Urban Planning Aid

What is a case?

Entries about cases document specific examples of how various methods of participatory politics and governance are implemented. Cases can be contemporary or historical, completed, or ongoing.

What is a method?

Entries about methods provide information on the overarching processes used to guide public participation, such as citizens’ juries, deliberative polling, and participatory budgeting

What is an organization?

Organizations are profiles of formal and informal groups that design, implement, or support innovations in participatory politics and governance. Please read our guidelines on how to write an organization.

What is a collection?

Collections consist of Participedia entries that share common traits, such as association with a large-scale initiative, institution, or specific topic. Case, method, and organization entries are added to collections by Participedia team members. If you have a suggestion for a new collection, please contact us.

What is a survey?

Surveys are supplementary to Participedia’s current data and narrative descriptions, and are intended to gain further insight on the outcomes and effects of cases. Completed surveys are linked to corresponding cases. See the Research page for more information about surveys.

How do I create a new user account?

To create a new account, click “Login” on the main menu bar.

How do I access an old user account?

To access an account from an older version of Participedia (prior to 2019), you will need to reset your password using the same email address that you used to login on the old website. Click “Login,” and enter your email address. Then, click “Forgot your password?” and follow the prompts to access your original account and content. Please contact us if you need assistance.

How do I create content?

Once you are signed in, you can create content by clicking the “quick submit” button from the main menu and choosing the type of article you would like to create. Please review our guidelines on how to write Participedia entries or contact us for more information.

What is Quick Submit?

Clicking “Quick Submit” allows you to publish a case, method, or organization in minutes. All you need to provide is a title. Adding an external link or source is also helpful.

How do I edit content?

While viewing a case, method, or organization entry, click the red pen icon in the bottom right-hand corner to add to or amend the entry’s content.

How does translation work?

On an entry page there are three fields that are filled with user-generated free form text. We call these ‘Open Text’ fields, and they are the Title, Brief Description and Narrative. The rest of the fields are either numbers, dates, or fixed options—we call these ‘Fixed Data’ fields.

When an entry is published for the first time, we machine-translate the Open Text fields into all of the other supported languages. From this point on, the Open Text fields exist as fully separate (i.e. “forked”) versions for each language, while the Fixed Data fields are synchronized between all languages. If you change a Fixed Data field while viewing the site in any language, that change will be seen on the entry page for all languages. However, if you change the Title, Brief Description or Narrative text, those changes will be saved to only the Open Text of the language in which you are writing.

Please click the floating ‘edit’ button located at the bottom right of the page to add information or improve machine-translations for any entry.

To view and edit an entry in another language, use the drop-down language selector found on the top menu bar and footer of the site to change your preferred language.

How do I create content in another language?

To publish, view and edit an entry in another language, use the drop down language selector found on the top menu bar and footer of the site to change your preferred language.

If the language you wish to enter is not yet supported on our site, please contact us to request it. In the meantime, you can use the English version of the site to submit your entry. In this case, please indicate the language in square brackets in the title of the entry, for example, “Your entry title [Your language]“.

How do I search for content?

Navigate to the search page from the site menu, or use the search bar at the top of any page to conduct a site-wide keyword search. Once your search results are displayed, you can sort them by content type such as cases, methods, or organizations. You can further filter results for cases, methods or organizations using the filters button.

To conduct an advanced keyword search, use the following syntax in the search bar:

AND: bicycle and rally (this is the default, so the same as bicycle rally) will return items which match both words

OR: bicycle or rally will match items with either or both words

NOT: bicycle not rally will match items which contain bicycle, but only if they do not also contain rally

QUOTES: "womens rights" will return items that have womens followed by rights

PARENTHESES: (bicycle or rally) and (womens rights and UK) will will group logical operations inside the parentheses as a group before applying the operators joining groups

How do I access my bookmarked content?

When logged in, click your profile avatar in the top right-hand corner of the screen to visit your profile page. From there you can access your bookmarked content under the “Bookmarks” tab. Only you can see your bookmarked content.

How do drafts work?

All new entries are auto-saved as soon as any data is entered in the form. If you start an entry, but don't want to publish it right away, there's no need to click save. You can enter as much data as you want in the form, and close the browser window. Once you create a draft, your drafts will be accessible on your profile page under the “drafts” tab, as well as on the Quick Submit page. You can login on any device and access your drafts. Using the “preview” button in the entry form, you can see what an entry will look like once it is published. If you wait to publish your entry until it is more complete, the description and narrative text will be translated into all supported languages. (We only run translation once, the first time an entry is published - see: “How does translation work?”)

Why is my work “awaiting approval”?

To prevent spam entries being published, we require users to request to publish or make edits to entries on Participedia, and these requests are approved (or blocked) by website administrators. This can take up to a few days, as it is done manually by our team. Once approved, subsequent changes will publish immediately.

July 31, 2022	Nina Sartor
July 5, 2012	epan

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