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:Having the patent project as part of the pagename is a good idea, so visitors can quickly see what it's about. --[[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]] ([[User talk:Chriswaterguy|talk]]) 06:54, 24 August 2015 (PDT)
:Having the patent project as part of the pagename is a good idea, so visitors can quickly see what it's about. --[[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]] ([[User talk:Chriswaterguy|talk]]) 06:54, 24 August 2015 (PDT)
:Thanks for the suggestions. I'll give that a try. --[[User:EricHunting|EricHunting]] ([[User talk:EricHunting|talk]]) 06:58, 25 August 2015 (PDT)

Revision as of 13:58, 25 August 2015

Appropedia:Village pump/Introduction

A plan for Appropedia to go places in 2013/14

Here's a stab at a strategic plan - what do you think? --Chriswaterguy 00:28, 19 September 2013 (PDT)

I think its a good start. I added some comments on the Talk page there. --PatSunter (talk) 19:08, 12 March 2014 (PDT)

Thanks and good luck

I'm outa here, folks. Good luck with everything. Joe

We've chatted by email, but again, many thanks for your great work, Joe. I wish you all the best with your next adventures. --Chriswaterguy 17:53, 14 October 2013 (PDT)

Pages that advertise green businesses

I removed the {{delete|advertising}} from Beyond Building Energy. We have been allowing sustainable businesses to have pages about themselves. I like having such pages, especially where they have information that might be valuable to a reader, but we need to work out clearer limits. E.g. is Beyond Building Energy the sort of page we want to have on Appropedia? --Chriswaterguy (talk) 21:35, 19 November 2013 (PST)

  • Maybe there is a need for a template for sustainability-oriented businesses or organisations? I.E. not a delete template, but something to the effect that it is a business, Appropedia does not endorse businesses or their products, but allows relevant ones a page, so the reader should do their own research etc. I also think its ok, as long as they don't try to start inserting lots of "advertorial" style content in more Encyclopaedic pages (an issue we had a while back on Public transport). --PatSunter (talk) 21:06, 14 March 2014 (PDT)
Thanks Pat, good approach, I think. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 04:58, 17 April 2014 (PDT)
Yes, good approach. Here's another wiki's page on the topic: [1]? Pashley (talk) 10:57, 17 April 2014 (PDT)

spammness

Hey I am sorry but I face the spam problem too. I've tried change the content of the page Cshr25, and I was sure I got logged in. No idea why it treated me as a spammer.
I couldn't even leave a message on the supporter's page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cshr25 , 21 January 2014

(For the record, this was resolved. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 04:46, 17 April 2014 (PDT))

Exemplar city?

An article [2] on work in Huntsville, Alabama on tornado resistance, "micro-grid" energy sources, sustainable tech, ... Pashley (talk) 11:18, 15 April 2014 (PDT)

That's very cool! I wonder what it would take to find students interested in developing pages on this. This touches on a bunch of important topics. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 04:36, 17 April 2014 (PDT)

Solar at Canadian latitudes?

An Indian reservation with a solar project. This is a fairly isolated community; I do not think it is on the electric grid or that it is reachable by road. It is not in the far North, only Northern Ontario so laititude below 60. Pashley (talk) 19:59, 17 April 2014 (PDT)

New type of axe for splitting wood

Where does this fit in? Inventor & press make some rather strong claims for it. Pashley (talk) 16:03, 22 April 2014 (PDT)

Content types

I can tell there's been a lot of effort to organize Appropedia by topics/ subject matter. But I'm wondering if there's been much in the way of organizing by content type? Appropedia's content is much broader than traditional wikis. From what I can see there's: 1) articles, 2) manuals/ how-tos, 3) specific project/ experiment write-ups, and 4) raw data. Maybe we could have a convo about if this kind of organization would be helpful for users and if so how to do it. --Ethan (talk) 19:06, 22 April 2014 (PDT)

Agreed - a good start would be clarifying the exact classifications for pages we have. "Designs" seems like another type of content, but perhaps these will fit into projects or how-tos. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 02:00, 23 April 2014 (PDT)
Another kind of content is essays. These may be high in narrative or experience, e.g. Reversing Soil Degradation of Agricultural Lands. These are about the topic, but probably should stand alone, separate from a topic page. I'd like to have a naming convention, so they can be easily recognised. Should they start with "Essay:"? Should they be capitalised? --Chriswaterguy (talk) 05:28, 21 August 2014 (PDT)
As I was organizing the permaculture category, I realized that designs are an essential area to work on. Perhaps we could use custom namespaces. I see that there's already Original: , but that seems to have more to do with attribution than content type. Another option might just be to use categories, but I don't know if it would make site navigation feel messy to have content types and subject matter organized that way. --Ethan (talk) 10:18, 17 May 2015 (PDT)

Food crops & nitrogen-fixing bacteria

Three teenaged Irish girls got the top prize at a Google Science Fair with work that looks rather interesting: http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/news/irish-teenagers-bag-top-prize-at-google-science-fair-2014-30607710.html

Is anyone interested in a guide to Greenwashing?

