On Commonplace, the term project refers to an individual project website with its own URL - e.g. https://democontent.commonplace.is/.
A project usually focuses on a specific location, community, development, etc. - but may contain multiple tiles, each one relating to a different aspect of the location/community/development.
For example, a project might relate to a new Local Plan - that project might then contain tiles relating to housing, economy, heritage, and so on.
A tile is a single, customisable page. There are two types of tiles:
A proposal tile is a flexible web page - you can lay out text, images, documents and survey questions in any order you choose.
Each proposal tile can be broken down into multiple 'steps' to create a journey through your survey questions.
Proposal tiles don't have to include survey questions - they can be there just for information (e.g. FAQs, a document library, etc.).
Map tiles are focused on getting feedback on specific locations. The survey questions allow you to create a 'heatmap' of local sentiment.
You can also display information on the map such as data layers, boundaries, info points or landmarks.
The dashboard is where your project data lives - it has different pages covering visitors, respondents, contributions, etc. and is specific to each individual project.
Project centre includes the list of projects under your organisation, and allows you to manage user roles and permissions for each project.
Edit mode is where you can edit the content on your project. Click the blue 'edit page' icon in the bottom right hand corner of the page to edit it.
Further reading: Introduction to edit mode.
Survey mode is accessed via the 'add paper form/interview' option in the admin menu. It is a tool designed specifically for use at face-to-face interviews, or for uploading paper versions of your survey. It allows you to interview someone - collecting their answers, email address, demographic information, contact preferences, etc. - without them having to create their own account while at an event.
A visitor is someone who has visited your project. Some visitors will go on to add a contribution (in which case they become a respondent). Others may decide to only read the information on the site without contributing. Others still may find that the project is not relevant to them and leave the project straight away (known as 'bouncing').
A respondent is an individual person who has added a contribution to your project. An individual respondent can make more than one contribution on a project - such as by answering the surveys on multiple tiles - but will still only be counted once as a respondent.
Anonymous respondents (see confirmation statuses section below) do not appear in the respondents tab of the project dashboard, because we don't hold any information about them. In the project dashboard, each respondent with a confirmed or pending status is assigned a unique Respondent ID code.
A contribution is either a comment or a reaction - the total sum of comments and reactions equals the number of contributions.
When a respondent completes a survey form, this is saved as a comment. It is counted as a comment regardless of the number of questions the respondent answered, or whether or not they provided any free text answers. In the project dashboard, each comment is assigned a unique Contribution ID code.
When respondents view other people's comments on a map or proposal tile, they are able to add 'reactions' to comments. Each respondent can only add one reaction to a comment, and can't add a reaction to their own comment. Currently the only 'reaction' is to agree with the comment, however more reactions are planned to be added in the future.
Confirmed respondents provided an email address and clicked the confirmation link we sent to them via email. Their comments are shown publicly (other than on projects with hidden comments).
Pending respondents provided an email address, but did not click the confirmation link we sent to them via email. They may still have provided demographic information. Their comments are marked as pending, and are not shown publicly (but can still be viewed in the dashboard).
Anonymous respondents chose not to provide an email address and therefore did not reach the stage of sharing their demographic information. Their contributions are marked as anonymous, and are never shown publicly (but can still be viewed in the project dashboard). Anonymous respondents do not appear in the respondents tab of the project dashboard, because we don't hold any information about them.
Comments added via the paper form/interview 'survey mode' are given the surveyed status. Comments with this status are shown publicly.
Similarly to 'surveyed', contributions added via the paper form/interview 'survey mode' but where the 'Respondent does not wish to publish this comment' box was checked. Comments with this status are not shown publicly.
Still unsure about anything? There's lots more information here on the Commonplace Help Centre - alternatively, contact the support team and we'll be happy to help 👋
