Getting Started
Searching
Making Maps
Adding Notes
Loading and Saving Maps
Emailing Maps
Error Reporting
Getting Started
The simplest way to start using They Rule is to add a company to the map. To do this, click on "Add Company" on the main menu. A list of all the companies in the They Rule database will appear. You can through the list by typing the first letter of the company that you would like to add. Click on a company and an icon representing its boardroom table will slide onto the screen. You can click and drag this around the map. When you roll over this icon - it will bring up a menu that will allow you to perform various action with that company. If you click "expand" on this menu, the directors on the board of that company will appear around it. The directors have various degrees of weight. The larger the director the more boards (within the They Rule database from 2004) they sit on. Rollover the company again and click on the "contract" button in the company's menu, this will delete the unconnected directors. If you rollover any of the remaining directors you can access their menus. Select 'expand' and you will see the other boards they sit on.
Searching
You can use They Rule as a starting point for research. If you choose search from the company, institution and director icons a search window will appear. You can run searches on various websites. One search that is available is the excellent Open Secrets database of political contributions. The search is not perfect, you might want to remove the middle initials from names before you run your searches. A useful thing to try when searching using Google is to add search terms to the name - such as "bio", 'bigot' or 'Bush' for example. Be sure to try some searches on the left wing sites too - you may be surprised by the quality of information that exists out there.
Making Maps
After expanding a few companies' boards They Rule can get pretty cluttered. The top companies are heavily interlinked! One way to help people find their way through this data is to allow people to create and save maps that they have arranged and annotated. There are a few tools that can help you make these maps. If you press 'CTRL' and drag an icon - it will drag all those icons directly attached to it as well. If you choose 'delete' from an icons' menu it will delete the icon from the map - not from the database - don't worry!
Adding Notes
If you would like to annotate a map - click 'add note' from the main menu. This will bring up a window that you can expand or shrink to fit your note. You can add links to your note by selecting the text that you want to link and clicking "add link." Click save note to remove the window structure and leave the text free floating on the map. If you click on the text again the editing controls will return.
Loading and Saving Maps
Share your maps with others. You can save a map by clicking Save Map for the new menu. This will save the map info to the they rule database. It will ask you to sign up, before you save a map. This can be a drag - but it is for a good reason. It is so that other users that find a well constructed map can browse through other maps made by the same author. You can load up maps that other people have made by selecting them from either a list of recent or popular maps that come up when you click load map from the main menu.
Emailing Maps
When a map loads up you will see a map info window, which will allow you to: see information about the map author (whatever they have provided), email the map, and vote for the map. If you click email the map - it will bring up the default email client on that machine with the url to the map in the body of the text.
Error Reporting
They Rule - will not be 100% accurate. If you see any glaring errors - please let me know. Likewise if you see a map that has hate speak, death threats, racist, sexist or homophobic content please email it to me, josh@theyrule.net (see above) and I will delete it.
