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Publishing & Updates

Publishing is the moment Symthink turns your private thinking into a public civic artifact.

In practice, publishing means: Symthink serializes your entire current Vision branch — including Ballot Research and every child under Vision — into (or over) your public Shared Vision page, then refreshes downstream experiences (Following activity, metrics, and citation analytics). Top-level tree cards outside Vision are not published.

Publishing and sharing controls live on Dashboard → Sharing (Manage Sharing).

The key idea: your Vision branch is the “public source of truth”

Symthink makes it safe to think in drafts while still enabling public accountability:

  • Your private tree on My Vision can be exploratory and incomplete (including cards outside Vision that never go public).
  • Your published Vision branch — the full branch — is what other people see, follow, and evaluate. You cannot publish part of Vision while keeping other Vision content private.

When you publish again, Symthink treats that as a new version of your public artifact.

What to expect when you publish

  • Shared Vision updates first: your public platform is refreshed to match your latest Vision branch.
  • Notifications follow: people who followed affected questions may see activity on Home → Following.
  • Metrics catch up: rankings and analytics may update after publishing (not necessarily instantly).

If you don't see an update immediately, it usually means the system is still processing background refresh work.

Switching civic area after publishing

Your civic area is the level on your Civic Ladder where your published Vision appears — it controls your leaderboard and regional Our Media Diet analytics.

  • Exploring (unranked): You can switch civic areas without a waiting period while you are not yet ranked on a leaderboard.
  • Ranked: Once you have a rank, you can switch again only after a 48-hour cooldown. Symthink warns you before you confirm a move.
  • What updates: Your Vision moves to the new leaderboard immediately; engagement percentages and regional media-diet data catch up shortly after the move.

Switch from Dashboard → Sharing → Manage Sharing or from the Civic Ladder screen.

See also: levels.md and metrics-ranking.md.

Manual publishing vs. auto-publish

Symthink supports two publishing styles:

  • Manual publishing: you decide when your public Vision changes (Manage Sharing on the Sharing tab).
  • Auto-update (opt-in): enable Auto-update public vision in Manage Sharing. Symthink refreshes your public Vision daily at 9am UTC.

The product point is control: civic thinking evolves, and you should be able to choose how “live” your public platform is.

A practical publishing checklist

  • Clarity: Can a reader follow your top-level structure without context?
  • Grounding: Did you attach citations where you're making factual claims?
  • Scope: Is everything under Vision — including Ballot Research — ready for the public to see?
  • Collaboration: Are you ready for suggestions and followers on the questions you published?