Talk:Welcome to Appropedia

From Appropedia

Jump to: navigation, search

(some past discussions have been moved to Talk:Welcome_to_Appropedia/Archive)

Contents

[edit] The New Font Page

The new front page in my opinion does not look as good as the old one. Just a statement I though I would share.

Thank you for your feedback. I think we agree and we are working on it. Please check back next week and let us know. Thanks again. --Lonny 19:39, 19 February 2007 (PST)
Do you like it better now? --Lonny 10:20, 18 September 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Let's not forget to revisit the logo question

Are we happy with the bricks? Why do the bricks have a "P" on them? Can we get bricks with an A? An "AT"?

I know this should be on the logo page, but it seems like a mainpage topic at the mo'. --Curtbeckmann 22:32, 9 October 2006 (PDT)

The designer of the most recent submission to the logo page has promised a new revision this week. Can it wait until then, or is this stalling your promotion push? Thank you, --Lonny 23:43, 14 October 2006 (PDT)

[edit] Small problem...

Sorry for your time.... Why i can't see images on this resource? My Browser is: Opera. Thank you.

I can't imagine why, but will look into it. --Curtbeckmann 07:48, 10 October 2006 (PDT)


That's odd. I use Opera (Windows & Linux) and can see images no prob. Can you view images on other sites with no problems?
The only thing I can think of is:
  • Go to Tools > Preferences,
  • Click "Web pages" at the top
  • What is your setting for "Images"? "Cached images" should be okay, but "Show images" should be safest. Try setting it to "Show images" if it isn't already.
Hope that helps - please let us know if it doesn't. --08:02, 10 October 2006 (PDT)
Question: what version of Opera were you using? I found the following link that suggests that earlier versions of Opera might not support .png files, but apparently 7.22 supports .png files. Here is the link (you'll need to follow the previous/next links to see the whole conversation): http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2005-January/003037.html

By the way, I've checked it on IE and Firefox and it works at least with my versions. --Curtbeckmann 08:14, 10 October 2006 (PDT)

[edit] Can www.appropedia.org go to Welcome page?

Is the redirect necessary? I assume that the mapping from http://www.appropedia.org to "Main Page" is done somehow programmatically. If so, can we go directly to the "Welcome to Appropedia" page with getting the little "redirected from" subtitle? (Note, even if we do that, we should keep the Main Page redirect for some time, since many references to Appropedia may point to the Main Page. That's how it's linked at my blog, for instance.) --CurtB 13:59, 2 November 2006 (PST)

Yes, it can! I found "mediawiki:mainpage" and changed the contents, which worked a treat. --CurtB 06:59, 3 November 2006 (PST)
Great work. You might want to tell Helge about this so that his main page is not a redirect... although it seems like he would probably already know.--Lonny 11:25, 3 November 2006 (PST)
I did. The reason why I use a redirect rather than Mediawiki:Mainpage (where I changed "Main Page" to "Home") is that I want to maintain a short URL that is recognized as the frontpage. People look at URLs a lot as a clue to where they are on a site. The little "redirected from" seems to be the lesser evil. --Helge 07:00, 19 November 2006 (PST)

[edit] Policy for changing the highlighted project?

I think we have several great projects that could be candidates for "highlighted project". AEF Greywater has been highlighted for couple of months now. Change it quarterly? More often when traffic grows? What's the process? For process, I suggest: Lonny picks what he likes, or delegates the problem to someone else (i.e. some very simple process). We could also have a monthly highlight, and have a policy of showing the last 2 or 3 months on the mainpage... This might imply smaller photos, but would show some of the richness of the site. I guess we could also feature non-project articles, since there's some pretty good content (Weld wood, Beyond dams, Demotech, etc) that may not be categorized as projects... --CurtB 12:13, 13 November 2006 (PST)

Highlighted project: I think that this should change at least monthly with our current content, and increase in frequency to weekly then daily. I am sorry that I have been slow about this. I will take charge of the highlighted project, and all are welcome to submit suggestions at Template_talk:Highlighted_project. For now I will change it monthly. Thank you for the reminder.
Other highlights: I think that we should not just have one highlight box and rotate through pages from different areas, but I would be very interested in an array of highlights - Highlighted project, how to, Topic, Organization, etc... maybe even user. --Lonny 13:23, 13 November 2006 (PST)
Okay, so would "highlighted user" be forced to have their photo on the main page? Scary! Wrong incentives! :-) Just saw lots of activity from User:Ethanzuckerman... Cool! --CurtB 14:25, 13 November 2006 (PST)
Suggestion for process:
  • Nominate a project on the talk page of Appropedia:Highlighted project (or whatever the page will be called). Much like nominations for upcoming tips at Wikipedia talk:Tip of the day#New entriesWP.
  • One or more admin can choose a project, provided it has been nominated for some time (a week or more?) This time after nomination allows time and attention for the article to get any extra work it needs.
  • Re how often to change it - the frequency will no doubt increase as things get more active. I agree, we should be changing at least monthly for now.
--Singkong2005 · talk 22:49, 14 November 2006 (PST)

[edit] Avoiding spam...

