User talk:KVDP   

Thanks for your contributions to TTH! --Steven M. 17:25, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Contents 1 Welcome! 2 TTH 3 refs 4 Appropriate health care manual 5 Population growth 6 Wikipedia 7 Mills 8 Instant messaging +categorisation 9 Emergency management and healthcare 10 Sanitation & Water 11 Climate news 12 Google Wave 13 hands 14 reply 15 blog & tech help 16 CAD Team 17 file extensions 18 Village Pump 19 http://costeffectiveaid.blogspot.com/ 20 Schematics 21 Neologisms 22 Appropriate living manual 23 Navigating the manual pages 24 Status tags 25 Jamkhed 26 A Space for Speculative Projects 27 Appropriate methods of transport 28 Village Pump 29 Open Educational Resources 30 Air filtration 31 Travel article 32 good reading 33 Appeal 34 Heliostat image 35 Wikipedia content 36 Template:Bar box and Template:Requested move 37 Appropedia task allocation 38 Userfied some pages 39 Userfied canals 40 Lavafilter image rights 41 Alternating current 42 Notifications 43 Handy Appropedia search 44 source of Ag manual? 45 Your autogyro 46 Edit summaries 47 Please clarify 48 Replied 49 Animals for transport

[edit] Welcome!

[edit] TTH

Hi there - thanks again for all your good work.

Re the suggestion to delete TTH Chapter 14: Transition abroad and other TTH pages - see Talk:The Transition Handbook - free edit version #Deletion proposal. Thanks. --Chriswaterguy 15:38, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Btw you may be interested in some of the talk pages, if you haven't seen them yet - e.g. these may be relevant to the manual you are working on:

• Talk:TTH Chapter 2: The view from the mountain-top and
• Talk:The Transition Handbook - free edit version #Other people
• Talk:The Transition Handbook - free edit version #Getting involved --Chriswaterguy 15:44, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] refs

We don't seem to have {{reflist}} set up on Appropedia. I used {{subst:notes}}, which substitutes in {{notes}} (though just using {{notes}} would also work.

You could try that - though if there's a reason we should use reflist, we could look at that too. Thanks.

Checking out your new pages, comparing technologies - really nice work. --Chriswaterguy 10:11, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Not all the pages I uploaded are already really useful (eg the comparistion of WECS, HECS, ...) is still unfinished. However it already provides a main categorisation (so we can name each system seperatly, with a suitable term) and it gives other people a reference point on what they should improve, ... Also, I placed the duplicates of these pages here as I fear that they could get corrupted too much or even deleted (some pages already have warning tags) at wikipedia

I set up a simplified version of {{reflist}}. It should work for most of our purposes for now, and is highly adaptable for later. Let me know if that works for you KVDP. Thanks --Lonny 09:10, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Lonny, this will do nicely.

KVDP 08:39, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I copied wikipedia:Template:Reflist to {{Reflist w}}. See it working at User:Teratornis/Tasks#Notes and references. The simplified {{Reflist}} is in wide use currently (backlinks) so I will not update it until I check with someone who can approve the change first. --Teratornis 01:40, 24 January 2011 (PST)

{{Reflist}} works like the Wikipedia version now (small font, support for multiple columns, reference highlighting in compatible browsers, etc.) so I'm requesting deletion for the test template Reflist w. --Teratornis 15:13, 17 February 2011 (PST)

[edit] Appropriate health care manual

Hi KVDP,

Thank you for your prolific edits and suggestions. What appropriate technology or health care situations have you worked in before? I am mostly asking to get a context for the Appropriate health care manual. I think we need to have a way to share this context with readers as well, similar to how we do for Practical Action pages like Aerial Ropeways in Nepal^{(see more)}.

Thanks, --Lonny 09:15, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

At present, I haven't worked in any appropriate technology or health care situation. Unlike some of the other appropedia members, I do not possess any practical experience; however having studied many writings/approaches on how health care is organised (both in developed as the less developed countries), what their flaws were, ... and also having studied a short (2 year) course on phytotherapy, I am quite sure that the approach will work. To place the document in context however, I do not have the right credentials to back it up myself; however (as too I placed in a <!-- line in the article,) the writing can be backed up by others, (I'm guessing that other AT organisations already have certain topics mentioned in the article covered (eg the vaccinations?); and for the phytotherapy perhaps others such as Dr. Geert Verhelst, Volker Schulz, Rudolf Hänsel, Varro E. Tyler can be contacted. I already sent Geert Verhelst a letter, and if he doesn't respond, the others can be dropped a line). As such, the writing I made will function only as a guideline on how health care can be set up most efficiently (note that my approach as of present, is still unique and no mentioning of this approach has already been described anywhere; meaning that the document remains vital to simply describe the method of approach). However, additional info (such as the exact plant list per area, the exact vaccinations, ...) need to be filled in by others, which ideally, also need to have a certain degree of authority (credentials) in their area.

KVDP 09:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

KVDP You tell us have no practical experience and the health care manual and the Appropriate living manual you are offering us is based on your personal research and prepared by you on your own, without having been reviewed by anyone else? The greater part of your contributions advocate improving general health via eugenics. I hope you see that this strategy offers little benefit to anyone who isn't so poor that they have no other choice. "You may die in poverty with no children to look after you but everyone else will be much better off without you scabby children dirtying up the place". That may be an exaggeration of your proposal but be aware that people will exaggerate. Appropriate Technology is about giving people power over their lives. You offer them a place in an AT village provided they meet some standard of conduct they have no say in setting and provided they agree to be sterilised. I've been sterilised already and I wouldn't agree to that. Would you? Every practical trial has told us that the most effective contraceptive is education for girls. This is not even mentioned in your manual.

Indeed, I stated that I had no practical experience, and I already advocated that this issue is to be resolved in the future (see the Health care manual talk pages). However, the best way to do so is via eg a tag, ... (and not with a text per single article). As for not being reviewed by anyone else, this is true when asessing the article in a whole on its approach, however, most of the discussed techniques (eg herbal medicine, ...) are indeed proven to work. As for the "not benefitting anyone who isn't so poor that they have no other choice", I think that you are referring to the economic standpoint (as in any other way it actually does, seeing that we already exceeded our global population quota by 300%). From the economic standpoint, children may indeed bring economic benefit (the moment they reach their 18th birthday), but this is pretty much it, and the economic benefit I think shouldn't be brought in anyways as the economic/society system is a bit off at the moment (environmental effects of certain jobs, ... are simply not yet calculated herein). As for the AT village prepositions you make it sound like it is set up similar to a prison. This is offcourse the opposite of what I am envisaging. The moment there is talk of some "rules of conduct", people generally always link this to a "restriction". However, implementing some general simple rules (including sterilisation for a part of the population) will ensure that a village runs economically smoothly, that the social interaction runs smooth and casual and that many problems such as (synthetic) drugs, corruption, poverty, ... are eliminated. This is surely a small price to pay for the received benefits. As for agreeing to be sterilised, indeed I do agree to this, and I would surely execute the procedure the moment the need arises. Regarding the best contraceptive being education, I must disagree. This is unsecure and when extrapolated on any population over any length of time, we will clearly see that the population numbers will increase over the sustainable maximum.

The idea of a Model village with a simple set of rules has of course been tried before with varying levels of success (See the WP article "Model village"). The most successful seem to be those which were set up as company towns.

I am astonished that you disagree with the proposition that education for young women is the best contraceptive. This is pretty well documented in various locations around the globe. In countries where most women get university level education the population is declining! Joe Raftery 14:15, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Playing "If I ruled the world we would do it right" is great fun when the only thing affected are the pixels in a video game (Sim City and Civilisation are my favourites) but it is not right to play God with real people. Please read Our Bodies, Ourselves (the US edition is online but the Indian and the South African editions, if you can get hold of them, have a many additional elements relevant to those countries) and Where there is no Doctor. These books have been prepared by large teams of Health workers, working around the world. They have been hone through years of trial and error to see what works where. Appropedia does have a place for stuff you just thought of which seems like it might work but you mustn't pretend that it is tried and tested. Don't call it the Manual. I hope this doesn't seems rude. You seem to have a real interest in making the world a better place. Just remember that you don't have to do it all on your own. Look to see where you can contribute to making the whole site better - not just creating a little mini-site of your own within Appropedia. I hope you will respond on my talk page. Yours Joe Raftery 11:03, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

As mentioned above, I never pretend my articles to be tried and tested. If you feel strongly about adressing the issue quickly, you can start by making a tag for this. Regarding calling it manuals, this issue too has been raised previously (in the AT villager talk page) and I have already made clear in these texts why I use the term manual (which has nothing to do with making my texts seem more scientific, ...) Regarding making a mini-site, I always try to align my ideas in articles suitable to Appropedia. I do have some sites outside it (at Wikiversity; and at a personal blogspot) but this is outside of Appropedia. I finally do try to improve Appropedia on other planes too (eg categorisation, ...).

