Tracking page for GIM

admin123 - 7-JUN-2010

Going by the hype around it, and looking at sharp opinions within the activist community, fallouts of Global Investment Meet (aka GIM) need close tracking. Whether GIM will bring inclusive growth, or create more controversies around corporate greed and disrespect for natural resources depends on how much interest we take in monitoring the specific proposals and demanding transparency.

To make it easy for readers and contributors on this website, we have created a special tracking page for GIM:

New email notifications from Praja

tech - 14-MAY-2010

 The Praja Tech team is happy to introduce new and improved email notifications system on Praja.

What

Praja users have the option of receiving email notifications when there is a comment on a post they are interested in. It can be a post authored by you, or a post you commented on. While the existing notification system was working, it was not perfect and we have now rolled out a new notification system.

Why

The old notification system was restricted in terms of its functionality and scalability. As Praja grows, we wanted to have the ability to send notifications to a larger number of users, send notifications through SMS etc. We will now also have ways to make the notifications better formatted and more useful. In addition, with the new system, it will also be possible to receive notifications for any activity within a project group, which is a critical functionality for project teams.

Website Update Announcements

tech - 22-MAR-2010

Book to hold important technical announcements about Praja website itself. These announcements could be about new feature releases, retiring some features, or to announcements to gather user feedback on technical aspects of the website.

Users should leave comments on relevant posts in this book to interact with technical team. "Contact" feature is another tool available to users for providing technical feedback.

New navigation on Praja

tech - 23-MAR-2010

We at the tech team are happy to announce new and improved navigation features on Praja.in. These will be launched today. We hope that the changes make it easier for our users to find, read and create relevant content on the site. Read on to know more about the new navigation.

Changed front page

The homepage of Praja (http://praja.in) now has a simplified look when you are not logged in. It has a small slideshow to tell what Praja is about and leads to creating or finding discussions. (We are currently working on improving the looks of the graphics and buttons on this page). This design is done keeping in mind the new users to the Praja community who want to understand what Praja is about.

When the users login, the front page will automatically change to a more personal version. This page is the centre of all the action on Praja for all the users.

PrajaBytes

New features at Praja!

tech - 5-FEB-2010

We at the Tech team are happy to announce another set of new features on Praja. Starting today, all registered users will have access to these new features.

1. The Stream Microblog with Twitter Integration

For those of us who are familiar with Twitter, we now have an analogous feature built within Praja. How is PrajaBytes to name it? Suggest better if you have one. The idea is for you to share your status or broadcast those pithy one liners to all Praja users (and especially those who follow you, see below).

• To start posting, just head to 'My account' and type in the 'Stream' box.
• What more, you can link one or more of your Twitter accounts to your praja accounts. If you link your Twitter account, a tweet will be posted to your Twitter account when you make a post on Praja.

To link your Twitter account:

• go to 'My account',
• choose 'edit' and click on 'Twitter Accounts' tab.
• Fill in your Twitter id and Twitter password. We need your Twitter password to make posts on your behalf.
• Rest assured that the passwords will be stored securely and are not accessible to any users, including the admins.

Spam Control Feature

tech - 13-JAN-2010

Lately Praja has been flooded with spam posts from people promoting irrelevant products and services. There have been times when the admins/moderators have had to clean up as many as 10 posts in a day. In view of this we have put together a filtration feature.

Site Notice - tech work during December

tech - 27-NOV-2009

This isn't to scare anyone. Website will stay operational, with minimal impact, but just wanted to announce that we plan to work on some long pending tech issues (navigation, projects, gyan etc) during December.

New feature - search Bengaluru related sarkaari websites

tech - 16-SEP-2009

No big deal this, but we have put up a new feature wherein you can search through all well known Bengaluru related public websites. Its essentially a list of all sarkaari websites pointed out by the geeks of Praja.in put inside a "custom search" widget that will search only this universe of 25-30 websites.

Gyan part of Praja

n - 30-AUG-2009

Been meaning to write this for a looong time - not intended to be personal.  Posting it here as there are (I assume) multiple admins who can all see this post.

Moderation launched on Praja

tech - 6-AUG-2009

We had recently solicited ideas for introducing moderation on Praja for Posts and Comments. We thought it was essential to have a moderation system to retain the no-nonsense flavour of Praja as we grow. We are thankful to all those who responded and are happy to announce the launch of moderation system on Praja.

There are four facets to moderation on Praja.

1. To remove content that is deemed to be unfit for publishing on Praja by its members. This include posts that contain spam, hate speech, rumours etc.
2. To 'review' posts for their links, tagging, formatting and other cosmetic/functional aspects.
3. To make top quality content more easily accessible to users
4. To provide a way for all users to bring objectionably content to admins' notice

Principles of moderation on Praja
Keeping with the democratic principle of Praja, the moderation is also democratic
and as transparent and objective as it could be. In summary, to meet the above objectives we have worked with following principles

1. Most active Praja members become 'moderators' who can 'flag' content for unpublishing. If enough moderators flag a post or comment for unpublishing, it will be automatically unpublished.
2. All posts published will be reviewed by one of the administrators 'only' for their technical consistency (formatting, tagging, links etc). Admins will NOT unpublish the posts during this review.
3. All users can vote posts up or down and the posts with highest votes will be predominantly displayed on the front page.
4. All users should have a facility to bring objectionable content to admins' notice