Users and roles in Dialogue

To help you manage your Dialogue, there are a few levels of permission and access. Dialogue provides for:

Here’s a quick guide to each of these different type of user in Dialogue, their responsibilities, and how they interact with the system.

Unregistered users

It’s important that visitors become quickly engaged with the Dialogue, without having to register or log in.  Unregistered visitors to the site can:

  • Browse all the public user-submitted content on the site, including ideas, comments, ratings and topics
  • Search the ideas using keywords or topics
  • Read the background information about the challenge(s)
  • Share links to ideas via Facebook and Twitter

Registered users

Anyone can register for an account on a Dialogue site. By registering, a user is able browse the site in the same way as an unregistered user, but they can also contribute their own content.  Registered users can:

  • Submit ideas
  • Comment on other people’s ideas
  • Rate ideas
  • Edit their own user profile
  • View the profiles of other registered users (this just shows what else that user has posted)

We’re very aware that the registration process on many websites can be off-putting, so we’ve made sure that the registration form asks for the absolute minimal information: a username, a password and an email address (although you can ask us to add more questions in to the registration form if you need to).

Moderators

It’s important for somebody to be in charge of moderating Dialogue challenges.  Moderators can interact with the Dialogue in the same way as standard registered users, but they can also:

  • Reject inappropriate or offensive ideas and comments. Rejected content is hidden from public view, but can be reinstated if required
  • Lock ideas to prevent further discussion. The idea and its comments will remain visible to the public, but no further comments or ratings can be added
  • Interact with users as a community manager, prompting visitors to expand on their ideas and feeding back information from the organisation
  • Moderate all public and hidden challenges, and restricted challenges that they have been given access to

Dialogue can send an email to moderators if an idea or comment has been reported by a member of the public, making it easier to find and remove inappropriate content.

Site admins

Site admins have the ability to set up the Dialogue, manage its users, customise its appearance and view or download reports and statistics.  Site admins can:

  • Perform all moderation actions as above
  • Create, publish, delete, open and close challenges, and edit ideas if necessary
  • Set the visibility and access settings for challenges
  • View top-line statistics about the dialogue (number of users, ideas, comments etc)
  • Download all ideas, comments, user details and topics in xlsx (spreadsheet) format and .docx (Word/word processing software) format
  • Change the site-wide logo on the Dialogue
  • Access the 'Users' page and download user information from that page
  • Promote and demote other users between different roles, and delete users
  • Edit the fundamental information about the Dialogue: the homepage copy, Privacy policy, About the Dialogue page, Moderation policy, How to use the site page, and other text on the site