Dear All,
We are pleased to have all the recent activity on the wiki. Giorgio has
continued to add a lot of wonderful Aroid pictures. Our Arisaema wiki page
continues to grow and we now have so many different species illustrated and
he is adding other Aroids too. Rodger Whitlock has added some very
interesting text and a lot of additional reference books on bulbs to our
Reference wiki page. Reading some of his comments since he gives his frank
opinions makes me smile. Jay Yourch has been adding to the Crinum pages
including many new hybrids and some wild species photographed in South
Africa by Cameron McMaster. We haven't quite had time to complete the Iris
page divisions, but will do so as we have time and are grateful to Jim
McKenney's new additions and are happy to welcome Max Withers as a new wiki
contributor. The more who contribute the more there is to share with all
those people who are eager to learn more.
Susan and I put in a lot of time almost every day on the wiki and this is a
heartfelt plea to please follow the instructions about using the wiki. When
we ask you to name the files a certain way it is so we can keep track of
them and when we ask you to resize them a certain way it is so people with
dial up connections and small screens can easily see them. If you follow
your own rules instead of ours it just means that we have to change what
you have done and that takes us time we could spend on something more
useful. I know that more and more people have high speed connections and
new computers and it is tempting to be able to send pictures that can be
seen to their best advantage so I understand the desire to do that. Please
just keep in mind that not everyone is equally fortunate in what they have.
I'm repeating these instructions from the upload file page :
Every image file of a plant should include the full genus name with the
first letter capitalized followed by an underscore and then the species
name in lower case, followed by a period and the file extension. Be sure
there are no spaces in your file name, no strange punctuation marks or
extra periods and to include the file extension (.jpg or .png). Because
image files on the wiki must be uniquely named, we prefer that you append
the name of your image with a number or your initials or a
location. Example: Brodiaea_elegans_JD.jpg This would be a way to name
John Doe's image of Brodiaea elegans. We used to be more permissive about
how you named your files, but as our list of wiki images gets longer and
longer it is difficult to keep them sorted when there are multiple ways of
writing them. Sorting when some have a hyphen, some have an underscore,
some have partial names, some have names that are written together does not
put the same species together.
Please try to keep your file size under 100 KB and the dpi (dots per inch)
resolution no more than 72 dpi. The picture should not be so large it
cannot be viewed on most screens without scrolling. This depends on the
picture, but a pixel guide is a maximum of 600 pixels wide. Height should
be no more than about 500 pixels. Some software programs have a 'save for
web' option which allows for quick downloading.
We sometimes don't take the trouble to change files that are a little out
of these requirements, especially when we are extremely busy. But when the
pixel size is way too large we either resize them or ask the person to
resize a picture following the guidelines and add it again. Both make extra
work for us.
Thanks so much to all of you for your cooperation in this.
Mary Sue