Tapatio

Tapatio is intended to be a communications resource for the radical anti-authoritarian community. We have developed a system that can be used in mass direct action scenarios to gather tactical information, categorize that information based on type and urgency, rate the information for reliability, and then dispatch reliable information to individuals in the streets based on the criteria they request (for example, maybe the user only wants information about legal updates, or maybe they want to hear about police mobilizations and medical information).

At a recent mobilization the work flow went like:

  1. An individual, with a twitter account, who is following one of the twitter accounts used by the system, submits a report from the streets via a SMS text message to twitter.
  2. An operator, using this software, receives the report, categorizes it based on certain pre-existing tags (for example: food info, downtown, legal support, etc) and gives the report an urgency rating.
  3. Either the operator attempts to verify the report by contacting a known scout, or determines the report is verified by receiving multiple reports. The criteria for verification is a decision made by the collective using the software.
  4. Verified reports are dispatched via SMS, through the twitter system, to users that are following the twitter accounts managed by the software (associated with categorization tags of the report).

Various levels of access can be given to the system. Some known scouts, sending text messages, can be given a higher default post rating level. Various displays, with the possibility of adding or moderating data, can be made available to groups like the legal team, the convergence space, and the food collective.

We are excited about future releases of this project and would like to hear from you if we can customize this software for the specific communication needs of your action/project.

Overview

Tapatio performs three main functions:

  • Automatically accepts SMS (text message) reports from people participating in an event.
  • Allows operators to categorize those reports according to topic and importance, and to rate their reliability.
  • Sends out selected reports to event participants via SMS.

Currently all SMS communication happens through Twitter. This means that everyone who wants to receive SMS from tapatio must have a Twitter account.

Installing the tapatio module

Information on installing this module is available with the module. The simplest way to get a dedicated system up and running is by using the installation profile .

However if you chose to install this module manually you will need to take the following steps:

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  • Download and install the required modules: userpoints, og, views, votingapi, and tapatio.

  • Download and unpack the ARC90 PHP Twitter API (a mirror is also available here). After you do this the directory structure should look like:

    • <

    p>

      comms/
    Arc90_Service_Twitter/
      lib/
        Arc90/
          Service/
            TwitterSearch.php
            Twitter.php
            Twitter/
              Exception.php
              Response.php

    anything else in the Arc90_Service_Twitter can be deleted if you would like.

  • Add a new content type named "Group" of type "group" that is used by og as a "Group node" (administer > Content management > Content types > Add content type).

  • Specify the Comms content type as one that can be used by og as "Standard group post (typically only author may edit). No email notification." (Administer > Content types > Content management > Content types > edit on the "Comms" line).

  • Add a vocabulary name "Priority" for "Comms" nodes (Administer > Content management > Categories > Add Vocabulary).

  • Add at least the following terms in the "Priority" vocabulary: "Emergency", "Info", "Warning" (Administer > Content management > Categories > add terms on the "Priority" line).

    • Using the tapatio software

    Information on how to use the tapatio system.

    Banning users.

    Tapatio will pull in all tweets from followers of groups that are added to the system. This may create a situation where information is pulled in from twitter users that is consistently not useful to the comms that is being colected. In this situation you may decide it is a good ideal to "Ban" a users tweets from being pulled into the system.

    • Make sure the system is configured to have a user ban threshold on the tapatio settings page (admin/comms/settings). The setting is titled "Disable pulling in tweets for users with points below"([inline:TapatioSettings.jpg]). 0 is disabled and any other value is the threshold that a user will have to have "points" greater than to have their tweets added to the system. Users are given 1 point when there account is created by the tapatio system.
    • To prevent a user from posting you will set their point value at or below the threshold you configured above. There are two ways to change a users points:
      • Click on the username in the comms posting ([inline:ClickUser.jpg]), then click on the users points in the next screen ([inline:ClickPoints.jpg]), Then set the points below the threshold configured above ([inline:SetPoints.jpg]). In the example in the picture the threshold is -1, and since all users are given one point on account creation we enter -2 in the "Points" field to get the users total points to -1.
      • You can also change user points on the points administration page ([inline:PointsAdmin.jpg])(admin/user/userpoints/add). Start entering the user's name in the "User name" field (it will drop down a list of users on the system that you can select from after enough characters are entered), then fill in the number of points in the "Points" field.

    Banning users is done my integrating in with the userpoints module. As described above a threshold is set in the tapatio configuration page (admin/comms/settings), and if a user has points that are less than or equal to this threshold thier points will not be pulled into the system. Another example of using this sytem is not allowing users to post until the have enough</strong points. You could do this by setting the threshold to 1, and setting only the users you wanted to be able to post to have 2 points.

    Working across time zones

    A possible scenario is one where there are operators spread across time zones working on an action that takes place in one time zone. It maybe useful to view comms node with dates from the target timezone (see attachment). If this is the case you may want to switch your time zone to the target time zone.

    You can do this through My Account -> Edit (At the top of the page) -> Locale Settings (Near the bottom of the page).

    Common problems

    Tapatio issues
    • You are trying to add groups to a comms node and it kinda seems to work, but never really does. A common reason for this is because the comms content type is not set as a organic group " Standard group post" ([inline:StandardGroupPost.jpg]) on the content type settings page for comms nodes (admin/content/types/comms).
    Cell phone issues
    • You are trying to follow a group with your brand new clean phone and you get the following message back from twitter: Welcome to twitter reply with SIGNUP to begin.
      Hi there you are signing up for twitter, but it has been a while since we heard from you so lets start over.
      Ummm, this user name isn't on twitter, want to create a new username? Reply with SIGNUP
      We don't know why people are getting this messages but we have heard about it, with boost phones. Maybe this twitter support ticket helps you. Maybe it happens with some disposable numbers as they are put back into circulation. We suspect users might be able to get around this by registering online.

    Downloads

    The tapatio project is now hosted at drupal.org/project/tapatio. You can download all versions from there.

    You will most likely want to use our install profile here.

    Snapshots from the super, ultra, totally unstable and most likely broken trunk are installed at devdemo.comms.hackbloc.org and refreshed with the most current cvs copy nightly.

    You will also need a copy of the PHP twitter API from ARC90. For your convenience we keep a copy here.

    Presentation Materials

    The two files below are some brief and to the point presentation materials that can be used to describe the system in a general way to folk.

    Incidentally this was used at a presentation that a now known informant was attending with 15 of his buddies.