Besides this wiki, there are 4 other web based formats hosted by NSCSS:

	Main Website		phpBB Discussion Forum
	News and Views Blog		Yahoo Discussion Group

The content on this wiki is currently loosely organized:

News

Projects

Our Featured Project:

Member Biographies

FAQ

FAQ
What the heck is a wiki?
Where do I start?
What is next?

A collaborative project for members of NSCSS

What the heck is a wiki?

A wiki is an easy-to-use Web site that makes it profoundly easy to collaborate on projects. This wiki has been made public to allow anyone to read it, while still restricting editing to those who know the wiki's password. Edits are done in plain text and don't require learning fancy or complex codes like HTML. Just click Edit page and start typing! It's also easy to create new pages and make links to pages you've already made.

Where do I start?

Passwords, available to NSCSS members, will be emailed on a regular interval. Regular users are encouraged to create a permanent “PBwiki Identity” by visiting http://my.pbwiki.com. These users won't be affected by periodic password changes.

What is next?

A great place to contribute content is about yourself at MemberBiographies.

Have a suggestion? Just click the Comments button and leave us a note.

About this Wiki

Introduction

Started in December 2006, this wiki is intended to serve as an extension of the NSCSS Website.

Purpose

The wiki is for those portions of the website that benefit from direct editing by members.

Acceptable Use Policy

Our Acceptable Use Policy is posted. It applies to all authorized users.

Relationship between this wiki and the NSCSS website

Functional guidelines are fairly obvious:

dynamic news feed content (such as we are experimenting with at ../mic.html ) is not supported in the wiki.
Approved content, such as the mission statement, goals, bylaws etc. are not dynamic, so will not be placed in the wiki.
pdf format content can be linked regardless.

There may be reason to better define this relationship. At this point we have no defined reason to produce comprehensive guidelines that could be used to determine which content is best maintained in wiki format and which content is best hosted in html format.

Features

Anyone we give the password to can edit this wiki. Each page has some sort of RSS subscription capacity (see bottom right of page) and editors can opt for email notification of changes. Like the website, the wiki is fairly easy to keep organized using a combination of links, tags and pseudo-directory links (see across the top).

Future

Right now the structure and content is directed to educating NSCSS-ers about the various vehicles we have to complement the website. In the future we anticipate porting substantial website content to the wiki. Candidate content to bring over includes:

NSCSS Soil Science Links
- NSCSS Soil Science Sources
- NSCSS Soil Science Disciplines

These two uses, a dynamic ideas formulation forge for our web-based services, and providing those services, may be two incompatible uses. If that is the case, we can either minimize/drop the "forge" use, or a second wiki may be needed. The first alternative appears preferable.