BugwoodWiki:About

From BugwoodWiki

The purpose of the BugwoodWiki is to provide a source of reliable information for homeowners, scholars, industry professionals, and researchers. Despite the considerable merits of Wikipedia, it is unlikely that it will gain the full support of the academics and professionals due to its open nature. However, "wiki" technology does provide great promise in it's ability to centrally consolidate information, promote collaborative writing, and provide a channel of authoritative information for academics, extension personnel, and industry professionals as well as the general public.

By developing a specialist site we hope to develop a mechanism of appropriate peer review for all articles and to restrict contributors to qualified individuals. This will allow articles to achieve academic status for referencing purpose and ground the content solidly in the knowledge base of the discipline.

To make this resource as dynamic and useful to as many audiences as possible, BugwoodWiki provides tools to:

• Allow collaboration on the creation of fact sheets and other information sources with accommodations made to make sure individuals are credited for their contribution
• Provide easy, open access to the Bugwood Image Database System so the images and information can be used in the creation of Wiki articles
• Provide easy portability of the Wiki articles to other formats including: other websites, publications, AgAlerts, and factsheets. Special emphasis is placed on maintaining proper citations for both images and the Wiki Articles

Who can edit BugwoodWiki?

BugwoodWiki Scholars are users who have been given permission to edit and create articles in this wiki. To qualify as a Scholar, you must have experience, education, or training specific to the articles you plan to edit.

Examples of individuals who qualify as BugwoodWiki Scholars include:

• Graduate students
• Faculty and Staff of Educational Institutions
• Industry Professionals

If you wish to become a BugwoodWiki Scholar so that you can contribute to wiki articles, please contact the Bugwood Network Staff or a BugwoodWiki Bureaucrat to receive permission to edit articles. You may also look at our current events to find a project leader in an area you are interested in. General requests to become a BugwoodWiki Scholar can be sent to the Bugwood Webmaster.

What constitutes authorship?

To edit articles in the BugwoodWiki, you must be a BugwoodWiki Scholar. Even then, the BugwoodWiki system 'does not' automatically assign authorship. We leave this upto the site contributors to assign on the various articles. If you make a significant contribution to an article, you should be listed as an author.

Examples of significant contributions include:

• adding a section to article
• improving a section of an article to be more complete

Examples of non-signficant contrubutions include:

• correcting spelling and punctuation
• minor revisions of grammar

This will be an evolving definition as this project develops. We believe most people have a basic understandig of ethics in science and there will be few (if any) disputes over authorship.

Standardizing the author line

The standard Author line (in WikiText) for BugwoodWiki articles is:

''Authors: [[User:USERNAME]], [[ORGANIZATION]]''

• The double single quotes ('') at the begining and end will put the text in italics.
• The USERNAME is whatever username you entered when you made your account. Using the [[User:USERNAME]] will link to your personal page on the BugwoodWiki.
• [[ORGANIZATION]] will link to the page for your institution or company. From that page, visitors can find out a little bit of information on the organization access links to different departments and units.