Guidelines

Become a Contributor

To become a contributor, click "Create Account" on the upper right hand side of the page, and send an email introducing yourself to webmaster Kevin Robertson including your user ID and real name. Contributors unknown to the webmaster will not be retained. It is suggested that you make the user ID short (e.g., your initials) as it will be used to cite contributions with a link to your contributor page, explained below.

Overview

Contributions to Coastal Plain Plants can be made in various ways:

1) Edit pages directly using the guidelines below.

2) Request a plant species form as a Word (docx) file, edit the form and submit to Kevin Robertson for incorporation into the website.

3) Submit other sources of information, such as notes or spreadsheets containing relevant data about plants, for incorporation into the website.

4) Volunteer to be interviewed about your knowledge on certain plants by contacting Kevin Robertson.

Editing

Coastal Plain Plants uses a Wikimedia platform, the same as used for Wikipedia. To edit pages, login, then click the "Edit" tab or and of the "Edit" hyperlinks on pages. After editing, click the "Save Page" button at the bottom. If you are not familiar with editing in Wikimedia, a good place to start is this tutorial. Many more sophisticated commands can be searched online. Some basic commands are:

''italic'' (use for plant species binomials)

'''bold'''

'''''bold italic'''''

=Heading=

==Subheading==

===Sub-subheading===

Contributors are encouraged to use the default headings for plant species pages, but additional headings can be added as needed, e.g. Roots and Clonal Reproduction, Allelopathy, Human Uses, etc.

pipe "|" divider: SHIFT + BACKSLASH

: single indent

:: double indent, etc.

Adding a thumbnail:

Link to an external source: Example: [http://plants.usda.gov NRCS Plants Database] The part after the space is what will appear as a hyperlink: NRCS Plants Database

Citing Contributions

Contributions should always be cited, but they can be cited in various ways.

Cite by Contributor user name

To site observations by the contributor, type the user name in double brackets, e.g. [[DDG]]. This will create a link to a page that is not yet created, so it will appear as a red hyperlink after the page is saved and you are in Read view. If you click on this hyperlink, you will be prompted to edit the new page that has your user name as the title. To set up a template for this page, type or paste {{subst:Template:Contributor}} in the editing area. After saving the page, this will create a template where you can fill in with information about yourself so that people may know who made the contribution. This page can include links to a personal or professional web page where contact information may be more secure.

After your Contributor page is created, typing your user name in double brackets will create a function link to that page.

Cite literature using Author-Date form

Simply cite the author(s) and date in parentheses, e.g. (Smith and Blackburn 1994), and write or paste the full reference in alphabetical order under the "References and Notes" section.

If a reference is going to be used frequently on different pages, it can be made into a template. For example, type {{Template:Smith and Blackburn 1994}}. After the page is saved, this will appear as a red hyperlink. If you click that hyperlink, it will bring you to a new page to bed edited. Type in the full reference and save the page. Afterwards, any time you write {{Template:Smith and Blackburn 1994}} in the References section, the full reference will appear after you save the page.

Cite literature using the <ref> function

As typically done in Wikipedia, citations can be made so that they show only a hyperlinked superscript number in the text linking to a footnote at the bottom of the page. For a single reference, type <ref> followed by the reference text and then </ref>. This will place the reference text at the end of the page in order of citation.

If the reference is going to be referenced several times on that page, you can type <refname=Smith and Blackburn 1994> then type the citation text followed by </ref>. Every time the reference is cited afterward, just type <refname=Smith and Blackburn 1994> and it will link to the same full reference at the bottom of the page. However, it is only good for that page.

Cite with links to other pages

As described above, links to other pages can be inserted. For example, typing ([http://plants.usda.gov NRCS]) will appear as NRCS linked to the USDA NRCS database.

If the same webpage is cited multiple times, text can be cited using the Author-Date form described above, e.g. (USDA NRCS 2015), and provide the link with the full citation under the References and Notes section.

Add images

To add an image, it first has to be uploaded. To upload an image, click on Main Page in the sidebar menu, and under Tools click Upload file and follow the instructions. If the file is too large then it will not allow the image to be uploaded. In that case, the image size will need to be reduced in another software application before uploading. When uploading, note whether or not the format indicator "JPG" is in lowercase or uppercase letters, as references made to the image later are case-sensitive.

The simplest command for adding an image has the format [[Image:image_name.JPG]]. However, that does not specify the size or location. More specific commands can be made separated by pipes (|), for example [[Image:image_name.JPG|thumb|left|image caption]], which specifies that it is a thumbnail justified to the left with the caption "image caption". For more guidance, see Wikipedia's image tutorial.

Add a new plant species page

• Navigate to the Plant Species page, where the plant species binomials are listed in alphabetical order.
• Start editing.
• In the correct alphbetical location, add a link using the name of the new species in double brackets, e.g. [[Dyschoriste oblongifolia]].
• Save the page, and the link appears as a red hyperlink.
• Select the hyperlink, and you will be brought to the new page with the plant's name as the title.
• Type or paste the command {{subst:Template:PlantName}} to bring in the template text.
• Save the page and begin editing

The new page will include a "Taxobox", which is a template for creating the box with the plant name, image, taxonomy, and distribution. The Taxobox will need to be edited. To fill in the Taxobox you will need:

• Uploaded image for the species
• Taxonomic information for the plant, which can be obtained from the NRCS Plants Database or other updated reliable source.
• Uploaded image for the distribution of the species. Most pages so far have used images screen-saved from the NRCS Plants Database.