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From WikiBird
The Wiki Guide to Birds
A free and non-commercial guide about birds and birding where anyone can contribute, explore birding hotspots or keep track of rare species in a region. You can share a favorite birding spot or topic by adding descriptions, bird lists, or images for that subject.
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Regional guides
The regional guides contain information for an area such as local hotspots, maps, recent sightings, lists of species with links to the species accounts, and just about anything else useful for birdwatching. For an example see the guide for the Rio Grande Valley.
Species accounts
General species information such as field marks and habitat description are shared between regional species accounts. This allows the general information to be maintained in a central place so when it is updated all the regions will benefit. For example, a species account from an Oregon guide would share this data with a species account for a Texas guide but also include region specific data such as where and when the species is found in Oregon. To see this look at the difference between the Tamaulipas Crow for the Rio Grande Valley and the general Tamaulipas Crow page.
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General articles
In the Topics section are articles on Equipment, references material, and a Guide to Bird Pages. Others will be added as the site grows.
Watchlists & Email notifications
You can add pages to a watchlist to keep track of page changes. Preferences can also be set so an email will be sent to the user when the pages change. So, for example, if you want to track recent bird sightings in the Rio Grande Valley you can add that page to your watchlist and be notified when a sighting is updated.
Indices & categories
There are various indices that are automatically maintained by putting each page in one or more categories. These can be used by selecting the category links at the page bottom or the index links on the main page. There are indices for the common species names, the scientific names, the regional lists and guides, the recent sightings pages, and more.
User pages
When you create an account you are given a personal page where you can put information that doesn't fit in an article but you would like it to be available to visitors. There is also an associated discussion page where visitors can leave you a message. You will get a message notification on the next logon.
Quick start to editing
To edit you must first create an account and logon (see the upper right part of the screen). Then go to the page and select the "Edit" tab. Enter your text and save by selecting the "Save page" button at the bottom. Some pages have "section" edit links on the right of the page that can be used to edit just a section of the page. With each page there is a discussion page selected by the "Discussion" tab. This can contain any related information that is not suitable for the article page, such as discussion about the page maintenance. The Sandbox is a page where you can experiment with editing.
To create a new page first go to the page where you want to create a link to your page, select the edit tab, and enter a link by typing your chosen page title surrounded by double square brackets like [[Put your new page title here]]. When you save that page there will be a red-colored link you can click on to edit the new page.
You can format your text in various ways by adding special markings. To learn these you can visit the editing overview page or you can find examples of how to do formatting by going to another page and using the edit tab to look at how it's done there. You can cancel those edits by using the "Cancel" link or just by exiting the page. To find out more about how the species account pages are laid out visit the Editing Help or the Community Portal. Also there are some help resources listed below. In order to keep this a free site it is important that no copyrighted works should be submitted without permission.
Learning about the site
The Community Portal contains information and discussions about the WikiBird site. Any topic that isn't about birds or birding is located there.
Obtaining help
The help pages contain information about using WikiBird. You can also send your questions by email or, if you are logged on, there is the help desk where questions can be left. If it's a bird related question you can add it to the Reference Desk.
Suggestions or comments
I would love to hear your comments, whether good, bad, short, or long. Is this site useful? How can it be made more useful? What kind of potential, if any, do you see for it? Send an email or if you are logged on you can edit my discussion page or the suggestions page. If you would like help starting a bird guide to a different region let me know and I'll get you started. If you have ideas about starting a wiki guide on another subject send me a note.
Tim Whitehouse
Wiki Administrator
