How to contribute to the Rebel Toolkit
A new vision for the toolkit has arrived! Please read the first page of this book for latest information on how to contribute.
- IMPORTANT UPDATE - Sep 15th 2023
- NEW: Guidelines for Content Contributors
- Contributing - The Technical Side
- Editing Pages
- Markdown Hints
- Adding Images
- Resizing Images
- Links to pages in Rebel Toolkit
- Adding a Google document
- Same page two + contributors
- Tags and why they're useful
- Contact the Rebel Toolkit team
IMPORTANT UPDATE - Sep 15th 2023
We are launching a new vision for the Rebel Tookit - the project has been identified and mandated by Operations as a strategic and urgent task. The aim is to increase the relevancy, and therefore use, of the Rebel Toolkit to educate, support and empower rebels.
There will be a new layout, which should be more logical for rebels to navigate. Circles will be asked to create new books/chapters, based on the needs of Local Groups which we have identified. We have done our best to catalogue existing resources, and will be asking circles to create new content based on this (but up-to-date and relevant for the audience of local group rebels)
We are currently reaching out and connecting to the major contributors and will be supportive and responsive to all enquiries. We have restricted access to edit books, and will be approaching all relevant circles ASAP to explain the task required of them.
You can view a short presentation here showing the journey of this plan. We can come to any meeting to go through this.
In the next chapter you will find 'Guidelines for Content Contributors', which explains in more detail everything you need to know to create and maintain these new books.
If you have any problems of questions, please contact the Rebel Toolkit Team
NEW: Guidelines for Content Contributors
How to contact us
Via our Mattermost Reception or by email LGsupport@extinctionrebellion.uk
Vision
To create an easy to navigate and relevant one-stop-shop for Local Groups and individual rebels to find the information and support they need. You can view a short presentation showing the journey of this plan.
Intro
There are a huge amount of valuable resources within XR UK, but they are spread all over the internet - Google docs, XRUK Cloud, XRUK website etc. This project aims to bring all of the resources into one place - the Rebel Toolkit [RT] - where they can be curated going forward by Local Group Support.
These resources need to be focused, relevant, accessible, up-to-date and tailored to the right audience.
We are creating new shelves and allocating books/shelves to specific circles within XR UK, to take responsibility for the content and update it in order to ensure consistency and ease of navigation.
Instead of open-access for anyone to edit, we will be giving tailored access so that you can be assured your particular section of the Toolkit is within your control. What comes with that is a responsibility to maintain the content.
If you find yourself ‘locked out’ of a page you want to edit - contact the RT team.
What are we asking for?
We have collated a massive list of resources - current RT books, information from the XRUK website and resources circles have shared with us already. We have catalogued these and assigned to the new plan for the RT shelves.
Your circle will receive a list of all of these resources, with links to all of them. We are asking you to create, or recreate, a book (or chapter) on the RT collating any of this information and fixing broken links or out-of-date content. We know that the resources we have found may not be a complete list, so of course if you have more up-to-date resources or information, use those!
We will give all members of your team who would like to work on updating the RT exclusive access to a particular area of the Toolkit - either a whole shelf or certain books within it.
If you think your group should be working on a certain section of the Toolkit, and have not heard from the RT team, please contact us.
Timescale
With the Strategy foregrounding the need to grow Local Groups, it is a priority to turn the Toolkit into a useful, thorough, and easy to use space as quickly as possible.
Therefore, when you are given the topics that we would like your circle to cover, we would really appreciate you making this work a priority within your circle. If possible we’d like to do this initial work with you before the end of October so we can launch the ‘new-look’ RT.
Using Shelves, Books, Chapters, and Pages
The RT is structured just like a real bookshelf, full of real books. Your group may be given a shelf, book or chapter to update. Please ensure that your content effectively uses the chapter/pages system to break down the topic into chunks. Ensure each chapter & page has a logical name as these will be displayed in the contents page of your book, and in the sidebar when navigating the book itself.
You don’t HAVE to use chapters if your book is short. If it’s 7 pages or less, it probably doesn’t need chapters.
A good example is the ‘Action Network for XR’ book.
Book title
It is also important to choose a name for your book that communicates what the topic is in as few words as possible.
