Refreshed todo (not prioritized)

  • Cards
  • Main page
    • Highlighted contributor
    • Highlighted organization
    • How to support Ap
    • Highlighted portal
    • Highlighted initiative

More

  • Board
  • Forum
  • Portals
  • Logo
  • NS coloring
  • RSS
  • Interns
  • Porting / conversion tools
  • Original namespace management

My useful links

Add to "Requested content" to "not found" search text See MediaWiki:noarticletext See Special:Allmessages See MediaWiki:noexactmatch

Possible initiatives

  • Recruiting interns
  • Posting online volunteering positions
    • Porting talent
    • Searching for material and getting republication permission
    • Fact checkers
    • Editors
    • Experts
  • Identifying specific topic areas for expansion, i.e. focus initiatives
  • Re-invest in porting efforts
  • scripting / bots to automate text-to-wiki imports (perhaps for CD3WD)
  • Activity to increase the internal article-to-article links
  • More clarity around the portals idea: Topics portals, Org portals, etc.
  • More clarity around org partnership details
    • Expansion of org pages to support an Org portal?
  • Aggressively pursuing the Peace Corps Volunteer project ideas
  • Working on Wanted pages and Wanted categories
  • Working on dead external links (with bot support)

My "Appropedia To Do List"

  1. Continue driving for incorporation and non-profit status
  2. Invest in understanding pywikimedia or similar bots, MWiki-Browser
  3. Development of NGO partnership concepts
  4. Topic and Area categorization work
  5. Push development of Mission statement!
    • Mission statement highlighted on Community portal, Village pump and About Appropedia.
  6. Policy page work
    • delete, content (political activity), naming
    • encyclopedic (exists), request copyright permission
    • categorization policy (started this with Appropedia:Categorization?)
    • More work on porting / original content policy details: Portals?
  7. Promotion and advertising of Appropedia
    • Creation of links within Wikipedia pages
    • Google ads, Green Options ads, others?
  8. Porting
    • Need to revise and document the "Original content policy"
    • Practical Action technical briefs
    • cd3wd! Ask Eric?
    • biosandfilter guidelines
    • Expand on the "How to port" page to give suggestions about porting, conventions?
      • how to organize a porting effort (single page vs multiple pages, etc)
      • how to create a new "XXXXpage" template?
      • how to port from web, from Word docs, etc.
        • port the text first, without photos, and without worrying about formatting
        • do some formatting
        • port the photos last
      • should we keep some info on the talk page about the status of the port?
  9. Organizing various pages that are somewhat hidden under Village Pump, etc.
    • Add to About page?
    • Add page about various template resources and other useful tools?
      • "Porting Helpers" box (like the photovoltaic box)
      • Add a link (like Helge's) to add a question on prominent pages like Village Pump
  10. Development of a "LDC Development Framework" involving all various players (see User_talk:Curtbeckmann/Framework)
  11. Development of "Host_village" category
    • Related development of "Host Village Questionnaire" to aid in developing pages
  12. Non-NPOV approaches
    • Encouraging "opinion pages" within the namespace of users and orgs?
    • Create a category and highlight "opinion of the week" or whatever? I'm willing to go slow on this. "Rhetoric" or "Commentary" are interesting, not mudslinging...
  13. Work on getting logo-based "Appropedia buttons" for blog pages, etc
  14. Engage with EWB-SFP colleagues and see if their wiki and see if there is appropriate content for Appropedia

Archived topics

Several old topics have been moved to User talk:Curtbeckmann/Archive

  • Interwiki
  • Blogging
  • Adminship
  • Archiving
  • What Extension
  • Recent Ports
  • Porting, historical link templates, “Beyond Dams” stuff
  • Content duplicated - one of them needs deleting?
  • Hello Curt
  • Thanks for the Tome
  • Titles of original documents
  • Worldchanging
  • Spelling/Grammar Notification
  • Sparsely populated parent categories & empty sub-categories

Transclusion

FYI - if we use transclusion method for protecting the text of original documents, then there's a neater way than using the "Template:" space. Any page can be transcluded. For example, edit this section/page, add the text {{Parras Water}} and click preview - the whole article is transcluded.

Even the text of a category page can be transcluded. I created Category:Water/test, with just a sentence, which I'll transclude here: Category:Water/test

I assume the software searches in the template space, then failing that it looks for the page with that name and no "Template:" prefix.

