Appropedia:The Appropedia Update/next: Difference between revisions

This is the working page for the next edition of The Appropedia Update.

You can either edit the page or leave ideas on the talk page.

Appropedia Update 1: A mystery spam-fighter, guerrilla gardeners and more...

We've long talked about a newsletter, but haven't had the resources to make it happen. So, instead, we'll aim to give a brief update here every 2 weeks. For the first few updates, we'll also be catching up on older news that you may have missed because, well, we never reported it.

This year we've voted in three new wiki administrators:

• Fixer. Not only do we not have a "Real Names Policy" on Appropedia, but we even have our own mystery admin. Fixer lives up to to his or her name, blocking spammers and fixing other problems as they come up.
• Teratornis is an experienced Wikipedian, and passionate about responding climate change. Teratornis has been modernizing our templates and contributing to discussions about policy and strategy.
• Tahnok, aka Wesley. Wesley studies at McGill University in Canada, and started a tech internship over the summer holidays, doing valuable work and ending up on the admin team.

This makes a big difference to our small team of interns. Welcome on board!

Of course adminship is just one of the roles that Appropedians play, and we'll be highlighting other Appropedians and their work - starting with our valued interns and volunteers who've joined us so far this year, including:

• User:Kili, a self-described "ardent supporter and doer of appropriate technology" in Tanzania, who is translating many pages into Kiswahili. (If "Kiswahili" isn't familiar, in English it's often called "Swahili".)
• William Dineen and Maccabee "Macc" Shelley from Humboldt State University, earlier this year - helping both to build the knowledge base in Appropedia, and with tech development. James.Gourlay and Teratornis lent a guiding hand to William and Maccabee - in spite of being in different parts of the world.
• Wesley, mentioned above. Wesley has been developing a very cool mobile skin for Appropedia and helping upgrade our spam fighting abilities, among other tech tasks

We'll keep this brief, so we'll just end with this image, right, from our guerrilla gardening page, which has undergone expansion recently. It shows papayas planted in an unused lot of land. The page describes how papayas are an excellent tree for guerrilla gardening in the tropics, and gives advice on where to place them. Note that there are two trees here, planted near a wall to protect them from the wind.

More people, pages, programs and partnerships in the next Appropedia Update.

• Content, & open license evangelism
  • Agreement with Shareable

Any news or interns that I've missed - please let me know, for the next edition.

Announce later:

Just a heads-up - there's a copyediting class working on Appropedia at the moment, led by User:Prstn, going through Category:Articles in need of copyediting (i.e. pages marked with {{copyedit}}).

If you know of pages that need copyediting - tag 'em now!

Joshua, Lonny's classes.

These aren't ready yet, or there's already enough material for the Update edition being worked on above:

• Tahnok, starts a tech internship over the summer. (That's the northern hemisphere summer.)
• Partnerships
  • We're connected with 350.org through COTW & WiserEarth
  • WiserEarth content partnership
    • -> Forum, regular chats (monthly?)

Guidelines/suggestions - regular items:

• Highlighted page or two
• New interns & volunteers starting work
• Openings & initiatives
• New admins
• Highlighted users (e.g. a student, or recently active)
• Classes using Appropedia
• Partnerships or content-sharing
• New site features
• Milestones (pageviews)
• Mentions in media or journals
• Fundraising
• How to donate
• Funding (say, anything $500 or more?)
• Tip or "Did You Know?" about using the wiki. E.g. "Related changes".
• Upcoming events
• Recent events.

Optional (esp if other content is lacking):

• Past news topics that haven't been mentioned in the Update yet
• Site features or related programs that aren't widely known or used.
• Programs for participation - a line about different internships available
• Ideas for participation - e.g. make a page about your green business, or a green business you know
• People who could use Appropedia (pass on the idea)
• Social media - occasionally mention our various accounts & pages.
• Related projects & sites - e.g. AIDG, Enviu, OSE, COTW, E4C, Bloodandmilk - link their work on Appropedia if it exists.