If you change the name of the book, it changes the URL and if you have linked to it from elsewhere (XRUK website, or an email footer perhaps) - that link will break. (note: book URLs are independent of what shelf they sit on - so any rearrangement of shelves that we do won’t affect this.
Audience
The audience for the RT pages we are asking you to work on, will be both individual rebels and those in Local Groups.
Please ensure that you don’t use XR jargon, abbreviations, or make assumptions about users’ technological abilities. Use simple language, short sentences, and short paragraphs.
If you currently have information on the RT (or wish to add more) - which is not suitable for this broad audience, then please get in touch with us.
Links to documents outside of Rebel Toolkit
As part of future proofing the Tool, we are trying to minimise links to outside documents. It is preferable that information is written within the RT. Please transfer everything you can that is currently relevant and linked from the RT to an outside document, directly to a page on the RT. Only link to an outside document if this is absolutely necessary and the page cannot be recreated on the RT..
If you have to link to external docs please use Karla font, no italics, clear layout and for Google docs, edit the URL - make sure that after the last ‘/’ which normally says /edit or /view, replace this with /preview.
Links to other books & topics
We are striving to reduce duplication of information. Therefore, if your circle needs to include elements of the work of another circle within your pages, please link directly to those pages, rather than writing your own section in your book.
For example, in the section on Outreach methods it is relevant to talk about how to include fundraising, you should talk to the Fundraising team and/or view their current content. They may already have suitable guidance, so you can link directly to this.
If those pages do not yet exist, talk directly to the team who you think should be providing the content or contact the RT team for guidance.
Wiki spaces
The original vision of the RT was modelled on a ‘wiki’ style design - where everyone in the movement could share resources, instructions and ideas. Whilst an amazing vision, lack of curation has meant that huge swathes of the Toolkit are out of date, duplicated, or link to docs which no longer exist.
We still appreciate the vision of the Toolkit as a sharing space, therefore we will be creating several ‘Wiki’ style spaces, within relevant shelves or books. Each wiki will have a basic style guide, and anyone with a Hub log-in will be able to contribute to them.
Future Proofing
All circles who have been asked to contribute to the new RT must check their pages at least every 6 months to ensure that nothing needs to be updated. Ideally someone in your team should take on the role of updating the RT regularly, whenever you produce something new or change the ways you do something.
But our book is already fine!
Some circles already use and update their RT pages regularly. In this case, these books may simply move to the new shelf.
You may be sent other resources or documents that we have found that we are not sure are relevant any more. We would like to work with you to either incorporate them into your books, or get feedback that these resources are out of date.
Please review your pages with Local Group rebels in mind, remove jargon or lengthy detail and try to create concise and accessible information.
Stay in touch!
If you want to meet with us again during the process of update or when you think your updated info is complete, please contact us.
The conversations with all the different teams should help us develop a more nuanced and detailed view of what needs to happen to make the RT a fabulous resource for the movement.
What we are aiming for is to reduce any duplication in content. So we may contact you again if we identify overlaps and repetitions.
Contributing - The Technical Side
Editing, Markdown, images, links etc
Editing Pages
Any rebel with a Communications Hub login can edit pages within dedicated 'wiki' spaces, but from Sep 2023 onwards, the overall Rebel Toolkit will being more curated with specific team (with the appropriated mandate) having exclusive access to curate and maintain their particular shelf/book/chapter in line with their particular area of expertise.
More details of this change can be found here.
Note that the Rebel Toolkit is visible to everyone on the Internet. Please do not publish personal email addresses, Mattermost invite links or Zoom call details that include the passcode, or links to documents containing such things.
It is discouraged to link to external documents (eg Google documents) and encouraged to have as much content written directly on the toolkit as possible.
Signing Up and Logging In
In order to edit the content on this web site, you need to be logged in.
The user accounts on this web site are tied to the accounts on the Communications Hub.
To sign up to this web site, click the 'Sign up' link at the top of the home page. Make sure you click on the SIGN UP WITH UK HUB button first and ignore the name, email and password fields on the Sign Up page. You will need your Hub user name and password, unless you are already logged in to the Hub.
Logging in subsequently is done also with your Hub user name and password. Click on LOGIN WITH XR UK HUB on the Log In page.
New users have the ability to edit any page, so please be careful.
Note that this web site is visible to the general public on the Internet, and is indexed by Google and the other search engines, so:
- Don't add anything that should not be visible.
