Choose the best image of a species on the Encyclopedia of Life

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On eol.org, hundreds of partner projects contribute images (and video and sound files) of hundreds of thousands of species of animals, plants, fungi, and microbes. Our system tries to pick the best ones to show on the species overview, to be the first thing a visitor learns about a species- but you can help us do a better job! Take a look in the Media tab at all the images or videos or sounds available, rate the good ones higher and the less useful ones lower on our 5 star scale, and if you like, choose the most useful, representative image as the Exemplar, which will show most prominently in the Overview.

It sounds simple but it's very important. We get about 10,000 visitors every day, looking for biodiversity information, but if they don't see something helpful on the species overview, they usually don't go looking for more. Also, frequently only the first one or several images get sent by our web services to an educational product (like this free mobile app: http://www.nameitapp.org/) which relies on EOL content, so it's important that the best content shows first. Please help us organize our information!

Please sign up at eol.org using the "Join EOL now" link (it's free) and email me your username; I can give you some advice to get you started fixing up pages for your favorite organisms! If you'd like to be able to set Exemplar images, request "Assistant Curator" status when you register.