CommonYard words, explained

CommonYard has a few words of its own. Here is what each one means, in the order you are likely to meet them.

CommonYard: A free social app for taking part together: polls, sides, petitions, swipeys, games, yards and chat. It runs in any browser at commonyard.app. Sometimes written Common Yard.
The Yard: The whole of CommonYard — and the home list of posts people take part in, under the HOME door. A post shared with the whole Yard can be seen by anyone on CommonYard.
Yard: A community inside CommonYard (written with a small y): a school, a church or mosque, a family, a team, a group of friends. Each yard has its own posts, chat, events and the people who run it. See Find and join a yard.
School yard: A yard for a school. It comes with Practice, for revising school work.
Faith yard: A yard for a church, a mosque or any faith group. It comes with the devotional (a word for the day), the prayer wall (the yard’s prayer requests, and a way to ask) and this week (service and meeting times).
General yard: A yard for anything else — friends, a team, a neighbourhood, a family. Just the yard and its chat.
Open yard: A public yard: anyone can find it under Find a yard and look inside before joining. Its owner decides who gets in: anyone with the link, people an admin approves, or nobody new for now.
The bar: The row at the bottom of the app: HOME (the Yard, or the yard you are in), CHAT (your chats), GAMES (play) and YOU (your profile), with a round + beside it for making a post. Inside a yard the bar adds PRACTICE in a school yard or FAITH in a faith yard.
Your yards: The yards you’re in, together on the sky at the top of HOME: the one you’re reading in the middle, with a ring. Tap another to bring it to the middle, and the posts below follow. CommonYard, the whole Yard, is one of them. Find a yard stands beside them.
Post: Pictures, a video or just words, shared with the whole Yard or with one of your yards. A post can ask people to do one thing: vote in a poll, take a side, talk it through, swipe your pictures, sign a petition or play a game. See Make a post.
Poll: A question with two to four choices, in words, pictures or both. The choices fill in like a bar chart as people vote, and the card says when the poll closes — in a day, three days, a week, or never.
Opinion: A post people take sides on, in one of seven forms — a hot take, a confession, a question, pick a side, a prediction, story time or a debate — each with three sides worded to fit, like Agree, Not sure and Disagree. It can be posted anonymously. See Weigh in and Take a side.
Petition: A post asking someone to act. People choose a side and then press and hold to sign. Signatures are private: the petition shows how many signed and how the sides split, never who.
Hold to sign: How a petition is signed on CommonYard: choose your side, then press and hold Hold to sign until it fills. Letting go early signs nothing, so a name is never added by an accidental tap.
Swipey: A run of pictures with one question, judged one at a time — swipe left or right. The post says what left and right mean. A post with two or more pictures becomes a swipey.
Notice: A message at the top of a yard, set by the people who run it, for everyone in the yard to see.
Announce to the yard: Sends one post to every member of a yard. The people who run a yard can do it once a day.
Owner, admin and mod: The people who run a yard. The owner made it (or was handed it); admins and mods help run it, and can take down posts that don’t belong there.
Your people: Your friends on CommonYard: whoever came in through a link you shared, or whose link you took. They are listed on your profile. See Bring your friends in.
Rounds, solo and teams: The doors of the GAMES page: PLAY ALONE for solo games and their halls of fame; ROUNDS to play hosted rounds with other people, live or later; TEAMS for Troll War, Sasabonsam, yard games and games with friends; and HALL OF FAME for every board in one place.
Hall of fame: Each game’s board of champions and best scores. The HALL OF FAME door on the games page holds them all.
Penalty Flick: A solo game: flick the ball past a keeper who walks from post to post and gets faster the longer you play. A save or a miss costs one of your three lives. You play for a country — about seventy to choose from, Ghana first.
Hot Potato: A solo game: pass the potato around a ring of game characters before it burns you. It gets hotter every round.
Troll War: A battle of comebacks between two corners — one against one, or teams. The crowd’s reactions are the score, and the side with more when the clock runs out wins. See Play Troll War.
Squad Trivia: A trivia game for yards, under TEAMS → Yard games.
Practice: A school yard’s bank of past and practice questions to revise with, by level, course and topic, timed or untimed, 5 to 50 at a time. See past questions for University of Ghana courses.
Points: Credits for taking part: a post earns 20, finishing a game 15, joining a yard 10, signing a petition 8, voting 5, answering a question 5, a reply 4 and a reaction 1. Points are not cash.
Streak: The number of days in a row you have done something on CommonYard.
Freeze: Covers one missed day so your streak doesn’t break. Every seventh day in a row banks one, and you can hold two.
Ladder: A yard’s weekly ranking by this week’s points. It starts over every Monday.
Level: How the Yard sees you, moved up by everything you do — a post most, a reaction least. It is never a score and never cash.
Impact and contribution: Two figures on your profile. Impact is what other people did with the things you made; contribution is what you did with things other people made. Both start again on the 1st of every month.
RateYourSociety: Ghana’s public-opinion platform, started in June 2023 by the same founder. It lives inside CommonYard and shares its accounts. Often shortened to RYS.
Ghana’s Mood: RateYourSociety’s own page, at rateyoursociety.com: how Ghana feels, in live reactions.
Weigh in: The choice on the post screen for an opinion. Pick one of seven forms — Hot Take, Confession, Question, Pick a Side, Prediction, Story Time or Debate — and the three sides people choose from are worded to fit. See Weigh in.
Anonymous: An opinion posted without a name: it shows a mask and Anonymous instead of a name and photo. Only opinions can be posted this way. See Post anonymously.
Troll: A post that puts its host — or a school, a team, a business, an event — up for a friendly roast, on rules the host sets: what’s off limits, the heat (Mild, Hot or Shito), the shots each and how long it’s open. See Start a troll.
Shot: A reply on a troll post. The crowd laughs 😂 at the shots that land, and the one with the most laughs when it closes is crowned. The host can stamp a favourite (GOT ME or HOST’S PICK), clap back, or give a shot a RED CARD. See Take a shot at a troll.
Series: Posts in parts — part 1, part 2, part 3 — kept together on a page of their own. Followers can be reminded a day and an hour before the next part. See Post a series, and follow one.
What you made: The page, under YOU, that holds everything you posted and every game you made, each with Edit and Delete, and the controls for your games. It replaced Your studio. See What you made.
Sub yard: A smaller yard inside a yard — a hall, a class, the choir — with its own posts, chat and admins. Its members are all members of the yard it’s in. See Sub yards.
Study materials: The shelf under PRACTICE in a school yard: slides, notes and past papers the yard’s admins upload for members to download. See Share and download study materials.
Sasabonsam: A game for groups: everybody hides in the yard, and every round Sasabonsam searches one place. The last one hiding sees the sunrise. See Play Sasabonsam.
Clips: The videos on CommonYard, played one after another, full screen. Press and hold a clip for its menu, or hold an edge to play at 2×. See Watch clips.
Hidden posts: The page, under Settings → Help & legal, that keeps every post you hid, with Show again beside each. See Find the posts you hid.