Create How to contribute page

[mdoering]

Create a new page that explains how to contribute to ChecklistBank. This page should be linked from the homepage.

Initially it should at least contain:

• checklists published in GBIF will automatically be included in CLB
• individuals can publish datasets directly to CLB, either by uploading them manually or by registering an external URL that is visited by the system regulary for updates. You need a CLB login for that and a publisher role
• some support email to get in touch with to become a publisher. Ask users to register and log into CLB once before
• ColDP, DwC-A & TextTree are supported formats, with links to the formats on the portal
• The IPT can be used for conversion (DwC now, ColDP very soon) and registering with GBIF

[thomasstjerne]

I suggest this is created as a markdown page somewhere (maybe here?) that the CLB UI can fetch and render.

[mdoering]

or just included as a markdown file in the checklistbank sources? I don't expect that to change between clb deploys, so it can happen during built time.

[sformel-usgs]

@mdoering @thomasstjerne I'm giving this a bump to see if there are plans to finish this? If resources are short, I'd be happy to help develop the documentation.

Some backstory, @laurabrenskelle and I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to contribute. However, neither of us were able to make any headway. #1077 seems like the closest thing to instructions that I've found so far. We're both excited to promote checklistbank within our communities, but we need to be able to demonstrate how to contribute. If I've overlooked some obvious tutorial, please accept my apology and kindly point me to the link.

To give you a sense of what a relatively naive user (me) encountered, here are some top search results where it's been stated that users can contribute, but I couldn't follow the statements to any documentation:

1. https://www.checklistbank.org/ "taxonomic community can publish a checklist to ChecklistBank either by directly uploading a..."
2. https://discourse.gbif.org/t/publication-of-checklists/3878 "...you can publish a DwC or ColDP archive in checklistbank.org which allows both to register a URL or to manually upload an archive file when you don’t want to host it yourself..."
3. https://docs.gbif.org/course-checklistbank-tutorial/en/description.html#audience "This tutorial is for anyone interested in discovering, curating and publishing checklists with emphasis in taxonomic and nomenclatural checklists."
4. https://www.catalogueoflife.org/about/colpipeline "The taxonomic community can publish a checklist to the web either (2a) by directly uploading it to ChecklistBank along with metadata describing its content..."

[mdoering]

Thanks @sformel-usgs, the documentation is really lacking and sparse. I am not a fan of distributing various documents all over, but would really like to have a full section in CheckistBank.org that explains all that is needed to know.

@thomasstjerne could you please create a new menu About with the following subpages that each loads its content from markdown files in a folder of your choice in this repository?

• /about/introduction Background of what ChecklistBank is, can do and its relation with COL & GBIF
  • dataset origins, gbif registry sync, data interpretation, verbatim data, user accounts, downloads
• /about/contribute How to contribute and publish datasets
  • how to apply for rights, licenses, push/pull, archive formats, metadata
  • prefer ColDP and link to https://github.com/CatalogueOfLife/coldp/blob/master/docs/publishing-guide.md
• /about/projects What are projects, what can you do with them and how to apply for them
  • sectors, syncs, download/upload subtrees, txtree editing
• /about/formats Overview of supported formats in CLB - both in downloads and uploads/publishing so we can link from download pages etc to it
• /about/matching How does matching work and how can you use it
• /about/api Introduction to the CLB API - markdown can probably be seeded from https://github.com/CatalogueOfLife/backend/blob/master/API.md and we can do away with the docs there
• /about/wishlist Feature wishlist with links to important github issues

I would then try to populate these pages with some basic structure and content. @sformel-usgs if you then still want to help us to improve the documentation you are very welcome!

Until that's ready here are 2 other resources worth reading:

• https://github.com/CatalogueOfLife/coldp/blob/master/docs/publishing-guide.md

• https://github.com/CatalogueOfLife/backend/blob/master/API.md

  Your user account needs the right to create new datasets. You will then be able to create new datasets from the dataset search page and upload data archives (dwc-a, coldp, excel spreadsheet versions from the former or the simple but lovely text-tree format)

[mdoering]

@sformel-usgs can you please tell me your username so I can give you access?

[mdoering]

@thomasstjerne please see https://github.com/CatalogueOfLife/checklistbank/issues/1464

[sformel-usgs]

@mdoering Thanks for the quick follow up! My GBIF username is sformel, associated with the email, sformel@usgs.gov.

[thomasstjerne]

@mdoering this is now set up with markdown files here: https://github.com/CatalogueOfLife/checklistbank/tree/master/public/about-md

I have so far hidden the about menu on production until we have the content in place.

Example page: https://www.dev.checklistbank.org/about/API

[sformel-usgs]

@mdoering just a nudge to see if you had a chance to give me upload permissions yet? I'm not seeing any menu items that look like I'm allowed to upload in checklistbank.org yet.

[mdoering]

@sformel-usgs sorry, I forgot to do so. You should have permissions to create datasets now!

[sformel-usgs]

It's a thing of beauty, thanks! Really looking forward to exploring it. I see that the contributing page is blank right now. Let me know when you're ready for me to add to it.

[mdoering]

@sformel-usgs I did not find time to complete the about pages, especially the contribute section. We are glad for any contribution through a pull request you could do here in markdown if you're up for it: https://github.com/CatalogueOfLife/checklistbank/tree/master/public/about-md

Alternatively just paste some text here so we can copy it.