People profiles — Documentation

Each person at MARC keeps their own profile up to date, either with the profile form (no GitHub account needed) or by editing it on GitHub.

Use the profile form

No GitHub account needed

Add or update your profile, photo and projects with one form.

Open the profile form

The form adds a new profile or updates yours, and keeps every link intact:

Updating? Fill in only what should change. Blank answers keep what is already there.
Other email addresses and other forms of your name are added to your profile, never removed, so projects and papers that use them stay linked to you.
Photo: upload a JPG, PNG or WebP image. It is resized and its camera and location data removed.
Projects: tick the projects you work on and you are added to their teams.
Leaving MARC? Choose Past member and say where you are now.

Every night at midnight (Sri Lanka time) your answers become a change request. It goes live once a MARC maintainer approves it. If something can’t be used, for example an update from an address that is not in any profile, a maintainer will be in touch.

The rest of this guide is for editing on GitHub, and explains what each field means.

Edit on GitHub

Profiles live in the marc_people repository (opens in a new tab) on GitHub: one Markdown file per person in the profiles/ folder, with photos in profiles/photos/.

marc_people/
└── profiles/
    ├── Jane_Doe.md
    └── photos/
        └── jane_doe.jpg

Update your profile

You can do everything in the browser:

Open your file in profiles/ (opens in a new tab) and click the pencil icon (Edit this file).
Sign in to GitHub if asked. If you are not a member of the repository, GitHub offers to fork it for you. Accept.
Change what you need. To replace your email or name, keep the old one in otherEmails or otherNames (see Changing your email or name).
Click Commit changes…, choose to create a new branch, then Create pull request.
When a MARC maintainer merges it, the website rebuilds and your changes go live.

Joined or left a project? That is changed in the project’s file, not in your profile. See Add yourself to your projects.

To change your photo, first upload the new image to profiles/photos/ (opens in a new tab) (Add file → Upload files), then point photo: at it.

Add a new profile

In the profiles/ folder, click Add file → Create new file, name it after yourself (for example Jane_Doe.md) and start from this template:

---
email: jane.doe@eng.pdn.ac.lk
post: Research Assistant
name: Jane Doe
photo: ./photos/jane_doe.jpg
otherEmails:
  - e19999@eng.pdn.ac.lk
  - jane.doe@gmail.com
otherNames:
  - "Doe, J."
  - "J. A. Doe"
---
Jane Doe is a Research Assistant at MARC working on ...

## Research interests

- Computer vision
- Remote sensing

otherEmails and otherNames are optional: leave them out if you have nothing to add. Before you save, check the linking keys:

email: your main address. If you are already listed on a project, use the address in that project file, or add it to otherEmails.
otherEmails: any other address a project file may list for you: a student address, an old address, a personal one.
name: your name as you want it shown, for example Jane Doe.
otherNames: every other way your name is written in the author lists of your papers.

Then add yourself to your projects. Your profile does not say which projects you are on, so that is a second, separate change.

Other emails and names

People are often written down in more than one way: a student address and a staff address, or Jane Doe in one paper and Doe, J. A. in another. List the extra forms so the website can connect them all to you.

otherEmails:
  - e19999@eng.pdn.ac.lk
otherNames:
  - "Doe, J."
  - "J. A. Doe"
  - "D. M. J. A. Doe"

Copy name forms from your papers’ author lists. Upper and lower case, full stops and spacing are ignored, so J.A. Doe, J. A. Doe and j a doe are the same form.
Make each name form specific to you. It must have at least two words, and it must not match another MARC member: if a colleague could also be Doe, J., use the longer form with all your initials. The automatic check stops two profiles from sharing a name form.
Each email belongs to one person. The check stops an address from appearing in two profiles.
Put quotes around name forms that contain a comma, as in the examples.
Emails are never shown on the website, and otherNames are only used for matching.

Add yourself to your projects

Each project file lists its own team; your profile does not. To appear on a project’s page, and to have the project appear on your profile, one of your addresses (email or any of otherEmails) must be in that project’s file in the marc_projects repository (opens in a new tab).

Find your project’s file. Its name is in the project’s page address: /projects/inr/ is INR.md.
Open it in projects/ (opens in a new tab) and click the pencil icon.
Add your email, copied from your profile, under projectMembers if you are a researcher or supervisors if you supervise the project.
Commit to a new branch and open a pull request in marc_projects.

If the list is empty ([]), replace the brackets with a list. Before:

projectMembers: []

After:

projectMembers:
  - jane.doe@eng.pdn.ac.lk

If it already has people, add one line for yourself at the end:

projectMembers:
  - researcher1@eng.pdn.ac.lk
  - jane.doe@eng.pdn.ac.lk

Each line starts with two spaces, a dash and a space. Don’t change anyone else’s line.