I've noticed a couple of spam attempts recently... not a huge problem, but is it possible to set the wiki up so that if a new or unregistered user adds a url, they have to pass through one of those anti-robot tests (type the squiggly letters, or perform simple arithmetic)? --Singkong2005 · talk 21:31, 23 November 2006 (PST)

[edit] about box suggestions

I suggest changing "Increasing Sustainability" to simply "Environmental Sustainability", as in certain business circles "sustainability" can mean "profit sustainability".

I also suggest beginning bullet points with the highlighted terms, e.g.

  • International Development to foster change, knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life (UNDP definition)
  • Environmental Sustainability to encourage responsible stewardship of Earth's natural resources
Good suggestions. --Chriswaterguy · talk 04:33, 28 March 2007 (PDT)

("Appropriate Technology" I believe is a silly and ambiguous term) Dhart 00:20, 28 March 2007 (PDT)

It's certainly ambiguous, but it is widely used by people in the international development arena (including Engineers Without Borders) with the kind of meaning described at Wikipedia:Appropriate technology... it's a very important concept and I'm not aware of alternative terms that serve the purpose. --Chriswaterguy · talk 04:33, 28 March 2007 (PDT)
Perhaps AT should have it's own bullet point with a short description? E.g.
ES overlaps with AT, but it's important enough to single out IMO. Dhart 15:25, 28 March 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Category suggestions

I suggest a separation of the "ICT / Education" category. A few arguments: acronyms are perhaps not great at the category level (who outside of ICT knows the definition of ICT?); the combination with education is not obvious; WikiMedia categories are what everyone else calls "tags" ; WikiMedia categories are hierarchical, so splitting and multi-tagging is better than lumping. Proposed split:

  • Information Technology
  • Education Infrastructure

--Dhart

I agree with your points, especially about acronyms. We were trying to set up the top categories so that they would mirror human needs/wants. Education and Information Communication Technology seemed to fit together. I am starting to strongly favor removing ICT from the top level categories and instead subcategorizing/multitagging it. Maybe Education could be renamed to be more inclusive... or maybe Education is just right. Thank you for your feedback. --Lonny 02:13, 28 March 2007 (PDT)
Using common-use tags is probably better than second-guessing users wants/needs for tag names; in this case "Education" would be best (even though I like "Education Infrastructure"!), and would make a nice top-level tag. In my experience, choosing top-level-anything is tough, especially avoiding too many top-level things. Choice will probably come down to a decision about the topics which the site wants to stress (probably around 10 max), with the compromise of a link to a page of "Other Categories" which may contain a hand-culled list of 50-100 categories, and the WikiMedia "all categories" link (which can probably be safely removed from the front page). Dhart 04:19, 28 March 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Appropriate technology link - yikes

I just realized that Appropriate technology is linked from the top of the main page - and it's not a great article at all. We need to make an Ap Tech portal, ASAP, IMO. It doesn't work well as a category as such a large proportion of our stuff would go in it, but it could be a great portal, which would be a landing page for tech-minded people. --Chriswaterguy · talk 16:44, 29 March 2007 (PDT)


[edit] Rocket Stove Opportunity

I just wanted to comment on the benefits of Appropedia. A requirement of my appropriate technology class at Humboldt State University was to create a Appropedia web page describing students individual appropriate technology projects. My project was the construction and design of a rocket stove or improved fuel stove. The article can be found under "CCAT Rocket Stove". In the discussion area of the rocket stove page I indicated my contact information and stated my desire to continue research with rocket stoves. Several months passed with no response. And then to my surprise a associate director with the department of mechanical engineering at Colorado State University contacted me. He stated that he has some opportunities and asked that I send my resume. This opportunity would not have presented itself had it not been for Appropedia. I want to thank everyone who has had a part in creating this truly helpful site. Thank You Lonny!

[edit] I can't seem to log in

any idea why I'm having this problem?

signed baron.

Hi Baron,
No idea what the source of the problem is. What error are you getting? Have you tried doing a hard reload of your cache?
-Lonny 09:36, 14 January 2008 (PST)
Retrieved from "http://www.appropedia.org/Talk:Welcome_to_Appropedia"
Personal tools