User Guide

Welcome to Ask Fedora! This is a community supported Discourse instance for Fedora users to get help with any issues they may have with their Fedora, As a new user, we hope you will find this site intuitive and clearly structured, but here is some guidance to get you started:

  • Basic Terms Used by Discourse

  • First Setup

  • How is Organized the Site?

  • What is a Badged?

  • Browsing the Forum

    • Topic lists

    • See who is participating

  • Navigation Tools

  • Reading Topics

    • Keep scrolling

    • Jump back in

    • Related topics

  • Taking Part in Conversations

    • Replying

    • Drafts

    • Quoting

    • Mentioning

    • Emoji

    • Oneboxes (Link Previews)

    • Formatting

  • Actions and Reactions

  • Notifications

Basic Terms Used by Discourse (Nomenclature)

Here are some very basic terms that will be helpful to keep in mind as you use the Site:

  • Topic: or ´thread´ The collection of messages grouped together.

  • Post: Each element of a topic is referred to as a post.

  • Original Post (or OP): The first post in any topic.

  • User: Registered Users.

  • Moderator : Keep The Site Clean and Organized.

  • Admin : Do Administrative Tasks

  • Category (Level-1): The Language that we can support. it’s there for organization only. Topic requires Moderation. (Parent Category)

  • Sub-Categiory (Level-2) : The place Where the Magic Occurs. (Child Category)

First Setup

Before you start your Journey in the forum, you should set some config in your Preference :

We are running a multi-lingual-site on Discourse, one of the first step One User should do is mute the categories/sub-category to which you are not interested in receiving any type of messages from the system and be able to take full advantage of the system.

As a User you don’t like see any messages about :

  • A new messages from other languages

  • Topic or Wharever other than you’re not trackere and any kind of noisy or disturb with any other (category/sub-category)…​

for example (any other than your language or another that you’re insteresting, for example (your language and English).

What you Should DO? Muted these categories/sub-categories in your personal profile GO → Preference → Categories → (Muted).

You are also able to change the Theme althought the default language in the Site is English, you can change it to your mother language.

You only need to MUTE the parent Category…​ altought you can mute as many as you like.

How is Organized the Site?

Where’re Running a Multi-lingual Site and We Sructuture it as follow :

  • Category Level-1 is The language Itself, and It there for Organizational purpose. Topic here requires Moderation.

Next, sub-categories Level-2, that are identical for all supported languages.

  • on Using Fedora

  • on Installing or Upgrading Fedora

Select the proper Sub-Category Will Help us to Help you better and Kept the site Clean and On-Topic.

What is a Badged?

Badges in Discourse reinforce positive user behaviour and facilitates “learning by doing”.

Browsing the Forum

Topic lists

By default, the Discourse homepage will show all Latest conversations in the community but you can filter this list in a number of ways:

by category: in the menu line, click the ‘all categories’ title and a list of all the categories appears.

By tag: in the menu line, click the ‘all tags’ title and a list of all the tags are used will appear.

By level of activity: if you click on ‘Top’ the conversation topics will be listed in order of most activity (views and replies) for a specific time period. You can choose whether this is for all time, or select a specific period such as quarter, month, week or just today.

By what’s ‘New’ to you: by default, new topics are those created in the last 2 days that you have not opened yet to keep the list fresh and relevant. New topics show a small blue dot next to the topic title

By what topics are “Unread”: by default, unread topics are those that you have previously opened and read for at least 4 minutes, and that have new posts (replies) submitted to them. Unread topics show a number in a blue circle indicating how many new posts are in the topic.

See who is participating

There are several ways to see who is involved in topics.

On the homepage you will see a selection of avatars (profile pictures) of:

  • the user who started the topic (always the first photo);

  • a selection of the most active participants;

  • and, who created the most recent post (usually the last photo).

  • in some cases, the first photo has a blue border or blue halo to indicate that the original poster is also the most recent poster

The box at the bottom of the OP tells you; who created the post and when, gives a count of the replies and views in this topic to date, and a display of the avatars of the most frequent participants.

participating

Navigation Tools

For Search, the Menu, or your User page, use the icon buttons at the upper right .

navigation tool

Reading Topics

A healthy community needs members to be posting new content, but this activity is not everything. Readers are the true indicators of how healthy the community is. What’s the point of posts that no-one reads? Discourse encourages and tracks reading habits so community managers can keep a healthy balance.

