also people from TCD.

There are funding opportunities available for such work and I have been in touch with one group who are interested, but they need the first paper, outlining what the study may comprise before the end of this week, not so great.  But the fact that they have expressed an interest and wish for me to put in a paper before their deadline for project consideration is itself a great sign.

Hopefully before the end of the week, we can get some basic metrics agreed and a short outline paper to the potential funders of the overall project.

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