- If you don't want your full name to be visible, change it by going to Edit Profile on the menu top right.
Please do not include any email addresses unless they are already public on the Internet. This also applies to links to, for example, Google Docs containing email addresses, or other sensitive material.
Editing Pages
This web site runs on a software package called BookStack. Their home page is at https://www.bookstackapp.com/. We have our own copy of BookStack running on one of our servers in Switzerland.
The user documentation is at https://www.bookstackapp.com/docs/. We won't duplicate that here, but we will add things which are specific to this site or need extra clarification.
BookStack supports two different page editors called WYSIWYG and Markdown. We have chosen to use the Markdown editor for this site. Note that the BookStack demo referenced on their home page, while good for gaining an understanding of BookStack, is configured to use the WYSIWYG editor. This is a site-wide setting and can't be adjusted per user, because the pages are stored in a different format by the two editors.
To edit a page:
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You need to sign up and log in
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Then go to the page you want to edit.
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Click the Edit button
On very wide screens a sidebar will appear on the right hand side which includes an Edit link.
On medium width screens a sidebar will appear on the left hand side which includes an Edit link.
On narrow screens, you have to click the Info tab at the top of the page to make the sidebar appear.
The editor accepts both Markdown and HTML. You may find that the page that you are editing is in Markdown or HTML or a mixture of both. For example in Markdown a bold word is indicated like this: **bold words** (rendered as 'bold words'). In HTML, you get the same effect with <b>bold words</b> (rendered as 'bold words').
For information about Markdown see: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/basics and https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax. You may wish to get yourself a summary of the Markdown codes by searching on the Internet for 'Markdown cheat sheet' -- there are lots.
See the Markdown Hints page for more information about Markdown.
For plain text content, no special markup is needed. Put a blank line between paragraphs.
It is a good idea to keep a copy of your text yourself locally in case it gets lost, through computer failure or user action. This can done by clicking in the editing area and doing Ctrl-A (Select All), Ctrl-C (Copy), then open Notepad, Ctrl-V (Paste), Ctrl-S (Save) and choose a place and name for it. These are the instructions for Windows. It will be similar for other operating systems.
When you have made your changes, make them visible by clicking Save Page in the top right hand corner.
Creating New Pages
You can create a new page by going to the Book or Chapter where you want the new page, and clicking New Page in the sidebar. You can change the order of pages by clicking Sort later, which lets you set the exact order you want.
Start your page with a sentence that gives some more detail as to what the page may be about in addition to the title. The first line or two appear in the book contents lists and on search results, so this makes it easier for readers to find the page they want.
Split your text into multiple pages if necessary. If pages are too short, it is hard to find things using find-in-page in your browser, as you have to do it separately for every page. If the pages are too long, they become hard to take in. Also on a long page, you may have so many headings that the Page Navigation on the left (wide screens only -- on a narrow screen it is on the Info tab) becomes taller than the height of a typical screen.
Headings
Another way to stop the Page Navigation getting too long is to make headings at the lowest level which don't appear in the Page Navigation by just using a short bold paragraph, like the one above, which looks like a heading but just uses bold markup **Headings**.
Tags
Shelves and Books
Please contact us if you would like a new book creating and adding to a shelf.
Markdown Hints
Markdown is used to make headings, bold, bulleted lists etc on the Rebel Toolkit pages.
This page contains tips for formatting your pages. Feel free to add things which you have found useful but were not obvious from the Markdown and BookStack documentation (see Editing Pages for the links to that documentation).
For even more documentation, and links to tools to make editing easier, we recommend The Markdown Guide or search online for Markdown. Here is a fairly comprehensive set of basic Markdown syntax.
Tables
In addition to classic Markdown, BookStack supports the Markdown Extra extensions, see https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/. This provides a number of extra facilities in addition to the original Markdown, in particular support for tables. Here is a quick example of how to insert a table.
| Item | Value |
| --------- | -----:|
| Computer | $1600 |
| Phone | $12 |
| Pipe | $1 |
This renders as:
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Computer | $1600 |
| Phone | $12 |
| Pipe | $1 |
Link on an Image
To put a link on an image, so that you can click on the image to go to another page, just use some image markup instead of plain text as the link text in square brackets [](my-destination-page.htm)
For example, this [](/books/engaging-our-rebels/page/rebel-ringing) renders as:
Floating images to right or left
The Markup Extra specification says that you should be able to add class attributes to image markup, but it doesn't work in BookStack. You need to put the image in as HTML as below if you want to float an image with the text wrapping round it. You can also use align-left and align-center.
