How to contribute

How to help

Oceancyclopedia is built by scientists, undergrad to emeritus, like you, and there are tons of ways to help!

If you're interested in getting involved but not sure where to start, we'd recommend joining our email list by filling out our interest form: OceanWiki Interest Form. We'll keep you updated with emails, high priority orphaned pages, wiki 'hackathons', sections in need of curators, or whatever else comes up. Emails will be infrequent!

Contribute to a page

Each page was written by a human expert on the topic. If there's a topic you feel qualified to speak on, or have been interested in recently, contribute to it! You can edit existing pages or start a new one. There are currently tons of blank pages, which we hope will help prompt content. Any red link is an uncreated page waiting for someone to take it on, and if you're interested in it, that person could be you.

If you need to upload an image or some sort of media, use Upload a file, then reference it in your text as [[imageName.png|thumb|caption]].

Hierarchy of contribution

Generally, the content on each page was written by the Page authors. Each page was curated by the Responsible curator, who may have also reached out to authors to ask for their contributions. If you are interested in being a curator, please contact the section curator or one of the main website admins for assistance and more information. If you're interested in authoring a page, go for it! If you would like support, please feel free to add tags next to your name as page author (e.g., 'Need coauthor', 'Undergrad', 'Junior author'), or reach out to the section curator.

Making your user page

When adding yourself as an author or curator, it would be great to also create your own user page (so that your name shows up as blue instead of red). If you have an ORCiD ID, please include that information on your user page so that readers can learn more about the author's background.

Lexicon

Contribute a definition! These, ideally, are a paragraph or less, and could include graphics. It is totally fine, and even good, to contribute a definition that (kindly) conflicts with a pre-existing one and to highlight disagreements or inconsistent usage of terminology.

Data wiki

See Data wiki template for a blank template to use for new page generation.

Model wiki

See Model wiki template for a blank template to use for new page generation.

Organization

When making a new category for the Breadcrumbs extension, you must create the new Template page and enter the navigation information, as shown in Template:BreadcrumbsPhotoautotrophy or Template:BreadcrumbsCellular. If you need to make a new Breadcrumbs category, start by making the actual page of interest using one of the templates above. You'll notice that the first line for both data and model wiki pages is something like {{BreadcrumbsPhotoautotrophy}}. Replace 'Photoautotrophy' with whatever category you are trying to generate. If it does not already exist, it will appear as a red link when you go to 'Read' the page. If you click that link, it will take you to a new page that you can create using the template examples at Template:BreadcrumbsPhotoautotrophy or Template:BreadcrumbsCellular.

MediaWiki editing quick reference

References

When making a reference the first time, in the text where you want the reference to appear, use the format:

<ref name = "NICKNAME"> FORMATTED REFERENCE </ref>

If you use Zotero, you can 'Create bibliography from item' and then 'Copy to clipboard'. Most articles currently use APA format. That text can simply be pasted where REFERENCE is called for above. If you reuse the reference later on in the same article, you can simply refer to it as:

<ref name = "NICKNAME" />

The references section will be automatically compiled and formatted under the 'References' heading at the end of each page. As an example, see Net community production (NCP) - O₂/Ar.

Quick reference table

MediaWiki Editing Reference

Feature	Syntax	Example Output / Notes
Link to another page	[[Page Name]]	Links to *Page Name*
Link with custom label	[[Page Name|Visible Text]]	Shows as → **Visible Text**
External link (implicit)	https://example.com	Auto-links as URL
External link (labeled)	[https://example.com My link text]	Shows as → **My link text**
Link to a user page	[[User:Username|]]	Goes to that user’s profile
User link with label	[[User:Username||Name]]	Shows as **Name**, links to profile
Upload files (images, PDFs, etc.)	Go to: Special:Upload	Or click **Upload file** in right sidebar
Insert an image	[[File:Image.png]]	Display at default size
Image with formatting	[[File:Image.png|thumb|300px|Caption text]]	Thumbnail + caption + size control
Edit page title	{{DISPLAYTITLE:New title with formatting}}	Edit page's title and (sometimes) links to it
Bold text	'''text'''	text
Italic text	''text''	text
Superscript	<sup>14</sup>C	14C
Subscript	H<sub>2</sub>O	H2O
Headings	== Heading 2 == === Heading 3 ===	Used for structure + automatic TOC
Bullet list	* Item	• Item
Numbered list	# Step	1. Step
Code/monospace	<code>text</code> or nowiki tags	text
Template call	{{TemplateName|param=value}}	Inserts reusable content
Math	<math>E=mc^2</math>	$E=m{c}^2$
References	<ref name = "NICKNAME">citation</ref>	...

Contact information for the main folks on this project

Web maintenance, Oceancyclopedia co-creator: Kate Evans (USC), evansk@usc.edu

Oceancyclopedia co-creator: Hagen aka. HagiBucknWise Buck-Wiese (USC), buckwies@usc.edu