Click on "Register" at the top right to create a user profile. You will be asked to provide a valid e-mail address and to set a password. In addition, you will need to define a user name, which will then also appear in the comments. It is possible to enter a pseudonym as a user name. After you have registered, you will receive an email with a confirmation link. Please click on it to confirm the authenticity of your e-mail. You can then log in with the profile information you've provided.

Initiators can set their projects as private, to which only certain people can participate to. If you receive an email with an invitation to such project, click on "Accept invitation". If you are already registered on KOSMO, you only need to log in and you can then view the private project. If you are not yet a user on KOSMO, you need to register now (as explained in the previous step). When you confirm your email, you will again see the invitation to the private project on KOSMO.

Click on "log in" in the top right-hand corner to log in as a user. You will need your user name or e-mail address and the and your password.

If you have been invited to participate, the organisation link will take you to its page.

Scrolling down a bit, you will find all projects on the organisation start page. By clicking on "Join in" you can participate in the project. In the project's tile, you will see the remaining days to participate.

Depending on the modules used in the project, you can comment, create ideas or rate other people's comments and ideas. You can activate notifications for the project via the "Follow" function. This way you will always be informed about the current status of the discussion. The notifications can be deactivated at any time at the same place.

The tab in the upper right corner takes you to "My settings". There you can change your username, upload a profile picture, eidt your password, and more.

Our moderators are supported in their work by an artificial intelligence (AI). Using a machine learning algorithm, it can automatically recognise communication patterns in comments and then suggest them to our moderators for processing. The AI is trained on the following three communication patterns:

• The recognition of toxic communication content: With KOSMO, we want to provide a cooperative and protected discussion space. Accordingly, there is no place for any form of hate and agitation in our discussions. Our AI supports moderators in recognising incivil forms of communication such as insults, vulgarity, discrimination and discrediting as quickly as possible, moderating them and, if necessary, and removing them from our platform.
  
• The detection of valuable communication content: Our AI supports our moderators in picking up aspects of particularly successful comments and making them useful for the discussion. It therefore draws the attention of moderators to comments that particularly meet so-called "deliberative standards". These include respectful and well-founded comments, additional information and suggestions for solutions as well as empathetic comments or those that describe (discourse-related) individual experiences. Since valuable communication content is partly a subjective category, our AI was subjected to several evaluation steps. This ensures that the AI is in line with scientific findings as well as with the expectations of moderators and users in reality.
  
• The detection of factual claims: Additional information and sources can enrich an online9 discussion. They can help participants to understand points of view and to form their own opinion based on the information. However, false information is also widely spread. We would like to reverse this by helping the moderation team to identify when stated facts need accountability.
  

The AI is a tool that is used as a first step in the moderation process selecting comments. It is intended to provide a better overview of the discussion and to facilitate the prioritisation of moderation issues so that our moderators can process your comments in a timely manner. However, no moderation decision will be made without human supervision: All comments will still be read by our moderators.

First things first: we appreciate you taking the time to contribute to the discussion. If you want to share your own point of view on a topic, please make sure that you do so in a respectful tone. Make your point of view understandable to others! It is also desirable if you give us some insight into how you arrived to your idea or opinion: what experiences did you have that influenced you? What additional information (in the form of newspaper articles, facts or expert knowledge) led you to take this position? This information not only helps other participants to better understand your point of view, it is also scientifically proven to increase your chances of being heard, facilitating empathy and acceptance of differing opinions. A shared culture of listening is of particular concern to us. That is why there is room for many forms of listening on our platform: in addition to writing your own comments, every factually critical or approving reply comment, every up-and-down vote is an important contribution to advancing the discussion. At the end of the discussion there should be a jointly developed solution: suggestions for solutions and compromises are also an important building block on the way to a common good oriented outcome of the discussion.

In KOSMO, discussions are supported by an Artificial Intelligence (AI). The AI can help the moderators to stay on track and keeping an overview of the ongoing process. That way, the moderation can better focus on your ideas, suggestions, and experiences you want to share. But how does that work?

In recent years, research has made great progress in automatically identifying all kinds of content in online discussion and social media, for example discrimination, sexism, or other forms of hate speech. In KOSMO, we can build on that scientific knowledge and integrate a state-of-the-art AI that has been trained on huge amounts of data. But you can help the AI to get even better! With your personal feedback, you feed the AI with new information on what are valuable or even harmful contributions to KOSMO. This way, the AI gets smarter and smarter with every user and every discussion!