<img src="/uploads/images/gallery/2020-08/thumbs-150-150/RebelRingers.png" alt="Rebel Ringers video" class="align-right">
Horizontal Rules in Dark Mode
Horizontal rules like this:
don't show up in BookStack Dark Mode. There is a link to turn Dark Mode on and off near the top of the sidebar or Info panel on the home page. This is a mistake in the BookStack default style sheet in Dark Mode where the horizontal rule is dark grey (#222) on a dark grey background. We mention it in case it puzzles you. We may or may not fix it.
Comments
You can add comments to be seen by subsequent editors of the page, but which will not appear on the final rendered page after the Markdown processing. There is no explicit mechanism for comments in Markdown, but we can make use of the reference-style link syntax like this:
[Comment]: # (you can put any message for editors here.
It can span more than one line)
Not to be confused with the BookStack comment facility, which is turned off.
Adding Images
To add an image to a page:
- prepare a suitably-sized image. Most photos need their resolution reducing for publishing on the web. See the Resizing Images page for instructions,
- click in the text at the point where you want the image to appear,
- click the "Insert Image" button in the editor above the main text pane,
- either:
- drag your image from Windows Explorer (or the equivalent for your computer) into the grey area top right where it says "Drop images or click here to upload", - or:
- click on the grey area top right where it says "Drop images or click here to upload", and select an image, - click on the image you have just uploaded,
- click SELECT IMAGE,
- the Markdown code to display the image will appear in your page.
You can also drag an image file directly into the main text area of the editor. However this not recommended because the image will be given a numeric name, and not the name of the file it came from. If you have done this, you can rename any image via the "Insert Image" button mentioned earlier: click on the image, edit the name and click SAVE. Images can be deleted via the same screen using the dustbin icon.
Please try to use sensible names for your images so that they are easier to manage.
Note that the Rebel Toolkit is not meant as a repository for artwork, photos, videos etc: store such items in the UK Cloud or the Global Media Library, and refer across to them from a page on the Rebel Toolkit.
Resizing Images
Why use smaller images?
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It saves on energy! Every pixel uses energy to be stored and shared so the smaller the image the less energy you use. It'sgreen.
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They take up less space on a page. Pages can be quite long at the best of time onhere so why not make them colourful but also quick to browse!
OK, so how do I do that?
Not a tech whizz (yet)?
If you have an image to put on a page on the Rebel Toolkit, you may need to resize it in order to get it to display at the correct size on the page. This involves reducing the resolution of the image, ie reducing the number of pixels in the width and height.
You do this on your computer before uploading it to the Rebel Toolkit.
Notes for Microsoft computers:
You can see the dimensions of an image by hovering your mouse over the name in Windows Explorer.
- For an image on a web page, right-click and select View Image Info (in Firefox), select Inspect and hover over the image element (in Chrome). In most cases you will want an image between 200 and 600 pixels across.
Notes for Computers with the Paint app:
An easy way to resize an image on a Mac is to open the file using Paint.
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Click on the Tab Image on the toolbar at the top of the screen. A drop-down menu will appear with the option to Adjust image. Click on that and choset he amount of pixels you want it to have. 200 Width will make the image take up aboutz a third of the width of a page - to give oyu an idea. This is usually small enough to see but not so big that it takes up lots of room. (You can also use Preview in much the same way)
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Once you have resized the image click on the tab File in the Toolbar at the top. Click on Save As and put it into a file where you might find it again easily.
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Now you can add a page in the Toolkit and insert an image which is smaller.
Tip: It is a good idea to make a copy of the image and resize the copy.
There are numerous tutorials available on how to resize images, and a selection is listed below.
Note:
Many of the tutorials are trying to get you to download a piece of software or to use a particular web site.
You do not need to install any new software or to use a web site or online service*
Whether you use Windows, a Macintosh or Linux, your computer already has the software you need to resize images. The list below only covers Windows.
Feel free to add suggestions for Macintoshes if that is what you use.
*Linux is more tricky, and you may actually want to install some software.
