Contributor Guidelines

Design & Art Australia Online is about
● art and design history
● authoritative content
● research
● free and open access
● collaboration

Design & Art Australia Online offers information on artists, designers, curators and craftspeople: their lives and work

Who qualifies as an Australian artist, designer or craftsperson?
An Australian artist, designer or craftsperson is defined as a person, living or dead, who:
● has a body of artistic, design or craft work
● considers themselves to be an artist, designer or craftsperson
● is considered by others to be an artist, designer or craftsperson
And
● is a resident or citizen or is known as an Australian.

Who qualifies as an Australian Curator/Gallerist?
An Australian curator/gallerist is defined as a person, living or dead, who:
● curates the work of artists and designers in a public capacity
● has a body of curatorial work
● considers themselves to be a curator/gallerist
● is considered by others to be an curator/gallerist
AND
● is a resident or citizen or is known as an Australian.

What qualifies as a group that creates?
Any group or collective made up of Australian artists, designers or craftspeople:
● who work collaboratively or individually to create work under a unified title either formally or informally
● who consider themselves to be a creating collective
AND
● who reside in Australia or are citizens or are known as Australians.

What does not qualify as a group that creates?
We don’t collect records for groups as defined by an external observer/historian. For example, we do not have a record for the Heidelberg School because it is a conceptual grouping. You can add tags to a record to describe movements that artist was associated with. Eg. Tag the Arthur Streeton record with 'Heidelberg School’.

Criteria for inclusion
For your entry to be included in the Design & Art Australia Online it needs to fulfill the following criteria.
Biographies need to focus on:
● history not criticism
● authoritative content not reviews
● information not opinion
● research, rather than promotion
● be written in plain English prose. A pasted C.V. does not meet Design & Art Australia Online’s Contributor Guidelines.

Principles
● Accuracy
● Impartiality
● Respect for original research
● Substance
● Substantiation
● Summary of a creator’s life
● Privacy

Intellectual Property
Biographies need to be the work of the author. Authors warrant at the beginning of the membership registration that the content is their intellectual property (see EULA).

Word limits
Try to limit biographies to approximately 1000 words. Less is ok too.

System protocols
Any logged in member can submit a full biographical record for an artist not currently represented on the Design & Art Australia Online. Any member can submit a correction, update or additional information to any existing Design & Art Australia Online biography.

The system will notify the Source Contributor whenever another member submits an addition to their entry.

All contributions or edits will be highlighted as ‘Needs Approval’ until approved by a Design & Art Australia Online, Moderator. Moderators may choose not to accept member edits. (Moderators are experts in their field selected by the Editorial Board or by other Moderators.)

Previous versions of updated biographies are stored on the system. A Moderator or Administrator may revert an entry to its previous version.

Locking protocols
Dispute: If an update/edit has been rejected by a Moderator and subsequently resubmitted by the contributor more than twice, the entry will be locked and flagged for dispute resolution.

Double Blind Peer Review: An entry will be locked if it is marked as Double Blind Peer Reviewed. See Definitions.

Indigenous specific fields: some fields specific to Indigenous creators are locked to prevent unnecessary edits. E.g the Language Group field is locked to prevent ‘correction’ of a language group spelling. Numerous spellings are possible for a single Language Group and the site defaults to the spelling used by each individual creator.

Dispute resolution
If you do not agree with an element of another members’ work, raise your concern on the entry Talk Page. Talk Pages provide a forum for members to discuss research issues with peers. Be courteous and keep in mind that Talk Pages are public. The same privacy and respect guidelines are applicable to the Talk Pages as apply to biographical records.

If a record is locked as ‘in dispute’, it will be flagged for Board resolution.

Respect for the work of fellow members
Members have access to submit updates, corrections and additional information to existing Design & Art Australia Online records. In allowing members to build upon the work of their peers, Design & Art Australia Online facilitates the rapid growth of an up-to-date and accurate biographical database. All Design & Art Australia Online members should respect the work of their peers. Do not make unnecessary edits or additions. If you disagree with an element of the biography, use the Talk Pages to resolve the issue before editing the entry.

Approvals
All edits will be marked as ‘Needs Approval’ until approved by a Moderator with relevant expertise.

What can I edit?
Incorrect or incomplete information such as dates, exhibition titles, relationships etc.
Typos, grammatical errors and basic style inconsistencies.

