Camera-wiki.org:About

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Revision as of 05:37, 7 February 2011 by Steevithak (talk | contribs) (Active Admins: updated status of Rebollo_fr and Hoary)
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The Mission of Camera-wiki

Welcome to Camera-wiki! This site hopes to be your reference guide to all the still-picture cameras ever made.


In particular, Camera-wiki exists to document older camera models, from before the era when reviews, specs, and manuals were routinely available online.


What is a Wiki website? This means that any user can contribute or edit content. If something is missing you can add it, and if you find a mistake you can change it. A Wiki website makes content a two-way street: You are no longer a passive reader, and the more you participate the better the content gets. If you want to learn more about Wikis visit the Wiki entry at Wikipedia.org.


This wiki builds upon the earlier work of Camerapedia.org, which was founded in October 2004 by Brandon Stone. In January 2011, the former Camerpedia.org contents were transferred to new hosting at camerapedia.wikia.com. A number of earlier contributors were uncomfortable with their content being hosted on a for-profit, ad-supported service, Wikia. To address this concern, users Steevithak and Voxphoto invited the community to begin an alternative non-commercial wiki; and camera-wiki.org launched on 7 February 2011.


The textual content of Camerapedia was released under the GFDL 1.2; which permits republication such as this. (Camera-wiki-org uses GNU Free Documentation license 1.3; please read the page about Copyrights for the full details.) Camera-wiki has been founded to preserve and expand on the hard work of the earlier wiki contributors—but in an environment which we pledge to remain entirely non-commercial, for as long as community support makes this possible. Or goal is to establish nonprofit status for the project in the near future, and that status will be updated here.


Note: Former Camerapedia volunteers will likely find that their logins and personal pages are preserved here too; however you will need to contact an admin to receive a new password.


Join!

We need your help! Are you a specialist in a particular brand or era of cameras? Please take a look at the relevant pages, to see if you find gaps or errors. We would be happy for you to contribute your knowledge.


Do you have some unusual gems in your camera collection? If you're able to contribute clear photos of them (preferably with a neutral background), we'd love that too. The preferred method is to contribute them to our Flickr pool. Note that if you post these under "all rights reserved" copyright, adding them to our pool will be interpreted as permitting their use on this wiki only. But using some form of Creative Commons licensing allows us more flexibility and is greatly appreciated.


Take a look at some of our pages to get an idea of the format we like to see in contributions; you can examine the syntax behind these pages if you click "edit" (but please, leave them alone if you're not sure what you're doing yet).


In the transfer of contents from the former Camerapedia, there have been a few loose ends left dangling. We are happy if volunteers with wiki experience can help repair broken links, track down image rights, change out-dated references, and so on.

Sources

When writing for Camerawiki, we encourage you to confirm factual statements by citing (and where possible, linking to) independent sources. These might include collector websites, price guides, specialist books, company records, or historical publications.


But one difference between Camerawiki and Wikipedia is that we actively appreciate "original research" (Wikipedia discourages it). Simply having a particular camera model in your hands is sufficient if you'd like to describe its features and specs, or make comparisons with other brands. Even somewhat subjective assessments are acceptable ("the build quality is flimsy"), when not excessively controversial. This wiki is a conversation between people who enjoy cameras, so we don't need you to write in some dry, omniscient style.


Active Admins

Users with sysop accounts who have been active in the last 12 months. These users can make administrative changes to the camera wiki.

Previous admins who we hope will return:

Camera-Wiki on the Net


Camera-wiki in the News & Elsewhere