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Welcome to PangaWiki! This wiki is a dynamic manual and reference for the information system PANGAEA - Publishing Network for Geoscientific and Environmental Data PangaWiki is operated to support data providers, curators and end-users in archiving, publishing and retrieving data from earth system research in the data library Pangaea. It is the reference system for any questions and information around the system and its operation. The Pangaea login is required to add or modify pages.

The most important PangaWiki chapters are listed in the table of contents.

If you need information on how to provide data for archiving and publication please go to Data submission.

New users may start reading the following pages:
 * Pangaea
 * Data model
 * Project
 * Campaign
 * Event
 * Data series, Data set, Parent set
 * Parameter
 * Basic rules, Curator and Staff
 * Publications about PANGAEA

see also:
 * Articles and projects related to data management.
 * Recommendations, aphorisms and draft web pages.
 * The STD-DOI project

Why using a Wiki for PANGAEA?
''Operation of a complex system like Pangaea, fulfilling the data management requirements of nearly all sciences in earth system research, is a challenge and must be supported by some documentation. In a first step, documentation was distributed through various pdf-files, web pages, and a (draft) manual. Also the BSCW system was used to exchange documentation and common files between various projects and curators.''

''A major problem of documentation is the very fast development and changes with any technology related to data systems and the Internet. Also new scientific requirements, sometimes just invented from scratch in running projects, need to be taken into account. A significant amount of resources are required to keep track on all documents and to keep them up-to-date and thus the distribution of a static (and most of the time outdated) manual is useless.''

''A comprehensive system was needed to support users in providing and accessing data and curators while working with Pangaea in an efficient way, ensuring overall technical quality of its content. The introduction of the wiki principle made a dynamic documentation easier. With the open source software MediaWiki, developed and used by the Internet Encyclopedia Wikipedia, a free software tool is provided for fast and easy editing of content which is accessible and editable to anyone on the Internet. PangaWiki was installed in 2005-11-01 by Wikimaster Uwe Schindler and has become a constantly growing archive for any information around Pangaea.''