What can I update?
Help keep a record up-to-date by adding details of recent achievements or newly discovered facts. (Always refer to Design & Art Australia Online’s guidelines, particularly in relation to privacy of birth dates and respect for living artists when adding new information; in some cases, information is absent for a reason.)

What shouldn’t I edit?
Do not re-write another member’s entry because you don’t like the style.
Do not delete another member’s entry and replace it with your own. *Such edits will not be accepted by the Moderator.

Adding Art or Design Works to a record
Treat information about works with care. Works must be authenticated before information is entered on Design & Art Australia Online.
Add information about a work to a record if:
● You are an artist or designer adding information about your own artworks.
● The work has been exhibited or catalogued by a reputable gallery or auction house. In this case, link the work to the relevant exhibition listing within the DAAO or add catalogue details to the work description.
● The work is held in a public collection. In this case, link the work record to the relevant public collection on the DAAO. You can also link directly to the collection site.
Do not add information about a work to a record if:
● The work is listed as 'attributed to’ in an auction catalogue.
● You suspect (but are not sure) the work may have been created by the subject. You can always add this information to the record TALK pages and see if another member can provide feedback.

General Style Principles
● To be written in the third person
● Written in plain English
● Impartial
● Be conscious of timeliness – avoid writing in the ‘now’ e.g. “Artist X currently lives in…” should read “In 2007 Artist X was living in…”
● Be aware of your audience
● Include all references and sources in the source and reference metadata fields

Avoid
● Avoid jargon
● Avoid additional editorial from outside sources e.g. extracts from reviews (references to reviews etc. can be included in metadata fields as Further Reading)
● Unless pertinent and brief, avoid inclusion of additional academic text from outside sources (see note above re: references)
● If outside sources are to be quoted, include all reference details for verification and indexing purposes
● Avoid extraneous prose
● Unless highly relevant/interesting, avoid details on auction prices/sales (catalogue details can be listed as references)
● Avoid long descriptions of artworks, they speak for themselves
● Potentially defamatory judgement (e.g. “boring”, “not very good”) will not be published
● Discriminatory, racist or sexist comments will not be published
● Generally speaking, avoid critical judgements (good or bad)
● Avoid time based observations e.g. ‘turn of the century’, ‘Artist X is currently working on…’, ‘Artist X has had thirty exhibitions since 1990’, ‘Artist X continues to paint…’
● See Design & Art Australia Online Style Guide for further detail (link to Style Guide)

Do not make personal attacks anywhere on Design & Art Australia Online
Comment on content, not on the contributor.
All records must strive for accuracy; Design & Art Australia Online is not the place to insert personal opinions, experiences, or arguments.

Living artists and designers
Members need to take particular care adding biographical material about a living person to any Design & Art Australia Online page. Such material requires a degree of sensitivity, and must adhere strictly to our content policies. For example, an artist may be part of the Stolen Generations, but may not wish to have it mentioned in their Design & Art Australia Online biography.

See Design & Art Australia Online’s EULA for Indemnity Statement.

Contentious material
Administrators will remove any contentious material that is unsourced, or that relies upon sources that do not meet Design & Art Australia Online standards. If the information is derogatory or poorly sourced, it will not be published.

Administrators may remove such material at any time.

Using the subject as a source
In some cases the subject may become involved in creating a biography. They may edit it themselves or have a representative of theirs edit it. Information supplied by the subject may be added to the article if:
● It meets key principles: verifiability, neutrality etc.
● It is relevant to the person’s notability;
● It is not contentious;
● It is not unduly self-serving;

A blog or personal website written by the subject may be listed in the external links or Further Reading section, if it satisfies Design & Art Australia Online’s Links policy.

Privacy
All subjects are entitled to their privacy. Members should exercise restraint and information relevant to their work or public information. Respecting personal privacy is a legislative obligation. See Design & Art Australia Online Privacy policy.

Privacy of birthdays
DAAO includes exact birth-dates for some famous people, but including this information for most living people should be handled with caution. While many well-known living persons’ exact birthdays are widely known and available to the public, the same is not always true for marginally notable people or non-public figures. With identity theft on the rise, it has become increasingly common for people to consider their exact dates of birth to be private information. Err on the side of caution and simply list the year of birth rather than the exact date.