User Guide: Community Tools

PublicSquare is based on the core concept that communities set their own standards, and it is the job of the software to hand communities the tools to manage their communities their own way. We believe in being yourself, and taking responsibility for your words.

That said we also believe that Editorial is what keeps a publication from being a self-perpetuating suck-hole, and gets new ideas and concepts into the fray AS WELL AS cleaning up spelling and encouraging folks to have complete thoughts. Editors make better content.

This means

  • Everyone must log in to comment, rate or participate in any way
  • Participants have a reputation that is affected by everything they do on the site.
  • The community can rate comments, stories and ideas AND that affects the generator of their comment types reputation.
  • The community can flag any comment as offensive, and three flags means it disappears. BUT an editor/publisher (see PsRoles) can mark it as worth living on even if the community doesn’t care for it.
  • Sometimes the audience is smarter than the writer—any comment can be nominated by a reader to the Ideas slushpile.