Please note that this is an unofficial guide. Its author has no connection to Jyte other than as a user of the web site. Everything contained in this guide is meant to help new users to better understand Jyte. These are suggestions and recommendations; you are free to come to your own decisions as to the best ways to use Jyte.
You do not need to make an account to read the claims or profiles on Jyte. However, you will probably find you wish to make an account so that you can vote and comment on claims. Jyte uses OpenID, so you can use any OpenID account you already have. If you do not have one, you can easily make one. The OpenID you use will be displayed to other users as part of your identity.
Once you have an account, there are several things you can adjust about it. You will get to choose a name. This name will be displayed to other users when you vote or comment. This can be your real name, a nickname, or an online handle. A lot of Jyte users use a real name, so you may wish to use some part of your name with Jyte, but there are users using handles. Any name you use will be remembered and visible to others from your profile, which will keep a history of names you have used. So, only use names you are willing to have and keep publicly associated with your account.
You will be able to put some information about yourself in your profile. Other users are likely to look at your profile to learn more about you. You can choose to put some basic information about yourself or not as you see fit.
You will also be able to list interests. Your interests will display to other users to give them an idea about what things you like. However, your interests also serve other purposes. Your interests serve as a link to see other users with the same interests. From that page, you can also see people who have or have given cred with that name. The interactions between interests, cred, and tags will be discussed later in this document.
The rest of your profile won't be that interesting yet. It will develop as you use Jyte. Your profile can be found from the "You" link on Jyte pages.
Your profile will show a list of all of the groups you have joined. It will also contain some statistics. It will show you how many claims you have made, how many claims you have agreed with, how many claims you have disagreed with, and how many times you have changed your vote on a claim. It will also show you how many people you are ignoring and how many people are ignoring you. Beneath the stats block will be a section to show the tags you most often use when making claims.
Claims, comments, and votes you make will be findable through your profile. At the bottom of your profile page there will be two sets of links. One says "About:" and the other says "By:".
The About section contains a link to claims that anyone has made about you. About you is defined as a claim that contains your openid in the claim. If your openid is only in the description, it will not be linked to your profile here. Next it has a link to display all of the cred you have been given and who gave it to you. Finally, it has a link to display the people you have added to your contacts. Underneath your contact list is a link to see who has added you as a contact.
The By section is fairly similar. It shows claims you have made. It shows claims you have commented on. It shows claims you have voted on. Finally, it shows cred you have given to other people.
After you make claims, claims you make will be findable through your profile.
Each claim has an agree and a disagree button. The agree button is on the left and has a "thumbs up". The disagree button is on the right and has a "thumbs down". You can click whichever way you feel. When you vote, you may notice that the colors change. Different vote tallies are represented through color. The numbers also display the number of votes on each side. If you misvote or change your mind, you can change your vote by clicking on the other option; however, you cannot undo your vote such that you do not vote at all once you have voted.
Some claims have documentation that helps to clarify or elaborate on the claim. On the page of claims you will see a small green icon before the attribution line (the line that says "By name-of-author"). That is a picture of a tree designed to let you know there is more information. You might also see something telling you how many comments have been made on the claim. This will not appear until there is at least one comment. You may wish to read the description and comments before deciding how to vote.
When you click on the text of a claim, it brings you to the page for that claim. That is where you can read the description and comments. Underneath the claim and on the right side of the page there may be something that says "This claim inspired by". This means that the claim was made because of something that happened in another claim on Jyte, either a claim or a comment. Sometimes looking at what inspired that claim will help to clarify how the claim is meant. If it says it was inspired by a comment, you can find which comment by going to the link and scrolling until you see the text of that claim underneath a comment. It was inspired by the comment it is below.
Please note that when the word "I" or "you" is used that it generally refers to the person reading the claim, not the author of the claim.
When you are looking at the page for a particular claim, you will find a box in which you can write a comment. Enter the comment you wish, then push either the Preview or the Publish button. Previewing a comment is a good idea if your comment contains HTML tags, to ensure that it displays the way you expect it to. Once published, a comment cannot be edited or deleted (except by deleting your account). Be sure you wish to submit the comment before publishing it.
What fun is just voting on what other people have to say? If you've been looking through claims, you probably want to start making some of your own. There are two ways to make a claim, you can make a new claim or an inspired claim. If your claim is based on something you read on Jyte, it is better to make an inspired claim, because it will link to what it is based on. This makes it easier for other people to follow your train of thought. You can make an inspired claim by clicking the link to "Make a related claim" underneath the claim or comment that inspired it.
