Profiles give members an opportunity to share information about themselves with other members of the community. It is also an opportunity to find people who share common interests. The information in the profile is published and most of the information is linked into a common "type" database. So if someone lists that one of their hobbies is playing the piano, a play piano link is created. When the member clicks the link they see a list of everyone in the community who listed piano playing as a hobby. This helps members to locate others in the community who share their interests. The profile has three categories, personal information, political information, and professional information. The more information you provide the easier it will be for people with common interests to find you, however please limit descriptions to one to three terms whenever possible. Long descriptions don't work well with the database and are must harder to categorize accurately. We encourage members to limit the amount of personal information they share. We recommend using only first names and not giving any more information about location than state. Please be sensitive to the factor that there are predators of all kinds using the Internet.
To create a profile click the "my account" tab at the top of the page. This will open the "username: My account" page with the "View" tab slected giving you the current view of your profile. There are six tabs directly under your username. They are "View", "Edit", "My Weather", "Track", "My Diatribune", and "Personal Files". Click the "Edit" tab. Just beneath the six tabs are links that allow you to configure your profile.
The first link is "Account Settings" On this page you can change e-mail address and password, upload photo or avatar, set your time zone, add a unique signature for your posts, and choose whether you wish to receive emails from tribes you join, whether you receive private messages from other members, your contact form, or from members on your friendslist.
The next link is "Personal Information". This section asks for your first name, age, what state you live in, gender, and hobbies. You may fill in whatever you are comfortable with.
The next link is "Political Information". Here you may tell people what specifics issues you are most passionate about. This will enable others in the community with similar concerns to locate you and vice versa. There is also a box to state your presidential preference.
The next link is "Professional Information". Here you have options to state your vocation and any avocations you may currently pursue.
Each of these individual pages has a submit button to save the information.