KVDP 13:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

"Regarding the best contraceptive being education, I must disagree. This is unsecure and when extrapolated on any population over any length of time," - this is where I would suggest we turn to statistics, as Joe has already. And all this work that we're doing here, comparing ideas, is best done on a relevant article. This is a wiki, and this is key to how wikis work (as opposed to forums and more conventional collaborative platforms) and it's key to what makes a wiki successful.

Showing statistics is indeed a goog idea and should be included (eg in a bar chart, ...). However, working on some other articles at the moment, I don't have much time for this at the moment. I'll perhaps look into it later-on.

This conversation demonstrates the fundamental problem with this kind of manual page. Here we have two of us (Joe and myself) who have fundamental disagreements with these pages, and I know at least of one other (Lonny) who has expressed deep concern - yet no one has substantially edited any of them other than the original author. I remain uncomfortable editing them, in spite of being an admin and having made thousands of edits here and at Wikipedia, so I imagine others are even more hesitant.

Re the idea that the best way to resolve these issues "is via eg a tag," I'm not quite clear what that means. I've added a {{disagreement}} tag to two of the pages, but this is nowhere near a satisfactory way of dealing with it. One has been there for 5 weeks but there remains no progress on resolving anything.

This is not exactly what I meant. Rather than a page-wide tag, I propose a tag for a specific line, paragraph or statement (eg similar to ref-tags, or the {{facts}} tag at wikipedia. Regarding making the orginal source (writer) clear, this can be done with the infoboxes, as discussed at Talk:AT_villager_recruitment

With the same text on topic pages, some of us would have already added content, perspectives, empirical research and/or links to case studies, and I would have been actively canvassing for feedback and input. So here's my suggestion: let's develop the pages that way first, and raise the question of a manual again later, when we have a good collection of articles to start with.

So, we've been talking about this for some weeks, but are no closer to agreement. We need to resolve this ASAP so we can get on with building this resource at Appropedia. I am extremely strongly opposed to this form of manual in this situation, at the present time. The options I see are:

1. If you insist we do things the way they are at present, we just add tags {{disagreement}} or similar tags to pages as needed (but I still won't be editing them, and from experience others won't either). I dislike this option.

2. If you appreciate our concerns (even if you don't agree, but recognize that cooperation is difficult the way things are) then you might agree to split and move the manual pages to topic pages for further development.

offcourse I appreciate your concern/feedback, and as I mentioned before, I understand why editing the manual may seem to be more difficult. Regarding the splitting of the articles into topics, I still don't quite understand what the merits would be (what kind of info for example would you be able to add which now seems impossible ?). Personally, I think that this problem is simply moreof a problem that we don't usually work this way conventionally (eg at Wikipedia, ...), but in practice doesn't really pose much of a problem. Regardless, can you state how this perform the splitting in practice (eg which seperate articles you would make, ...) be done, perhaps that we can rework it. An option would be eg to make new topic pages, eg the ones on topics that aren't yet available at appropedia (eg herbal medicine or phytotherapy). Perhaps that the manual I made can (as there seem to be many objections against it), simply muffled away (eg with a tag, removal from categories, ...) until it has matured enough, labelling it as a "Work In Progress (WIP)". This allows to keep my approach, aswell as take out the main new features into a new article which may be more quickly improved.

KVDP 10:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

"Regarding the splitting of the articles into topics, I still don't quite understand what the merits would be (what kind of info for example would you be able to add which now seems impossible ?)."

It's hard to do a major expansion without affecting the structure of the page, and hard to do even a minor one without potentially changing the whole direction and tone of the page.

I stated impossible, indeed it's harder as discussed previously in other talk pages, but still possible if the entire text is first well analysed. As noted before, I do agree that it could be a barrier for quick improving.

"Personally, I think that this problem is simply moreof a problem that we don't usually work this way conventionally (eg at Wikipedia, ...), but in practice doesn't really pose much of a problem."

I disagree - it is fundamental to wikis that if you want to read about, contribute to or link to X, then that article is at [[X]].

"how this perform the splitting in practice (eg which seperate articles you would make, ...) be done, perhaps that we can rework it."

It would be great if you could do the splitting - then each new page or existing page where you add content, it's clear from the history that these are your additions. I'm looking forward to contributing to some of these pages and getting other people editing as well.

At the moment, I'm still working on the agriculture manual, and I also have some extra images to make for wikipedia. I think the splitting is best done simply by renaming the "Appropriate health care manual 2 - 4" to the appropriate topic (eg "vaccination", phytotherapy, ...) I already saw at the village pump that Joe Raftery's already on the case btw.

Perhaps that the manual I made can (as there seem to be many objections against it), simply muffled away (eg with a tag, removal from categories, ...) until it has matured enough, labelling it as a "Work In Progress (WIP)".

That sounds good. Make up a template notice for the top of your manual pages. If you welcome edits by others, say that in the template. Also note that this is controversial. That's enough to work with, but you could maybe link to something that states your own background and perspectives that lead you to make this manual.

I'm not completely aware how templates are made at wiki's. I'll leave this to more experienced editors, but if some basic info (or my motivations) is required what it would say, I could be of assistance. For the motivations; I am however not sure what more I can note other then what I already have at the talk pages; most of the times I simply edit/make images, ... at wikipedia and appropedia simply because I have a little understanding of how things are best handled and because I'm here and able to. I am however not always the most qualified/experienced person to do the task.

KVDP 08:46, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

How does that sound? Note I'll be going away for a couple of weeks, with no internet, so I'm catching up on as much as I can now... have a good break if we don't connect before I leave! --Chriswaterguy 23:49, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

3. We start a kind of voting process, something like "Articles for Deletion" on Wikipedia, and push. I'd rather not spend the energy on this, so I hope we can go with option 2. --Chriswaterguy 06:10, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Population growth

Found this interesting (Via Lonny's Stumbleupon): Falling fertility, The Economist. Argues that there is little more to be achieved through population policy, as growth is already falling about as fast as can be expected. Thus reductions in impact must come through technology and governance. (I added the link to Population growth. --Chriswaterguy 03:52, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I read the article you mentioned but it really doesn't say that growth is already falling enough so that we can just switch to technology and governance to reduce our impact. Indeed it says that some slowing down has occured, but as it was mentioned at the bottom, this only makes sure we're heading to the iceberg more slowly. If no exact numbers are given in an article, it is however hard to analyse the problem correctly. As I mentioned in my previous writings, population growth actually can't occur anymore at all (which is still continuing presently however) and the exact number of decrease would be 66% (as we are presently at 300% overpopulation). In practice, this means that per 3 couples, only 1 couple can reproduce and bear 2 children ("the magic number as discussed in the article you mentioned --> this comes from the fact that one needs 2 parents, thus also 2 children to keep the ratio right). However, as we need to reduce population by 66%, only 2 children can be had per 3 couples. Looking it this way, it will be much easier to understand the problematic, and see that there really isn't a single country that adheres to this sustainable ratio.

I also took a look at the population growth article at appropedia (which seems to be taken from a blog by Ahmed). This article seems to be focused too much on "who is to blame" (eg developing countries or developed ones), and draws attention to climate change for this to illustrate that the developed countries are wrong here. In reality however, even the mentioning of climate change is incorrect, as these are completely seperate problems, thus this argument already makes no sense.

In addition, regarding the "who is to blame" argument; we see that, from a more objective standpoint, neither the developed nor the developing world is right; both have adhered to unsustainable ratio's.

I thus think that the Population growth article is best reworked with the pointers I just noted here. I also alreay added a simple map from Wiki Commons to illustrate that population growth is a greater problem in the developing world than the developed world; however perhaps the map can be improved to show that all countries have ratio's over the tresshold.

