Technical Writing World

The social network for technical communicators

Help

Getting Started

Welcome! Are you new to the Technical Writing World community? Here are a few ideas for getting started:

Please use your full, real name. This makes our "social" network that much more social. (Click Settings.)
Add a photo to your profile so that other professionals can get to know you. (Click My Page.)
Customize your profile. Use the Text Box widget to tell us a bit about yourself. (Click My Page.)
View the Members page and send some friend requests to those you know, or wish to know. That way you can send and receive direct messages from those friends and control access to the content you post. (Click Members.)
Use the Invite features to bring your tech writer friends to the community. (Click Invite.)
Give us a status update; what technical writing tasks or ideas are you working on right now? (Click My Page.)
Start a new discussion or comment on an existing discussion. Got an itch? Perhaps the community can scratch it by answering your question or at least empathizing with your woes. (Click Forum.)
Share your thoughts in a blog post, so the community can give you feedback. You can use the privacy features at the bottom of the editing page to control who can see or comment on your post. (Click Blogs.)
Hosting a tech writing webinar or meetup? Use the Events feature to share the news with the community. (Click Events.)
Track forum discussions and blog posts via RSS. The Blogs and Forums pages have individual feeds, so you can keep track of them when you are logged out of the community. (Click Blogs or Forums and scroll to the RSS icon at the bottom of the page.)

Posting Guidelines

The following guidelines are in place to help keep Technical Writing World a fun and engaging community. Please read them before you post anything, and thanks in advance for your cooperation.

Be courteous and respectful to other members
We encourage discussion and debate. However, please use manners when engaging in conversations. Flame wars and trolls are annoying, so we ask that you be polite to others, just as you would if you met them at a professional conference.

We welcome courteous conversation, but abusive or rude posts will be edited or deleted from the forum.

Keep private messages private
If you need to say something private to another member, please use the "Send a message" feature on their profile page. Do not post private messages in the forums or other highly visible areas of the community. Be considerate and use discretion when necessary.

Posting content from other websites
If you wish to share something you read elsewhere on the Internet, please just link to it and provide a short description. Do not copy the content and paste it into the Technical Writing World website.

No advertising, please!
Messages that are blatant advertising will be removed. You may link to your professional website from your profile page. If you write a blog post or discussion, and wish to cite relevant information from your own blog or another website, that's fine. However, the link target must have information that adds to the discussion. Do not link to a site that is just a sales pitch for your products or services.

In other words, don't spam the forum. If you demonstrate your value to the community by getting involved and contributing valuable information, you are on the right track. If you show up with fake profile information that looks spammy and immediately start adding links to sales pitches, we're going to oust you like the spammer that you are. If you believe that your ousting was a misunderstanding, feel free to ask us to reconsider; we're nice folk, and would love to have you in the community if you play by the rules.

Blog posts should be content-rich

Your blog posts should contain at least a few paragraphs of original content so that search engines will not see them as "thin content" pages. Do not write a very short blog post with the sole purpose of linking out to your external site. Instead, write a few paragraphs of interesting material and then include a link to relevant content on your site. A blog post should stand on its own, not just introduce content that is external to the community site.

Use descriptive headings
When you write a blog or post in the forums, please use a descriptive heading. Try to summarize what the discussion is really about. Doing so will improve engagement and make your discussion easier to find.

Keep it clean, please
Do not link to bad neighborhoods (adult content, gambling, weapons, etc.). Also, watch your language, please. Your peers and coworkers are watching, so behave yourselves (within reason). We like fun, but don't be offensive.

The same goes for any images you post. Try to keep them clean and relevant.

Don't share personal information
Please do not post any information that was not meant for public display, such as your SSN, credit card numbers, home phone number, or anything else you don't want abused.

DON'T SHOUT!
Posting in all caps is rude, and is the equivalent of yelling. Please be civil and tone it down a bit.

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RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are available for almost everything posted at TWW. Just look for the cute little blue icon () near the bottom of whatever you are reading. Here are some feeds to get you started:

Featured Content Feeds

Blogs - http://technicalwritingworld.com/profiles/blog/feed?promoted=1&...
Forum discussions - http://technicalwritingworld.com/forum/topic/list?feed=yes&xn_a...
Events - http://technicalwritingworld.com/events/event/feed?xn_auth=no&f...

Member Feeds

All members - http://technicalwritingworld.com/profiles/friend/feed?xn_auth=no&am...
Recent members -http://technicalwritingworld.com/profiles/friend/feed?xn_auth=no&am...
Featured members - http://technicalwritingworld.com/profiles/friend/feed?xn_auth=no&am...

Miscellaneous

Everyone's blog posts - http://technicalwritingworld.com/profiles/blog/feed?xn_auth=no
Recent forum posts - http://technicalwritingworld.com/forum?feed=yes&xn_auth=no
Recent activity - http://technicalwritingworld.com/activity/log/list?fmt=rss

Also, each of you has a latest activity feed. Just look for that same cute little blue icon on your profile page.

