Help:Contributions-Getting Started

This page can help new editors/contributors get started using Antwiki. There are some step-by-step guides to help you learn some basic editing tasks and a general overview of how Antwiki is organized. Click on any heading in the Table of Contents to jump directly to any section of this page.

Never Used Wiki Software?
You will not be able to make any edits unless you are signed in using your editor login information. Go here to see how to obtain an editor profile.

You can learn the most basic editor tasks - editing a page, uploading a file, and searching - by editing your user profile page. The next few sections will step you through this process but before you get started you should know:
 * Anyone that visits Antwiki will be able to see your profile.
 * Your profile page is different from most Antwiki pages. Only you can edit this page. Other pages can be changed by any editor.
 * If you do not like any changes you have made you can go back and edit your work.

"Search" for your Profile Page
There is a search box on the upper right side of every Antwiki page. You will see a box for entering text and two buttons - "Go" and "Search". If you enter the name of a page and click Go you will be taken directly to the page you named. If you enter a word or a few words and click search you will see a list of pages that include your search terms in their title or in their page content.

The name of your profile page is User:username. Type this in the search box (replace username with your profile name) and click on Go to be taken to your page.

Add Contact Information to your Profile
Name Address email
 * Go to your profile page (see above for instructions on how to get there).
 * On your profile page click on the "Edit" tab found on the upper right of the page.
 * Type in the following contact information:
 * Click the “Save page” button found on the bottom right of the page, just under the editing window.
 * You will now see the information you added on your profile page.

Add an Image to your Profile
Prepare a suitable jpg image file on your computer. A good photo size is ~ 300 pixels high and/or wide. Once this is ready.....

Upload the image
 * Click on the "Upload file" link, on the left side of any page, under the heading Toolbox.
 * Click on the "browse" button and select the image you have prepared as your source file.
 * Type your username in the "destination filename" box
 * In the summary field type in the following information:

your name


 * Click on the "Upload file" button on the bottom left side of the page.
 * A new page - File:yourname.jpg - is created. You should see this name at the top left side of the page in a large bold font. You should also see your picture on this page.

Insert the image into your profile page.
 * Click on your username, shown on the top right of any Antwiki page, to go to your user profile page.
 * On your profile page click on the "Edit" tab found on the upper right of the page.
 * You should see a framed window in the center of the page. Add the following in this edit window [[File:yourname.jpg]], replacing "yourname" with your username.
 * Click on the “Save page” button found on the bottom right of the page, just under the editing window.

You should now see your picture on your profile page.

Add Text to a Species Page
Go to the page for an ant species that you know well. Find this page by entering the binomial name in the search box on the top right side of any page and clicking on Go.

To add text click on the "Edit" tab found on the upper right hand side of the page. You will then see text contained in a boxed window in the center of the page. Don't worry about any strangely formatted text you see. Page headings are surrounded by "=" and look like this ==Biology== and ===Taxonomy===. Enter some new text under an appropriate heading and then click on the “Save page” or “Show preview” button (these are found on the bottom right of the page, just under the editing window).


 * "Show preview" will show you what the page will look like if you save the page. The preview is shown on the top of the page and the edit window is at the bottom of the page.


 * "Save page" does just what you expect. The page will now show the species page with your newly added changes.

What Next?
You now know enough to get started editing pages. You can learn more about specific editing tasks on the help pages or through looking at what is already done on existing pages (if you click edit on any existing page you will see how the page content is formatted).

There are many ways you can contribute to Antwiki. You can create new pages, edit named pages, add images to taxaboxes, contribute images, work on regional projects or start a new project.

The rest of the page gives a brief overview of Antwiki: it's design and how we envision it will be useful.

An Overview of Antwiki
The short and simple explanation

Species Pages
Antwiki is designed to build off of a solid foundation of a specific set of pages - a webpage for every species. There are other named pages too. Subfamilies, genera and more (e.g., synonyms). These name pages are already in place but need information and images added to them. We do ask that no new species pages be created. This will help with consistency of presentation across the site and also make Antwiki easier to use.

There is more detailed information about named pages here.

Regional Projects
A useful way to organize information about ants is through creating regional species lists. While this faunal list is of vital importance, there is much more to understanding the ants of a region. A regional project is a way to maintain a faunal list, with all the names linked to their respective species' pages, and include other information. The content created within the scope of a regional project will include aspects that are perhaps predictable (e.g., regional identification keys, or information about what keys exist and where to find them) and other areas that will only be limited by the imagination of our editors.

Other Projects
Antwiki allows editors to create as many new pages as they would like and these pages can be organized into projects other than a regional project. If you are working on a particular aspect or ant biology feel free to create a project that focuses on any topic. One example of a non-regional project is the Extinct Ant pages created by Gary Alpert.

Images
Besides text based information, Antwiki provides an opportunity for macro-photographing myrmecologists to revolutionize how the rest of the world perceives ants. Automontage images have already been a tremendous advance for ant identification and for presenting the beauty and variability of ant forms to the general public. Yet automontage images are limited to representing dead ants mounted on points. From the pioneering photography of Carl Rettenmeyer to the modern work of Alex Wild and Piotr Naskrecki we know there is much more to see and present with beautiful ant photographs. Antwiki can host automontage images, macro-photographs of living ants, ant nests, habit shots, etc.