Keep scrolling

Click a topic title and read down the list of replies in chronological order, following links or previewing replies and quotes as you go. Use your mouse to scroll the screen, or use the timeline scroll bar on the right which also shows you how far through the conversation you’ve read. On smaller screens, select the bottom progress bar to expand it.

Jump back in

  • Selecting a topic title will take you to your last read post in the topic. To enter at the top ↑ or bottom ↓ instead, click the reply count or last reply date.

  • Topics above the light red line on a list are new or updated since your last visit. If you have read all the way to the end of a topic, the title will be light grey instead of black.

Related topics

Sometimes conversations are clearer if topics are split, where posts are moved to a more appropriate topic, or two related topics are merged. If a post is moved, a link will appear that will allow readers to jump to that comment wherever it has been moved to, and the person who posted it will also be notified.

At the end of the OP you will also see lists of related topics that link to the one you are reading

summarize

Taking Part in Conversations

Replying

Press any image Reply button to open the editor panel at the bottom of your browser. You can continue reading (and even search or navigate to different topics) while you compose your reply.

replying

Discourse shows all posts in the order they are published. It does not make you chase down multiple threaded paths. However, it still gives you lots of ways to follow the context of conversations.

To reply to a specific post in a topic, clicking the grey Reply button at the end of each post and your reply is linked to that post.

  • If your reply is the next one published after the post you are replying to, this will appear next in chronological order

  • If yours is NOT next, then two things happen after your post is published:

    • Your post will include a new link in its header with an image to show what this is ‘in reply to’ - clicking this link displays that previous post for context next to your reply

    • The original post includes a count of replies at the bottom - clicking this link displays the content of the

Drafts

Drafts will automatically be saved as you write. If you minimise the editor or navigate to a different topic, the editor might disappear. To open a draft, return to the topic you were replying to or click the highlighted bar at the bottom of your browser, and the editor will reappear with your draft.

Quoting

To insert a quote, select the text you wish to quote, then press the Quote button that pops up. There is no need to quote the a whole message, it helps to be specific. Repeat this for multiple quotes even from different posts and different users. The quoted text will point to their original source.

Mentioning

To notify someone about your reply, mention their name. Type @ to begin selecting a username. This search will also search the name fields in case you don’t know a particular username.

Emoji

To use standard Emoji 8, just type : to match by name, or traditional smileys ;)

emoji

Alternatively, click on more to see a complete list of emoji to select from.

Oneboxes (Link Previews)

What do we mean by “Onebox”?

That converts your web links into useful preview windows that inform readers about the target before clicking.

How does it work?

The process is easy: Paste a URL into a post, and that link is converted into a preview window

  • start a post

  • grab the URL you want to link to

  • paste this on a new line with no spaces before

  • magic happens

To generate a summary for a link, paste it on a line by itself. To start a topic with a link, paste the link into the title field.

onebox

Formatting

Your reply can be formatted using simple HTML, BBCode, or Markdown 18:

This is <b>bold</b>.
This is [b]bold[/b].
This is **bold**.

For more formatting tips, Try This Tutorial.

Actions and Reactions

There are action buttons at the bottom of each post:

action

  • To let someone know that you enjoyed and appreciated their post, use the like button. Share the love! (we encourage to use This).

  • Grab a copy-pasteable (permalink) link to any reply or topic via the link button.

  • Use the … button to reveal more actions. Flag to privately let the author, or the site staff, know about a problem. Bookmark to find this post later on your profile page.

  • Mark a TOPIC as SOLVED.

Notifications

When someone is talking directly to you — by replying to you, quoting your post, mentioning your @username , or even linking to your post, a blue number will immediately appear over your profile picture at the top right.

When you have been sent a Personal Message you will receive this in your Inbox and a green number will appear over your profile picture to the left.

Click your profile image to scroll through all your notifications .

notification

You can optionally receive all these notifications as push notifications to your desktop browser or Android device. Simply allow the site to send you notifications through your browser when it asks permission.

Don’t worry about missing a reply – you’ll be emailed any notifications that arrive when you are away.

If you want, you can get notified about other things happening on the site as well, either at the category or topic level.

Topic notifications

You can change your notification level for any individual topic via the notification control at the bottom, and right hand side, of each topic.

topic

Category notifications

Notification level can also be set per category. To change any of these defaults, see your user preferences, or visit the category page, and use the notification control above the topic list, on the right side.

category
Based and Adapted from the Guide → Discourse New User Guide, if you don’t feel confortable/agree with this content feel free to adap it and updating.