What is Appropedia?
Appropedia is the site for collaborative solutions in sustainability, poverty reduction and international development through the use of sound principles and appropriate technology and the sharing of wisdom and project information. It is a wiki, a type of website which allows anyone to add, remove, or edit content. Registration is encouraged but not required for contributors.
Appropedia has been described as an "appropriate technology wiki," but it is much broader than that - it is a green wiki, and a wiki for all matters of international development and aid. But most importantly, Appropedia is an open site for stakeholders to come together to find, create and improve scalable and adaptable solutions. For more about our motivation, see Appropedia:Mission.
Appropedia began in April of 2006. Six other similar sites have joined Appropedia since its inception:
- Sustainable Development Wikia
- WinWinWiki
- Wikigreen.org
- Village Earth's ATwiki
- HowToLiveWiki, home of the Hexayurt
- sgoals, the site for sustainable business
These collaborations have brought many content pages, readers and contributors. You can learn more about the history of Appropedia at Appropedia:A_history_of_collaboration.
Content on Appropedia
Appropedia welcomes contributions of many types of content:
- Project histories and project how-tos
- Textbook-style information, tables, and figures
- Photographs and illustrations
- Information for finding supplies and help
- Links and information on other organizations
- Collaboration pages for co-creating solutions
- Discussion pages for commenting on work done and work that needs to be done
- And more
Posting encyclopedic content on Appropedia is discouraged, as Wikipedia is a more-used resource for this style of article.
People who make Appropedia possible
You
The community of contributors and visitors makes Appropedia work, and makes working at Appropedia meaningful.
Founder, admin and bureaucrat
Founding administrators
- Chriswaterguy, a.k.a. Chris Watkins, major contributor to Appropedia and other wiki projects.
- Curt Beckmann
- GoodSignal, a.k.a. Gabriel Krause. Founding technical administrator.
Other administrators
- On2Leggs, a.k.a. Ryan Legg - Senior staff at Cornell's Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise in charge of program development and management.
- Vinay Gupta of the Hexayurt.
Technical Assistance
- Aaron Antrim, a student of Humboldt State University consulted the original appropedia team, and provided the recommendation to use MediaWiki software.
Financial Assistance for hosting Appropedia
Thanks to a kind (and fairly modest [ CurtB ]) donation from Curt Beckmann, Appropedia has a fast and secure server - DreamHost.
The Foundation
Oversight of Appropedia is provided by The Appropedia Foundation.
More questions?
Do you have a question about how to participate? Wondering what exactly Appropedia's activities are? Starting a website and wondering how it fits with Appropedia? See Appropedia:FAQ, and if you still have questions, contact us.