Antwiki serves as a repository for all kinds of ant photographs, diagrams, videos and other visual medium. These media can be useful in named pages, and on other pages too (for example ritualised fighting). These media can be usefully organized using |categories.

Boundaries
Antwiki is designed to be managed with as few rules as possible. This does not imply anarchy holds sway or that there are no rules at all. Here are a few basics you should be aware of:


 * Editing/contributing to Antwiki
 * Editors are professional myrmecologists.
 * Management assumes editors will be reasonable, responsible and civil. No myrmecologist needs to prove they will behave well to become an editor but if you behave badly there can be repercussions.
 * Most pages can be changed by any editor. This means your work can be changed by others and you will have to be comfortable with that if you contribute.


 * Sharing, Fair Use and Copyright
 * Uploaded files, included images, will maintain the copyright you assign to them.
 * Text based information on Antwiki will likely shared with other websites, e.g., [EOL]. You should assume any text you add is likely to be shared under a creative commons license (insert link here).
 * There is no explicit permission granted for anyone to use Antwiki content elsewhere, for any purpose, unless that information or media is explicitly marked with an appropriate permission/copyright.


 * Named Pages
 * Management assumes responsibility for maintaining a taxonomically correct and up-to-date set of named pages (with our thanks to Barry Bolton for all his ant catalogue efforts).
 * Editors should not create new named pages.

Limitations?
This website is not specimen based nor is it designed to be run off of a database model. Depending on your particular perspective you may find this to be: wonderful or chilling, freeing or scary, etc. There are pluses and minuses for the approach we take here just as there are pluses and minuses to having a database driven site (e.g., [|Ants Down Under]. The big advantages to our approach includes the ability for the community of editors to create what they want and the overhead for managing the site is less resource intensive.

The kind of ant information and ant centric pages that can be created here are limited by what any of our editors want to create.

In Progress
'''Please do not delete the following. It is being edited/may be moved to other pages.'''

Species Pages
We believe Antwiki species pages will be most useful if information is consistently presented across all the named pages. For this reason we strongly encourage the use of a suggested set of subheadings (shown here Species Page Headings). There is another page that provides a brief explanation of the type of information that fits under each heading (found here Species Page Headings Explained. You can see how this is put into practice on these exemplary species pages xxx, xxx and xxx.

Many species pages are Stubs. This means they contain a minimal amount of content and some text that encourages editor contributions. If you add a significant amount of information to a species page or, in cases where not much is known except for the taxonomic work and you have added all of this information, please remove or appropriately change these hints and suggestions, as explained |here

Go to the Named Pages section to learn about why we discourage the creation of new species pages.

Genus Pages
There are 300 valid, extant genera and each generic name has its own page. Adding text or photos to a page is easy if you are familiar with wiki software or, if you have never contributed to a wiki, will not take much effort to learn the basic means of editing (=contributing) to a page. For a quick overview of how to edit a page, visit Simple Editing Basics.

We believe Antwiki species pages will be most useful if information is consistently presented across all the named pages. For this reason we strongly encourage the use of a suggested set of subheadings (shown here Genus Page Headings). You can also take a look at these exemplary genus pages xxx, xxx and xxx.

Go to the Named Pages section to learn about why we discourage the creation of new genus pages.

Regional Lists
Gary Alpert has created a list of species for every country (the country list is based on the UN list of recognized countries). In many cases these lists are preliminary, at best. We encourage anyone that has specialized knowledge of the ant fauna for a country to edit the relevant country list to reflect our best understanding of what species occur there.

Lists and other regional project pages can also be created and are only limited by our editors interests (see the next section, Other Pages, to see how to create new pages). Divisions within countries, collections of countries or really any set of species can be created.

Creating New Pages
You are free to create new pages about any subject related to ants and their biology, with one caveat. We do not encourage the creation of new named (genus, species, etc.) pages, as discussed here.. Creating new pages is easy, as explained here Make a New Page.

Named (Species, Genera, Etc.) Pages
A named page exists for all valid ant names. These names are based on Barry Bolton's Catalogue, which is kept up to date in unpublished documents that are Barry graciously shares with us. Antwiki management policy provides for the administrators to keep these pages current to reflect newly published taxonomic work. Antwiki is also committed to maintaining a single page for each name across the various relevant Formicidae ranks (species, genus, etc.), with some special exceptions. From this management policy Antwiki discourages the creation of additional named pages. Our intention in creating this policy reflects a number of considerations. It is easier to find relevant information about a particular species (or other rank specific name) if that information is found on one page. The named species pages also serve as an important foundation for Antwiki. Other pages can be created about any other topic related to ants but many of these will include links to named pages. By having a single named page there is no confusion about what page to link too and no need to have to search for the true canonical page for a name.

One of the most common reason someone might want to initially create a new page for a species is to add information related to a regional species-list or regional project. If you would like to add name specific information for a particular region this can be done by adding a subheading under the biology section, as shown here and here.