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Promote Your Blog

You can add an RSS feed to your profile page. This is great for promoting your blog at TWW. Just look for the RSS box on your profile page.

Twitter

Here's how Twitter integration at TWW works:

If you elect to sign in to TWW via your Twitter account, you will be able to log into TWW with just a single click.
Even if you log in manually, you can still link your Twitter account to your TWW account.
When you post a blog entry, forum post, or My Page status, you will see an option to simultaneously Tweet about your post. You can edit your Tweet before sending it.
Almost everything on TWW has a Twitter option. With a single click, you can Tweet about something interesting you found here. Again, you can edit your Tweet before sending it.
The Twitter tracker on the right is tied to a public Twitter list managed by Arnold Burian.

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Facebook

The "Facebook Like" button allows you to quickly share TWW content on Facebook with a single click.

You can also share something you see at TWW with your Facebook friends. Click Share, then Facebook. You have the option to preface the post with your text.

This is how they appear on your Facebook wall (Like vs. Share):

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Like Us!

Visit the official Technical Writing World fan page on Facebook.

Stay Informed

If you see something interesting, you can Follow it.

Mobile

A mobile version of Technical Writing World is available for smartphone users at http://technicalwritingworld.com/m. iPhone users are automatically redirected.

Not all features are supported in the mobile version, like blogs. But we know that's important to you, and we're working on that. You can view the full site directly from the mobile version.

Supported Browsers

TWW officially supports the following browsers:

Firefox 2 or 3
Internet Explorer 7 or 8
Safari 3 or 4
Google Chrome

We're always working on adding more.

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The Admin Team

The site administrator is Arnold Burian. Feel free to reach out to Arnold for questions, comments, suggestions, etc. You can also use the feedback form.

1 member likes this

Comment by Jerry Franklin on August 2, 2011 at 11:25am: Greetings.

I just got a comment on my profile that's spam - one of those mail order bride things. Obviously I can -- and will -- delete this, but I'd like to know how this could happen, and what I should do to prevent this in the future. I'd also like to forward to you, but I'm unsure how. Please advise. It's actually quite annoying.

Thanks.

Regards,

Jerry

Comment by Julio Vazquez on August 2, 2011 at 11:55am: Same thing happened to me from user klarajames. Guess it's hard not to avoid this sort of spam, is it? Is there any way the Admin team can prevent future occurrences?

Thanks,

Julio

Comment by Arnold Burian on August 2, 2011 at 12:12pm: Sorry about that. I immediately suspended that account, which also removes the corresponding spam posts.

Unfortunately, as our community grows and becomes more visible, we will be the target of spammers. I have several automated systems in place, plus a final manual approval. Sadly, I don't think we can ever be 100% protected.

Comment by Dave Peyton on August 9, 2011 at 2:24pm: Are you considering working with relevant paid advertisers, to run banners alongside discussion pages, for instance?

Comment by Arnold Burian on August 9, 2011 at 2:50pm: Hi, Dave- The thought has crossed my mind. Especially with the wife yelling at me about the expense of running this site. :)

I'm keeping it ad-free for now. We'll see what happens in the future.

Comment by Daniel Archer on August 22, 2011 at 9:53am: Any idea why I can't change the email address associated to my account? It says that the change has been saved, but 12 hours later it still shows the old one / sends notifications to the old account.

Comment by Arnold Burian on August 22, 2011 at 10:10am: Daniel- I will investigate.

Comment by Daniel Archer on August 22, 2011 at 1:54pm: Arnold - thanks very much. If you have any kind of event log as site admin, it will show that I saved the change twice at around 11 PM EST.

Comment by Arnold Burian on August 25, 2011 at 6:49am: Daniel- you found a bug. We're working on it. :)

Comment by Arnold Burian on August 25, 2011 at 7:39pm: Daniel- please try again. We believe this issue has been resolved.

Comment by Daniel Archer on August 26, 2011 at 5:36pm: Arnold - it now works as expected (with an email / confirmation link to the old address). Thanks!

Comment by David Foster on December 9, 2011 at 2:27pm: Question: when I try to add a picture to my profile, my company's anti-virus blocks it, with the following message:

Script/Exploit

The Script/Exploit is not a virus, is it a heuristic scan warning, that there is a file on your computer which is able to use a security hole. It is necessary for such a program to have rights to change the Windows registry settings, and the program gets these rights by a dirty trick. This script does not contain any destructive action. If such a file is present on your computer, it is necessary to delete this file to avoid any further security damage done to your computer.

Can you tell me what's going on?

Thanks!

David

Comment by Arnold Burian on December 9, 2011 at 4:18pm: Hi, David-

I will investigate - thanks for letting me know.

Comment by Arnold Burian on December 12, 2011 at 6:41pm: David- here's an update from our support team:

I haven't had any reports of this before. As much as I'd like to help, I'm not sure what David's company's anti-virus software is referring to. I suggest asking David to consult with his company's IT team to ensure that the anti-virus software is up to date and providing an accurate notification in this case. If David gets any more information or comes across this warning doing anything else on, please let us know.

Comment