This discussion forum gives By the People volunteers a space to talk directly to each other and Library of Congress community managers. We hope you’ll share your questions, feedback, advice, and interesting finds from Library of Congress collections.
Here are some basic steps to get you started:
1. Find the forum – Visit the forum at any time by clicking the Discuss link at the top of any By the People page on crowd.loc.gov. You can also type or bookmark the url in your browser: forum.crowd.loc.gov
2. Create an account – You don’t need an account to read or search posts, but you will need to create a new account to create posts or respond to others. This account is different from your By the People account, but you can use the same username and password if you like.
3. Introduce yourself – create a post in the Introductions thread to let others know you’re here and whatever you’d like to share about yourself!
4. Search and browse posts – Before you create a new post, search the forum to see if someone else is already talking about that topic. If so, respond in that “thread” rather than starting a new one. You can also browse on the forum homepage or click through the categories on the left side of the page.
5. Create a post – Create a new post by clicking the blue “New Topic” button beneath the Library of Congress logo. Select one of the existing categories (How-To, Languages, Cool finds) from the dropdown, this is where the post will live.
6. Wait for moderation – Per Library of Congress policy, all posts must be moderated. This means your post will only “go live” once it has been reviewed by a By the People community manager. We moderate posts during standard EST work hours.
7. Respond to a post – After reading a post, click the blue “Reply” button at the bottom of the thread.
8. Tag a user – if you are responding to a specific user in a thread, you may want to get their attention by tagging them. Type @ followed by their user name to tag them. This will send them a notification to look at the post.
The By the People discussion forum is hosted on a platform called Discourse. Read more about using and configuring your Discourse account here.