(expand & correct comments)
(Program categories)
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Thoughts? --[[User:Singkong2005|Singkong2005]] <sup><small>[[User talk:Singkong2005|t]] - [[Special:Contributions/Singkong2005|c]]</small></sup> 21:18, 30 July 2006 (PDT)
Thoughts? --[[User:Singkong2005|Singkong2005]] <sup><small>[[User talk:Singkong2005|t]] - [[Special:Contributions/Singkong2005|c]]</small></sup> 21:18, 30 July 2006 (PDT)
== Program categories ==
If there's a lot of programs in a certain area, and they're listed in the appropriate category, then someone browsing the category will find it hard to tell at a glance which are the articles about the topic and which are the program writeups.
To solve this, I've decided to be bold and start creating program categories, e.g. [[:Category:Solar programs]], which are subcategories both of the topic ([[:Category:Solar]]) and of [[:Category:Programs]]. (See [[:Category:Programs]] - any such category will show in there.)
An alternative would be to make ''all'' the articles as category pages (perhaps that's already the policy?) and so anything not in the category namespace must be either a how-to or a program... However, that still seems a bit confusing, for people creating or reading pages, especially for anyone not familiar with the category policy. --[[User:Singkong2005|Singkong2005]] <sup><small>[[User talk:Singkong2005|t]] - [[Special:Contributions/Singkong2005|c]]</small></sup> 21:38, 30 July 2006 (PDT)

Revision as of 04:38, 31 July 2006

Feel free to ask a general question or make a comment here. For questions and comments on more specific issues, it may be best to find the relevant article (if it exists) and ask on the talk page.

Change subtitle

Rather than "The Free Encyclopedia" on the top left of every page, how about something like:

  • A living library of appropriate technology
  • A living library of appropriate technology and development issues
  • Appropriate technology, development and sustainability

While I always like to be comprehensive, something short and snappy would be best for a subtitle... --Singkong2005 t - c 23:19, 28 June 2006 (PDT)

Some people are working on a logo. We should include the subtitle on the logo, yes? Anybody have any other ideas for a subtitle? --Lonny 00:37, 29 June 2006 (PDT)

Redirect Problem

When redirecting to a category, subcategories are not displayed. See Adobe vs Category:Adobe for an example. Is there a fix for this, or should we just make a user-must-click style redirect? --Lonny 00:37, 29 June 2006 (PDT)

This bug has been fixed in the new version of mediawiki. See http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710 for a history of this bug request. Now we just need to get around to an update of this site. Until that happens, feel free to add redirects to categories with the knowledge that eventually subcategories and articles will show on that redirected-to category. --Lonny 01:20, 29 June 2006 (PDT)

Organisations

I haven't worked out if these organisations are notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia. If not, they might at least deserve a mention here. E.g. we could have a table of organizations, with category, place of origin & operation, brief comments/description, & links to Wikipedia where appropriate. (Have link to the Wikipedia article in name - but only if there is actually a Wikipedia article, as a dead link doesn't show as a redlink for interwiki link).

--Singkong2005 t - c 05:44, 30 June 2006 (PDT)

I think a table of organizations is necessary. In addition the the items you mention, we should include a link to the organizations webpage and the organization name should be a link to their appropedia page (if they have one). Inappropriate additions to wikipedia such as Wikipedia:Appropriate Technology Africa are a great example of a purpose that appropedia should serve. Maybe would should have a template on wikipedia along the lines of "This page is not in accordance with (some link to what wikipedia is not in reference to promoting your organization), please consider moving this page to another wikimedia project such as Appropedia where it is more appropriate." --Lonny 13:00, 30 June 2006 (PDT)

Directory of articles

I was thinking, the List of topics is useful, but being able to find all documents through the directory structure would also be good.

How about all top level categories, such as Category:How to or Category:Alternative building, go into a category such as Category:Fundamental or [[:Category:Categories, like in Wikipedia - Wikipedia:Category:Fundamental and Wikipedia:Category:Categories.

However, if a page hasn't been categorised, you won't find it via directories. So, it's good if there's something that lists all articles. Is there an "allpages" and/or "recent pages" link for the wiki? Thanks, --Singkong2005 t - c 08:36, 1 July 2006 (PDT)

I found the allpages link, via the Special:Specialpages link, bottom left. --Singkong2005 t - c 23:51, 5 July 2006 (PDT)

Directory of articles response

Absolutely. What do you think about some diffent metacategories, such as:

  • Topic_fundamental - This is the main category for all other topic categories. For instance Alternative_building is a Topic_fundamental for the subcategories Bamboo, Earthships, Strawbale, Ferrocement and Earthen Construction ,and for the subsubcategories Adobe, Cobb, etc.
  • Topic - This is the category for all topic categories. This category will eventually get very full, in which case we could retroactively make a Topic_L1, Topic_L2, etc. respectively for the subcategories, subsubcategories, etc. (or we could just do it now as well)

Alternative building - Category:Topic fundamental

  • Strawbale - Categories:Topic|Alternative_building (or Categories:Topic|Topic_L1|Alternative building)
  • Ferrocement - Categories:Topic|Alternative_building (or Categories:Topic|Topic_L1|Alternative building)
  • Earthen construction - Categories:Topic|Alternative building (or Categories:Topic|Topic_L1|Alternative building)
    • Adobe - Categories:Topic|Earthen construction (or Categories:Topic|Topic_L2|Earthen construction)
    • ...

