Powerbase:Quick Guide to Getting Started

Write your article for Spinprofiles in Word or similar, taking care to write and reference it according to Spinprofiles’ policies (see Editorial Policy).

Now put it on the Spinprofiles site. You may find the best browser is Firefox as Safari sometimes times out.

Go to http://www.spinprofiles.org and log in using the user name and password that you have been sent via email.

In the left hand side menu Navigation, click on Article Submission.

Type into either Box 1 (people) or Box 2 (organisation) the name of your target subject. Click on Create Article. A page opens called “Editing [your target]”.

There is a series of headers already provided as a template but you don’t have to stick to these – they’re just suggestions. You can substitute your own headers within the header formatting codings: === for big headers and == for subheads.

However, please keep the Notes/references header coding as it is, as this is where your references will automatically go.

Copy and paste your article into the template, with each section under the appropriate header. Put nothing in the Notes/references section as these will appear automatically once you have formatted your references in the body text.

You can Save Article (click on button at bottom of page) at any point to save, and I recommend you do this frequently in case your session times out and you lose data. Your article will appear as it will look to the reader. This is a good way of checking that you are coding things correctly as you go. Then return to the Edit page by clicking Edit at the top menu. Do some more on your article, then Save Page again.

Referencing

Code the references within your body text.

Please read the comprehensive guide to referencing Spinprofiles articles at http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/A_Guide_to_Referencing

This includes notes on how to code your references so that they show up properly in the article, number themselves in order, and appear at the foot of the article.

To see an example of an article with references coded in the format agreed by Spinprofiles editors, go to http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php?title=Alliance_for_Abundant_Food_and_Energy&action=edit (take care to mend any broken links in this url first)

Many of the older articles are not referenced in this way but we aim to standardize things from now on.

Here are few example refs to show correct coding:

Refs that have live weblinks to direct readers to:

The idea with this formatting is that the title of the article, website, book, film etc becomes a clickable weblink that takes the reader directly to the source.

Refs that have no live weblinks to direct readers to:

With regard to referencing formatting, the way I’ve done it, ie Name first, then title of book/article, then source publication, then date, etc., is a humanities type of referencing, but you don’t have to stick to it. Many scientists reference differently, and this is fine.

The main things to bear in mind are to get all the info in there, in consistent and comprehensible form, and to code the refs properly so that they number themselves automatically and go to the right place in the finished page – almost at the foot of the page, with only the Categories to follow them.

Also, where there are weblinks to your source, it’s important to code the url as shown above so that readers can go straight there.

Categories section

Your article template has a Categories section. Assigning your target person/organization to a category enables a person searching the Spinprofiles site by category to come across your article.

Go to the main page of Spinprofiles http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Main_Page

and look at the Tag and Category Cloud on the right. Choose as many categories as your person/organization fits into. Type each category into the Categories section of your article template, exactly as it appears in the Tag and Category Cloud, hitting “return” on your keyboard between each category.

For example, for a lobby group pushing GM crops and foods, you might want to assign them to the following categories: GM Lobby Groups, Biotechnology, and GM. You would code this as follows:

Coding names of people and organizations

Put the names of people and organizations mentioned in your article (other than the one your article is about) in [[ ]]. Thus:

In June 2008, Monsanto’s chief technology officer Rob Fraley said ….

This will enable the reader to click on the name and be taken to any page that exists on that person or org. Don’t worry if there is no page yet: in that case, the name will appear in a different colour automatically to alert the reader to that fact.

Saving page

When you’ve done your article in the Edit page, click on Save Page.

That’s it!

If you have any questions, email me on claire.robinson@spinprofiles.org