Landrace.Wiki:Contributing

Landrace.Wiki only works if people who care about landrace cannabis put their time and knowledge into it.

You do not need to be a botanist or a MediaWiki power-user. You just need field observations, seeds and notes, language skills, or the patience to clean up and organise what is already here.

This page explains the main ways to contribute and how to get started.

Ways to contribute

There are five main contribution paths:

Documenting accessions and fields
Improving regions and concept pages
Copyediting and sourcing
Photos and visual documentation
Technical / structural work

You can focus on one area or move between them as you learn the system.

1. Document accessions and fields

This is the core of the project. If you have:

seeds from a specific field or farmer
field notes from collecting trips
long-term observations from growing landrace populations

…you can document them as accessions.

Typical tasks:

Create a new accession using the accession form linked from the relevant field or region page.
Fill out all Tier 1 fields (collection date, location, elevation or climate band, collection context, basic plant/seed details).
Link the accession to the correct field, appellation, and growing region.
Add short descriptive notes: plant structure, maturation, resin quality, farmer’s comments.

If you work with a field over time:

Create or improve the field page (who farms it, how it is managed, what is planted there).
Link multiple accessions to the same field across seasons or years.

Start here if you are doing real fieldwork or already hold landrace material.

2. Improve regions and concept pages

Region and concept pages make accessions intelligible.

Region-related tasks:

Flesh out growing region, growing area, and appellation pages with:
- clear geographic description
- elevation and climate band
- cropping systems and main cash crops
- brief history of cannabis cultivation and resin making, where relevant
Cross-check place names and spellings; add local-language names in a consistent format.

Concept-related tasks:

Improve definitions and scope notes for core terms (landrace, accession, feral cannabis, charas, etc.).
Add short, sourced summaries of methods and practices (e.g. hand-rubbed resin, seed selection, curing).
Make sure pages are written in a sober, non-marketing tone and are clearly scoped.

Start here if you like writing, synthesis, and background research.

3. Copyediting and sourcing

There is always rough text that needs tightening and claims that need sources.

Tasks:

Fix grammar, spelling, and formatting without changing meaning.
Rewrite overblown or sensational language into clear, neutral description.
Add citations to published sources (books, articles, government reports, academic work) where specific claims are made.
Mark unsourced statements that look doubtful so they can be revisited.
Harmonise terminology (e.g. choosing one standard page title and redirecting variants).

Start here if you are detail-oriented and comfortable looking up sources.

4. Photos and visual documentation

Good images make fieldwork and plants understandable.

Tasks:

Upload photographs of plants, fields, landscapes, tools, and products where it is legal and safe to do so.
Add images to accession, field, and region pages with clear, descriptive captions.
Avoid faces and avoid anything that would obviously identify vulnerable growers or illegal sites.
Prefer wide shots that show context (slope, intercropping, terraces, etc.) alongside close-ups of plants and resin.

If you are unsure whether a photo is safe to publish, err on the side of caution and leave it out.

5. Technical and structural work

If you are comfortable with MediaWiki and Semantic MediaWiki, you can help improve the underlying structure.

Tasks:

Improve templates for accessions, regions, fields, and concept pages.
Help define and document semantic properties so data stays consistent.
Fix broken queries and category structures on overview pages.
Refine TemplateStyles CSS for cards, infoboxes, and layout elements.

See Landrace.Wiki:MediaWiki for more on the stack and data model.

Getting started

1. Create an account

Go to Special:CreateAccount.
Pick a username that you are comfortable having linked to your work.
Log in and set your basic preferences (time zone, editing options).

You can read without an account, but an account is required for most meaningful contribution.

2. Make a first small edit

Good first steps:

Fix a typo or obvious formatting issue on a region or concept page.
Add a missing elevation range or climate note if you have a reliable source.
Add a short cultivation note to a region where you have direct experience.

Use the edit summary field to briefly say what you changed and why.

3. Use forms where they exist

Most structured pages (accessions, regions, fields) are edited via PageForms.

Look for tabs or links like “Edit with form” or “Add accession”.
Fill out the form fields as completely and honestly as you can.
Let the form handle templates and semantic properties; you do not need to know the underlying syntax.

If a page does not yet have a form, you can edit it with normal wikitext.

4. Ask questions on talk pages

Every page has an associated talk page.

Use the talk page to ask where something belongs, flag uncertainties, or propose structural changes.
Sign your comments with four tildes: ~~~~ so others know who wrote what and when.

If you are unsure where to start, describe what you have (field notes, seeds, photos, sources) on a relevant talk page and someone can help you place it.

Norms and expectations

Scope

Landrace.Wiki is about:

landrace and long-established local cannabis populations
their ecologies, histories, and farming systems
the people and cultures that maintain them

It is not a strain catalog or a place to market modern commercial hybrids. Pages about modern breeder releases should only exist where they are strictly necessary to explain impacts on landrace populations.

Respect and safety

The plants matter, but the people matter more.

Do not publish names, exact addresses, GPS points, or identifiable details that could expose farmers or communities to risk.
Be cautious with photos: avoid faces, licence plates, distinctive buildings, and other obvious identifiers.
Do not pressure people for information that they clearly do not want public.

When in doubt, keep location and identity information coarse. It can always be refined later if everyone is comfortable.

Tone and evidence

Write in a clear, descriptive, non-sensational style.
Separate what you saw yourself, what farmers told you, and what comes from published sources.
Cite sources where you make concrete claims about history, law, or science.
Avoid myth-making and unverifiable origin stories; if you mention them, mark them clearly as oral history or local narrative.

Collaboration and disagreement

Assume other editors are here in good faith unless there is very strong evidence otherwise.
If you disagree with an edit, explain why on the talk page instead of starting an edit war.
Be prepared to back up your claims with field notes, photos, or sources.
Remember that nobody owns pages; everything is open to improvement.

Where to find things to do

If you want to help but do not know where to start:

Check Special:RecentChanges to see what others are working on.
Look at region pages that are obviously stubs and see if you can add basic geographic and agronomic context.
Find accessions with missing Tier 1 fields and complete what you can.
Look for concept pages that are too vague, too marketing-driven, or unsourced, and improve them.

Over time, dedicated task lists and workboards may be added. Until then, fixing obvious gaps and rough edges is already a major contribution.

This keeps the site coherent and avoids duplicate or conflicting entries for the same material.

Summary

Landrace.Wiki is a work in progress. The gaps and rough corners you see are not a problem with the project; they are an invitation.

If you have time, field experience, language skills, or just the patience to tidy and standardise, you can help turn scattered knowledge into something durable and useful.