Points

As you looked at the My Account screen, you might have noticed the "User Points" area below the links for creating user profile information. Currently we using these points as a means of automatically increasing the level of access new users have on our site, rewarding your experience with greater levels of access. Our assumption is the more you use the site the more experience you have and the better you can benefit from having more features available to you and the groups you belong to.

We want to make sure you are comfortable with some of the unique ways we help you protect your information before we give you more options for sharing it with other users.

You earn more points when you...

• as you revisit and log into AnyOrg.com
• as you comment on posts
• invite people to AnyOrg.com
• read more site content

Roles and Permissions

As you get more experience with AnyOrg.com and new things begin to appear, it will help you to understand some of the basic concept that drives what you can do here.

On a very basic level there are "permissions" for specific things that members (users) can do, but users aren't assigned permissions directly. We have established user "roles" from a basic user to the most advanced. Each user is assigned (or promoted by their user points) to a role. Each role has been given specific permissions. A user can be assigned multiple roles and thus has all the permissions that have been assigned to any of your roles.

Get it? No?, well don't worry about it, we've set all this up for you. An example might help.

• If you looked at "Getting Started" before logging in or created an account. You might have noticed the User Directory did not appear in the main menu. That's because the system assumes this visitor is anonymous and doesn't have permission to see the directory.
• Once I log in to my account, the User Directory appears because now I am assigned to the "authenticated" role. (when a user is logged in they are automatically authenticated because they have a user account.) The authenticated user can see the User Directory and the user name. The user name however is not a link because they don't have the permission assigned to access a user profile. You may already be able to see these links since this is this level of access is provided with very few user points.
• Does that mean that someone with very little user points can see all my profile information? No of course not! Access to user profile information is limited to people you have an established relationships with. How do I do that? Chances are you don't yet have a role assignment with that permission yet. Keep working at it and when you do take a look at the next getting started section.

Hopefully that gives you a good idea about how points, permissions and roles work. If not, maybe you will be more comfortable that protections are there to keep your information safe. If you have questions about that visit our Privacy page.