Authors' Resources

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Below are notes, guidance and links to resources for authors of these wiki pages. If you have been asked to author a page in this wiki please check back here regularly as this content may have been updated.

How Authors are Chosen

The BIF Guidelines Drafting Committee was initially selected by the BIF Board of Directors in June of 2018, and given the mandate to redevelop the BIF Guidelines for Uniform Beef Improvement as a wiki. Eight members with a diverse set of experiences and knowledge were chosen to reorganize and refresh the previous BIF Guidelines which was a book. Much in beef cattle improvement had changed since the last edition (9th). Technologies were rapidly advancing and the effort required for keeping the Guidelines current would require regular contributions from the larger community of stakeholders and experts. It had become clear to the board that a wiki format managed by the Drafting Committee and developed by the stakeholders, met these needs. The wiki markdown environment simplifies authoring content while providing powerful modern web capabilities.

While the best practices of wiki development include initially not over organizing content, some initial structure and principles were required that authors can follow. The information in this page reflects the Drafting Committee's specifications. This wiki is initially organized into six general topic areas that appear on the menu at the bottom of the Main_Page. Each topic area is managed by a Content Coordinator who is a member of the BIF Guidelines Drafting Committee. Content in this wiki is dynamic and evolving. As a Content Coordinator identifies a topic that needs to be developed or updated, that coordinator will contact a stakeholder and request that a draft of the content is added to the wiki. Because only logged in users can add and modify content, the Content Coordinator will provide new authors with login credentials.

If any stakeholder would like to become an author, please contact the Head Content Coordinator of the Guidelines Drafting Committee or the appropriate Content Coordinator to make a request. Please include your proposed topic and relevant experience. You can find the list of Content Coordinators on the BIF Guidelines Drafting Committee page.

General Guidance

• Authors should review the information on this page prior to contributing.

• Authors who are new to creating wiki content and are unfamiliar with wiki markdown should spend some time experimenting with the http://protobifgl.thetasolutionsllc.com page. This prototyping version of the wiki will never go live and is provided to test ideas. Put or modify anything you want in this prototyping area. Be aware that the prototype is not backed-up and it will be refreshed regularly so what you put into the prototype will disappear. See the resource links below for information on wiki markdown.

• If you do inadvertently corrupt anything in the production wiki do not worry. Any modifications can be reverted to a previous version. If you are uncomfortable with reverting something please contact your Content Coordinator for assistance.

• Except where the customary term of the art is different (e.g., cm for scrotal circumference) authors must use United States customary units of measure.

• Avoid standard abbreviations such as d for day, y for year, bw for body weight. Acronyms should be avoided except when the acronym is part of the regularly used term of the art (e.g., ERT for "economically relevant trait"). When an acronym or term of the art is used it should be defined on first use and an entry should be made in the Glossary.

• Authors should be aware that their content may have a degree of overlap to other Main Page content areas and should work with their Drafting Committee Content Coordinator (the Committee member who contacted you) to coordinate with the Drafting Committee Content Coordinator of overlapping content areas. For example, if writing about Total Herd Reporting, authors should be aware that this will impact at least three other areas of Main Page sub-content.

• Authors should be aware of pages in this wiki that have covered details about a point they are covering. For example, If an author were discussing age-of-dam adjustments on a particular trait they were discussing, a link to the general discussion of age-of-dam should be made. Using the search area at the top of each page or the search special page will facilitate finding places to make these links.

• http://Gramerly.com provides a powerful free plugin for browsers that checks spelling, grammar and punctuation on the fly as it is typed. Authors are strongly encouraged to install this easy to use plugin.

• The MediaWiki basic markdown and editing environment are very easy to use. However, as with any software, the more powerful capability can be tapped with just a little effort. In order to develop the wiki capabilities of the stakeholder community, authors are encouraged to perform all their editing in the wiki. However, if absolutely necessary, while adding to the effort and burden of the Content Coordinator, authors may develop content in familiar editors such as MSWord and email it to the Content Coordinator. But please consider that everyone here is a volunteer doing this work for the greater good.

• The MediaWiki software we are using is very powerful and will track authors' contributions. All new pages and edits are recorded and the attribution to the author can be seen by going to the History tab on each page. Additionally, the bottom of each page indicates the original author and the most recent changes. If an author includes content that is not original then citation must be made to the original work using the ref cite tags.

Links to Resources

http://gramerly.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Cheatsheet

https://www.tablesgenerator.com/mediawiki_tables

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_using_MediaWiki