Object Recognition with Deep Boltzmann Machines

This page explains everything (well, at least we tried) concerned with the creation and modification of project pages. Remember that you must be one or AIRWiki's Registered users to do these things. For a list of AIRLab projects, see the Projects page.

HOWTO add a new project to the AIRWiki

Contributing to a wiki is easy, and leaves you with a deep sense of satisfaction: by contributing, you are documenting your work in a durable form and helping all the other users of the wiki as well. By the way, a well thought out help for MediaWiki (the software that AIRWiki, or for that matter also Wikipedia and many other websites, is built upon) is available here. So even if this is your first experience with a wiki, you should not have any problems.

To contribute you need to become one of AIRWiki's Registered users. Please note that all the content you insert into the AIRWiki must be written in English.

Here is a complete description of the procedure to create a new page associated to your project: follow it carefully, because other contributors do not appreciate when their content is damaged by careless people. Be very careful with that 'Save page' button...

Step 1: Preparing the new project page

1. open a text editor (e.g. Notepad);
2. create a new, empty text file: let's call it YourPage.txt;
3. open the Project page template and click the edit tab on the top of it to expose the wiki source text;
4. copy all the content of the source text window into YourPage.txt;
5. modify YourPage.txt file by substituting all the example text with information about your project.

Step 2: Adding the new project to the Projects page of the AIRWiki

1. open the Projects page;
2. go to the 'Ongoing projects' section and find the subsection having the name of the research area of your project: e.g. "E-Science" (if you have doubts, ask the teachers);
3. choose a name of your liking for the new AIRWiki page dedicated to your project. If the project already has an "official" name, use it; otherwise, use a word or a short phrase with only the first letter in capitals (of course you have to choose a name that is coherent with the objectives of the project);
4. click the edit link on the right of the subsection to expose the wiki source text;
5. add a new text line with the name of your project and a link to its wiki page: the latter is simply the project name you chose surrounded by double square parentheses (this will create the page when you will click the "Save page" button - DON'T click it now);
6. use a blank line to separate the new line from pre-existing text;
7. be extremely careful not to alter pre-existing text: if you think you could have done that, press the 'back' button of your browser now to exit from the editing page without saving, then repeat the editing steps;
8. click the "Show preview" button at the bottom of the page, and look carefully at the whole subsection (not only to the part you added): if it doesn't seem to be perfectly right, press the 'back' button of your browser to exit from the editing page without saving, then repeat the editing;
9. when you are certain that all is ok, click the "Save page" button at the bottom of the page.

You should be now (proudly) looking at the description of your project, perfectly set among the others. Now, clicking on the link to your project's page in the Projects page of the AIRWiki, you will see one of these:

• the 'edit' tab of an empty page: good, you chose an unused name for your page. Proceed to fill the page as described below.
• a non-blank page: argh, you chose an already-used name for your page. Re-edit the Projects page and modify the wiki link (i.e. the name between double square parentheses) you put in it, changing the name of your new page (i.e. again, the name between double square parentheses). As before, click the 'Save page' button only if and when you are certain that all is ok in the whole page.

Go on with this checking and modifying until you find a (sensible!) name that no other project has yet used.

Step 3: Filling the new page

1. if you are looking at the 'edit' tab of your project's new page, simply open file "YourPage.txt" (you know, the one containing the content for your page, which you prepared before) and copy its entire contents into the page. If not, first use a browser to open your page and click on the 'edit' tab on the top of the page.
2. click the "Show preview" button at the bottom of the page, and look carefully at the result: if it doesn't seem to be right, press the 'back' button of your browser now to exit from the editing page without saving, then repeat the page editing by clicking on the 'edit' tab on the top of the page;
3. when you are certain that all is ok, click the "Save page" button at the bottom of the page.

You should now be able to (veeery proudly) see your project's page in its full glory. If you aren't satisfied with the result, just go back to page editing by clicking on the 'edit' tab on the top of the page.

