Help

Login/Register

All content on the site is viewable by anonymous users, but if you want to post questions or content to the site, you need to register. Enter your user information and the registration code on the bottom of the registration screen. You'll receive an E-mail with your initial password and you can login.

When you login the first time, you'll need to set a new password. Enter the password twice and the code at the bottom of the screen to set your new password.

Password Change and Account Settings

If you forget your password, you can click on "Request new password" and enter your E-mail address. Your password will be reset and a new password will be mailed to you.

Portal Usage Policies

 Openness

The goal of the DDS Portal is to provide and open forum for the... As such we welcome the broadest possible membership and allow anybody to make changes.  

Anonymous use

The portal is open for read-access to everybody. Modifications are also open to the community, however the portal is configured to require the user is "logged in" in order to have write access to the pages. This does not limit the openness as anybody can immediately obtain a user-id and login by filling the UserPreferences page.   

Requiring a login allows better change tracking and thus eases the maintenance of the site.  

Document Attachments

 

Documents can be easily attached to any page. Attachments should be used for documents that are not "official" OMG documents (i.e. do not have an OMG document number). Documents with an official document number should be linked in using their URL. That approach avoids duplication and ensures that the OMG document management system remains the ultimate authority with regards to official documents.   

It is appropriate and encouraged to use the DDS Portal to attach drafts and working copies of documents that eventually will become official OMG documents and use the Wiki as a collaboration tool, avoiding having to email large attachments. However, once the document reaches an "official state" (e.g. it is the official minutes from a meeting, contains a presentation given at OMG, etc.) it should be submitted to OMG such that it gets and official document number and referenced in the Wiki via a link.   

Note that posting a document in the wiki cannot be used as a means to meet the 3-week rule or any other OMG document-submission rule. In order wikipedia dispute resolution procedure for a document to be used to meet any such rules it must be posted to the OMG and get an official document number.  

Administration

 

The DDS Portal Wiki is administered by members of the Data-Distribution SIG. The users listed in the AdminGroup are able to do maintenance activities on any user account. Please contact them if you run into problems. 

Conflict Resolution

Open wikis rely on the civic behavior of the community. Disagreements and discussions regarding the suitability of certain content may occasionally occur and are typically resolved by the community via an open discussion.

Wikipedia is a great example of an open community that uses the open discussion process to achieve consensus. Wikipedia has a simple well defined wikipedia dispute resolution procedure that works surprisingly well given the size of the involved community.

The DDS Portal will use the same general approach used by Wikipedia, adapted for the much smaller DDS community. Paraphrasing the Wikipedia resulution process the approach the DDS Portal will use consists of:

  1. Avoidance of conflict attained by being respectful to others and minimizing reverting other people changes. For example, if you see something you consider inappropriate or biased it is often better to improve the edit than to revert it.
  2. Discussion with the parties involved. Many pages have a parallel "discussions" page where you can state your views on the content start a dialog that can result in agreement.
  3. Consensus building within the community. Consensus can be reached by involving others in the community and making them state their views in the "discussions" page.
  4. Arbitration by the Data Distribution SIG. This is the solution of last resort. In case the conflict cannot be resolved, the members of the AdminGroup can temporarily suspend users or freeze pages until the Data-Distribution SIG meets at the OMG technical meeting and comes up with a final resolution on the matter. We expect this situation to arise only in extremely rare occasions.

Roles

  • Anonymous users may view all content, but can not contribute content or post forum topics.
  • Authenticated users have registered accounts and can post documents, news items, videos, links and feeds to a variety of objects. They can create, edit, and delete their own content, but cannot modify other users content.
  • Moderators have the same ability that authenticated users havem but they can edit and delete other users content as well.
  • Administrators have full permissions to change the structure of the site.

Finding Content

Search

There is a search field in the upper right hand corner of the screen. This search will look for keywords in content in the forum and throughout the portal, but it does not search content that is only linked from the forum.

Recent Content

The latest content to the portal can be found by clicking on "Recent Content" in the "Portal Home" menu.

Content Tags

Content can be tagged by author and organization. Clicking on the tag will list on content that is associated with the tag.

Editing Content

Full HTML

When you edit content on this site, the content is stored as full html. This means you can use any tags you would normally use in html.

TinyMCE

When you edit content, the initial editor displayed is the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor. If you want to disable this editor and enter html directly, you can click on the "Disable rich-text" link at the lower left corner of the editor.