[edit] Wikipedia

Thought I'd point out the Wikipedia article here, partly meant to say a bit about how Appropedia and Wikipedia complement each other. I thought that as you do a lot at Wikipedia, you may be able to add, especially to the section Wikipedia #Collaborations at Wikipedia. Thanks! --Chriswaterguy 02:36, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Added small wikiproject about mills; I don't know any more wikiprojects simply because of the fact that I do not really use them. Instead, I actually work on implementing new information in Wikipedia where I myself think it's required (rather than being directed by the wikiprojects). Untill now, I've been able to do much more useful work this way. However, as I noted at the village pump, ... I do think wikiprojects are a good idea to Appropedia.

[edit] Mills

Re the Analysis of the various types of mills TOC - what is the format of the source? Just wondering if we can make it easier to do the formatting.

I assume you've sorted out the permission, but we'll need to get clearer attribution and work out whether it's under our regular open license or {{open access}}. Thanks! --Chriswaterguy 17:18, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

The source format was a pdf, however I don't have adobe acrobat, so I can't take over the images and the text is usually filled with white spaces, ... aswell but the latter isn't much of a problem especially as I am translating the document as I'am writing (actually I use Google translate first, but this still leaves much incorrections, so ...).

For the images dough, does somebody in the Appropedia Foundation have Adobe Acrobat (so I can "outsource" this task) ? I also have Foxit PDF reader (free) with a "snapshot" function; this can also do the trick, but I'm not sure whether original quality is kept and it also requires me to do some extra editing with the GIMP (if not correctly cut) and I think the format also needs to be changed (eg to png).

As for the permission, I already notified ISF of my ports to Appropedia (aldough they didn't really respond about this in detail). In addition, I'm guessing (?) that it's always public domain license anyway if I translated it (as the text is thus different and as I always provide anything I write/make under public domain). KVDP 08:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Interesting point about the translations - I'll ask around about that. We do need to clarify the licenses - I'd like to have some kind of permissions notice for anything we use, if the permission isn't otherwise clear (like at Agroblogger/license) and use the {{open access}} notice where appropriate.

I just wanted to say that I'm catching up on things here - I know there's some work on some conversations I haven't got to yet. --Chriswaterguy 04:22, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

...and of course, if we could get explicit permission for use under Appropedia's license, that would be awesome. Here's a page to help explain it to people who don't understand it: An Introduction to Creative Commons - that might be helpful if you're in contact with authors. (I'll be doing more work on this - I think explaining this clearly is very important.) --Chriswaterguy 14:25, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems that the license is important: Appropedia:Translation and licenses‎ (haven't got legal advice on that, though - we'll keep looking). Is it possible to clarify the license with the copyright owners? This can take patience, and we'll probably need to explain the licenses but it's important for having good content that we can use and remix, and not worry about someone asking us to remove it later. --Chriswaterguy 13:14, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --Chriswaterguy 13:14, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I'll take care of the license soon, working on finishing text first dough, I'll sent a mail to ISF with my translation and another request for permission to use the text+images at Appropedia. In the mean time, does anyone from the Appropedia Foundation have Adobe Acrobat to take over the images from the pdf on an easy/quick way ? I have the original pdf and i'll sent it over if someone has the program and is intrested in doing this task.

KVDP 13:36, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Great. I might know someone with Acrobat Professional - let me get back to you this week. --Chriswaterguy 16:41, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Instant messaging +categorisation

Initial answer on my talk page. Thanks for the ideas.

Btw, a trick to display category links: add a colon like so: [[:Category:Users by interest]] will display the link, whereas [[Category:Users by interest]] will be invisible and add the category. --Chriswaterguy 12:47, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Answered again at User talk:Chriswaterguy#Pumps. --Chriswaterguy 17:10, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Emergency management and healthcare

Re this categorization, emergency management is about many things including prevention recovery and reconstruction. Major categorization changes should probably be discussed first... sometimes there are good reasons for things being the way they are (and sometimes there aren't).

Btw, I can change categories quickly with the bot. If there's more than say 15 pages to be added or changed, you can let me know.

I just saw your note on my talk page... will answer more shortly. --Chriswaterguy 12:00, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I know i never responded to that note on the village pump. I had doubts about some of the changes, but some of them are good, and I needed to think about it. I'll respond there now.

It's like the person who makes challenging and well-thought out comments on an internet discussion list - while ignorant and prejudiced comments get lots of emotional responses, intelligent comments are ignored because they take too much thought to respond to :-). --Chriswaterguy 12:15, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I commented at Appropedia talk:Village pump#Categorization. --Chriswaterguy 13:02, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Sanitation & Water

Note Category_talk:Sanitation#Taking_this_category_out_of_Category:Water. --Chriswaterguy 09:23, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

A reply on a few questions at User_talk:Chriswaterguy#Instant_messaging_.2Bcategorisation - thanks --Chriswaterguy 07:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC) ...and added a brief note about the Open edit and Quality in an open edit wiki intended to help explain why we're open edit. --Chriswaterguy 14:30, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Replied again on my talk page. More soon. --Chriswaterguy 13:05, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Climate news

You left the note at Talk:Climate news? I answered there. Don't forget to be signed in when you add your signature :-). --Chriswaterguy 15:12, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Google Wave

It's definitely best for the asynchronous stuff, I think. I'm just experimenting for now, but I thought it could be useful for keeping track of projects and tasks.

I wanted to ask if you'd been in touch with the copyright holders of the work you're translating, re releasing under our CC-BY-SA license? If not, I can forward you an email that we've used. Thanks! --Chriswaterguy 12:00, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

[edit] hands

Thanks for the hands image, Media:AppropediaLogo_01022010.PNG - that's a huge improvement over the version that you started with.

I think could be great for another application, but for the navigation pages (CategoryTree and front page) I think it's good to stay with photos - they're very attractive and easy to look at, for people that care about that. So I found a new photo with lots of hands.

For those of us with a very strong practical inclination, we can just use Appropedia:Fundamental category tree. --Chriswaterguy 14:06, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

[edit] reply

Replied at User talk:Chriswaterguy#Members & User talk:Chriswaterguy#Automatic welcome message

btw, I'm not sure what you meant to do with ref tags at Appropedia talk:Village pump#Cost/effective development aid projects - but I added a references list after your comment.

This is something I always do for the sake of convenience. If I have a new idea, ... I always put in my references too; aldough they're not shown, I know where they are and when I start working on the articles I intented to make to work the idea out better, I can simply copy-paste them, it thus saves me time.

Ah, good thinking. Adding a references list is advisable though, to avoid the red error message, which will confuse ppl. --Chriswaterguy 07:01, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to make a priority list for tech work, and will announce it... so we can more effectively look for help developing the site. --Chriswaterguy 01:24, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

[edit] blog & tech help

Thanks - I've accepted the request for the blog.

Btw I've tidied our pages where we ask for tech help. See Appropedia:Site development/priorities - let's share the link around, and hopefully we'll start getting some help.

OK

I've also made this page Appropedia:Porting/Websites - note the easy instructions on converting to wiki markup. --Chriswaterguy 15:01, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Made small remark at Appropedia_talk:Porting/Websites

KVDP 09:35, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

[edit] CAD Team

Thanks KVDP --

For both the note and for your work on the sketch up tutorial. Are you planning to include screen captures in the tutorial? - that would make it really strong. When it is complete - I could beta test it in one of my courses.

Yes, I am planning to include screen captures. The document is from a professional modeller, so it's pretty good. The document however is still in Dutch, so I'm working on a translation before I upload it here. Feel free to use it for your courses.

UPDATE --> SketchUp Beginner Manual complete; some images are still missing but I can't download them from pdf; still use older Adobe Acrobat (doesn't support Dutch pdf's).

Concerning sharing the models -- This may be a good place to start - http://www.thingiverse.com/ or we could lobby for appropedia to expand the file types it allows for upload. What do you think? --Joshua 18:39, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I have raised the issue a while ago, personally I think that the best method would be Google Warehouse (this also shares the files much better, ie not just to Appropedia). Thingiverse seems to be simply a blog, I'm not sure whether much visitors arrive there, and the projects they have also don't seem too worked out. Regarding expanding the file types for upload, I think perhaps asking Appropedia of including odt-files (openoffice) would be useful, I would like to see Appropedia having the option of sharing the text+images of documents via openoffice-documents too. This way, people intrested in rereading the text, use it in courses, ... can have a downloadable (and easily editable) file. However, I would not share CAD-files this way; this because all files are shown in the navbar, and things will get pretty confusing if we put several files on one page. Thus, almost every design would need to get its own page ...