I would like to make a page on the practice of companies presenting themselves as environmentally friendly when they are not in reality (a.k.a. "greenwashing") but I'm not sure if it's something the community is interested in: this isn't a guide for a specific project or proposal for a kind of technology. Is this fit for Appropedia? Koavf (talk) 10:43, 7 October 2014 (PDT)

I think it's a good fit for Appropedia.
(Searching…) Aha – we have a page called greenwash. What do you think of moving that to greenwashing and developing it further? --Chriswaterguy (talk) 16:07, 7 October 2014 (PDT)
Ha. I didn't even think to search greenwash. I'll see if I can add to that. Thanks. Koavf (talk) 10:12, 9 October 2014 (PDT)

Any overlap here?

Survivor Library, for tech that might work after collapse of civilisation. e.g. An early 20th century text on X-rays, the idea being that with that plus basic electrical & glass-blowing skills you might be able to build a medically useful machine from scratch.

This is not closely related to anything we do here, but it might include some books of interest. It seems worth a link, but where? Pashley (talk) 08:35, 28 October 2014 (PDT)


Cool! Probably we want a Template:Tlc, or Template:Tlc? We don't have a lot of content directly addressing this, but it's definitely on topic. (Personally, I think the chances of modern society really collapsing are very low. However, I do believe in being prepared, and that compiling the info has other benefits.)
So, where... an initial article could be called Recovering from collapse, say? Just a thought. Be bold :). --Chriswaterguy (talk) 20:16, 29 October 2014 (PDT)
Love it. I often think of appropriate technologies as epi-apocalyptic technologies that we build in the race against collapse. The bonus is that if we do not make it in time, the technology knowledge can be there for the rebuild/re-imagine. --Lonny (talk) 21:29, 29 October 2014 (PDT)
From the looks of it, the content of the site is mostly public domain manuals/ how-tos from the 19th-early 20th century. Certainly there's a lot of commonalities between what people were doing then and the current approaches of appropriate tech and the transition movement. But there's also plenty of "bad ideas" from back then (like just about any application of lead). That aside, how could these two sites interact? Appropedia seems to be pretty averse to PDFs, which is Survivor Library's bread and butter. For the present SL can be used to identify content areas we're lacking here (like beekeeping) and linking to those that are covered here. --Ethan (talk) 09:38, 17 May 2015 (PDT)

Media idea

Hi been a long time.. just checking in to say that I've been thinking in a similar way about this, thinking that there are few forms of media which are written as if collapse is a real possibility (and, having been to a few academic conferences about this in recent months, I think it is a lot more likely than many might think) - or even if it isn't, talking as if the changes we need to make to our lifestyles in the face of climate change are real, serious and urgent. Which, I think, probably amount to the same kind of thing. I was even vaguely contemplating starting a wikinews clone to start putting out news written on that basis. Oh yes, I forgot to say that since I've been away, I've kinda become a journalist.. as you do! Joeturner (talk) 09:20, 10 November 2014 (PST)

Hi Joe. Thumbs up for all those thoughts.
Could Appropedia be the platform, or at least an incubator, for your news site idea? (Side note: "Collapsonomics" springs to mind for the economics section of such a project.) --Chriswaterguy (talk) 14:48, 10 November 2014 (PST)
Hi Chris - well I'm really throwing it out for discussion rather than suggesting that I have a 'ready made' idea. There are significant problems with the model from wikinews which makes it very bland and has a very tortuous process to get to publication - I am not sure that is really necessary. Also there is no need to feel pressure to generate a lot of daily content. So I guess I'm thinking something which is a bit more than a blog, but a lot less work than a full news site - perhaps including interviews with people involved in relevant stuff (including but not exclusively appropredia projects), discussion of relevant issues etc. It could, perhaps, be intended to be a monthly mag (newsletter or whatever) but with articles coming out as and when during that time.
I think it could work as opensource - providing everyone understood some basic rules and there were some protections to prevent people getting misquoted etc. I suppose I see it a bit more like an open review system to improve content which is eventually 'published' (and no longer open for editing). Dunno, just a thought really. Joeturner (talk) 02:41, 11 November 2014 (PST)
"I'm thinking something which is a bit more than a blog, but a lot less work than a full news site - perhaps including interviews with people involved in relevant stuff (including but not exclusively appropredia projects), discussion of relevant issues etc." – I like it. To do it in a collaborative way means that an existing site (with lots of suitable users already registered) would be a good place, but maybe that's my bias. To do it in an open source way, MediaWiki has some advantages.
In any case it sounds like something that I'd like to support, partly because it's a good idea and partly because I know that you're smart and no-nonsense. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 16:16, 24 November 2014 (PST)
Sounds like a potentially great project, Joe. I've been watching the collapse discourse for awhile. What info sources there are leave a lot to be desired. The main thing I'd like to see is something with a lot more fact-based approach. There are some staid and insightful media like John Michael Greer's blog and the C-Realm podcast, but there's also a lot of tin foil types. --Ethan (talk) 09:54, 17 May 2015 (PDT)

