This website is a discussion forum set up solely to facilitate discussion in Mark McClure's Complex Variables class at UNCA; participation is invite only. This post is meant to introduce you to the basics of discourse. There is another Meta Question that describes how to enter groovy typeset mathematics, code, and images. We'll also discuss the site and play with it in class some.
Note that participation is mandatory - you can earn 50 actual points for your grade! That's not a huge amount and it's not hard to get those points, but it should be enough to motivate folks to get started. Hopefully, the benefits of a high quality discussion forum will become clear as you participate.
So, how do you get those points?
Discourse, has a built in trust level system. You start at trust level zero and can increase up to trust level three by participation. Specifically, to make it to trust level 1 you must
- Spend at least 10 minutes
- Reading 10 posts
- Spread out over 5 topics
To make it to trust level 2 you must
- Spend an hour
- Over 10 days
- Reading 20 posts
- Spread over 10 topics
- Reply to at least 3 topics
- Receiving 3 likes and
- Dishing out at least 5 likes of your own
To make it to trust level 3 you must
- Spend at least an hour and a half
- Over 20 days
- Viewing at least 20 topics
- Replying to at least 6 topics
- Giving at least 10 likes
- Receiving at least 8 likes of your own
Most importantly, you earn 10 actual class points for each trust level.
It's really not particularly hard to make it to trust level 2. More importantly - the real benefit of Discourse is that it is a genuine opportunity to learn!