KVDP 08:15, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

[edit] file extensions

Allowed file extensions is a question for Lonny - he's the wiki "Bureaucrat" (the all powerful one). --Chriswaterguy 11:00, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, posted same question to his talk page.

KVDP 12:25, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Village Pump

Hi KVDP,

I had a thought, re the posts to Village Pump. Great to see the thought you're putting into these, but there haven't been a lot of responses.

Perhaps they'd work better as new pages, even where they are speculative ideas for designs - in those cases they could be marked as {{speculative}} (would need to create the template) or something similar.

Another idea is to post them as subpages of your userpage, then just share the links with people who might have insights into that topic. Maybe posting a list of these links on the Village Pump would be easier for people to navigate? What do you think? --Chriswaterguy 04:21, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Great idea regarding the {{speculative}} tag. Re the making of new pages: I'm already doing this to some degree, allot of new posts at the village talk will soon be moved to their own page and linked from the AT CAD Team. I post them at the village talk first dough, simply to see whether there are ideas on how to improve the ideas, and whether there is intrest in the main ideas before moving them to a seperate page (where they are read less).

PS: we also need a Template:Move tag; I noticed this tag isn't present as of yet here. 81.245.91.8 12:40, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Same as wikipedia:Template:Move, for use on talk pages? I wasn't familiar with it, but seems good. --Chriswaterguy 14:22, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Yep, OK

KVDP 15:10, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Just noticed, the Wikipedia template uses "#ifeq" meaning it relies on some parser functions (or something like that) that we haven't implemented yet. this is a gap in our tech development, which hopefully we'll catch up on very soon (a couple of weeks?) now that Jason has been helping with our dev site. --Chriswaterguy 03:55, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

[edit] http://costeffectiveaid.blogspot.com/

Thanks KVDP -- This is a really good idea -- particularly for file hosting -- --Joshua 11:55, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Schematics

I just looked at Fossil fuel power plant conversion and had a thought, re the schematics discussions on Wikipedia that you referred me to.

It's very important to be clear as to whether a diagram describes an existing technology, exactly consistent with how it has been built and used in the real world. That might be the normal assumption of someone looking at a schematic of a technology.

While Wikipedia doesn't allow for more speculative designs/diagrams, Appropedia does. So other kinds of schematics are possible, but then it needs to be very clear whether these are simplifications, proposals, or something else. Would you be able to mark on each of your diagrams what kind of diagram it is? When placed in an article this should also be clear as well.

Thank you - I appreciate your help with this especially as I'm not familiar with these technologies, so I wouldn't be able to work it out without a lot of work. --Chriswaterguy 09:10, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok Chris,

I'll run them down again and see whether I can make things a bit clearer in the image descriptions. Already dough, I think that there wouldn't be much problems since when projects are started by someone, they will dig into things anyhow, and I already put down the links to the original images. The fossil fuel power plant image (oxyfuel) is pretty much exactly taken over (except for the firebox), some of the other ones dough (such as recently the steam engine-related material, the new versions of the pumps, ... are self-made yet based on actual designs/information. KVDP 15:14, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

A quick rundown -->

• http://www.appropedia.org/File:Piston_VS_Plunger_Pump.png
• http://www.appropedia.org/File:Piston_pump_types.png

--> these 2 schematics were made more or less identical to the FAO document mentioned in the description

• http://www.appropedia.org/File:Piston_pump.png
• http://www.appropedia.org/File:Plunger_pump.png

--> first more or less completely own design, second is variation from FAO document

• http://www.appropedia.org/File:Pipe_pump_module.png
• http://www.appropedia.org/File:Water_bottle_valve.png

--> completely own designs

• File:Oxyfuel CCS fossil fuel power plant operation.png

--> only slightly modified from original bbc-image

• File:Steam powered locomotive.png
• File:Steam powered locomotive with steam turbine.png
• File:Smokestackless_firebox.png
• File:Steam engine valve gear plate.png

--> all own designs, based on reference material noted in image descriptions. Note: File:Smokestackless_firebox.png is best renamed to File:Smokestackless_firebox_V1.png (not sure how we can do this, see your talk page)

I remembered that a student of J.M. Pearce made an article about "Appropriate technology open collaborations templates ?" These templates can probably simply be added to the images too. KVDP 14:16, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks... I haven't look at these in detail, but if you're making sure that your actual designs (exactly following real world tech), simplified designs, proposed designs etc are all clearly marked as such, that's very helpful. Hopefully we'll grow the community of people interested in these specific topics, too. --Chriswaterguy 01:20, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'll still need to find the article (forgot exact name), when found, I'll probably know how the template name aswell.

KVDP 18:16, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Found article: Category:Status, will get unto this soon.

Excellent. I didn't think of that, but it's a great tool.

btw, to display a link to a category, use a colon: [[:Category:Status]] --> Category:Status. --Chriswaterguy 03:49, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Neologisms

I was looking at Solar energy conversion system and thinking... though neologisms aren't forbidden here (unlike Wikipedia) I think it's good practice to distinguish between existing terms and suggested (new) terms. At that page, I assume the terms are new, so "suggested term" or "a term that could be used..." would be appropriate. I'll modify the page. --Chriswaterguy 17:55, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Appropriate living manual

Hi Kristof,

Just looking at the Appropriate living manual, I still have the same concerns about it... I've been noticing it again recently as I'm running bot commands to create wikilinks.

What do you say about moving it to userspace for now? I.e. User:KVDP/Appropriate living manual, User:KVDP/Appropriate living manual 1, etc. It can still be open to edits and feedback from others. Thanks --Chriswaterguy 04:57, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Rather not actually, what exactly do you have a problem with, perhaps I can rewrite some paragraphs (in a couple of days, working on stirling engine-stuff at the moment, just finished v2 of the solar pyramid, yet images at wikipedia still need tweaking). Also, you can add additional contested templates, ... put sections between <!, ... for now.

KVDP 13:20, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Looking back over earlier conversations, I see you said that you were ok with pages and sections being given descriptive titles/headers. So actually that's a good starting point - I'll tag them for now, maybe get some help in copyediting (there's copyediting class contributing here soon) and take it from there. --Chriswaterguy 06:35, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I moved the pages linked from Agriculture manual TOC and Appropriate living manual TOC. They are already linked by the category linked at the bottom, but if there's a plan to link them together in a stronger way, one way is some kind of small navigation template listing the pages in the series. --Chriswaterguy 20:32, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

PS: It seems that the older version I uploaded of the 2nd solar power tower seems to be too large, I can no longer nominate it for deletion (an error message is shown). Perhaps you can delete this, it's called: File:Solar_pyramid_in_pit_concentrating_solar_plant_2.png Also, it's probably best that you change the message at the Special:Upload page too; rather than showing "maximum: 7mb", state something like "max: 500 kb", this was btw the reason why I made the mistake (thought that atleast upto 1,5mb wouldn't be a problem but it does seems to be) KVDP 08:58, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I've deleted and asked Lonny and Jason about this. Thanks for the suggestion. --Chriswaterguy 03:46, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Navigating the manual pages

I renamed pages in 2 of the manuals - I left the categories and the TOC pages, though (Category:Appropriate living manual and Category:Agriculture manual) so you can still keep track of them. Some pages I'm still not sure about, and haven't renamed yet.

Btw, I've run the bot to turn raw Appropedia links (that contain http, of the form [http://www.appropedia.org/...) to wikilinks ([[ ]]). That's always the best way to link wiki pages. Thanks.

Still catching up on a few things, but I got your emails - thanks. --Chriswaterguy 15:42, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Status tags

Hi Kristof,

I was just looking at Category:AT_CAD_Team and thought the pages could all benefit from status tags - probably the {{Status-Concept}} concept tag (I'll create it today):

{{Statusboxtop}}
{{Status-Concept}}
You can help by contributing to the next step in this [[OSAT]]'s [[:Category:Status]]
{{boxbottom}}

How does that sound?

