Contributor instructions

This page contains some instructions that should help contributors to organize the content of VCM website. Please, e-mail the website coordinator (John Hunter) if you want to suggest different ways to operate VCM updates.

VCM sections open to contributors

Only three sections of VCM should be directly edited by contributors. These are:

    1. Subpages of section 'State of the art'

    2. Section 'Technical resources'.

    3. Section 'Books'.

    4. Section 'News'.

Suggestions for other sections of the VCM website should be addressed to the website coordinator.

Instructions for section 'Technical resources'

This is intended to contain a list of resources. Vegetation databases should not be listed here, because GIVD already covers this need. Stand-alone programs and R packages should be listed in alphabetical order. Please be sure of formatting new software entries in the same way that others are. Information for each entry should include:

    • A short description of what the software does. Do not include images/tables/equations.

    • If possible, include a bibliographic reference (you can edit the bibliography list below, but please keep the alphabetical order).

    • An URL should be provided at the end of the description.

Instructions for section 'Books'

This is intended to contain a list of published books about vegetation classification, or books that have specific chapters devoted to the subject. Please be sure of formatting new book entries in the same way that others are. Information for each book entry must include the title, authors and the publisher. Additionally, a short description and/or a URL can be also provided.

Instructions for section 'State of the art'

This section contains several subpages, each covering a different topic. I will place a list of editors that are currently interested in editing a given subpage.

E-mailing between contributors

The following suggests how to organize e-mailing between contributors.

    • We should try to avoid e-mailing to all contributors, because some of them may be not interested in following all the discussions. E-mail discussions regarding a given subpage should be restricted to the group of editors of that subpage.

    • Please, contact the website coordinator if: (1) You want to suggest a new subpage of 'State of the art'; (2) You want to be one of the editors of a given subpage.

    • Please, contact the group of editors of a given subpage if: (1) You want to suggest a reorganization of sections within a the subpage (for example, adding an section called 'Introduction to the problem'); (2) You want to notify them of your recent updates and need their approval.

Modifying content

Note that each subpage of 'State of the art' contains several sections. These are generally free, but two of them (Discussion and Bibliography) are fixed:

    • Free sections: Should contain mostly facts, definitions, and (not too long) explanations. You can include images, graphs, formulas and/or tables if you want.

    • Discussion topics: Should contain information on topics that are debated in the literature. In can include references to research works comparing methods (e.g. a comparison of clustering methods or resemblance distances). Please, avoid giving your opinion here (Sorry, I already commited this fault! :-)

    • Bibliography: Contains cited bibliographical sources, ordered alphabetically.

Attachments: Note that attachments are possible. This should be used if you want to publish detailed descriptions. Do not use attachments for publications.

Comments: You can post here comments that express your opinion. As contributor, you can express your opinion on no matter which subpage, not only those for which you are editor.

Instructions for section 'News'

News are posted through adding blog-like entries in section 'News'. Any new entries appear in the welcome page. Use 'News' to post new events (e.g. meetings) or to anounce new resources (e.g. programs, tutorials). You can also announce new interesting papers regarding vegetation classification methods, but be sure that those papers interest the readers of VCM.