Tutorials for Resizing Images
Windows
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https://www.howtogeek.com/354015/how-to-resize-images-and-photos-in-windows/ Ignore the "Third Party App" sections and use Paint.
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https://tencomputer.com/resize-photos-in-windows-10/ Ignore the "Method 2: Download" section and use Paint.
Mac
Using Preview to resize an image tutorial. Youtube video link. You can skip the first 40 seconds where he explains why you may want to change the size of an image.
Links to pages in Rebel Toolkit
Normally the URL (web address) of a page in the Rebel Toolkit includes the name of the book it is in and the name of the page. This can cause problems if you make a link to a page and then the page gets renamed or moved to another book. The Bookstack software keeps a list of old page names, so links sometimes continue to work, but not always.
Each page is actually identified by a number which does not change, and you can use that number in a link.
To find the static link for a page:
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Go to the page you want to make a link to
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Highlight a piece of text by double clicking on a word. The word gets highlighted.
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A pop-up box appears - in that pop-up box you will see the unique address of the page and a fragment identifier. The fragment identifier is the part after the "#" which identifies a particular paragraph within the page.
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Copy the address and remove the fragment identifier so you don't want to link to a part of the page.
For example the address of this page is https://rebeltoolkit.extinctionrebellion.uk/link/463. So you can make a link like this: Links to pages in Rebel Toolkit which will continue to work even if the page is moved.
Adding a Google document
If you have something useful in a Google document which you would like to make available on the Rebel Toolkit, you can't upload it directly. You have a choice:
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If the Google document has a lot of complicated formatting, you can just make a short page on the Rebel Toolkit with a description of the document in a few sentences and a link to the Google document. The description just needs to be enough so that people can decide whether to click on the link or not. You can put links to several documents on one page if they are related. Bear in mind that the Rebel Toolkit is visible to everyone on the Internet: do not include links to any document with confidential information, eg personal email addresses.
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If you have the time to convert the formatting manually to the markup required on the Rebel Toolkit, you can do that, ie make a page on the Rebel Toolkit containing all the text from the Google document. Some people prefer to make a file in Notepad (or equivalent) on their computer and do all the work on that before pasting it in to the editor on the Rebel Toolkit. That way you are less likely to lose all your work. The formatting needs to be done in accordance with the Editing Pages instructions.
Same page two + contributors
For those that may be working on a doc at the same time as another Rebel.
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If at the top of the page you are working on you see an image the one below pop up at the top right-hand corner then we strongly advise that you work on a separate page. There is a possibility that when you save someone loses some of their work.
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If more than two people are contributing to the same page at the same time a similar box will appear, all red, and it will name the other user.
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The advice is still the same - save your work elsewhere as there is a possibility that when someone saves the work gets lost.
Generally, we recommend working on the Toolkit from a separate doc rather than directly onto the Toolkit. This is advisable because it means you have access to the original doc as back-up.
Tip: You can use the website Remarkable to create docs. It only works with Linux or Windows currently. The benefit of this site is you can write using markdown and it will show you a preview of it as you type. THis means you can write complete docs before uploading them to the Tookit.
Tags and why they're useful
Tags explained
When you create a resource in the Toolkit, you should add one or more "Tag(s)" to help people to find it.
The Toolkit's Shelves are organised in a particular way to reflect an imagined "rebel journey".
However, there will be many times when you, or another rebel, want to group together resources following certain subject areas, or other activities, that draw from a number of different Shelves. Tagging gives you thousands of different ways to combine resources.
Tagging each Page, Book or Chapter that you create allows other Toolkit users to draw together resources in many different ways.
How to add a Tag
On pages you can go to the far right side of the editing screen and open the side bar, revealing the area to use to add a Tag. It looks like this:
A Book (or Chapter) can be Tagged just by selecting "Edit" and adding a tag here:
The following list has been developed to control the number of tags that are used. Whilst you can use any tag you like, we suggest you use at least one tag from this list too.
NB Whilst every Tag listed here is "clickable" i.e. it will search the toolkit for that Tag, this is a new resource, and most of the Tags listed here haven't yet been applied, so will result in a "not found" search.
Contact the Rebel Toolkit team
Contact the Rebel Toolkit project team:
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On Mattermost, the Rebel Toolkit Reception channel in the UK Team. It is a public channel, so you can join yourself to it.
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By email : LGsupport@extinctionrebellion.uk