I'm in a small village for 2 weeks, using my phone for net access, so it's hard to do much editing myself. --Chriswaterguy 00:59, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Hey Chris,

I'm not sure whether that status-tag improves things (ie between which status tags does it fit ?) The status-design tag I used earlier with some of the design images is I think sufficient, and the same? and it keeps things simple. Anyhow, the tags don't matter much at all neither, the main thing is first modeling some of them out and creating a Google Warehouse group so as to have our representation of the team/Appropedia on this channel aswell. Although I'm still not sure whether my expertise is enough, and although I still don't have much dimensions of the models (yet working on this latter, by filling it the known dimensions and working from there), I think I will start on some of the easier models. I'm also thinking it may be useful to look around for some other artists at Google Warehouse, and perhaps buy some models to get a baseline for some of the harder models (wrote about this at village talk, ie IC-engine, aircraft models, perhaps other parts ie gears, ...) Finally, in regards to the land planning, ... I'd like to focus on, I think that as I did not yet receive any replies (from Cité du Fleuve, nor others) I think this will have to wait a little longer, and I also still need to figure out some issues involving the use of exact GPS-coordinates (not really supported in Google SketchUp, only "general GPS-locations" are, more on this later). KVDP 17:02, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Jamkhed

I saw a reference in your work to the Jamkhed hospital.[1] I hadn't heard of it - this strikes me as a really worthwhile project, being done in the field, that needs to be written up. Perhaps this could be a focus of your work on health pages? It would be great to have info here about Jamkhed, and since it's a real world project, it is relatively proven and reliable wisdom, and a great way to learn as you develop the pages also. --Chriswaterguy 14:55, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

[edit] A Space for Speculative Projects

Hi KVDP,

I would love to have a conversation with you about how we can best use your excellent energy. Your ideas are exciting, often flawed and never tested. Your contributions inspire me to want a space on Appropedia for speculative ideas that others can work on making happen. Then as they are tested and adapted, they can be brought into a general space. Some of my ideas (I am not sure of the feasibility) are to have a:

1. namespace called Speculative:
2. subpage system such as Appropedia.org/Speculative/
3. separate software running under our blogs subdomain for discussing these speculative ideas.

The benefit of a separate namespace is that people could choose to search just that space for ideas that need to be explored, or choose not to search in that namespace if they are looking for ideas that have already been tested. For example if I was looking for DIY solar thermal collectors, I would much rather find Solar hot water, Hotel Perote solar pool heating system, Solar hot water - system types, or Parras Solar Hot Water. What I would really want to find are diagrams on how to actually make one, based upon existing models that have evolved over time with feedback from users. I would want tables and charts of data from different measurements in different conditions with different materials. i would want cost tables. Etc.

Does this make sense to you? In addition, I would love to explore how we could leverage your energy and abilities even better.

Thank you, --Lonny 07:46, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes that seems fine.

The only thing I have to add though is that currently, the {{speculative}} tag generates a rather large and imposing banner. This because of the shear size of it and the dark red color. I initially used the {{status-design}} tag on some articles since this indicated that the design was still but a concept (each project which is in the first stage, or the stage:design is basically a concept and thus also speculative, see http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Status ), but it wasn't that large that the tag focused the attention upon it. Personally I don't really mind, but I sometimes do mails to some companies to ask whether they would perhaps be intrested to work on the project (while keeping it open-source). To them, I would imagine that such a banner does not inspire confidence. KVDP 08:05, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I tried making the {{speculative}} template more inviting, while still giving a clear differentiation. Hope that works for both of you, Lonny and KVDP. If not, edit it :-). --Chriswaterguy 15:11, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Appropriate methods of transport

Thanks for moving that content from here to Appropriate methods of transport. I edited it a bit - you may find the info on the Froude number interesting. --Chriswaterguy 15:12, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Village Pump

Hi KVDP,

I see there are "19 watching users" for Village Pump, and I know that some of us rely on emails when changes have been made. And if we don't check the page (while logged in), we don't get another alert the next time a change has been made.

So, is it possible for you to develop and edit the ideas on a different page, e.g. in userspace or on a speculative or "questions" page, and then post to Village Pump when ready? This would make it easier to follow when a new message has been left. Thanks --Chriswaterguy 12:49, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Didn't know that Chris,

I'll keep it in mind and I'll try minimising my posts by doing them in a single go.

KVDP 14:57, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks! --Chriswaterguy 07:32, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Open Educational Resources

We've talked before about education - here are some useful links, I think especially useful for those who haven't yet had the chance to study their subject of interest in depth: Open Educational Resources. A search engine is here: http://www.ocwsearch.com/

I've used some of these, especially the audio files on water treatment for emergencies. Even though I'd studied the subject, I still learnt a lot. I'd suggest you try it out, and perhaps note down the useful courses that you find, on the Open Educational Resources page. --Chriswaterguy 07:32, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Chris, I knew of the open courses on the web, but I never tried them and a search engine is handy. Weird you mentioned water treatment, I just finished up making a schematic of something useful for this: the baffle box (see File: Small_scale_fish_hatchery.PNG ) and I was thinking that many of the pages there need to be constructed much more modular. For example: the baffle box; this can be used as a primary module in any water treatment setup (it's a bit like a sieve), and if the pages are adapted to be a bit more modular, this would be very useful for any project. I also saw it a bit earlier ie to articles concerning the plough; at present, we have the ISF plough and another plough: the donkey plough; useful would be to assess both designs and come up with a single design. The same for the kiln, ... (allready made a page and project is underway, but here too there are eg for brick firing alone, several kiln designs) ...

KVDP 07:47, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Air filtration

I noticed you started Air filtration, a valuable topic.

Something to note is that screens and filters operate differently,- a screen is a sieve, as I understand it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filtration#Applications

The way I was taught the meaning of "filter," it works by adsorption. However, I see that the Wikipedia article defines it differently. Either there are different usages, or my teacher was incorrect, or Wikipedia is incorrect. (I suspect that sand filters in water treatment rely heavily on adsorption.)

Note Category:Filters also. --Chriswaterguy 17:32, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi Chris,

Yes I started the article since Emesee referred to it in the "screens" article, which appearantly referred itself to windowcoverings. I started the article since I didn't wanted to remove Emesees info, yet only wanted to make it correct and also a more useful article. I didn't clean up the air filtration info of Emesee as of yet though and it definitly needs a rewrite, ... As I understand it though (didn't yet check it, as mentioned), both sieves and filters work alike, they work by having small holes in place which filters out the larger particles (which can't go trough the holes), and only allows the smaller ones to go trough. Hence, if the holes are small enough it filters out thicker substances as smoke (carbon), ... from regular air (mixture of gases) KVDP 11:02, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Ah cool - thanks for taking that on. I'd be interested to know how adsorption fits in - maybe I'll come across it in an OCW lecture one day. --Chriswaterguy 11:37, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Travel article

Re http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Cheap_independent_travel - I think that makes a worthwhile stub article for Appropedia. It could be expanded to explore the absolute lowest carbon options for travel, with numbers.

OK, added it, see Cheap independent travel. Note though that my initial intent was to describe the financially best way to travel, not the most ecological. This as the financial difficulties are the biggest hurdle, and regarding ecology, this is I think not of any essence here. This, as I think that any trip/transportation should be carbon-neutral, regardless of where the trip leads (ie a hundred trips to the supermarket count just the same). Hence, it's more of a matter of arranging your life climate neutral instead; after this we can then take a look at how to travel on the cheap ;-)~

PS: the AT airship model is getting more and more finished, we could possibly link it once done (though I'm not sure whether it will be a viable transportation option any time soon), I also have some wikiversity pages that are intresting.

KVDP 08:56, 1 March 2011 (PST)

[edit] good reading

Hi Kristof,

Have you heard of Victor Papanek?^W I'm sure you'd really benefit from reading his work. Field experience is very important to understanding, designing and explaining appropriate technology, and it's worth learning from wise and experienced people (especially if it's not possible to get the experience directly at this point in your life).

Still catching up on your messages - more soon. --Chriswaterguy 07:27, 28 March 2011 (PDT)

I knew about him, and in specific his half-ton load vehicle. I allways thought it would be intresting to look at this particular design of him. However, never gotten around to do so, also because there doesn't seem to be much information about it online; and it seems like I'll never have to look at it anyway, allready made the AT traction engine design.

KVDP 07:34, 28 March 2011 (PDT)

[edit] Appeal

Hi KVDP,

I think you have some really interesting ideas. Ideas that belong on a personal blog. Do you have a blog? If so, please start making additions there and we can help put a feed on your talk page that links to your blog and recent posts.

Please stop adding prescriptive content of which you have zero expertise. E.g. I disagree with almost everything you have on Conflict resolution (especially the solutions). As a professional facilitator, I have some expertise, but still would not write a prescriptive article about Conflict resolution on Appropedia. If you do not have a blog, can we help you set one up. You definitely should be sharing your ideas... but Appropedia pages are not the place to do it.

