Episthema

01 - Episthema: what is this?
02 - What does Episthema mean?
03 - What Episthema can do?
04 - Do I need to log up to use Episthema?
05 - Is Episthema free or paid?
06 - What is a commercial theme?
07 - What is the difference between public and private themes?
08 - Learning from any member or only from the owner?
09 - What is the difference between open, closed and "under owner's permission" membership?
10 - Opinions: yes or not?
11 - Score: how does it work?



01 - Episthema: what is this?
Episthema is a space for building knowledge.
It works like a chat between the user and the computer.
While chatting, Episthema instigates the users to talk about their own knowledge and to opine about other's knowledge.
Inside Episthema, knowledge is compartmented in themes created by the users to discuss specific issues. When several people are in the same theme, the knowledge is built in a collaborative way.

What is the news in Episthema? Episthema searchs for new knowledge all the time.
Episthema learns!
While chatting, Episthema learns from the user and the more it learns the more thirsty for knowledge it becomes.

Attention: Information in Episthema is posted by users and is not necessarily true.

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02 - What does Episthema mean?
Episthema is an acronym to "Thematic Episteme", that is: Thematic Knowledge.
Episteme is a greek word [epistéme] that means science, knowledge.
Theme also comes from the greek [théma], and its original meaning is proposition.
Each Theme inside Epithema is exactly that: a proposition for building knowledge.

Episthema is a trademark owned by Factorem Tecnologia da Informação Ltda. (Brazil)

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03 - What Episthema can do?
You may use Episthema for:

• building knowledge in individual or collaborative way;
• exposing ideas, services or products;
• mining your own knowledge in an amusing way;
• registering opinions;
• helping in studying;
• helping in learning evaluations;
• researching.

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04 - Do I need to log up to use Episthema?

• No, if you use it only for researching. In this case, just go on browsing.
• Yes, if you want to use it to create themes or to take part in them.
  The log up form is quite simple. It doesn't imply any financial bond and it may be undone at anytime by the user.
  

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05 - Is Episthema free or paid?
It's free of charge:

• the research within the themes' knowledge;
• the player's log up;
• the membership in themes;
• the creation of themes with the default setting:
  • non-commercial;
  • public content;
  • learning from any member;
  • open membership and
  • opinions logged.

It's also free of charge nowadays (although it may be charged in the future):

• the creation of themes that are set to:
  • private content or
  • learning only from the owner or
  • membership "under owner's permission" or
  • closed membership or
  • opinions not logged.

Episthema charges the creation of commercial themes.

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06 - What is a commercial theme?
It is a theme that has priority to appear in the search results.
By default, Episthema creates only non-commercial themes.
To create a commercial theme, contact Episthema's Administration

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07 - What is the difference between public and private themes?

• A public theme has its whole content shown in the Internet.
  
• The content of a private theme can be accessed only by its members.

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08 - Learning from any member or only from the owner?

• Learning from any member is the default setting and it makes the building of knowledge faster and more interesting.
• Learning only from the owner is a good option whenever the owner is using the theme for studying or for showing something.

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09 - What is the difference between open, closed and "under owner's permission" membership?

• When a theme has open membership, any logged user may become a member of it.
• If the membership to the theme depends on the "owner's permission", when someone asks to become a member, a message is sent to the theme's owner. When the owner read the message, he/she will decide if the new member is accpeted or not.
  This option is useful for groups inside a school or a company, for instance.
• If the membership is closed, then it is not possible to include new members.
  This option is apropriate for themes supposed to expose ideas or products, and not primarily interested in gathering new members.

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10 - Opinions: yes or not?

• If a theme allows opinions, then Episthema will ask its members if they agree with the affirmations and images that it contains.
• If the theme doesn't allow opinions, there won't be any questions about opinions.
  
  Episthema's scores system depends on the opinions received, so if a theme doesn't allow opinions it won't show scores.

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11 - Score: how does it work?
The score system in Episthema depends on the opinions received.

• Every time that a theme member agrees with an affirmation or an image, it is brought 1(one) point.
• Every time that a theme member disagrees with an affirmation or an image, it looses 1(one) point. Hence, there may be negative scores.
• If the theme member opines "I don't know", no adding nor subtraction will happen.

The score of an affirmation (or image) is also added to the related concept, to the theme in which it is in, and to the author of the affirmation (or to the sender of the image).
Whenever a theme member creates an affirmation or send an image, Episthema registers automatically that he/she agrees with that (howevever, the member may change his/her opinion later).

In few words: if you want to increase your score in Episthema, it is important to create knowledge (text or image), but it is even more important that this knowledge be confirmed by other members of the theme. An incorrect affirmation (or a bad image) may cause a negative score to its author.

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