FAQ

A friend is someone you know socially and trust well enough to be comfortable sharing your personal contact information with. A friend can also be an ally or a nemesis. Friend connections are the fundamental unit of a social network. Your experience on this site will be best, if these connections respresent true, social connections that you have in the real world. You can decline a friend request - it doesn't make you a mean person.

An ally on essembly is someone who you don't necessarily know, but whom you agree with ideologically or that you're working with on some issue. An ally could be someone you find who shares your same beliefs on a resolve, a member of a group that your involved with, but an ally can also can also be a friend.

A nemesis is like an ally, but is instead a person you may consider your counterpoint or opponent for whatever reason. Allies and nemesises are not necessarily your friends and thus do not have the same privileges as friends. This means allies and nemesises are not privy to all your personal information.

To add a friend, first go to their profile, then click on the 'Add To My Network' link located under the person's picture.

People are allowed to have two different pictures - one is a friends picture, which you can set to be visible only by your friends. This could be you in a more informal setting which you don't mind your close acquaintances viewing. The other is a professional picture, which is the default picture people who are not your friends or allies see.

Flagging saves any members profile in your my people section. Flagging provides essembly users with a way to keep track of other members on the site that interest them. These could be friends whose profiles you frequently visit, other members that you debate with often, or a member whose resolves you like to follow.

Every profile is only as accessible as the creator of the profile sees fit. Under the privacy tab at the bottom navigation a user can decide who can see their name, contact information, personal information and professional information by designating it available to friends, network or all users.

A resolve is a short ideological statement, designed to spawn debate. We use your votes - Agree, Lean Agree, Lean Against, or Against - to build your Ideological Profile. You may also comment on why you do or do not agree with a resolve. You can comment only once per resolve, and cannot change your comment once it has been posted.

A Resolve of the Day is the resolve with the most votes in the past 24 hours. For any given day, there will be 1 to 3 Resolves of the Day.

Ideological proximity is a measure of how likely you are to agree with a person - how closely your beliefs match. Ideological proximity is calculated based on your votes on resolves. If you have a proximity of 100 with a person, you and that person have voted the same on every resolve that you've both voted on. If you have a proximity of 0, you've voted opposite on every resolve. For this measure to be an accurate reflection of your ideology, you should not vote on resolves that are not ideological statements, unless they are marked as not counting in ideology. (See "How do I create a resolve?" below)

From the 'Find Resolves' or 'My Resolves' page, or the page of any individual resolve, click 'create resolve.' When creating a resolve, you first enter the text of the resolve. Next you specify whether a resolve should be used in ideological calculation. If a resolve is not meant for serious political discussion, specify that it is 'just for fun.' You also must enter the geography relevant to the resolve, or check the box specifying that geography is not relevant to the resolve. Finally you can attach tags to the resolve. These are words dscribing the topic of the resolve, such as 'Bush Administration' or 'Democrats.' As you enter tags existing tags will be suggested, or if none apply you can create a new tag. Accurately tagging your resolve will help people to find the resolve and vote on it.

Sometimes the comments and arguments expressed with regard to a resolve are themselves subject to debate. To engage in in-depth discussion about a comment, follow the Debate this link below the comment.

If you find a resolve to be relevent or interesting to a group of which you are a member, you may recommend that resolve to be added to the groups platform. If your group chooses to add that resolve to their platform a resolve means that your group officially agrees with that resolve. A group administrator can then chose to add that resolve to the groups platform or put that resolve up for a vote of the group's membership. To put a resolve up for endorsement you must be an administrator of the group. If you are not, you should message your group's administrator/s and suggest the resolve for endorsement.

Under the Find Resolves tab, a search feature allows you to find resolves that are tagged with keywords.

A group is most basically a group of users. Much of the political power of Essembly comes from groups. Once people with common interests have found each other on Essembly, they can use the group feature to organize. Anything from a local PTA or homeowner's association to people wanting to stop global warming or lower taxes can use an essembly group. We are putting the tools of professional campaigns into the hands of everyone.

To create a group, first click on the link titled 'My Groups' or 'Find Groups'. This will take you to your 'My Groups' page (where you will find links to all the groups to which you are a member) or 'Find Groups' page (where you will find groups you are not yet member of which are close to your network). From here, you will notice a 'Create Group' link near the top right corner of the page, Fill out all the necessary fields pertaining to your group and click 'create'.