The upshot is that I think it would be better to put the protected text in a page with the same name plus a suffix (e.g. "/protected"). What do you think? --Singkong2005 · talk 04:34, 5 January 2007 (PST)

I learned about the transclusion of non-templates when I was about halfway thru templatizing things. I think the "/protected" approach could work fine. My biggest concern is where the search engines send people. I also like grouping all originals together, which works slightly better with namespaces, in my opinion, but a Category also works quite well (as long as we have <noinclude> around the Categorization).
So, to reiterate, my biggest concern is ranking of originals versus derived material. I think rearranging our current approach (30+ pages) won't take too long, whatever the new approach is... And we'll need to document the policy etc, but I'll have to defer to our search engine expert (Lonny) for which approach (if any) works best in that regard. --CurtB 07:59, 5 January 2007 (PST)
I think this approach is compatible with the namespace solution; I don't think the templates should get significant google hits. For one thing, they'd be on the same site, so I imagine they'd be indented under the main linked page, if they show up; or possibly show up only through the "more results from this site" link. The Appropedia search engine might be trickier - hadn't thought of that.
We will (I say boldly) have a notice template at the top of the /protected page, through the use of code like "<noinclude>{{transcluded}}", where {{transcluded}} (or whatever) is a notice that this page is just for transclusion.
Another thought has just occurred to me - if someone wants to copy material (including wiki markup) from an original document, transclusion could make it confusing. That's almost enough to put me off the transclusion approach. (We could add an edit button as part of the template at the top of the original page, but it's all getting confusing by that point.)
Following from that last thought, here's a possible alternative approach: don't use transclusion, but simply protect all original documents. At the same time, implement a liberal policy of appointing admins (which I favor anyway). Basically anyone we believe to be responsible and basically wiki-aware, who's been active for at least a few weeks, could go on probation as an admin. That way we quickly have a sizable number of admins to look after original docs, and who can quickly respond to any suggestions for changes to protected pages that are made by non-admins. Before doing that, though, it might be worth finding out why Wikipedia took a less liberal path, even though I think Jimbo expressed a preference for a liberal policy, in the early days. Hope i haven't done too many run-on sentences... just a quick response before I pull myself out of the vortex and make a dent in the boring stuff like tax that I should have done weeks ago...
Btw, I know I haven't answered your comment on my Wikipedia talk page - I think it's a great idea to get in touch with editors there. Perhaps after we've got the WikiGreen thing done, so we've got more to impress people with. --Singkong2005 · talk 21:57, 5 January 2007 (PST)

Solar hot water

Not sure if you moved Category:Solar hot water to Category:Solar thermal hotwater, but I still favor the first - more succinct. Plus thermal seems unnecessarily specific - it's generally superfluous, but even if there were a system heating water via photovoltaics (very inefficient) then it could go in the same category. Also, hot water should be 2 words.

Wanted to check with you first, cat moves being more awkward than normal page moves. --Singkong2005 · talk 18:12, 7 January 2007 (PST)

Discussion tracker

As Lonny mentioned recently, it can be hard to keep track of what's happening on the community discussion pages, with there being such a number of pages, so I had a first go at a {{Discussion tracker}}. {{Discussion tracker|Curtbeckmann}} gives


Hope you find it helpful. --Singkong2005 · talk 19:33, 11 January 2007 (PST)

Category naming

Finally avoided other distractions for a short time and had a look at User talk:Curtbeckmann/Category naming. I think it's very good, and would strongly support this being our working policy on category naming. I've also made some renaming suggestions, under yours on that page. --Singkong2005 · talk 13:24, 12 January 2007 (PST)

Redlinks

Hi Curt,

Saw your recent comments, and just wanted to let you know that we are still working on the interwiki map today. --Lonny 20:39, 15 January 2007 (PST)

Thanks, Lonny. I figured as much...but was concerned about the high profile links begin red. Fixed a few that were easy to find, then it got inefficient real fast... Thanks for the heads up. --CurtB 20:55, 15 January 2007 (PST)

Topic table

Should I leave comments directly on User:Curtbeckmann/Topic table (seeing as it's a work in progress)? Or perhaps we could chat about it. --Singkong2005 · talk 21:20, 29 January 2007 (PST)


Hi Curt, just came across the topic page that you modified as it was out of date . [Yes, I know it was a few months ago, but I haven't been here for a while!!].

