Editor+Instructions

Thank you for volunteering to add your hard-won knowledge to PARIS! You are helping your colleagues and improving program animal welfare throughout AZA.

While there are few "rules" for adding content to PARIS, there are some tips you may want to keep in mind as you go. Contact Stephanie if you ever have questions, comments, or feedback.

Each page follows a general template. The template suggests how the information in each section might be formatted so that it is easy to read or scan (that is, if the information is organized as a list of bullet points or as a fully-written paragraph) but these are just suggestions. How the information is organized should really be dictated by what kind of information you have to add. PARIS has no formatting police, so we rely on our editors to make judgement calls. Generally speaking, after you have added information to the page, re-read what you have written with new eyes. Does it fit it with the other content that was already there? Is it easy to read? Is it easy to understand. These questions should dictate formatting more than the template.

If you have sources other than your own experience (for example, if you are fleshing out the natural history section of a page, or if you know of a good source for dietary considerations, etc.) please feel free to share! If the source is online, you can use a link using the "Link" button at the top of the editing page. For ease of reading, hide the particulars of the web address inside the link title: for example, "Spectacled owls can be found from southern Mexico to Argentina (Encyclopedia of Life) instead of "Spectacled owls can be found from southern Mexico to Argentina (@http://eol.org.pages/1178320/details)."

Note that the default kind of link is to a page within PARIS; if you want to link to a separate website, you simply need to select "Web Address" along the left-hand side of the screen. When adding links, please click the "New Window" button so that the link opens in a new window instead of kicking people out of PARIS. People want to stay in PARIS! It is a nice place!

If you are heavily using a source -- that is, information from that source is used in multiple sections of the page -- don't feel the need to insert 500 links to the same place. Either add the link to the first time the source is used, or include the link to the source in the "Contributors and Citations" sections at the bottom of the page. Or do both! If you use the "Contributors and Citations" section, it would be nice to include a brief description of what kind of information the source contains: natural history information, a paper about medical concerns, etc.

If your source is YOU (or your experience), please list your institution in the "Contributors and Citations" section. If you want, you can also indicate your institution in the body of the text you are writing. For example: "At the Philadelphia Zoo, we feed our chinchillas X, Y, and Z" Some editors starting doing this to underline that different institutions might do things differently, and that is completely acceptable. It is not a requirement that you do it this way, but it does seem nice to have that extra information. There are some sections where adding your institution doesn't make as much sense, like the "Potential Messaging" section or anything about natural history. Again, use your discretion.

Happy editing!!