As your work on your project will go on, don't forget to keep your project's page up-to-date by editing it every time you have new material. To know how, see #HOWTO add information to a project page.

HOWTO add information to a project page

As said in AIRWiki#How do I access the contents of this wiki?, AIRWiki is divided into two parts (called "layers"): a public layer, readable by anyone through the internet and a private layer, only accessible by Registered users.

Registered users can modify both layers of AIRWiki.

For project pages, the public layer can be changed by clicking the 'edit' tab of the page. Thus, to add or modify something you only have to click that tab and do it. By clicking the 'Save Page' button on the bottom of the page, your work will be immediately made public to everyone on the internet. If you want to check the result before saving (a very good habit), click the 'Show preview' button and take a look before hitting the 'Save page' button. If you are not sure that what you see is exactly what it should (including the parts of the page that you didn't modify - or thought you didn't :-) ), just press the 'back' button of your browser now to exit from the editing page without saving, then repeat the page editing.

The private layer of project pages can be edited in just the same way: the only difference is that you have to click the 'discussion' tab instead of the 'edit' one. In this way you access the editing form for the discussion page associated to your project; this page has the same name of the associated project page, preceded by "Talk:". It is the place where you can put all your work notes, and you are strongly encouraged to use it to store ANY useful information about the project not being sufficiently well-proven or well-formatted to be put on the public layer. See #Public or private? to understand what you should put into the public layer and what you should, instead, put into the private layer.

Tip: if you are editing the private layer of a project "MyProject", on the top of the web page you are looking at there is the title "Editing Talk:MyProject". If the title is "Editing MyProject" (i.e. if Talk: is missing), you are editing the public layer.

Actually, there is one important difference between modifying the public layer and the private layer: if you publish something wrong in the public layer, you make your mistake public to all the world. And you have full responsibility for what you publish (see the [General disclaimer], also accessible by clicking the "Disclaimer" link on the bottom of every AIRWiki page). Of course, we all make mistakes, and you should not be too worried by the possibility that you write something that doesn't make sense scientifically or technically: but there are types of mistakes which mean trouble, such as those which infringe someone else's copyright. See Registered users#Warnings.

Public or private?

The right thing to do is to treat your project's page as an online repository of everything related to the project. You are encouraged to do just that. By doing so you:

• help anyone that is working or will work on your project or a similar one by recording all useful information;
• can access your documentation through the internet, from any PC.

As soon as you have some new information about your project (results, images, data, links, decisions, roadmaps, what you have done today, descriptions of things gone well or of errors made, warnings, and pretty much everything), it's very important that you put it into the project's page. In this way you will create a trace of how the project is proceeding, what difficulties you had to overcome, and how that was accomplished. To know how to put information in, see #HOWTO add information to a project page.

The obvious problem is: what information must be put into the "public" layer of the project's page and what should instead put into the "private" layer? You should follow these guidelines:

• Any text of the public layer of AIRWiki must be written in English (using English also for the private layer is a sensible idea, especially considering that you will have to move much of its contents to the public layer sooner or later: see below);
• Anything on the public layer of AIRWiki should be sufficiently "finished" and checked for errors. Of course errors occur, so you shouldn't be too worried about that, but remember that you are creating a public page on the internet. If something needs to be revised or checked, leave it in the private layer until it's ready.
• You should, eventually, migrate most of the content of the private layer to the public layer. (Well, excluding the details regarding your work that cannot be of interest to anyone out of the AIRLab, such as how much you paid for this and that :-) ) So:
  • try to keep the contents of the private layer of your project's page well organized: in this way the migration will be easy;
  • it's a good idea if you directly write everything in English!
• Try to include into the project's page everything you would have liked to find there (if you work on a project started by others) and everything you think that people working on it in the future will like to find.
• It is especially useful if you include a project diary into the private part of your project's page: a short description of everything you do, why you did it, and what resulted from it. This will be invaluable for those that will have to take your work further!

A final note: for your teachers, the AIRWiki will be the main source of information about how your project is going, so they will look at its page (public and private parts) often and with attention :-)