First, you will write the claim itself. This is what will display when looking at pages of claims. Once you submit it, you will see other claims that may be similar. You should check to make sure that the claim you wish to make has not been made before. If it hasn't, you will get a chance to write the description, include pictures, and add tags. If your claim is an exact duplicate, you will be taken to the claim that has already been made rather than being able to remake the claim. However, you should still check the similar claims in case yours is the same in content, but not an exact duplicate.
There are two important issues to keep in mind when making claims: perspective and tag choice. First, we'll deal with perspective. You can make three kinds of claims. You can make a claim about some fact about the world, such as "The sky is blue.". You can make a claim about a person, yourself or someone else, such as "Rachel is hungry.". Also, you can make a claim about the voter, such as "I want to eat.".
When making a claim about a person not on Jyte, you can just put in their name. However, when making a claim about a person on Jyte, you should put their OpenID in the claim where you would put their name. This both makes it completely clear who you are talking about and will create a link to that user's profile. Remember to do this when making a claim about yourself to keep things clearer. If you don't know their OpenID, you can look it up on their profile. Simply copy and paste their OpenID where you would have written their name, and Jyte will turn it into a link to their profile with the displayed text being their name. You can preview the claim to make sure that you have done so correctly.
An easy way to make a claim about a particular user of Jyte is to go to their profile to the section labeled "Connect with Name-of-user" and select "Make a claim". This will provide you with the claim box with their OpenID already inserted. You can make claims more easily about yourself by going to your "Home", which is a link at the top left of the screen, and "make a claim about yourself" from the option on the right near the top.
When making a claim about the voter, most people on Jyte use the word "I". When you see the word "I" in claims, you can generally assume that it means the person reading the claim. Some people prefer to use the word "you" for this purpose.
When talking about people in general, you may wish to use the term "one". As in, "One might feel really sick after drinking a lot of alcohol.". You can find discussion on this topic in the following claim: One should use the third person indefinite pronoun when making a claim
On tagging, tags should both reflect what the claim is about and match both cred and interests. The tags allow you to search for other claims with the same tag, users with cred in that tag, and users who are interested in that tag. How to tag things well will be discussed further after you have read about cred. You can edit tags in claims you made, should you need to fix or add something.
Famous quotations often do not make for good claims. However, sometimes they
can be interesting. Or you may wish to quote someone who is not famous.
Either way, when quoting someone else, claims in the format of "Einstein
said, 'Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared'" are not usually
a good idea, because it is not clear whether you are voting on the truth of
the quoted material or on the truth of Einstein having said that. There are
two basic opinions on how one can handle quotes:
To find interesting claims out of the large number of claims, you have several options. You can look at the Recent claims, the Featured claims (which tend to be claims that have a lot of votes or comments), or any of the other filtering options. You can also search using the search box for a word or set of words. It will find claims that have that word or those words in the claim, the tags, or the comments.
You can also find claims by a particular user. You can go to their profile and click on the "Claims" button that shows the claims they have written. There will be a "More..." link above the claims if they will not all fit on one page. You can find links with a particular tag through the search, but also by going to the main claims page and clicking on one of the tags in the "Top Tags" section. Then edit the URL and replace that tag with the tag you want.
You can find claims that the system thinks will interest you on your Home page. This will be heavily influenced by who you add as a contact. You can add someone as a contact by going to their profile and clicking on the "Add to your contacts" link.
To find claims according to more specific criteria, use the advanced search feature. You may find it helpful to create a search for claims with comments since viewed and that you've commented on. This allows you to more easily keep track of comment threads you have participated in. There are many possibilities with the advanced search feature. If a search is particularly useful, you may wish to save it, which will add that search to the links on the general claims page for you when you are logged in.
After you've been on Jyte for a little while, you may wish to give some of the other users cred. Cred signifies something that the person is good at, knowledgeable about, or a good trait about the person. You can give someone cred by going to their profile and clicking the "Give cred" link. A box will pop up which is either blank or contains cred that you have already given them. You can add new cred by typing it into the list. You should separate different creds with a comma.
You can remove cred by going to the "Give cred" link and deleting the cred you wish to remove and submitting. Another way to remove cred is to go to your own profile, look at the cred you have given. Next to each entry will be a "Take back" button. This will remove the cred from that person. If you wish to remove all of the cred you have given someone, rather than just some of it, you will either need to use the "Take back" button or replace the cred you have given them with two quotation marks ("") and save that.
