Help:Add species account information

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Even if you are not a bird expert you can collect the information from free sources and format it for these pages. If you're knowledgable your help will be very valuable in improving this information. Some of these resources are listed at Information resources.

The fastest way to learn is just start doing it and look at other pages for examples. Otherwise here are some instructions. It helps if you can have several windows open at once in your browser so you can move between different sources. An alternative is to copy the content into an external editor, merge it together into the existing format, then copy it to the WikiBird page and save it. There is a references section to add links to the original information. Currently size measurements and images are used from Wikipedia but not from Patuxent since they are likely from a non-free source. At any time you can use the "Show preview" to see what it's going to look like.

Steps:

  1. Open the species account and source material in separate windows
  2. In the resource pages drill down to the family and species to be added.
  3. In the WikiBird page the links for the common name and the scientific names will be red if the pages don't yet exist. When you click on either of them their edit page will appear. There are instructions for creating the pages here.
  4. If there is an image available from Wikipedia click on the image to bring up the image page. Sometimes you may have to go to the Wikimedia Commons description page.
    1. Save the image to your computer by right clicking on the image and selecting the "Save Image". Shift-click may also work to save the image.
    2. Edit the Wikipedia image page to copy the description and licensing of the page. Don't copy the category part becuase it's probably not applicable to the WikiBird site. Usually any embedded templates in the description are already on WikiBird but if not you can track them down and add them to Wikibird.
    3. Upload the image to WikiBird by going to a WikiBird window in your browser and select Upload File from the menu on the left of the page. If it doesn't show there it may be under Special Pages.
    4. In the Upload page use browse to locate the saved image on your computer. In the description paste the image description you copied in the step above.
    5. Add the image page name into the species page in an image link. There may be one there already that is commented. If not the link looks like [[Image:TheImageName.jpg|thumb|250px|right|YourTitle]]. Remove the comment part if it is there. The image descripion may already be set to "Adult" and need to be changed to something appropriate. # Fill in the other species account sections with the text combined from the information sources. If there's no text then you can just leave it as is. #* Use the size if available from Wikipedia. Use the units conversion website mentioned above to list both inches and cm. #* Fieldmarks: Highlight the "Adult:" and similar parts of the text with '''<nowiki>'''Adult:'''.
    • Sounds: Not very many of the Wikipedia pages have text for the sound. If you have any sound files of birds you can upload them and link to the uploaded file here.
    • Fill in any information you have for similar species, feeding & behavior, habitat & nesting, or range sections.
    • Since the range map may be different for various regions it is passed as a template parameter from either the common name page or a regional bird page. Refer to the instructions for those pages for passing the range map.
    • References: You can reference the page where you got the material. For instance for the Wikipedia page I add: *[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mute_Swan Wikipedia].
  5. Save the page

Editing the common name page

  1. Go to the WikiBird family page and click on the common name to go to the new page. Click on the "edit" tab to edit the page. If the link was red then no page existed and it will be in edit mode already. To create the page see the instructions here.
  2. If the Patuxent page has a BBS or CBC map that can be used for a range map until a better method is found that is compatible with the open document type of license. If there are both maps Photoshop or Gimp can be used to combine them. Gimp is an image editor like Photoshop but is free. The process takes about 30 minutes so it's labor intensive at this point. If there is only one of the maps then just use that image and label it as winter or summer range.
    1. Select the map link then right click to get the menu and save it.
    2. Upload the image as was done above and copy the image name.
    3. Paste the image name in the top line and add the rangemap template parameter so it look like the following but using your own genus species and image name:
      • {{:Dendrocygna autumnalis|rangemap=[[Image:Black bellied whistling duck bbs.gif|left|250px|thumb|<center>North America breeding range</center>]] }}
    4. If there is no range map then I usually just add the rangemap parameter like
      • {{:Dendrocygna autumnalis|rangemap=}}
  3. Save the page
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