tech's blog

New email notifications from Praja

14 May 2010 - 6:47pm — tech

The Praja Tech team is happy to introduce new and improved email notifications system on Praja.

What

Praja users have the option of receiving email notifications when there is a comment on a post they are interested in. It can be a post authored by you, or a post you commented on. While the existing notification system was working, it was not perfect and we have now rolled out a new notification system.

Why

The old notification system was restricted in terms of its functionality and scalability. As Praja grows, we wanted to have the ability to send notifications to a larger number of users, send notifications through SMS etc. We will now also have ways to make the notifications better formatted and more useful. In addition, with the new system, it will also be possible to receive notifications for any activity within a project group, which is a critical functionality for project teams.

New navigation on Praja

23 March 2010 - 5:17pm — tech

We at the tech team are happy to announce new and improved navigation features on Praja.in. These will be launched today. We hope that the changes make it easier for our users to find, read and create relevant content on the site. Read on to know more about the new navigation.

Changed front page

The homepage of Praja (http://praja.in) now has a simplified look when you are not logged in. It has a small slideshow to tell what Praja is about and leads to creating or finding discussions. (We are currently working on improving the looks of the graphics and buttons on this page). This design is done keeping in mind the new users to the Praja community who want to understand what Praja is about.

When the users login, the front page will automatically change to a more personal version. This page is the centre of all the action on Praja for all the users.

PrajaBytes

New features at Praja!

5 February 2010 - 3:11pm — tech

We at the Tech team are happy to announce another set of new features on Praja. Starting today, all registered users will have access to these new features.

1. The Stream Microblog with Twitter Integration

For those of us who are familiar with Twitter, we now have an analogous feature built within Praja. How is PrajaBytes to name it? Suggest better if you have one. The idea is for you to share your status or broadcast those pithy one liners to all Praja users (and especially those who follow you, see below).

To start posting, just head to 'My account' and type in the 'Stream' box.
What more, you can link one or more of your Twitter accounts to your praja accounts. If you link your Twitter account, a tweet will be posted to your Twitter account when you make a post on Praja.

To link your Twitter account:

go to 'My account',
choose 'edit' and click on 'Twitter Accounts' tab.
Fill in your Twitter id and Twitter password. We need your Twitter password to make posts on your behalf.
Rest assured that the passwords will be stored securely and are not accessible to any users, including the admins.

Spam Control Feature

13 January 2010 - 1:09pm — tech

Lately Praja has been flooded with spam posts from people promoting irrelevant products and services. There have been times when the admins/moderators have had to clean up as many as 10 posts in a day. In view of this we have put together a filtration feature.

Site Notice - tech work during December

28 November 2009 - 1:30am — tech

This isn't to scare anyone. Website will stay operational, with minimal impact, but just wanted to announce that we plan to work on some long pending tech issues (navigation, projects, gyan etc) during December.

New feature - search Bengaluru related sarkaari websites

16 September 2009 - 9:12pm — tech

No big deal this, but we have put up a new feature wherein you can search through all well known Bengaluru related public websites. Its essentially a list of all sarkaari websites pointed out by the geeks of Praja.in put inside a "custom search" widget that will search only this universe of 25-30 websites.

Project feature is almost here

30 August 2009 - 9:53am — tech

We are doing some live testing for an often requested feature - "project". See this KSRTC project to get a feel for what we are upto. Idea is to create a basic structure to group people and posts together.

Moderation launched on Praja

6 August 2009 - 2:58pm — tech

We had recently solicited ideas for introducing moderation on Praja for Posts and Comments. We thought it was essential to have a moderation system to retain the no-nonsense flavour of Praja as we grow. We are thankful to all those who responded and are happy to announce the launch of moderation system on Praja.

There are four facets to moderation on Praja.

To remove content that is deemed to be unfit for publishing on Praja by its members. This include posts that contain spam, hate speech, rumours etc.
To 'review' posts for their links, tagging, formatting and other cosmetic/functional aspects.
To make top quality content more easily accessible to users
To provide a way for all users to bring objectionably content to admins' notice

Principles of moderation on Praja
Keeping with the democratic principle of Praja, the moderation is also democratic
and as transparent and objective as it could be. In summary, to meet the above objectives we have worked with following principles

Most active Praja members become 'moderators' who can 'flag' content for unpublishing. If enough moderators flag a post or comment for unpublishing, it will be automatically unpublished.
All posts published will be reviewed by one of the administrators 'only' for their technical consistency (formatting, tagging, links etc). Admins will NOT unpublish the posts during this review.
All users can vote posts up or down and the posts with highest votes will be predominantly displayed on the front page.
All users should have a facility to bring objectionable content to admins' notice

New look Praja!

28 July 2009 - 5:19pm — tech

Yes, we have changed cloths! Based on feedback from users, we are happy to introduce a new look-and-feel to Praja website.

Our aim has been to make the site a little less-cluttered, provide more whitespace and make the text more readable.

We hope you like the new look. Of course, like always, we will keep working on further improvements so do let us know if you particularly don't like something.

Your suggestions for moderation system

27 July 2009 - 11:20pm — tech

Recently, there has been a flood of opinionated, offtopic, philosophical and ideological preaching type posts on Praja. And there are two schools of thought on how to deal with this

Now everyone can Blog! and other site changes

21 July 2009 - 9:11pm — tech

Effective today, we are introducing some changes to the way users write posts on Praja. Starting today, all users will be able to post blogs on Praja.

Moreover, we will also stop new forum topics from being added. The old forum posts will remain accessible.We have introduced these changes to reduce the confusion between Forums and Blogs.

We have also introduced 'Categories' for the posts. The current categories are tentative and we can change them based on your feedback. We will appreciate your help in drawing up a exhaustive 'category tree'. Please leave a comment below. We have also made it easier to choose 'Where' and Categories while writing the post.

Website updates and restructure

5 July 2009 - 9:07pm — tech

First of all, thanks all for being patient as we worked through a major website update during last week.

Calling all - website upgrade coming, need your help

8 September 2008 - 9:51am — tech

This website is our primary tool for interaction, coordination, and attracting new members. We have been lucky enough to get attention and grow, however the site may not have kept pace. Based on your feedback, we are on to a revamp. The things we have heard fall in these main categories

Lots of content, hard to find and track them
Site is getting slower
Unfriendly for new visitors - they don't know how to signup, find posts, problems logging in etc
Need more tools for member-member interaction. Private Messages are not enough.

So we are starting on a project to address these issues over next few weeks. Towards that, we will appreciate some help from members. No, no, we aren't asking folks to come and code, not yet :) As of now, we need help in following forms:

Praja.in comment guidelines

Posting Guidelines apply for comments as well. No foul language, hate mongering or personal attacks. If criticizing third person or an authority, you must be fact based, as constructive as possible, and use gentle words. Avoid going off-topic no matter how nice your comment is. Moderators reserve the right to either edit or simply delete comments that don't meet these guidelines. If you are nice enough to realize you violated the guidelines, please save Moderators some time by editing and fixing yourself. Thanks!