Our community is growing!
We've been abuzz lately — as staff — because our community here is growing rapidly.
But we haven't shared the good news with all of you, the people who actually make up the community.
Let me show you two graphs:
Pageviews have been trending upward for WellCommons recently. by Jonathan Kealing
Visits have also been trending upward recently on WellCommons. by Jonathan Kealing
As you can see, with the exception of a little dip in visits in May, all the numbers are heading upward. I expect July to meet or exceed the traffic levels we saw in July.
But WellCommons isn't just about traffic. It's about participation, and activity.
Our data indicate that 238 people have taken the time to make a profile on WellCommons. In an average week, about 100 different people post a comment, write a post or join a group. Many more (thousands) take the time to read these posts that are written.
Since May 1, when we started collecting this data, 355 different users have written a comment, written a post or joined a group. We have a total of 84 groups on our site now, with the vast majority having been created by our users. That number goes up practically every day.
The good news here is our community is growing, but it will be most effective in making Douglas County a healthier place when we can bring an even bigger slice of the community together here.
Tell your friends, tell your colleagues, tell your customers. Let's keep WellCommons growing strong.
WellCommons recognized in Knight-Batten Awards
WellCommons was honored Monday as a "notable entry" in the annual Knight-Batten Award competition.
Though WellCommons wasn't among the top seven entrants, the site was among 30 others that were singled out for praise by the panel of judges.
Taking top honors was an effort by the Sunlight Foundation to add data and context to the coverage of a government event — coverage of the health reform summit — to make it more consumable for the audience.
ProPublica, 48HR Magazine, The Obameter from the St. Petersburg Times, Ushahidi Haiti, Publish2 News Exchange and The Takeaway took the next level of awards.
The Knight-Batten Awards reward news and information efforts that create opportunities to involve citizens in public issues and supply opportunities for participation.
How WellCommons works….
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The first order of business: sign up for WellCommons! If you already have an account on LJWorld.com, KUSports.com or Lawrence.com, just sign in. (You don't have to sign in to just look at pages, but if you want to participate, sign up.) We're asking each of you who sign up or sign in to fill out your profile and use your real name. We think that WellCommons will be a safer, more productive place if we all know each other.
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This site is organized into five super-groups: Wellness, NoTrauma, Nosurance, Locavores and Wise. We'll add more as time goes on.
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If you want to participate in a group -- leave comments on posts or post into the Commons sections -- you have to join a group. To join a group, all you have to do is click "Join". It'll ask you to confirm, and you're in! You can join as many groups as you want.
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There are three levels of participation in a group: member, contributor and administrator. The group administrator -- the person who creates a group -- an upgrade a member to contributor or administrator.
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Members can post in the Commons section of any group they've joined. They can also reply to (or add comments to) posts in the News, Resources and Commons sections.
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Contributors can post in the News, Resources and Commons sections of groups that they've joined, and, of course, reply to any post in any of those sections.
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Administrators can post in the News, Resources and Commons sections of the groups they create, and, of course, reply to any post in any of those sections. They can also edit the posts of other administrators and contributors. Administrators can change members to contributors or to administrators. They can also ban people. More on that in the How-To.
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Anyone who's signed up for WellCommons can create a group. When you create it, we will categorize it under one of the super-groups. This is a health site. If you create the Buick Electra mechanics group, we'll ask you to wait a while until we set up the entertainment/events/hobby site.
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The difference between a Quick Post and a Post: A quick post is just that....a sentence or two, a photo, a video. No headline. No editing tools. Blast it out and move on. A post has a headline, a place to put the first graph or two, and a place for extended content (what you see after you click on "Read on"). For both of these, the publish button is at the bottom of the post.
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We like visuals....photos, videos, charts, graphs. Most people do. So, we've made it really easy for you to add them. Want to add a video from YouTube? Open a separate tab, find the video, copy the url and paste it into your post. Baddaboom. It appears and plays in the post when you publish. Do the same for video from Vimeo. (Yo ho I'm a poet and don't know it.) Or photos from Flickr. Or photos from LJWorld.com, KUSports.com or Lawrence.com. For everything else -- including text articles -- you'll have to embed just the link.
