About versions

Data have been imported into this Wiki from external precursor documents. As a result, some early versions of the project are not represented through page versions at all, whereas the page versions have a special significance.

As mentioned in About, the origin of this glossary are both the LIAS character definitions and glossary definitions for the "Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region." The first "versions" of this process are not yet represented in this Wiki database:

• First Draft: B. D. Ryan 1999. Glossary for the Sonoran Desert Lichen Flora. Arizona State University, Tempe, 54 pp., unpublished manuscript.
• First published as part of the introduction in: Nash III, T. H., Ryan, B. D., Gries, C. and Bungartz, F. (eds.). (2002) Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region. Volume 1. Lichens Unlimited, Tempe.
• LIAS character definition, see Descriptor Definitions. @@@ Note: This link no longer points to an informative page @@@

In 2004-2005 the original LIAS character list created by G. Rambold, D. Triebel and co-workers was revised by F. Bungartz, Botanische Staatssammlung München. The result was submitted as a Word file, available as a downloadable document (282 kB, in 7-zip archive format). Further changes prior to import into the (then) JSP-Wiki are documented in a second downloadable document (750 kB). The following versions have been documented in the Wiki itself, allowing to use the history/version comparisons functionality:

• Version 1: The original 2758 glossary entries by F. Bungartz were converted by G. Hagedorn from a Word file to JSP-Wiki syntax and database structure. No content changes were made in version 1, with the following exceptions: Due to duplicate head terms (292 cases, the definitions being either exact copies, two different attempts, or different definitions in a different usage context) which had to be resolved by deleting one or merging two duplicate entries. Further, to simplify further editing, spelling errors detected in the head term where already corrected as well. Finally in a few case an ambiguous head term was already made more specific. (The above applies only to glossary pages; version 1 of standard Wiki pages come from a template developed by G. Hagedorn.)
• Version 2: A major conversion problem was that the terms were originally hierarchically arranged (under 543 headings) and occasionally different levels of paragraph indentation used, both implying information usually not available in the definitions themselves. This information was converted to categorizations and links as far as possible. Many non-linked categories (e. g., word form categories) where converted to links and in general term linkage was revised and increased. As a result, the number of glossary pages increased from 2598 to 3098 (largely due to alias, category, and general wiki pages), the number of links from 3348 to 13143. 504 Wiki automation functions (alias and referring pages) were added. In addition, occasional improvements to the definitions were made. The authorship has been marked as F. Bungartz & G. Hagedorn.
• Version 3 and following have been edited normally in the Wiki and authorship is as indicated. Authors or page revisions claim copyright only for the portioned they revised or added, not for the entire page.

LATER CHANGES IN ALL VERSIONS ABOVE: In 2010 the LIAS Glossary was converted from JSP-Wiki to Mediawiki. As a result, several changes had to be made. Unfortunately, many changes directly address the way the wiki page are titled (JSP Wiki supports only programming-language-like "CamelCase"-Titles, but has several workarounds to make page titles look more natural). Thus "XY-type", "XY type", "XY types", "XY Type", "XY Types", etc. are all valid forms to refer to the (camel-case-required) page name "XyType". Furthermore, mediawiki requires the use of category: prefixes to indicate categories, whereas JSP-Wiki simulated categories in the normal article namespace. As a result, the changes could not easily be made "transparently", such that earlier versions remained true to the original form, and only a new, 2009 version was added. Instead, the export was changed directly, and converted into the mediawiki installation using the standard mediawiki xml format. Thus the dated versions prior to 2009 (dated 2005) incorporate the necessary syntax- and title/reference changes required for porting to mediawiki without changing the original dates. However, no changes to the biological content were made during the conversion process. The changes are documented in a downloadable document (805 kB).