Thanks, --Lonny 10:40, 12 June 2011 (PDT)

Hi Lonny,

I'll try to avoid making controversial articles at Appropedia; actually I try to do so as much as I can at present aswell, but often by assimilating information from various sources, this is what I end up with; and the text is fits best with how I see things personally aswell. I just made the article thinking that perhaps it might of been beneficial for AT projects in some countries as Sudan, and similar countries around the sahelian region (in these areas too racism exists heavily between ethnic groups with different skin tones). Also, I actually wanted to make smooth thingsout a bit more, and implement some own views, hereby making the article a bit less controversial. Also, I wanted to clarify the link to Buddhist ideas (I drew upon these too resulting in reading trough some books a couple of years ago, especially upon the 4 noble truths; line 2 and 3; ie:

• Suffering arises from attachment to desires
• Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases )

In any case, I moved the text to http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Conflict_resolution and will continue to work on it there.

KVDP 00:54, 13 June 2011 (PDT)

[edit] Heliostat image

Hi KVDP. I've written something about the image you put on the Heliostats page. It's on my User Talk page. DOwenWilliams 07:56, 17 June 2011 (PDT) David Williams

[edit] Wikipedia content

Hi KVDP - I want to update you on some things I'm working on. I've learnt that Google has become stricter about duplicate content, so it will actually "punish" the site overall if we have content copied from elsewhere. I've copied Wikipedia content here to a number of pages, and so have others, and I mention it to you as I noticed you also add Wikipedia content at Cycle rickshaw. Not that we can't do it at all, but we need to be careful, and the more we adapt the content the better. Ideally we take the ideas, more than the complete sentences and paragraphs.

One thing I've done is create {{copied}} for pages which haven't been adapted yet, and I've asked Lonny to turn on noindex tags so that these pages won't damage our ranking in the meantime. Anyway, just so you understand some of my intention in editing. --Chriswaterguy 01:55, 18 June 2011 (PDT)

Hi Chris,

I often copy from wikipedia, but I do select only the most useful sentences and change them atleast a bit so that the article becomes more focused on practicality then the similar wikipedia article, yet also becomes wikipedia-grade in accuracy. I'm not sure whether Google punishes material that is changed (not a copy) but is nonetheless copied to some extent.

PS: Have you changed your emailadress lately ? I sent you several mails in the last months, but I'm not sure whether you received any of them. One mail btw had some info on conventional water treatment plants; perhaps that it would be useful to make an article on this for Appropedia aswell ? Also, perhaps we can make a category: Liquid filtration for water purification articles that do not provide a organic purification (only mechanical; ie sieving action). I noticed your Cloth_filter article, hence the idea.

KVDP 02:42, 18 June 2011 (PDT)

I'm sure that some similarity is fine, as long as there is additional content, and no more than 2 or 3 sentences are in basically the same form as Wikipedia. That's my feeling, anyway. The more additional content we have, I think the less problem we have.

I've got your emails, but I'm behind on answering my emails, sorry. I did read them, but wasn't quite sure how to respond at first, so I deferred them... I'll need to do some serious emailing in July. --Chriswaterguy 13:44, 19 June 2011 (PDT)

[edit] Template:Bar box and Template:Requested move

Hello, you sent me e-mail asking to port these templates to Appropedia. Sorry for the slow response, I had not checked my e-mail for some days. Leaving messages on User talk:Teratornis should get my attention faster.

• wikipedia:Template:Bar box - I am trying to port the template to my offline wiki first. If it works there, it should work here. It looks like a nice template to have.
• wikipedia:Template:Move is a redirect to wikipedia:Template:Requested move. I'm not sure why we need this template on Appropedia. It is appropriate for Wikipedia which may have a large number of requested moves, and a backlog of requests to manage. On Appropedia we would probably have few such requests, and people could just request moves on Appropedia:Village pump. Please explain why you need this template, maybe I am not understanding what you want to do with it.

If you want to learn about template porting, see User:Teratornis/Template porting: theory and practice, and my many documented case studies on User:Teratornis/Tasks. Porting templates from Wikipedia can be difficult, but it is getting easier now that I have ported many base templates from Wikipedia already. The more templates (and supporting things like CSS classes) you port from Wikipedia, the easier it generally becomes to port additional templates, since many templates on Wikipedia use a common set of things. --Teratornis 13:31, 6 July 2011 (PDT)

I have Template:Bar box working on my offline personal wiki. I will port it to Appropedia next. Hopefully it will work here too. I found it useful already for making a bar chart display of my personal carbon dioxide emissions from domestic gas and electricity since 1999. --Teratornis 11:34, 13 July 2011 (PDT)

Hi Teratornis,

regarding the Template:Move : If I understand it correctly, the template puts a request on a special article intented to display all of the move requests. We don't need our template to do this, but it would be useful to be able to type in ie {{Move|newarticle}} to move an article section to a new article or even move the entire article to a new name. We allready have eg the {{Delete|thisarticle}} template, but we don't have a template to move text or rename an article; that's sometimes annoying, especially when renaming articles under names not everyone agrees with, ...

91.182.99.158 08:02, 14 July 2011 (PDT)

I strongly recommend keeping it simple - we don't have such a large community that we can effectively monitor another maintenance page. For discussion of moves, I suggest the Village Pump, for now. --Chriswaterguy 10:55, 14 July 2011 (PDT)

I understand the request better now, by analogy with {{Delete|thisarticle}}. However, we (almost certainly) have had a lot more deletion requests, because of all the spam we get. Given the few move requests, it would be simpler just to put a move request on Appropedia:Village pump so people can discuss it. Most or all of the active administrators watch that page. If the Village pump starts getting flooded with move requests then we can talk about creating another maintenance page for move requests. --Teratornis 00:09, 16 July 2011 (PDT)

(undent) {{Bar box}} appears to work on Appropedia now. Here is an example showing my carbon footprint from domestic natural gas consumption since 1999:

The only problem I noticed so far is that {{Bar box}} does not work quite correctly when I put it inside another table, but that may also be a problem on Wikipedia. So don't put it in another table. --Teratornis 00:01, 16 July 2011 (PDT)

Thanks for your work on the template. Regarding the use of the village pump: I suppose we can use this page for now. Perhaps in the future, we can solve the problem better by putting specific tasks to community members (see http://www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:Village_pump/Archive2#AAI projects , http://www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:Village_pump/Archive2#Appropedia organisational chart , ... ) - 91.182.214.100 01:38, 16 July 2011 (PDT)

[edit] Appropedia task allocation

(Continued from #Template:Bar box and Template:Requested move in a separate section as the topic is changing. The links you gave above are not formatted correctly (you have to turn the embedded space characters into underscores to make them work as bare URLs). As wikilinks, you probably mean these: Appropedia:Village pump/Archive2#AAI projects and Appropedia:Village pump/Archive2#Appropedia organisational chart.)

The basic difficulty on Appropedia as I see it is not that we are not organizing our contributors effectively, nor that they have inadequate communication tools. Rather, the problem is that we don't have a lot of long-term active contributors, and only a few of them have read enough manual pages to have gained a deep knowledge of how to build wikis. On Wikipedia, the project and help pages constitute an elaborate internal structure, but this structure arose as a consequence of Wikipedia's early success in attracting a large core group of technically proficient contributors. That is, contributors who often had prior experience in building Web sites, complex software systems, technical documentation, etc. When those kinds of people turn their attention to a system like MediaWiki, they can quickly grasp how to implement the internal workings of a productive wiki, so the potentially larger numbers of content contributors have a comfortable editing environment. There aren't enough of those technical kinds of people to populate every single wiki that exists in the world now. The situation with wikis is analogous to someone who invents an easy way to build, say, automobiles in enormous numbers, but the supply of motor fuel remains limited. Wikipedia is hogging up much if not most of the available supply of this scarce "fuel". The people who have these skills like to go to the place where they find lots of other people like themselves. Going out to a smaller wiki such as Appropedia is like leaving the comforts of civilization behind and going to a less developed country where there is little infrastructure and people don't understand the need to follow all the detailed rules that exist on Wikipedia.

