Joining Querki
Querki is now is open beta, so you can join simply by going to
the Querki homepage and signing up.
However, the most common way of getting involved with Querki is that somebody invites you to join a Space of theirs. This is how that works.
(NOTE: invitations got a serious rewrite recently, so most of the pictures below are incorrect. However, the process is similar to what is shown, and should be pretty self-explanatory.)
Invitations are currently by email: someone will share a Space with you by giving your email address, which will send you an email introducing you to the Space. They can provide a description of the Space for that, so you'll get an email that looks something like this:
For the time being, these emails always come from userEmails@querki.net. (This might change in the future.) The "Click here" link at the bottom is how you accept the invitation. When you click that, you get this page:
If you're already a Querki member, you can just sign in using this side of the screen:
Assuming you're new to Querki, fill in the other side:
There are four fields you need to fill in:
- The email address you want to use for Querki -- this defaults to where your invitation was sent, but you can change that if you prefer.
- Your Querki password. As with any online system, make sure you use a reasonably strong password: we require at least eight characters, and recommend making it pretty random, with a mix of letters and numbers. (I will put in a plug for LastPass, which is a very nice password-management package and which generates very secure passwords for you.)
- Your Querki "handle". As it says, this must be only letters and numbers -- no spaces -- and must be unique. (That is, no two Querki users are allowed to have the same handle.) This is your permanent ID in Querki, so try to pick something you like. In the future, these handles will become a paid-user perk, but as a beta user you get one for free. You can use your handle for logging in, and it will show up in the URL of your Spaces.
- Your Display Name. This is how you will usually be displayed in Querki, and you can put basically anything you like here. (But please avoid offensive language.) You can change your Display Name later, from your Profile page.
When you press the "Sign Up" button, you get taken to the Terms of Service:
We recommend reading through the Terms of Service -- so far, it's not horribly long, and we've tried to keep it as clear as possible.
The Terms of Service talk a bit about "membership status", and how that relates to privacy in Querki. This is an important point, and goes to the heart of how we're trying to run Querki, so it's worth talking about a little.
Many online services claim to be "free", but that's usually a half-truth. Most of them don't take payment in money -- instead, they essentially make much of their money by selling you. They take information that you have revealed by using their services, and use it to advertise to you, often leaking your information to third parties along the way. That's not really surprising: every company has to make money somehow, and if you aren't paying them directly, you should assume that they're making money off of you some other way.
We would rather be more upfront about this, and we're serious about the privacy of your data. We would love it if all of our members bought paid subscriptions -- we're keeping it inexpensive so that as many people as possible can afford it. If you're a paid member, you won't see any advertisements, and there won't be any shown in your Spaces. If not -- well, we do have to make money somehow. But we're still serious that "private" means "private" -- and that means that Private Spaces can't have advertisements, since modern online advertising is usually a bit invasive.
So the most important perk of paid membership will be that any or all of your Spaces can be as private as you like. Free members will be able to have some private Spaces, but it won't be unlimited, since we do need to show some advertisements.
Once you are done with the Terms of Service, check the checkbox at the bottom, and press the "Submit" button:
That's it: you're now a member of Querki, and of the Space. You should see the front page of the Space:
Once you're a member of Querki, you don't have to sign up again -- if you are invited into more Spaces, just log in on the page shown. (If you're already logged in, you won't even have to do that -- clicking on the link in the email will join the Space and bring you to it immediately.) When you log into Querki, you can use either the email address you signed up with, or your handle.
