Honestly, we have put a really big amount of time and effort
trying to produce a good resource.
Good means that Loukie tried to collect crisp, detailed and colorful images,
visually pleasant and rich in details, accompanying them with
meaningful information when available - including historical and botanical
notes gathered through research, bibliography and personal communications.
Good means that Fabio tried to plan and realize a brand new site
architecture by designing from scratch all parts of the server
software running stapeliads.net, trying to keep the content as sleek
and elegant as possible, but light and essential at the same time,
without overloading your browser and modem.
We like the idea to share all this with you - not only - we like the
idea to ask you to become part of the project.
Our hope is that, while browsing our site, you will
feel the same push we felt almost two years ago when we started to work
on this project. The push to contribute, the need to share with others,
the will to do something for all of those who live the borderless,
ethereal world of the internet.
If you are considering to accept our mission and
become a part of our project, there are several things you can do, ranging
from simple things demanding little time to more time and effort
demanding tasks.
As simple as it sounds: subscribe to stapeliads.net,
keep visiting the site, read, explore, and let us know what you think
about stapeliads.net.
If you find bugs or spelling errors, even the two minutes it will take
you to drop us an email will be your way to contribute. Even a small
comment can help us improving the site to a great extent.
stapeliads.net maintains a thematic forum dedicated to the
Stapeliads and to the website.
You can take part in the forum and post questions and answers,
write your own thoughts, comments, cultivation notes,
and whatever comes into your mind. You can post also
images of your plants.
The forum is moderated but is open to anybody and divided
in several channels, to suit the needs of newbies, experienced
growers, botanists.
Taking part to the forum will obviously require more time
on your end than to the occasional visitor, but your contribute
will be more visible and important.
Registered users already have the priviledge to submit
posts on the forum - just enter the forum (top menubar,
click "forum", choose a channel and start writing).
The heart of the stapeliads.net is its complex database
of nomenclatural and specimen data - notes, locality data,
historical notes and images. Thousands of entries
representing years of works by different people are
all there available for you to read and browse.
If you don't feel only the need to read and see what
others had to say, but feel you would like to add something
on your own as well, if you have information or images
of Stapeliads in habitat
or cultivation (especially if your specimens have good
locality and source data) you can submit this information
and images to the stapeliads.net database.
Images, good cultivation hints, a nice historical
note, a nomenclatural discussion or just your thought
on this or that taxon... this is what
user proposals are for. Submissions
by users. You can propose whatever you think it is
appropriate, through the SI Database.
One of the site editors or reviewers will check your
proposal and enclose it in the site, giving you extensive
credits. Unlike forum posts which will be part of a
community dialogue, your proposals to the database,
once accepted, will become a
permanent part
of the stapeliads.net database, available
for all users.
Registered users already have the priviledge to propose
additions to the database. Just browse the SI-Database,
enter the genus or species you are interested in and
click on "Propose Comment" - once proposed, your comment
will need to be approved by a site reviewer - this
can take a few days.
Once you'll be happy with your proposals to the
database we bet you'll feel more and more allured
to take part to our project in a more deep and
concrete way.
Submitting whole articles to be included in the
"Article Repository" of the site is for sure one
of the best ways to contribute - your article will
be made available to thousands of visitors. They
will learn about Stapeliads from your words.
Another solid way to contribute is submitting S.I.
entities to the stapeliads.net database - if you
do have interesting entities with good locality
and determination data available, you can enlarge
the spectrum of entities of the SI database by
submitting your owns.
Registered users
cannot automatically submit
articles or SI entities - if you want to be given
the priviledge to submit articles and SI entities,
please
get
in touch with the webmaster.
By far the most rewarding and important way to contribute
to stapeliads.net - make the site yours: become a site
reviewer.
By becoming a reviewer you will be given access to the
full structure of the database as well as to every
document and piece of information submitted to it
(only users' private information will not be available to
site reviewers).
You will be allowed to edit nomenclatural data, fix
spelling errors on the database, you will be able to
reject and/or accept user proposals, moderate forum
posts, add/remove photos and perform any modification
to the website.
If you want to become a site reviewer,
please
get
in touch with the webmaster.