Let's write a submission for worldchanging.com.
The Village Earth Wiki was reviewed in May, and even in September attracted a valuable contributor to that wiki.
Submission Guidelines
Full guidelines at Submission guidelines.
In brief:
1) only positive recommendations.
2) always a fresh angle.
3) Pithy Writing. ...no more than three paragraphs... Try to start with a strong, declarative first sentence.
4) Excerpts. ...pull the best quotes from the resource as excerpts in your recommendation.
5) Why It Matters. Why is it good? How is it useful? How do you use it? What's innovative about it? What are the implications if its use were to spread? Feel free to be opinionated!
Don't use HTML (the form strips it out) - presumably they will format it themselves.
Submission
We plan that the first submission is a "Concept validation," below.
- Note that web links are to be left in the raw form.
(Use this review of the Village Earth wiki for ideas).
Proposed "Concept validation" submission for WorldChanging
A wiki dedicated to sustainability, international development and appropriate technology is compelling idea. Some months back, WorldChanging did a story about an Appropriate Technology Wiki Project (see http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004483.html). Around that time, several other sites with very similar visions were in the offing, all started separately by a few ambitious hopefuls.
So, are we set for 'war of the wikis'? Fortunately, no. It turns out that collaborative visionaries are very willing to work together. The founders of two wikis (the Development and Sustainability Wikia http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/About_the_Development_and_Sustainability_Wikia and WinWinWiki http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/WinWinWiki) independently discovered the larger and more active site, Appropedia (http://www.appropedia.org). These three pioneers, now on one site, agreed on a broad scope covering all world-changing ideas about sustainability and international development. The Appropedia agreed policy is to complement Wikipedia, rather than compete. Rather than encyclopedic articles, Appropedia encourages other useful material, including original research, project writeups, how-to's and more. The result is turning heads: Engineers Without Borders-International listed Appropedia as "Solution of the Month"; Kofi Annan's Centre of Excellence in ICT Blog ranks Appropedia as one of five "Links of Interest"; Ethan Zuckerman of "my heart's in Accra" calls Appropedia a "very cool idea".
The nature of wikis is such that merging is highly favored. A single larger wiki has better synergy, with more active users editing and expanding the content. Search engines also favor larger, busier sites. Appropedia has benefited from these dynamics, with a growing community of international editors, partner websites (e.g. http://www.demotech.org/) and open design groups (e.g. http://www.osafa.org). The world of sustainable development now has a unified web-based method for sharing information, and no longer is there any need to reinvent, well, rainwater catchment, solar water purification, the composting toilet, or hundreds of other useful inventions.
Suggested tags: Quickchanges, collaboration, open design, appropriate technology, international development, sustainability
(first pass drafted by --CurtB 21:48, 2 November 2006 (PST))
(second pass (and draft left in messy state) by --Singkong2005