--Lonny 15:34, 2 July 2006 (PDT)

and then each topic would also have an array of subcategories that are part of other metacategories such as

    • Adobe - Categories:Topic|Earthen construction
      • Projects - Categories:Projects|Adobe - Adobe construction projects
      • Curricula - Categories:Curriculum|Adobe - Adobe realted curricula, lesson plans, worksheets, assignments, etc
      • How tos - Categories:How to|Adobe - How to make adobe buildings and adobe in diffent forms
      • Organizations - Categories:Organization|Adobe - Organizations focused on Adobe construction
      • Theses - Categories:Thesis|Adobe - Treatise, economic plans, and other works on Adobe
      • Tools - Categories:Tools|Adobe - Tools such as clay content calculator and loading tables
      • Programs - Categories:Program|Adobe - Adobe building intensives, schools and other programs
      • Collab - Categories:Collab|Adobe - Services offered and needed, events, book/link/article reviews and other collaborative working pages
      • Maybe photos - Category:Adobe on an image page in the Image namespace - Photos of adobe (I am worried that the page may get too big... so maybe a seperate category Adobe Photos, or just hand made galleries so that captions are supported)
      • Maybe users - Category:Adobe on a user page in the User namespace - Users with a defined interest and experience in Adobe (this could help build networks of people, and allowing for users to find user pages on which to make contacts, ask questions, etc.)

Therefore I am proposing the following metacategories:

and I am proposing encouraging putting categories on entries in the User and Image namespaces (note: images that are in a category appear as thumbnails in that category page). Quick note, if we decide to do this, we should decide on singular or plural names for the metacategories... i.e. Projects vs Project and Program vs Programs.

What do you think? --Lonny 15:34, 2 July 2006 (PDT)

Alternative proposal

I've been taking some time to think about this. I think it's best to keep it simple, and use the self-organising nature of the wiki as much as possible. I think the only thing that we need to add to the category structure is a top layer, i.e. Category:Fundamental or equivalent (I'd prefer shorter names where possible). I've created it and started putting the tag on appropriate subcategories, so click Category:Fundamental and see what you think. (It can always be deleted later if necessary).
Categories such as Category:Monograph and a category for collaborations will be useful. (This is similar to to Wikipedia's WikiProjects category - and see also the Collaborations page in the Wikipedia namespace, which lists types of collaborations.)
I'm not clear on what role a Topic category would serve, and Topic_L1 etc doesn't sound intuitive. If we want a list of all pages, maintained automatically, we can use Special:Allpages (which I just discovered by clicking on the Specialpages link - bottom left, unless you're using a non-standard skin).
This is the Wikipedia approach to categories, as I understand it... I guess part of my reason for preferring this is that I'm a creature of habit, and the Wikipedia system makes sense to me (and has been the subject of a lot of refinement by a large community of editors). That doesn't means it's always best to do things the Wikipedia way, of course. --Singkong2005 t - c 23:51, 5 July 2006 (PDT)
Still working on a reply. --Lonny 01:34, 7 July 2006 (PDT)

Maintaining category structure

Here are some links that make it easy to ensure that the category structure is complete:

And one link to find pages that haven't been linked to yet:

  • Special:Lonelypages (orphaned pages, not linked from other pages. Aim to keep empty or near empty).

--Singkong2005 t - c 08:58, 6 July 2006 (PDT)

Lonely pages not all that lonely

Note that Special:Lonelypages does not consider being categorized as a link. Too bad there is not a page for Uncategorized, Lonely pages. Therefore we should not look to keep Special:Lonelypages empty because some pages will only be linked to by categorization, e.g. Hand stitching, which is part of the How to category. --Lonny 16:51, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
You're right. We might check Special:Lonelypages on occasion to see if there's articles that should be linked from elsewhere, but a category link may be enough. Special:Uncategorizedpages & Special:Uncategorizedcategories are the ones to work on keeping empty, then. --Singkong2005 t - c 01:02, 8 July 2006 (PDT)
I'll create Help:Categories (or should it be Appropedia:Categories?) to contain the explanation for using categories. I'll also delete Category:Testsubcat and Category:Testcat, and move explanatory material to the new page. --Singkong2005 t - c 22:45, 20 July 2006 (PDT)

