headcycle: welcome

This is a very short and very simple introduction to Headcycle.

We can't cover everything here, but hopefully this will explain the basics.

last updated: 2023.7.03

CONTENT

Top level posts are one of the following:

Text - Text posts are...text, but they can also include images (more on that later)
Link - Link posts are direct links to other sites
Image - Image posts are for one uploaded image
Video - Video posts are for videos (see below for supported video sites)

VIEWING HEADCYCLE

Unlike one of the sites that shall not be named (ootstsnbn) Headcycle is best viewed in landscape.

The reasons for this are many, but here's a good summation.

Basically videos (see Momma Bear and Cubs Part 3) and images (see any post in /h/f8andbethere) look much better when in landscape - not just on Headcycle, but in life.

With that said portrait is fine...you know, phones...but you can turn your phone 90°s.

When viewing Headcycle in portrait mode on a device with a small screen links will appear in a dropdown menu accessed from a traditional hamburger menu icon in the upper right corner.

When viewing in landscape the sidebar menu will appear to the right of the content.

There are a few things that improve viewing images and videos:

Clicking/tapping on an image will make it full screen with mouseover or touch pan and tilt - here's a good example of an ultrawide image and here's an image with tilt
When logged in the side menu toggle icon will collapse the right menu, which allows the content to flow to the maximum width of the display
Changing the theme to "Night" by clicking the theme icon in the hamburger menu or the setting menu
Viewing Headcycle in landscape ; )

VIEWS

There are 4 basic groupings or "views":

Overall (headcycle.com) - Consists of content from all default headcycles (small h - see below) and non default headcycles to which you are subscribed
headcycles (for example headcycle.com/h/music) - Top level posts about a specific subject or idea (see below)
Users (for example headcycle.com/user/administrator) - Top level posts by a user
Domains (for example headcycle.com/domain/apnews.com) - Top level posts that link to a specific domain/site

Each view has a wordcloud which is a size based representation (larger is more frequent use) of words in top level posts in that view.

The overall Headcycle word cloud uses posts from the last 7 days.

Word clouds of specific headcycles, domains, and users use the last 50 posts.

Each view is ordered by popularity (based on votes over time) by default or new (chronological in descending order by time posted) when clicking the "new" tab.

LAYOUTS

There are 3 Headcycle layouts:

Default - Displays the title and thumbnail or icon of top level posts
Compact - Displays only the title (no thumbnail or icon) of top level posts
Expanded - Displays the title, thumnail or icon, and the initial top level post, which can be text, an image, or a video (or an image/video and text)

To switch between layouts click the eye icon which can be found next to the search box (for non logged in users) or in settings via the gear icon (desktop) or hamburger menu (in the app or mobile browser).

Will will initially see the themes menu, click "Select Layout" and choose your preference from the dropdown menu.

HEADCYCLES (small h)

In Headcycle's main view you'll see a list of posts, each of which have been posted to a headcycle (small h).

You can alter the content you see in Headcycle's main view ("Popular") by going to the big list of headcycles or the individual headcycle and clicking the Subscribe or Unsubscribe button.

headcycles can be viewed by going to headcycle.com/h/<whatever>

So if you go to headcycle.com/h/politics you're going to see a lot of stories about today's politics.

headcycles are an idea of interest - some are very literal (baseball), some are very broad (teachinglearning), some are more specific (ilovemycatharry - btw, this doesn't exist), and some are most esoteric (thembatsissmart).

headcycles can be private, with only approved members being able to see that headcycle's content.

headcycles have moderators who are basically curators of that headcycle's content.

Thumbnails of posts in headcycles marked "not suitable for work" (NSFW) are obscured in Headcycle's main view and the search (using a "NSFW" icon instead).

To see the actual icons go to the post or headcycle itself (just get ready for nudity or gore) and posts to NSFW headcycles are marked as NSFW in red.

HEADCYCLE (small h) CREATION & MODERATION

Users can create a maximum of three headcycles and are automatically a moderator.

Users can be a moderator of up to three headcycles.

Users who have created a headcycle can add and remove moderators, but again users can be a moderator of up to three headcycles maximum.

Moderators can also renounce their moderator status of a headcycle.

Headcycle's (big H) Administrator account is automatically a moderator of all headcycles (small h) and cannot be removed.