Farm Hack

Farm Hack looks like prime partners for Appropedia - we should be encouraging cross pollination. -- Joshua (talk) 06:38, 6 February 2015 (PST)

Thanks Joshua. I'll drop them a line. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 05:04, 7 February 2015 (PST)

LH side bar link for sustainable community action

There are now quite a few (c. 300) pages in the Category:Sustainable community action. It'd be good if we could have some kind of link from the left hand menu (just to Sustainable community action, the sca main page), perhaps near the collaborators box? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Philralph, 17 February 2015‎

Thanks Philralph – you're doing great work. I added it under "areas", as "Community action" so that it fits. ("Collaborators" was intended for external partners, so it didn't seem right.) How is that? --Chriswaterguy (talk) 15:16, 23 February 2015 (PST)
Excellent! Thanks Chris Philralph (talk) 01:27, 24 February 2015 (PST)

Translation students on Wikipedia

Sharing this link because it may be relevant to Appropedia and Ekopedia, as we work to connect the different language wikis: Translation students embrace Wikipedia assignments, but find user interface frustrating. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 04:44, 24 Februa ry 2015 (PST)

What's the progress on that project? I'd be glad to help port stuff once I'm finished with Permaculture.info. Unfortunately, I don't know French, but it looks like there's lots of great English-language content and images. --Ethan (talk) 09:17, 17 May 2015 (PDT)

Self-healing concrete?

Slashdot points to an article on bio-concrete; it contains bacteria which fix cracks. Pashley (talk) 10:09, 15 May 2015 (PDT)

Year of Soil & Light

This is a bit late as the year's almost half over, but it would be cool if we could do something for the International Year of Soil and Light (as declared by the UN). Perhaps some kind of work party or months-long effort to add relevant content. At the very least it could get a mention on the front page. --Ethan (talk) 10:03, 17 May 2015 (PDT)

Oops, I haven't been checking this page, sorry! That's a good idea. Perhaps there are existing pages that could be highlighted also? --Chriswaterguy (talk) 05:28, 12 June 2015 (PDT)

Instructables

As J.M.Pearce mentioned, Instructables has some material that could be ported here. But there's a snag. If I understand right, Appropedia avoids BY-NC-SA material. That license appears to be the default on Instructables, so the majority of content is licensed that way. I want there to be a quick way to look up BY-SA content, but I'm stumped. CC's own search utility doesn't include Instructables. Trying to combine a reverse image search of the BY-SA image combined with the string "site:instructables.com" didn't work. Any suggestions? I don't want to waste time going through stuff we can't take. (Incidentally, I was reminded of the website's existence by finding a book of "off-grid" projects compiled by the site's founder. Is he violating his own users' licenses!?) --Ethan (talk) 21:56, 20 May 2015 (PDT)

It turns out there is alttext on the license images. So you can enter the search string "site:instructables.com attribution sharealike -noncommercial" to get (mostly) relevant results. I created the template {{Instructables}} to provide attribution for imported material. TCMTECH dripper irrigation for rainbarrel is an example of what an imported page can look like. It might also be nice to notify the content creator.

Side note: There's been some discussion discussion about CC license violation 1, 2 --Ethan (talk) 13:04, 21 May 2015 (PDT)

Hey, nice effort with the "site:instructables.com attribution sharealike -noncommercial" search.
Yeah, it's unfortunate about the incompatible licenses. What we are always able to do, regardless of license or copyright, is post a summary or paraphrase together with a link. I think that's still very useful, as it becomes information that can be found by browsing Appropedia (e.g. going through the pages in a category), even if the full version must be viewed elsewhere. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 05:26, 12 June 2015 (PDT)

Articles about individuals - need guidelines

There were a couple of articles about individuals in mainspace, that were a bit promotional in nature. That's not fundamentally a bad thing, but it's not what Appropedia mainspace is for, I think. So, I've moved them to the userspace of the user that created the pages.