The new page does not match the left hand nav bar and I always thought the original was a good way of finding pages quickly. Also I think the original page gave an impression that there was plenty going on in the site unlike the dry page that is there now. Maybe it would be better to keep the original for the time being? -Cgfoz 12:43, 29 April 2007 (PDT)

Welcome

Welcome, Steve! Glad to have you on board! --CurtB 20:05, 30 January 2007 (PST)

Retrieved from "http://www.appropedia.org/User_talk:PlantPhotos"

Thanks for the welcome. I am checking this wiki frequently, and love the whole idea. I grew up on a Vermont farm, mostly subsistence, grew most of our own food, and went shopping about once every 6 weeks. This was in the 1970's or so. I was born in 1957. I see this returning, as energy, and environmental concerns again become of utmost importance. I have been living the appropriate technology lifestyle for 50 years, so hopefully can contribute some useful information to those younger people who are thinking about it now. --Steve Gallagher 15:08, 4 February 2007 (PST)

moving cats

A partial solution to loss of history when moving categories. See Help:Moving a page#Moving a category. --Chriswaterguy · talk 01:17, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Thanks, Curt and robotic minion. The author thing didn't quite work (dates instead of author names) but all up, good effort. And we now have a more settled naming system, which makes me happier about posting and sending links, nowing they'll stay valid. --Chriswaterguy · talk

Rename from Transportation to Transport?

Please see Category_talk:Transportation#Can we rename from Transportation to Transport? - thanks. --Chriswaterguy · talk 04:56, 20 February 2007 (PST)

Greenlivingpedia

Curt, thanks for making contact with me on Greenlivingpedia. I had located Appropedia after we created Greenlivingpedia and have linked to it from our Directory. We think there is space for Greenlivingpedia to progress with a focus on sustainable housing in Australia. Let's progress with mutual collaboration and interwiki links for now, and consider merging down the track. Regards, Peter Campbell 21:51, 5 March 2007 (PST)

Your thoughts requested...

at User_talk:Chriswaterguy#Greenlivingpedia interwiki. Thanks --Chriswaterguy · talk 16:02, 16 March 2007 (PDT)

attribution in comments

Hi Curt, to clarify what I'd suggested about attribution in comments, I redid your edits in Category:Water. Instead of leaving a note on the page to credit the author, I used the edit summary: add content by David Bartecchi of Village Earth, as part of the merger of the Village Earth wiki).

I also redid the previous move (I didn't realize that "rollback" undid every edit by the previous editor) with edit summary "arsenic" content moved to Arsenic in groundwater (just doing what Curt did, but trying different approach to edit summary for such moves). LMK if there's a prob. --Chriswaterguy · talk 16:36, 17 March 2007 (PDT)

Rethinking categories

See User_talk:Lonny#Photovoltaics how-to? --Chriswaterguy · talk 06:08, 24 April 2007 (PDT)

Missing Images Bot Needed

Hey Curt, got a way to tag pages with one or more missing images? I noticed a number of the CD3WD pages were lacking images. It wasn't real consistant, so I don't know if they were already missing pre-assimilation or not, but anyway, a bot to tag them with a 'Missing Images' category would be nice, that way I can just pull up the category and fix them.

Or is there another way to identify them ?

I wrote a little php script that loops through and detects them, it's not great, but it works. A bot would be better. I've got this script on a 1 sec per page throttle, so it plays nice and won't grab all the bandwidth. See Back_Yard_and_Commercial_Rabbit_Production_12 as an example of a page with missing images.

Ericblazek 06:57, 11 May 2007 (PDT)

Moving categories, an update?

I must be behind the times in some respects. Obviously some recent version of MediaWiki has made it easy to move cats as with pages - or is there a clever way? I was definitely warned - some months ago - that it would not work, that you could add a cat redirect template but you had to change each item manually. Your note mentions "category.py". Er?? Sort me out? (But I'm off to bed very soon, so you may get no more for the next 20+ hours!) Robin Patterson 07:36, 31 May 2007 (PDT)

More newcomers to welcome

Show up clearly on Recent changes - a redlinked "Talk" page. Over to your welcoming squad!! Goodnight. Robin Patterson 07:42, 31 May 2007 (PDT)

Imagemap extension for buttons

Curt,

I have installed the Imagemap extension which supports buttons (images) linking directly to urls and interwikis rather than the image itself. I have used buttons on the front page of Greenlivingpedia if you want to check this out. It might be worth using this functionality for Appropedia too, at least on the front page. I have left a note about this for Chris too. Regards, Peter Campbell 07:11, 25 September 2007 (PDT)

Hi Guys,
We use an image map extension. Currently we only use it with the highlighted project (see front page), but maybe we should start using it for buttons like on Greenlivingpedia (which looks great). Thank you so much for the update Peter. We really appreciate it. --Lonny 09:26, 25 September 2007 (PDT)
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