• On Wikipedia there are detailed rules for almost everything, eliminating much guesswork and potential for conflict. For example, see the rules for letter case in titles (wikipedia:WP:LOWERCASE, wikipedia:WP:CAPS, and wikipedia:WP:MOSHEAD). When you see an article or section title on Wikipedia that violates these rules (for example by being in American Style Title Case), you can simply fix the problem and cite the relevant guideline with a shortcut link in your edit summary, so anyone who did not know the rule can learn why you did what you did. All the debates about how to format titles on Wikipedia were worked out years ago, so you don't have to think about that problem again. Because all of Wikipedia's rules evolved out of extensive debate between lots of smart people, the resulting rules are pretty good. It's hard for anyone else to improve on them, and even harder to improve on Wikipedia's rules without any knowledge of those rules. (See wikipedia:Reinventing the square wheel.)
  • On a small wiki like Appropedia, it's like going back in time to the early days of Wikipedia when people were still trying to figure out the most basic issues such as letter case in titles. A scan through Special:Allpages shows a mess of inconsistency, with some people using Wikipedia style (e.g. Seismic retrofit) and others using American style (e.g. Composites in the Aircraft Industry). When I see all these unnecessary deviations from Wikipedia's best practice, I experience a bit of anguish. I suspect I am not alone in this - someone who has learned to collaborate productively within Wikipedia's detailed rules may feel inhibited on a wiki that shows no consistent understanding of them. One of the necessary conditions for attaining the rewarding sensation of flow when editing on a wiki is to have clear rules and a knowledge of them, so a contributor knows what to do and can just go ahead and do it. Having to second-guess, negotiate, ask for opinions, etc., interferes with attaining flow.
  • That's why I think we should follow Wikipedia's rules to the extent that we can on Appropedia. By taking a lax approach to things like title case, I think we are shooting ourselves in the foot when it comes to competing for the small group of people who have the technical skills to serve as the "fuel" for the organizational "automobile" you want to create (with your ideas for organization charts and WikiProjects and so on).

--Teratornis 10:58, 16 July 2011 (PDT)

Hi Teratornis, you are indeed correct in that the not having of sufficient long-term members is the biggest problem at Appropedia. The fact that Wikipedia is the biggest (and comprehensive) wiki, luring everyone away to it is indeed also not helping.

However, I do disagree to some extent that with their rules, they actually have an advantage over Appropedia. Personally, I find allot of their rules simply wrong in approach (not all, but some), ie in regards to the naming: they allways want their articles to be named with a term that is the most commonly employed (popular), even tough that term may be simply "incorrect". For allot of words, I just use my own terminology, which is more logical and hence accurate. At Appropedia, we don't have as many rules, and I find this to be better.

Regarding the fact that most flock to Wikipedia also isn't necessairily a bad thing; by contacting people via wikipedia we could attain members quite easily. The fact that members flock to specific wikiprojects or remain to be active in articles surrounding a certain topic also makes choosing good members for Appropedia more easy.

I still think that a better communication and some site reorganisation (ie better categorisation, ...) is probably one of the best improvements we could do to lure in more members. Another thing is to simply improve our article texts/information and make things more basic (at the moment we have many article snippets for one or particular specific situation (ie wood gasification in North America, healthcare in the Phillipines, ... rather than that we have more general articles, aswell as good manuals (that explain every step of a certain process, rather than having an article on each process and expecting the user to know which step comes after the other).

91.182.100.231 05:15, 18 July 2011 (PDT)

Having fewer rules is better in the short run for individuals working alone. But this quickly fails as more people join the project and discover that each person has different rules than everyone else. I do not agree with all the rules on Wikipedia either (most notably I think the notability rules are largely unnecessary - anything which can be reliably sourced should be allowed, and I also think excluding procedural knowledge is a bad idea). However, whether I agree with some of the rules on Wikipedia, I benefit from knowing what the rules are, and knowing that in any Wikipedia dispute, the side that most closely follows the rules "wins". It is much easier for me to adapt to a rule I do not like than to have to argue with everybody who disagrees with me about something. Most organizations that start small and grow rapidly go through a similar process. At first everything can be informal and the few participants can rely on personal relationships so everybody knows what to do. But as the numbers increase you get more people with more opinions and individual participants are more separated from each other, as each can maintain only a limited number of personal relationships. In that case the only way to keep things coherent is to codify a detailed set of rules. Nobody will be happy with every single rule, but the alternative is chaos and unresolvable edit warring which is worse. On Wikipedia everybody does not have to agree on all their personal preferences, they only have to agree to follow the rules. That frees contributors to focus on building content rather than arguing forever about presentation, formatting, and other side issues.

In the real world there is an analogous situation: many people would rather live in countries with stable laws than in Somalia which had no functioning government since the early 1990s. In Somalia you have more freedom, but unfortunately so does everyone around you.

People who edit on Wikipedia are there at least in part because of Wikipedia's comprehensive and largely stable rules, whether they realize it or not. I think Appropedia will have difficulty recruiting many editors from Wikipedia as long as we are less orderly than Wikipedia. --Teratornis 17:07, 18 July 2011 (PDT)

I do not know which kinds of content improvement would make Appropedia most attractive to Wikipedia editors. Speaking for myself, I found the lack of many useful templates troubling here, so I worked hard to start porting some. There are basic templates most experienced Wikipedia editors depend on: infoboxes, navigation boxes, unit conversions, message templates, location map templates, etc. Wikipedia's template library, which takes advantage of MediaWiki's template feature, is probably one of the most important factors in Wikipedia's success. On a wiki with no templates, it is vastly harder to create an equivalent quality and consistency of presentation, for example by manually coding wikitables every time you want to display information in a box. On Wikipedia you can rapidly structure an article by using pre-coded templates. This allows even beginning editors to produce high quality output in far less time than they would need to figure out the detailed coding. Thus an ingredient for the success of a new wiki might be to attract a core group of people who understand how to port templates from Wikipedia. Someone who is used to having a comprehensive template library to work with might feel frustrated on a wiki without many templates. --Teratornis 17:16, 18 July 2011 (PDT)

Also I believe the need for "better communication" is inversely proportional to the quality of internal documentation. When all the rules are worked out, and almost every decision can be settled by consulting the rules, there is less need for editors to communicate with each other, since most issues have already been worked out. Everybody can read the rules and work asynchronously, confident that as long as each person follows the rules, they won't have many conflicts.

For example, on Appropedia there have been recent disagreements about religious content in articles. On Wikipedia there is less need to communicate on such issues, because the rules were settled years ago: articles that aren't about religion do not contain a religious point of view. Articles that are about religion present the beliefs of the religion as beliefs rather than as claims of fact. Wikipedia does not say something like "Jesus died and was resurrected" but rather "Christians believe Jesus died and was resurrected." The claim itself is controversial and irresolvable, but the claim about what some people believe is verifiable. If everybody believed the same religion this would not be a problem for wiki editing, but in fact hardly any two people agree on every religious question. --Teratornis 17:27, 18 July 2011 (PDT)

[edit] Userfied some pages

Hi - I've userfied some pages you've created, that I believe weren't suitable for mainspace in their current state. "Userfying" means moving to a subpage of your userpage. I've moved 4 (& maybe there'll be others later - I'll check carefully before moving).

• User:KVDP/Alternative social systems
• User:KVDP/Appropriate living and networking
• User:KVDP/Appropriate living for one person
• User:KVDP/Safeguarding of forests

This seemed better than deleting, as they can still be worked on.

Here's a template you might find useful, to show all your subpages:

Thanks --Chriswaterguy 11:38, 7 July 2011 (PDT)

[edit] Userfied canals

FYI, I moved the Canals page to User talk:KVDP/Canals. If the content is developed, with suitable references and more detail, it can be moved back. Cheers --Chriswaterguy 03:41, 1 October 2011 (PDT)

[edit] Lavafilter image rights

I was just checking images and saw your File:Lavafilter.jpg - thanks for uploading. There is no reason given in the {{PD}} tag though - is this a photo that you took yourself? If so, could you please update this image with the reason, and any of your images that your aware of? Much appreciated.

Sorry about this - we need to improve our upload process, so it prompts for reasons.

Thanks --Chriswaterguy 01:20, 2 October 2011 (PDT)

Hi chris,

yes, most photo's I upload aswell as schematics are self-made. Not sure whether I need to state in the reason whether it is self made though, ie the PD license allready makes this clear (else another license is needed). User:KVDP 08:13, 2 October 2011 (PDT)

Ok, thanks.

