Help:New User Guide

The following is an Intellogist Help Topic

Introduction

Welcome to Intellogist! Our goal is to establish Intellogist as a site driven by a vibrant and involved community, and this guide is a basic introduction to making your mark here. If you’ve previously been involved with a Wiki or another form of community-based website, some of this material may be a review for you. Feel free to continue reading if you’d like a refresher. If you’ve never been involved with a similar site, we hope that you’ll be ready to jump in and be part of our community after reading this guide.

Registering

Before you do anything on Intellogist, we recommend that you register. Once you’ve registered, you can use your username and password to log in and begin participating in our Community Reports, Best Practices, Glossary, Ratings, and Discussion Forum. Registering is a simple process: the registration page here collects the basic information necessary for the creation of an account, and sends you an email to confirm that you would like to create an account. You can continue to use the site and log in with your username without confirming the account from your email, but we don’t recommend it. Your interaction with the site will be limited, and confirming is as easy as clicking a link in an email.

Creating Your User Profile

After you register, we recommend that you spend a few moments personalizing your user page by filling out your profile. This will help involve you in our community by allowing other users to learn a little bit more about your background and experience. Intellogist achievements and awards will be displayed on your profile page alongside your friendships with other Intellogist users! To get started, log into Intellogist, and then click your username in the upper right corner of any page. For more information about the user profile feature on Intellogist, see the User Profiles page.

In addition, we also recommend that you add the official Intellogist user as a friend as soon as you are registered. This will enable you to receive notifications via your user board whenever a major update is made to the site.

Ratings

Now that you’re a registered user on Intellogist, you’re ready to start getting involved! The easiest way to interact with the site is to participate in our Ratings system. Every product for which we have written an Intellogist Report is available to be rated. When viewing the report, click the blue tab at the top of the report labeled “Ratings.”

The Ratings tab at the top of each Intellogist Report.

On the Ratings page, you’ll see a list of criteria and row of blank stars. For each category, you can apply a rating between 1 and 5 stars, with 1 star the lowest rating and 5 the highest. Just click the appropriate star and your rating will be applied immediately. The column to the right of the stars displays the number of users who have given the category a rating, and the aggregate score. If you decide to change your rating, you’ll have to refresh the page first. In Internet Explorer, hold Ctrl while clicking the Refresh icon, or press Ctrl-F5; in Firefox or Safari, hold Shift while clicking the Refresh icon, or press either Ctrl-F5 or Ctrl-R. Then make your new selection. For more information about our Ratings system, see our Help document.

Editing Pages

Another way to get involved with Intellogist is to edit pages. As a Wiki, much of our content can be added to and edited by the community. Any page in the Glossary, Community Reports, or Best Practices section is open to edits. The Intellogist Reports are created by our editors, and are closed to edits.

You might want to edit a page for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you’ve noticed an error or inconsistency in what another user has added. You can correct it! Or perhaps you have some valuable knowledge or expertise, and you feel that you can expand the scope and quality of the page. Definitely do that! The community sections of Intellogist will only be as comprehensive and detailed as the members of the community are willing to make them, so every contribution is valuable to us all.

Wikis like Intellogist use a set list of commands to perform certain functions on a page. For example, there is a command for creating a link and another command for adding a new subheading. If you’re interested in the technical details of editing a page, the documentation provided by Mediawiki can fill you in, but you don’t need to worry about it for minor edits. To edit a page, click the “Edit” tab in the upper right corner of the page.

The Edit tab at the top of an Open Page.

The next page will be dominated by a large text-entry box with the contents of the page already present. Find the section that you want to change, and change it. Simple changes like the addition of a sentence or the correction of an error should not typically require any specific syntax or Wiki language. When you’re satisfied with the changes you’ve made, click the “Save Page” button at the bottom of the page.

The Save Page button at the bottom of the page.

You’ll be returned to the page you edited, and you can check to make sure that it is correct. Editing pages is one of the most important and useful ways to be involved with Intellogist. For more information about editing Open Pages, see our Help document.

Discussion Forum

Intellogist also hosts a forum for discussion about the site and patent search topics. As a registered and confirmed user, we invite you to get into the conversation, express yourself, and help us improve. To get to the Forum, click the “Discussion Forum” box at the top of any Intellogist page. You’ll see a list of the various topics available for discussion. Like most forums, you have a variety of options. Once you’ve decided which topic is of interest to you, you can read the other posts users have made, reply to them, or start your own discussion. Make sure you search before you start a new thread to make sure that it hasn’t already been covered. The Forum can also be a great place to ask any questions you might have about Intellogist. The editors read the forums carefully, and will reply to the best of our ability. For more information about using the Forum, see our Help document.