How to use it

Firstly, have a look at this page which has a basic overview of crabgrass, click especially on the ‘Groups’ section.

Your Profile

When you login, visit the Me tab (at the top). Here you can edit your profile, you can choose a name so that people may (or may not) recognise you, edit your details and settings, and upload a photo if you wish.

Navigation

On the homepage, on the left, you will see a list of areas to visit. These include all general discussions and task lists. Also, from the home page, you can see wikis, uploaded files and polls.

Creating Pages

On the homepage, on the left bar, you can create a page. Here are the options available:
- Wiki page: a page that can be edited by everyone, useful for editing text. There is also an area to make comments.
- Discussion. Kind of like a chatroom. Lots of ‘threads’.
- Upload or embed: you can upload any file for people to download, or embed a video hosted on another site.
- Task list: you can create a task list, people can assign themselves to tasks, tick them off once done and comment on other people’s tasks.
- Polls and votes: tools for checking opinion.

Committees

The chimneyswoop page is divided into committees, which are where working group work is done. The current committees are found below the members pictures, to see what each one is you need to hover the mouse over the picture.

Click on the committee picture to see its page. You can then join the committee. Committees can decide (in the settings area) if they are going to be open, or if membership must be accepted. They are all open at the moment.

Anyone can currently create a new committee. Committees can decide on openess, and may decide to make their committee invite-only.

Committees have their own page, with all the same possibilities as the general homepage.

Watching and Notifications

If there’s a page that you want to be notified when it’s updated, like an important text or a discussion, then at the right of the page click ‘Watch for Updates’.

Also, if you create or edit a page or discussion or upload a file, and you want to notify certain individuals that it is there, click ‘Send Notification’. You can choose to notify specific individuals, only people who have made a contribution to the page before or all who have access to it. They can be notified by a message in their Crabgrass inbox, or by email too. However, we do not want this to be overused so we are going to have a bi-weekly update email listing all the activity on crabgrass so people know what’s going on and can participate in what they want to. Group spokes will update Process group, who will send it out.

Private stuff

People can create private pages (including all of the things listed above) by clicking on the ‘Me’ tab at the top, and clicking ‘create page’. Then you have the option to set access, and you can choose exactly who you want to be able to see and edit this page.

You can send people messages by clicking on their profile (in the members list on the group homepage), where you’ll find a link to send messages. Messages go to your inbox, in the Me tab.

Security

No internet communication is secure, and all sensitive stuff should be discussed face-to-face. However, unlike all email, Crabgrass communication doesn’t pass through lots of servers that log data passing through them.

This group has been set up to not be publicly visible, so people wouldn’t be able to find it by searching for it. The best way to add new members is to email me with a new member’s address, and I can add them to the email list and crabgrass at the same time.

Still stuck?

There’s a help page here: https://we.riseup.net/crabgrass/table-of-contents