The reason is not to do with another license, but it's essential to have the reason listed, to help confirm that the license has been declared public domain in a valid way. Often people misunderstand, and call something "public domain" when it does not satisfy the legal meaning. (I don't expect you to make this mistake, but we have to be thorough and consistent with confirming our permissions.)

Thanks. --Chriswaterguy 02:06, 8 October 2011 (PDT)

[edit] Alternating current

FYI, I merged Alternating and direct current into Alternating current - and Lonny has left some questions on the talk page. Perhaps you could check that and edit the article and/or respond to the questions - thanks. --Chriswaterguy 03:52, 25 October 2011 (PDT)

Done

KVDP 05:22, 16 December 2011 (PST)

[edit] Notifications

Hi KVDP,

I have a suggestion for making sure you are notified of comments on talk pages of pages you create, as well as edits to those pages.

1. Go to the your preferences and select "E-mail me when a page on my watchlist is changed"
2. Still within your preferences, click the Watchlist tab, then select "Add pages I create to my watchlist"

Hope that helps! --Chriswaterguy 23:02, 9 November 2011 (PST)

[edit] Handy Appropedia search

Hi KVDP,

I've been using this for a while to help find related pages on Appropedia, and you might also find it useful, especially where a page exists in a different spelling than you might guess. (The inbuilt Appropedia search doesn't handle that well, yet.)

I created a bookmark in Firefox for this link: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=site%3Aappropedia.org+%s - and I added a shortcut "Keyword" in the bookmark properties. I use ga (Google Appropedia) for my shorcut. Then I can just type e.g. ga solar destillation in the address bar and it will show results for that and alternative spellings. (The English is distillation.)

Alternatively just find a way to add your search terms to the end of this link: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=site%3Aappropedia.org+

Hope that's some use to you. --Chriswaterguy 10:15, 12 November 2011 (PST)

[edit] source of Ag manual?

Hi KVDP,

Are all the pages in [[Category:Agriculture manual]] from ISF-IAI? I'd like us to have attribution on those pages, if they come from an external source. Thanks.

I was just looking at these pages, and there is some good content here. Your translation work there was very valuable. --Chriswaterguy 05:54, 15 December 2011 (PST)

Hi Chris,

No, not everything comes from ISF; I composed the manual from 2 sources:

• most comes from ISF
• Chapter 1.21 to 1.26 comes from documentation of Leo Van Crombrugge (see chapter 1.21 top); he gave me personal permission to use the information on Appropedia (I telephoned him a while back)

KVDP 04:55, 16 December 2011 (PST)

Cool, thanks for the clarification. --Chriswaterguy 06:23, 16 December 2011 (PST)

[edit] Your autogyro

I'm concerned that the changes you've made to the design of the Hornet autogyro are a danger to anyone who would try to put your recommendations into practice. In particular:

• By raising the engine and propeller, you've put the thrust vector far above the center of gravity, beyond what the horizontal stabilizer can compensate for. This will cause the autogyro to try to pitch down, requiring constant effort by the pilot to prevent a nosedive.
• By raising the main rotor, you've caused the rotor lift vector to pass well forward of the center of gravity, which makes the autogyro unstable and possibly uncontrollable.
• The reason lawnmower engines are cheap is that they are not designed to produce full power all the time. If you try to use one as an airplane motor, it will break down in a matter of days, probably during takeoff when an engine failure is most dangerous.

--67.160.38.148 18:15, 13 February 2012 (PST)

Hi user 67.160.38.148,

I first added the "Status-Design"-tag (forgot this last time). For the center of gravity: offcourse it needs to be tested in practice and modified if needed. I did however heigten the propeller and rotor for a specific reason, and it couldn't be achieved using 2 propellers (see image text). However, even with the current design, there's still allot of "wiggle room", ie the the springed hinge may be set to a modified certain angle and range, the weight of the frame can be made heavier and/or the tail can be lengthened, ... (tail btw is allready lengthened and made larger). The propeller may be slightly lowered and/or made smaller (if the cabin is made small enough), ...

Then for the motor; I believe it depends on what lawnmower engine you use, using a powerful one (ie riding mower, ...) and possibly changing it a bit (adding NASCAR-pistons, ...), possible changes in air intake, fuel used, ... could make it suitable enough. In the other case, a quasiturbine (IC-version) can be used. KVDP 02:23, 14 February 2012 (PST)

Many years ago I read in Popular Science about a small aircraft company called the OMAC (Old Man's Aircraft Company) who designed their planes with a method they called TLAR (That Looks About Right). That's an interesting (and funny) way to approach design, for people who each have decades of experience. If designing without experience, it is absolutely essential that it be tagged as {{speculative}}, and as {{status-design}} if no prototypes have been built. This is the bare minimum for any technology on Appropedia. You have a number of times indicated that you don't think study and experience are so important to this kind of work - you are dangerously wrong, and I urge you to take advice, study, and gain experience before promoting these ideas which are not yet half-baked.

If a user proposes designs for potentially dangerous equipment such as aircraft, then I will suggest that such material be not only tagged in this way, but removed to their userspace. I find the idea of flying in such a machine quite terrifying, and am convinced it would be extremely unsafe. Please study the development of safety standards in aircraft, and understand the difference between making an aircraft engine and making a lawnmower engine before continuing on this. Please pay close attention to these guidelines, especially the use of tags.

Thanks to the anonymous user for highlighting these concerns. --Chriswaterguy 03:35, 21 February 2012 (PST)

I'm deleting sections about microlights from AT CAD Team/Aircraft, and deleting the images for the designs. I wouldn't normally take such a harsh unilateral action, but I can't bear the thought of someone taking advice from such designs on Appropedia, trying to operate such a device, and being injured or killed. Please think carefully about this and tag any similar images with {{delete}}.

If you need the original text you'll find it in history. I assume you have copies of the images - I suggest you keep these as a personal and speculative hobby rather than sharing designs for untested and potentially deadly machines. --Chriswaterguy 04:41, 21 February 2012 (PST)

Replied at User talk:Chriswaterguy #Aircraft mages. --Chriswaterguy 21:02, 23 February 2012 (PST)

[edit] Edit summaries

Hi KVDP,

It would be much appreciated if when you move a chunk of content, you could note the move in the edit summary, e.g. this cut from Biodiesel could have had a summary saying that you're moving content to article Biogas and liquid biofuels (note that wikilinks work in the edit summary, which is handy). It's also good practice to note the reason for the move.

Also in the target page, the source can be noted in the edit summary when adding the text.

Thanks --Chriswaterguy 06:43, 22 March 2012 (PDT)

[edit] Please clarify

See Talk:S.T.E.V.E.N. Low-Cost Windmill - thanks. --Chriswaterguy 08:42, 23 April 2012 (PDT)

[edit] Replied

Replied at User_talk:Chriswaterguy#Sketchup_Beginner_Manual --Chriswaterguy 07:50, 14 May 2012 (PDT)

[edit] Animals for transport

Re List of appropriate animals for transport:

• I think it's best to avoid "appropriate" in most page titles about specific topics - it's best for the article to describe the topic and various options, and what is appropriate and inappropriate. Also it's not a list, so I moved it to Animals for transport.
• "Species include ie wild horse, zebra, wild ass, camel, reindeer, ..." - have you done much research on these animals? There are good reasons that zebras are not often raised domestically and especially not used for transport.

Thanks --Chriswaterguy 06:20, 21 May 2012 (PDT)

I indeed read that zebra's were never domesticated, but figured that they could be attached in front of a cart and persuaded to do the master's bidding (perhaps depending on the specific animal in question though). I read that the others (except for the wild ass) were indeed used for transport. The wild ass is the ancestor of the donkey, so I assume this animal wouldn't provide much problem. I mostly focused on their diet though (use in grasslands). I also tried to use as many original species as possible. The draft horse is the only species I did include, despite being a selection, mainly as it's just so strong/usable, and isn't that far off from the wild horse.

91.182.177.11 00:26, 22 May 2012 (PDT)

Maybe the difference is that zebras evolved around lions, and have to be fierce. That also makes sense for the difference in temperament between the cape buffalo (considered more dangerous to humans than lions are) and other buffaloes (the water buffalo looks identical to the cape buffalo, but can be led by a child).

Please don't add things as fact if you just figure them to be true. This makes more work for other editors who need to check and correct your edits. A few minutes starting on Google can make a difference. Thanks. --Chriswaterguy 00:53, 22 May 2012 (PDT)