We want to be clear and consistent, so my suggested guideline is that articles about people need to be notable in some way. If they meet Wikipedia's notability criteria and they're relevant to Appropedia's themes, they can be in mainspace.

We can be more flexible than Wikipedia, though, e.g. by counting popular sustainability/development blogs as "reliable sources" that count towards notability.

What are your thoughts? --Chriswaterguy (talk) 05:43, 12 June 2015 (PDT)

I've been thinking about this a little bit, but not about the notability aspect. There's several individuals and their work that I'd like to profile. In many cases the individual is more or less synonymous with the organization they head or the technique they developed. Sepp Holzer is a perfect example which already exists on the wiki. I can't imagine anyone whose biographical details will be sufficient (for the purpose of this wiki) to justify their own article. --Ethan (talk)

Nominating Ethan for admin

Ethan has been flagging spam, and being an admin would let him work on this more effectively. He's been an enthusiastic and trustworthy contributor here, so I see no reason not to make him an admin. Support, oppose or have another comment? Please comment below. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 06:20, 12 June 2015 (PDT)

I'd be glad to help out. :) --Ethan (talk) 19:35, 12 June 2015 (PDT)
Support, Philralph (talk) 01:55, 24 June 2015 (PDT)
Great. Thank you Ethan, welcome to adminship. You should see new tools on pages (such as the ability to delete directly). You should also see new tools at Special:SpecialPages, such as mass delete (use with care). Please feel free to ask whenever you have a question. Thank you for all you do. --Lonny (talk) 17:58, 19 July 2015 (PDT)
Thanks everyone. I tried out the delete function on the lastest spam articles. What's the standard procedure for the spambot-created users? I'll take a closer look at Special:SpecialPages; there's a lot there. Any recommended regular mainenance tasks? --Ethan (talk) 13:15, 31 July 2015 (PDT)

Lightweight structural panels 3D print

Think of a cross between milk crates and giant legos. Now build a house with it. If you're actively intrigued about how to address this challenge with a 3D printer, please see http://www.appropedia.org/Lightweight_structural_panels_3D_print because I really don't know much about how to go about it. I only have an idea with potential.

top menu link for Community action

Can we have a link in the menu that goes across the top of pages for Community action (as in the areas of the side bar)? I've moved 'Sustainable community action' to Community action for sustainability, which fits better with the link, and is perhaps a slightly less opaque name (plus am making corresponding changes to category names, etc), Cheers, Philralph (talk) 08:21, 13 August 2015 (PDT)

Also would be good to have links to Community action for sustainability or Community action on Welcome to Appropedia/Categories & Appropedia:CategoryTree Philralph (talk) 07:45, 16 August 2015 (PDT)

I bet most-all of Category:Taking action could be merged into CAS, and then CAS could replace it on the Category Tree. --Ethan (talk) 11:40, 17 August 2015 (PDT)

commercial article?

I'd like for someone to take a look at The Economics of UK's Residential Solar Power and tell me what you think about it. It's been written by, and links to, a website that compares different solarvoltaic installation services in the UK. I'm not sure whether this crosses a line in terms of advertising content. It does appear to offer some useful, if unsourced, information. I'm sure at least part of the motivation for creating the article was for SEO reasons, but I don't think that's sufficient reason to remove it if they're also adding substantive content to Appropedia. Thoughts? --Ethan (talk) 11:52, 17 August 2015 (PDT)

Question on Naming Conventions

Was fleshing out an index on my new project page and wanted to ask about the naming conventions for internal page links. First, is it OK to use separate pages for sub-sections of a project or is it preferable to only use sub-sections on the one project page? Is there a convention for naming internal pages and links so they relate just to a parent project?

Thank you. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by EricHunting, 23 August 2015

My opinion is 1) Go for it. If it turns out there's not much substance on a particular page, it can easily be merged into the parent page. 2) Check out Help:Page naming. I would title the pages something like Open House Fabrication, Open House Budget and so on. --Ethan (talk) 12:16, 23 August 2015 (PDT)
Agree with Ethan. Unless they're short sections, it's often better to have separate pages, that link to each other.
Having the patent project as part of the pagename is a good idea, so visitors can quickly see what it's about. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 06:54, 24 August 2015 (PDT)
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll give that a try. --EricHunting (talk) 06:58, 25 August 2015 (PDT)
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