Help:The Process

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Contents

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Creating a New Geospatial Format

You must login to add a new format. Once you have logged in, locate the New Format text box in the left hand navigation and enter the Common Name of the format in lower case characters. After you hit the submit button you will be presented with our standard set of content headings for format metadata:

  • Common Name
  • Full Name
  • Version
  • Description
  • Specification Links
  • Supplementary Documents Links
  • File Extensions
  • Relationships


edit


Add your content for each field heading as appropriate. Whenever possible, avoid using Wiki markup for text formatting, e.g., italics, bold, etc., because the finalized Wiki format pages will be archived as XML documents. An XML document free of clutter is a happy XML document...or so they say.

Read more about the Format Metadata or give your opinion about the metadata we are using.

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Group Editing

If community members have already started an article on a pre-existing format, e.g. you try to start a page for JPEG and the JPEG "Common Name" already exists, you will be presented with the most current metadata for that particular format rather than a blank format field template. If you wish to make changes to the existing content use the edit links located to the right of each heading. It is recommended that you Browse the Wiki before jumping into the editing process.

This is a wiki, like Wikipedia. All contributors have equal editing privledges, therefore take care when you edit a page. If you think you made a mistake and are unsure how to roll back your changes you can leave a note on the associated discussion page or use a {{help}} tag to flag the suspect content.

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Specification Status Upgrades

As a format spec is ready to move through phases of development users can tag them to mark them for discussion before an action is taken. Plase place tags as the first line in the edit window.

  • Help: {{help}}
  • Incomplete Page: {{stub}}
  • Incorrect Information: {{incorrect}}
  • Bad Format: {{badform}}
  • Review Page for Final Draft Status: {{review}}
  • Ready for Archival: {{archive-ready}}
  • Currently Archived: {{archived}}

See the Message Demos for how these look.

When there is a consensus that a specification is archive-ready a System Admin will move it to the "Format" namespace. Everything in this namespace is mirrored as an XML file ready to be archived.

Note: When Archive-Ready should edit permissions be more restrictive? Should there be a template for tagging things as Done with a note about requesting the spec be unlocked if further work is needed?

If you want, check out the ArchiveView of the Formats outside the Wiki.

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Create a Format Link

If a format does not exist yet, you can create a link to create a specific new format. Once the format exists in the wiki it will behave as an edit link. 

{{newformat|Format86}}

Format86 

{{newformat|Format86|Create This Format}}

Create This Format

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Discussing a Format

Discussions of a Format should be made in their associated Talk page. Discussions of formats that don't have specifications worked out in the wiki (but do have documents in the Format Registry) automatically get placed into the FormatTalk namespace.

If you are browsing the Format Registry and decide to discuss a Format by clicking the discussion link, you might be taken to a page that informs you that no such article exists. Create a normal wiki article with the link on that page, not a new format.

To search the Format Registry, try the simple search page.

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Administrator's Role

  • Move approved pages to the Format namespace
  • Lock pages from editing when they are given the archive green-light.
Retrieved from "http://ngda.library.ucsb.edu/format/index.php/Help:The_Process"
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