Consult the TinyMCE FAQ and forum for details on how to use features of the editor.

TinyMCE comes with core modules and plugins that support various features. Not all plugins are enabled. If you find that  there is a missing plugin that you need, contact the administrators to request that the plugin be enabled.

Expanding the Window

When editing, the screen may be extended by dragging the lower right hand corner of the screen. There is also a button on the editor that allows you to toggle full screen mode.  Hover your mouse over the buttons in the toolbar and you will see a short description of the buttons. The "Toggle full screen" button will redisplay the text in fullscreen mode.

Adding Images

Images may be uploaded to the portal, resized and displayed using IMCE. To insert an image, click the "Insert/edit image" button in the toolbar. You may enter a URL to embed a link to an existing image, or click the browse icon next to the URL to open a browser of images already uploaded to the portal.  You can select an image and click "Send to tinymce", or you can click upload and select images from your desktop to upload to the portal

Types of Content

Forum Topics

A forum topic is a question or comment submitted to the forum for response.
  1. Enter a Subject
  2. Select the appropriate forum
  3. Enter any tags that may be appropriate
  4. Enter a question or comment
  5. Click Save to submit the topic to the forum

Document

A document is a link to a whitepaper, presentation, or tutorial that you would like to share.
  1. Enter the Title
  2. Enter a URL that links to the document.
  3. Enter the document date
  4. Enter any tags that may be appropriate
  5. Enter text describing the document
  6. Click Save to submit the document to the document list

Link

A link is a link to a web site in the links section
  1. Enter the link name
  2. Enter the URL to the website
  3. Enter any tags that may be appropriate
  4. Enter a description
  5. Click Save to submit the link

Event

An Event is an entry in the portal calendar
  1. Enter an Event description
  2. Enter a starting date
  3. Optionally enter an ending date
  4. Enter any tags that may be appropriate
  5. Enter a description of the event
  6. Click on Save to submit the event to the calendar

News

A news item is an entry that displays in the News list
  1. Enter a Title
  2. Enter any tags that may be appropriate
  3. Optionally enter a URL to the news article
  4. If you don't enter a URL, the news item will be linked to the text entered in the body field
  5. Click on Save to submit the news item

News Feed

A news feed is a URL to an RSS or Atom feed.
  1. Enter a Title
  2. Enter any tags that may be appropriate. Items from the feed will inherit the tags of the feed.
  3. Enter the URL of the RSS or Atom feed.
  4. Click Save to Submit the feed
To prevent spam, feeds are not automatically published. Feeds will automatically be placed in an unpublished category and a moderator must approve it before the feed is enabled.
Articles will be screened from the feed for keyword references to DDS or "Data Distribution Service". A reference  to one of these keywords must appear in the News item before it will be published.

Video

A video is an embedded reference to a video on YouTube or another supported provider.
  1. Enter a title
  2. Enter any tags that may be appropriate.
  3. Enter the URL or the embed code for the video
  4. Click on Save to submit the video

Video Feed

A video feed is a URL to an RSS or Atom feed of video content.
  1. Enter a Title
  2. Enter any tags that may be appropriate. Items from the feed will inherit the tags of the feed.
  3. Enter the URL of the RSS or Atom feed.
  4. Click Save to Submit the feed
To prevent spam, feeds are not automatically published. Feeds will automatically be placed in an unpublished category and a moderator must approve it before the feed is enabled.

Blog Feed

A blog feed is a link to an external blog.
  1. Enter a Title
  2. Enter any tags that may be appropriate. Items from the feed will inherit the tags of the feed.
  3. Enter the URL of the RSS or Atom feed.
  4. Click Save to Submit the feed
The most recent posts to a blog are displayed, but the blog items are posted on the external site.

Code

Code content is an entry containing example code, or a link to a project on sourceforge containing DDS projects or examples.
  1. Enter a Title
  2. Enter a Date
  3. Enter any tags that may be appropriate
  4. Enter descriptive text in the body
  5. Enter a list of URLs to code
  6. Attach any files to the Code
  7. Click on Save to submit the code

Code Feed

A code feed is an RSS or Atom feed that provides code content.
  1. Enter a Title
  2. Enter any tags that may be appropriate. Items from the feed will inherit the tags of the feed.
  3. Enter the URL of the RSS or Atom feed.
  4. Click Save to Submit the feed