You can search groups from either the 'My Groups' page or the 'Find Groups' page by using the search feature in the upper right hand corner. Also in the 'Find Groups' summary page you will be directed towards groups which are socially and ideologically close to you and your current groups.

To join a group, first go to that groups homepage. Here, towards the top right you should see a button titled 'join group'. By pressing it, you will join that group. Please note that not all groups are open to the general public, some are invite only. These groups will contain a button which reads 'request to join group' which will then send a notification to the group admin who will confirm or deny your membership to the group.

The Endorsement Level of a group refers to the voting system adopted by that group. Simple Majority requires more than fifty percent of voters to support a given measure before the vote can passed, Two-Thirds Majority requires that at least two-thirds of voters support the measure before it is passed and Unanimous requires that all voters agree before the measure is passed. Please be aware that the voting system on Essembly works by counting only votes cast, so be sure to participate.

An official group is one where we at essembly have done our best to confirm that the group is, in fact, who they say they are. Essembly official groups have a URL link to their websites directly under their group name and logo on their essembly group page. Essembly official groups help confirm the legitimacy of pre-existing organiztions, for example, on essembly there can only be one National Republican Party group.

Groups are given the opportunity to create and debate internal resolves. These resolves can either be recommended to the group admin by a member or added by the admin for direct voting and debate within the group. If the Group chooses to vote in an endorsed resolve, then the resolve will be added to the groups platform, which is the encompassing range of resolves that characterize a group's ideology.

Under the My Groups feature you can click on the specific group. When taken to that group's page there is a 'leave group' option in the upper right hand corner.

If you are in fact an administrator for a group, when viewing the groups page there will be an 'admin' option available for all groups you are administrating. Within the admin section you can edit the groups recruiting, events, settings and resolves, as well as assign other administrators and titles.

Essembly is built specifically for the purpose of networking, and communication between groups is no exception. Subgroups can be created through the admin view, and other groups can be contacted through administration to connect for any purpose.

The 'Back to My Groups' button at the bottom of the admin view will return you to the area encompassing all groups which recognize you as a member. To view the group in a non-administrative fashion simply click on the group name instead of the admin button on the My Groups page.

The group administrator has control over which resolves ultimately constitute the platform. In group admin mode, under the group resolves section are controls for adding resolves to the platform, as well as deleting internal resolves.

In group admin mode, buttons are designated for giving group members administrative power, assigning them titles as officers, or removing a member from the group.

In group admin mode, the message group membership tab takes you to a compose message page, where a message can then be sent to the entire membership.

Through the Group Calendar button the Group Administrator can view all events and create new events. Events are either invite (specific members of group) or open (all members invited, and members can also forward to other Essembly users.

Discussions are an opportunity for Essembly users to engage in constructive debate on any issue. They are found in the My Discussions section of the navigation bar, and on an individual resolve page where participants of a resolve (voters of resolve) are given a forum to further voice their opinions either for or against the resolve in question.

To start a Discussion thread you can create one in the My Discussions section, you can also enter a Discussion through creating a resolve or voting on a resolve where you will be given an opportunity to support or counter the resolve. The Discussion box appears automatically after your resolve vote is counted.

By creating, participating or viewing a Discussion you are given the opportunity to invite others to join in the Discussion.

By clicking on the My Discussion tab on the left navigation bar you can view discussions that you have participated in as well as the replies of other users to your discussion.

Resolves are a great place to start a discussion, however discussions can also be started privately with discussion members selected by the creator of the discussion OR they can be started through a group.

Through the My Messages tab on the navigation bar. The message system works much like e-mail in that you can mark Messages as read or unread, divide them into group or personal and delete old Messages.

The Message Center contains lists of your friends, allies and nemeses as well as a built in member search feature so that you can contact members within your network who are not yet on your contacts list.

In the box located to the right you can select the users who will receive your message. If you would like to send the message to all the people within your network, select all of the people under friends, allies and nemeses.

In the box which contains the members of your network is also a tab for your groups. You can choose which groups you would like your message to go to and the message will be sent to all members of that group.