Help:Contents
Help nurture this site and watch it grow the following ways:
- Tell a friend!
- Link to this site!
- Edit or add a page!
- How to edit a plant article!
- Upload a photo!
- Become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!
Seriously though, the biggest help you can provide at this point besides actually editing and adding to articles is getting the word out. A wiki site grows as new users discover it and start making edits over time - so the more users the better the site. If you have a website or even a myspace/facebook page, make sure to list this as one of your favorite sites, and share it with your friends and neighbors. Thanks!
How to find what you need
To find a plant, just type in the common name, or scientific name in the search box on the left and click on go. It should either bring up the plant you're interested in, or in some cases a list of plants that go by the same name. Plants are usually listed by scientific groupings of all the species of a genera. To put it simply, all four species of clivia are listed on the clivia page, from which you can click on the separate species articles. In some cases, when a plant is very widely known by a single common name, the plant is listed under that name.
How to read an article
First the entire genus (eg. Muscari) is described, along with how to grow them, then the individual species (eg. Muscari armeniacum) are listed with some of their particular features. You can click on the species name in the list to go to the article specifically about that species of the plant. Wherever possible, zone information, plant height, width, and other information is provided for each species at the top of the article. If it's missing, you can click the edit tab at the top of the page and add it.
Editing and uploading
User accounts
Before following the editing/uploading instructions below, you must have a user account. Accounts are completely free, but you must now request one by email. Just send a note to raffi@ followed by the name of this website (gardenology.org) and include the username you'd like to request. Sorry for the extra step, but it helps to maintain a high quality of information as well as eliminate spam. Anyone can get an account if they are willing to follow the Help:Editing guidelines!
Even without a user account, you can add your comments to the bottom of any plant or garden article. There is a comment section that doesn't require any registration, so you can share your thoughts with the click of a mouse.
How to edit an article
Editing a page is very simple. Just click on the "Edit" tab on top of virtually every page, type what you need to, and click save! If there are formatting issues, don't worry too much about those, someone else can fix the formatting issues, and you'll quickly pickup what you need to when it comes to that yourself. For a quick intro see Help:Editing Some of the text is rather scientific and heavy, that's because of the source it came from. Here we are striving for a more readable and accessible text, so don't be intimidated at all to write in your own style, and to jump in and help rewrite the heavier text to simplify it and narrow it down to a gardeners needs.
How to upload a photo
To upload a photo, just go to Special:Upload - and make sure you include the source for the photo (if it's yours, say so), so that we know it's ok to include on this site. If you don't have your own photo, there are a bunch of places on the web you can find some that we are allowed to use here. See: Photo Sources. If you have hundreds of photos you need to upload, please let Raffi know. There are streamlined ways to batch upload photos for heavy uploaders.
The work to be done
For very detailed information on how to edit a plant article, see Help:How to edit a plant article.
The focus
This wiki is dedicated to information on gardening and growing plants. The difference between an article here, and one on Wikipedia therefore is that this site will tell you about the plant, what it's like, how to grow it, how to propagate it, how to keep it healthy and happy, all the important cultivars, etc. Wikipedia will tell you things like its history, uses, how many tons of it are produced in Brazil, etc. All of this is useful information, but which site(s) you visit to learn about the plant will depend on what you want to know about it. So on this site, the focus needs to stay on target, so that all of the information about the plant stays on focus. Same goes for articles about composting, grafting, etc. This site needs to tell you exactly what you need to know as a gardener to accomplish these tasks. You can see a comparison between the sites here.
What's been done
A fair number of articles have already been added, with information from many places, including some free license sources, copyright information with permission, rewritten and new material, etc.
What needs to be done
Many of these existing article need a strict rewrite keeping in mind the focus above. Many also need a lot of information added to them, like zones, heights, origins, etc. So if you see an article that needs work that you can help on, take a stab at it, this is a wiki after all. You cannot break it, and everything can be undone with the click of a mouse.
Sources
There are many great plant encyclopedias out there with ideal information for this site. The text must be reworded if it is copyright, but other than that the information in it is perfect for use here. You can use any material you like without restriction from sites with a Creative Commons license such as Wikipedia.org, just make sure there is a link back to the page you got the information from. If you can get permission from other sites to use their copyright materials, that's also ideal. Any photo in the Wikimedia commons can be used here, and in fact you don't even need to upload it here, just use the photo filename as you would with any other photo on this site.
For very detailed information on how to edit a plant article, see Help:How to edit a plant article.
Referencing
Always, always reference your sources of information! This cannot be emphasized enough. For a wiki to be a reliable source, the information it contains must come from reliable sources. So the following policy stands:
When adding any material or information, please add a reference to the source at the relevant spot, by adding the name or link of a source in between the reference tags like this: <ref>Name of book or URL</ref>. It will automatically be referenced in the reference section of the page. If you do not include this reference, your material can be immediately removed as unreliable. Your first-hand knowledge or experience with plants can be added in the comments section below an article, where it will not be confused with the reference article text itself.
Gardenology.org Merchandise
We have some goodies available for Gardenology.org fans who want to help spread the word. These are priced exactly at cost, they're just being made available to help spread the good word!