Who can see my actions?

By default, anyone can view and join an action. If when creating or editing an action "only those I invite" is selected under the "Visible to" popup menu, the action will only be visible to people who are already working on the action or those who have been invited to work on the action.

How do I enter dates and times?

Actions can understand most common date and time formats, even those written in natural English. Try any of the following: tomorrow at noon, 6pm today, 8/17 at 9:30am, or sat at midnight.

What's the point of "thanking"?

Who knows. I thought it might be nice if there were some way for people to easily provide positive feedback to others, so I added the ability for people to "thank" each other. If you thank someone for doing action X, the next time she goes to her My Actions page she'll see a message saying that you've thanked her for working on action X. That's it.

Who's allowed to edit actions after they've been created?

Only the person who originally created the action is allowed to edit it. If there are other people working on the action, the creator is not allowed to change the action's title.

Why don't invite-only actions show up in my profile box?

I have tried to design Actions so as to respect your privacy. Facebook does not currently allow for any information to be securely conveyed via the profile box; were your non-public actions visible to you on your profile page, they would also be accessible to all others who could view your profile. This would clearly make "invite-only" actions visible to people who had not been invited to join them.

But I've seen other applications alter the profile box depending on who's viewing it!

There are two answers to this. First, this restriction is actually a recent change on Facebook's part. Some developers were abusing the old functionality and showing obnoxious ads to users that the profile owner wasn't aware of, so, for better or worse, Facebook has deprecated the old tags.

Second, although after Facebook's change it is still possible to "hide" information from certain viewers, the data is only weakly hidden: If you view the source of the page, the data is still visible. So it would be possible to make it appear as though the information were only displayed to the appropriate parties, but even moderately knowledgeable users would be able to gain access to data they shouldn't see. Since there is no way to ensure proper security, I have simply removed the option of showing invite-only actions on the profile box. Yes, I know this sucks.

Actions can't do XYZ. Will it someday be able to do XYZ?

Perhaps. My goal is to make Actions genuinely useful to people, so if feature XYZ is something that would be really helpful to you, please let me know. I'll be back in school full-time starting in September, so I can't promise fast turnaround times, but I'll do my best to continually improve Actions based upon the feedback I get.

How should I send feedback?

The best way is probably to post to the discussion board. This way, you can see if other people have asked the same question or made the same suggestion before you bother posting something. You're also welcome to friend me.

General

Who created Actions?

Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock.

Isn't that a slightly presumptive and narcissistic FAQ?

Yes.

Why did you create Actions?

There are many reasons, but the primary reason is that I thought it would be useful to people. I've been involved with a lot of clubs throughout my time at college, and I have frequently found myself needing to remember to do a lot of little tasks or to ask others to do the same. I hope Actions will make this process slightly less cumbersome.

What does "Powered by The Open Planning Project" mean?

I developed Actions while interning at The Open Planning Project, a high-tech non-profit that builds technology to enhance the role of the citizen in democratic society. In short, they rock, and you should check them out.

Is Actions free software?

Yes. Actions is licensed under the GNU General Public License, meaning Actions' source code may be freely read, modified, and distrubuted under the terms of the GPLv3. All source code is publicly available via SVN.