How to use this forum

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How to navigate posts on the site

Posts are organized in several different ways: by taxonomy, region, and whether or not they are currently under assessment. Any post can be found by any of these means. Assessments are organized hierarchically by categories and topics such as region, taxonomic group, etc. Each major category will group a set of topics, which in turn will group entries relating to individual species, so, for example, a hypothetical category of either “Neotropics” or “Bufonids” could have a topic on “Atelopus”, which may contain entries for Atelopus andinus, Atelopus balios, Atelopus boulengeri, and so on.

Use the menu on the right side of the page to navigate through posts.

Use the drop down menus until you find the species you wish to look at. If you wanted Eleutherodactylus andrewsi, you could do it by going to Taxonomy > Eleutherodactylus > Eleutherodactylus Andrewsi; you could also do it by going to Region > Jamaica > Eleutherodactylus Andrewsi.

How the forum works

In cases where species are being reassessed primarily through the online discussion forum, each entry will contain the new proposed category and criteria, primary supporting documentation, including any recent information relevant to the assessment, and questions that may help inform the assessment process. In cases where species have already been reassessed in the context of an assessment workshop, the new proposed assessments and primary supporting documentation will be made available under each entry so that experts will have an opportunity to revise these assessments before they are sent off for review.

Each posted entry will be open to feedback for a period of up to three months from posting date. Posted workshop reassessments will vary in the period given for feedback depending on the number of assessments involved, but unless otherwise noted, they will be open to feedback for a period of two months from posting date, or if the posting date is older than the forum launch date, then the launch date is taken as the beginning of the assessment period. Experts who contribute with novel and relevant information will be acknowledged as contributors in the respective assessment.

How to comment on posts

If you would like to post your comments on any blog post, you can do so by filling out the form at the bottom of that post’s page. It looks like this:

Simply type what you wish you say in the text box, then click on the post as button in the lower right corner of the comment box.

Likewise, if you want to attach an image file to your blog post, use the +image button on the lower left of the comment box.

The Print Friendly button

The  button at the bottom of each page was installed to make printing easier on users. If you wish to print out or even share any post, consider clicking the “Print Friendly” button.

Forum policies and etiquette

All forum messages are moderated; the moderator will usually be a member of the Amphibian RLA and/or an IUCN Global Species Programme Staff member. The forum is open to all experts and interested parties, but there are some ground rules that need to be met so as to ensure a smooth online discussion process:

1. Please restrict comments and suggestions to the topic and entry of choice; if you would like to open a new topic or discussion thread please contact the Forum Administrator
2. Advertisement, spam, abusive, offensive or inflaming content will be removed
3. A collegial and respectful exchange is expected from all forum users; users who do not abide by this expectation will be called upon by moderators, who reserve the right to suspend or ban the user from the forum
4. Please do not post copyrighted material. The exception to this might be your own copyrighted materials (e.g. a thesis, or an open source document
5. Moderators reserve the right to delete posts of they find it reasonable to do so
6. Please use a single forum account per user
7. Please refrain from using text message substitions (e.g. u r instead of you are) and internet lingo acronyms (e.g. LOL), as these may not be necessarily evident outside of an English-speaking context
8. The opinions expressed by individual forum users are their own; they do not reflect or represent those of the moderators, the IUCN SSC Amphibian RLA, IUCN Global Species Programme staff members or the Amphibian Specialist Group

The discussion forum will not share or sell its user lists with any commercial entities; it will only share its user list with the Amphibian RLA and the ASG so as to keep the expert contact database current and to include expert emails in IUCN’s database system, Species Information Service (SIS) system.

For any enquiries about this discussion forum please contact Ariadne Angulo.