Pacific Iris and the wiki
Mary Sue Ittner (Wed, 09 Jun 2004 21:03:59 PDT)

Dear Debra and any other newbies,

All members of our list are invited to post pictures on the wiki of plants
they are growing or want help in identifying. There is sometimes a bit of a
learning curve for the wiki and we have attempted to write clear
instructions about how to use it which can be found on:
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Since the three of us who manage the wiki all can be a bit long winded and
we didn't want to leave anything out the instructions may make it sound
harder than it is. For all of you who know how to use it please disregard
the rest of this note.

Briefly, you need to name your file starting with the genus capitalized.
Iris in this case. This is followed by an underscore or a dash and the
species name. Adding your initials to the file name with an underscore is
also helpful in case someone else has named a picture with the name you
choose. There cannot be two files with the same name. Files need a .jpg
extension and should be easy to see without scrolling and 100 kb or less.
So you could name your mystery Iris, Iris_unknown_db.jpg . If it is
identified one of us can rename it later.

Then you upload your file to the wiki (there is an upload file page on our
photographs page and on our home page with instructions about how to do this).

Then you add the url of your uploaded file to a wiki page by editing that
page (left hand side bottom is the edit button) with some text. In this
case the Mystery Bulbs page:
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Then you save the page and let members of the list know that there is a
wiki page with your text and picture on it that you want everyone to see.

All of this is written about in greater detail on the first page referenced
above.

This is an article in Business Week (June 7, 2004) about wikis and how they
are web sites that anyone can edit and that they are transforming Corporate
America. In this article it mentions the Wikipedia which is a free online
encyclopedia where volunteers have created 500,000 articles in 50 languages
since 2001. It describes the appeal of a wiki as its speed and simplicity.
I expect that there are members of this group that might disagree with the
latter, but once you understand how to do it, it really is very easy. Our
pbs wiki can't compete with the Wikipedia, but we have created 346 wiki
pages and added a staggering number of pictures. At least it seems that way
to me.

We are very grateful to ibiblio for hosting our wiki. If any of you need
help with the wiki, contact me, Mark Wilcox, or Mark McDonough privately.

Mary Sue