Cred will link to claims that have that tag, along with a list of the users with the most cred in that subject. Cred can be helpful when thinking about how knowledgeable the voters on each side of the topic are. For this reason, cred should use the same format as tags and interests. That will be discussed in the next section.
You are more likely to get cred from other people if you also give sensible cred to others. You are also more likely to get cred if you participate in Jyte in ways that make what cred you deserve clear. Voting, commenting, and making sensible claims will increase the odds that someone else will give you cred.
Some useful claims about cred and getting cred are:
Because interests, tags, and cred all relate to each other, they work best if they all use the same system. If you are interested in "geeky", have "geek" cred, and people tag claims with "geeks" then none of those things will appear to be related. As such, a uniform system is useful. Opinions on how to do this are varied. You can read the major discussions on this matter in the following claims.
Since good tagging makes Jyte more usable, some people will point out ways that the tags in a claim can be improved. These people are sometimes referred to as "the tag police". The idea is simply to help improve Jyte. You can read more about this in the following claim:
Rachel
's Beginner's Guide to Jyte should say more about tagging and the tag
police.
Groups are a good way to show things about yourself or find claims that are
related to the interests of the group or claims made by members of that
group. Groups you join will show up on your profile. You can find groups
by clicking the "Groups" button in the top set of links. You will see groups
you can get more information on. Click on a group that interests you to
learn more. From there, you can join it if it has open membership. If you
wish to make a group, click on "Create a group" instead of looking at any
particular group.
You can make group-only claims by going to the profile for a group you are
a member of and clicking "Make a group claim", which will be a link on the
left side, underneath the space for the group's icon.
The culture of Jyte is changing and hard to define. This section is meant to
give you a decent place to start. It's best to supplement it by reading
through recent claims and tags you think might be particularly helpful.
All of the annoyances of the internet in general can happen on Jyte:
rudeness, flaming, trolling, spamming, flooding, etc. You can read about
general net etiquette through searching the web for information. This section is only
intended to help you learn the things specific to Jyte.
People generally prefer that others not be rude. There isn't much to say
about rudeness, flaming, or trolling that is specific to Jyte. However,
making a claim that you disagree with and then changing your vote to
disagree is not considered trolling. Usually it is better to make claims
that you agree with, but there are sometimes reasons to do it the other way.
Sometimes you may wish to use a famous quote or saying and to not tamper
with it. Other times you may wish to see whether wording it in the form you
disagree with affects how people vote or to try not to influence them to
vote just in the way you believe.
Spamming is generally not appreciated. However, as Jyte is a site for, among
other things, claiming things about yourself it is not unusual to want to
link to your web site, blog, photo album, or other creations. This is likely
to go over better if it is not one of your early claims and you let people
get to know you before you do so. Especially as people are more likely to go
to the link if they have come to view you as someone with interesting
things to say or good viewpoints. You can find discussion on this topic in
the following claim:
Making claims about yourself is encouraged in Jyte, but don't expect a lot
of votes. Most people do not know much about you, and will thus have no
reason to vote about you. Votes about people you don't know can be boring,
so it's often good to vary what you claim about. If there isn't a reason to
link the information specifically to you, consider making an "I" claim
instead and see how many other people share things that are true about you.
This allows others to get to know you and also learn about other people at
the same time. It also helps you learn about the other people on Jyte.
There is an emerging pattern for giving cred to people who have done a lot
of something and aren't trolls. The general method is "noun machine". People
have been given "claim machine", "comment machine", "vote machine", and "tag
machine" cred. You may wish to use this format if you want to give cred along those lines.
The "centurion" cred does not have an obvious meaning. Many people give it
when someone has made 100 claims. It is explained briefly in the following
claim:
A good way to learn more about Jyte and what other people think is
acceptable on Jyte is to make claims about it. Decide what you think is
acceptable and claim it. Ask for discussion in the comments. Claims are a
great way to get feedback. But make sure to search first that it hasn't been claimed already. Regular redundant
claims can get very annoying.
last modified 2:38 PM Pacific June 24, 2007
Groups
Culture
I
don't mind some self-promotion as long as it is rare and from someone who
clearly uses Jyte for other good reasons.
I'm
not sure if I should be insulted, or flattered, that px hasn't given me any
cred.