Already listed under another address? No need to change the project: add that address to your otherEmails instead.
Two pull requests. Your profile (marc_people) and the project file (marc_projects) are in different repositories. They can be merged in either order: you appear on the project once both are merged.
Several projects? Repeat the steps for each project file.
Leaving a project, or becoming a supervisor? Remove your line from that list, or move it from projectMembers to supervisors, the same way.

Fields

Linking keys: other content refers to these. Add to them freely; remove or replace a value only as described in Changing your email or name.

Field	Required	Linked from	Purpose
`email`	Yes	`projectMembers` and `supervisors` in project files	Your main address and unique identifier. Never shown on the website.
`otherEmails`	No	The same project lists	Extra addresses projects may use for you, one per line. Each address may appear in only one profile.
`name`	Yes	The `Authors` column of the publications sheet	Your display name, and the first form used to find your papers. Titles such as Prof. or Dr. are ignored.
`otherNames`	No	The same Authors column	Other forms of your name in author lists, one per line, at least two words each.

Email matching ignores upper and lower case, so Jane.Doe@… and jane.doe@… are the same address.

Safe to change at any time:

Field	Required	Purpose
`post`	Yes	Your role. Use exactly one of `Director`, `Deputy Director`, `Project Coordinator`, `Research Engineer`, `Research Assistant`, `Research Intern` or `Volunteer`. The People page groups people by role; see Roles.
`photo`	No	Path to your photo, starting with `./photos/`. Without one, a neutral avatar is shown.
`status`	No	`current` (the default) or `past`. Past members are listed under Past members. See When you leave MARC.
`currentPosition`	No	For past members only: where you are now, for example `"PhD, Columbia University, USA"`. Shown as “Now: …”.
Biography	No	Everything below the closing `---`, in Markdown: paragraphs, headings, lists, links and images. If empty, the Biography section is not shown.

The file name sets your page address: Jane_Doe.md becomes /people/jane_doe/. Nothing on the site depends on it, but renaming the file changes the address, so links shared elsewhere (a CV, an email signature) stop working.

Roles

The People page groups current members by their post, under these headings:

`post`	Heading on the People page
`Director`	Director
`Deputy Director`	Deputy Directors
`Project Coordinator`, `Research Engineer`, `Research Assistant`, `Research Intern`	Engineers, Research Assistants & Coordinators
`Volunteer`	Volunteers

The role is also shown on your profile and on the teams of your projects. Changing it is safe: nothing links by role. In the profile form, choose your role under Your role at MARC.

Changing your email or name

Never just delete an old address or name form: move it to the “other” list, and every existing link keeps working without touching any project file or the publications sheet.

Your main email changes. Put the new address in email and move the old one to otherEmails:

email: jane.doe@pdn.ac.lk
otherEmails:
  - jane.doe@eng.pdn.ac.lk

Your name changes, or you want it shown differently. Put the new form in name and move the old one to otherNames:

name: Jane Perera
otherNames:
  - "Jane Doe"
  - "Doe, J."

Remove an old value only when nothing uses it any more: no project file lists that address, and no paper lists that form of your name.

When you leave MARC

Don’t delete your profile. Mark it as past instead:

---
email: jane.doe@eng.pdn.ac.lk
post: Research Assistant
name: Jane Doe
photo: ./photos/jane_doe.jpg
status: past
currentPosition: "PhD, Example University, USA"
---

You move from your role’s group to Past members on the People page, with your role at MARC and “Now: …” from currentPosition. Your profile page shows a “Past member” label.
Everything stays linked. Your projects and publications stay on your profile, and you stay on those project pages (marked “Past member”), because your emails and names are unchanged. Leave your lines in the project files: they record that you worked on the project.
Keep post as the role you held at MARC.
Consider rewording your biography in the past tense (“was a Research Assistant at MARC…”).
Past members are not counted in the “Researchers” figure on the home page.

Photo tips

Use a .jpg, .jpeg or .png file, ideally square and at least 400 × 400 pixels.
Photos are shown in a circle, so keep your face near the centre and towards the top.
The photo path must match the file name exactly, including upper and lower case: the website is built on a system where Jane.JPG and jane.jpg are different files.

What appears on your profile

Associated projects: every project whose projectMembers or supervisors list contains your email or one of your otherEmails. See Projects.
Publications: papers in the publications sheet whose Authors column contains your name or one of your otherNames as a whole name. See Publications.

If the check fails

When you open a pull request, an automatic check validates every profile. If it fails, open the Checks tab of the pull request to see which file and field to fix. The most common problems:

a post that is not one of the roles, spelled exactly;
an address (in email or otherEmails) already used by another profile;
a name form already used by another profile, or one with only one word;
a status other than current or past, or a currentPosition without status: past;
a photo path that does not match the file;
a profile saved outside the profiles/ folder.

More detail: the marc_people README (opens in a new tab).