| If you have expert knowledge about a photographer and would like to participate then please contact me (alan@luminous-lint.com).
Intention
to provide the highest quality biographies
freely to all users
Given this simple intention we need to come up with a way where the work of each contributor is credited and at the same time the biography can evolve as additional information is unearthed and factual inaccuracies are found.
Traditionally a single person prepares a biography, it is checked for errors, edited, peer reviewed and published. This approach is fine for a published book but makes little sense on a website which is all about collaborating to create the best possible work and so we need to come up jointly with a different approach.
The intended approach here will be open, highly flexible and depends on contributors acting in good faith for the benefit of the entire community. Here I'd like to use one of the approaches of the Creative Commons movement where the biographies are available to all but with specified restrictions. I haven't gone into the legalities of this at the moment so let's keep it as simple as we can.
The guidelines are:
- Any person contributing a biography will give it under some form of common license which makes it freely available to all. The originator of the biography gets credited.
- If a person wants to extend the biography or correct an error it is discussed with the original contributor. An agreement on how to proceed is reached. The person making additions is credited.
The intention is for us to have a single high quality biography that is checked and peer-reviewed by as many knowledgeable people as possible. If the original creator is unreasonable about changes then we'll have to come up with some way forward but the basic and rather simplistic rule is:
be nice to people and share for the benefit of all….
As the core content of the site will not be open for modification we can jointly enforce quality. We'll keep this as straight forward as we can and resolve the issues as we come to them with open minds.
Please keep in mind that if you have written the biography for a journal or book you may not be able to re-publish it without permission.
I'm ready to start putting the systems in place as soon you feel ready to share a biography; let me know the photographers you intend to write about so we can reduce duplication. So if you feel community spirited start sending the material through - many thanks.
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LuminousLint 
@LuminousLint