Sub-categories/metacategories in topics

The metacategory schema would be a strong feature of the whole organizational structure described above. Can MediaWiki be made organize specific articles under metacategory headings on the Category:Fundamental pages, in the same fashion that they have been listed above in this discussion? I don't know of a way to accomplish this other than by using pipes to define the terms by which articles are sorted in a category tag [[Category:metacategory|metacategoryname article title]]. Unfortunately, this will not create subheadings in the list of category contents, only sort alphabetically, grouping articles with similar sort-words together without subheadings. The challenge here is to have articles displayed in a category and also be sub-sorted based on what other categories they belong to.--Aaron 10:33, 5 July 2006 (PDT)

As we add category tags to articles and on other category pages, the wiki software automatically creates the directory structure - see my comments above. I'm not sure if I got your question though, so please ask again if I haven't answered properly. --Singkong2005 t - c 23:51, 5 July 2006 (PDT)
I think what Aaron means is the following - Do you know how Articles and Subcategories show up automatically under a Category pages? I think Aaron is asking if the same can happen for the other Areas, e.g. seperate Articles, Subcategories, Tools, Monographs, etc. I think that the answer is no. Maybe for seperate namespaces, but I tried it, to no avail, by including a user in Category:Photovoltaic... the user was listed as an Article alphabetized to U for User, but no seperate Users section. Please let me know if I am offbase, or if this makes no sense.--Lonny 02:21, 7 July 2006 (PDT)
Thanks, Lonny, that is what I mean. I have edited my original discussion post to be clearer. I will look into any extensions for MediaWiki which might offer this functionality.--Aaron 14:06, 7 July 2006 (PDT)
Okay, I'm with you now - sorry for the misunderstanding. Aaron's idea is a clever solution, but with the lack of headings, and the non-intuitive way of writing category links are problems. I'm inclined to just use subcategories for now (E.g. make Category:Users interested in photovoltaics* a subcategory of Category:Photovoltaic) and perhaps at some time in the future there will be a feature in the MediaWiki software that allows the articles in subcategories to be listed beneath a heading. --Singkong2005 t - c 01:10, 8 July 2006 (PDT)

Userboxes

Someone may also choose to create a userbox which also adds the page to the category. So if you create {{User photovoltaic}}, that userbox can contain code to add you to Category:Users interested in photovoltaics. (The easy way is to start by copying and pasting from, say, Wikipedia:Template:User WikiProject Environment). --Singkong2005 t - c 01:10, 8 July 2006 (PDT)

Check out Photovoltaic members to see the new userbox implementation. Comments or suggestions? --Lonny 17:02, 17 July 2006 (PDT)
Very good - I've adapted your code to make {{User watsan}}, with the category Category:Water & sanitation members. Sanitation is currently a redlink. It may need to be changed to Category:Wastewater depending how we organise the categories.
The way "member" is used in the userboxes may suggest that the user is the member of a group related to that topic (as with WikiProjects on Wikipedia), so I'm trying to think of a concise way of expressing it, while still linking to the category. No better ideas yet - I'll ignore for a while and either it will be fixed, I'll think of a solution, or I'll realise it doesn't matter ;).
I also copied these (with small changes) from Wikipedia, to put userboxes in a column on the right:
See my user page for an example. These can also be useful in formatting articles when material such as images are to be placed in a column on the right. --Singkong2005 t - c 20:24, 17 July 2006 (PDT)

Categories & articles

Another issue I've been giving thought to. Lonny, I noticed at Category talk:Appropriate technology, you wrote:

I redirected appropriate technology to here at Category:Appropriate technology... Obviously there are some problems with the way we are using categories... One problem with the redirect to the category is that subcategories do not appear at the bottom of the category page after a redirect (although this does not affect category:appropriate technology as there are no subcategories).

Another small issue is that it will affect the layout of links on the "What links here" page, making it slightly more confusing.

Most likely the software doesn't handle the current usage well because it wasn't intended to. Cross-namespace redirects (e.g. appropriate technology to Category:Appropriate technology) are discouraged on Wikipedia, and I suspect on other Wikimedia projects as well.

A suggestion to separate articles from categories

I'm now leaning towards separating the articles from the categories, so that the category pages are solely for the purpose of categorising, perhaps with a brief intro. Other material would go in the article namespace, e.g. the material in Category:Appropriate technology would be moved to Appropriate technology, and replaced with nothing, or a brief intro.

I think that users should be able to view all pertinent information and links (especially to articles and subcategories) in one place.
I see your point. I'm slightly concerned that people will be confused, seeing a Category in the title, but viewing an article, and not seeing the categorised articles unless they scroll down. But the best thing is to get some non-users to have a play with it and observe their reactions. This may be easier for you, being in an academic environment, with lots of guinea pigs (i.e. students) if only you can catch them and sit them down in front of a computer... but I'll also try it with my friends when I get a chance. --Singkong2005 t - c 01:26, 8 July 2006 (PDT)
The redirect problem has been fixed in new versions of MediaWiki, see Appropedia:Village_pump#Redirect_Problem Village Pump for more. Now we just need to update. --Lonny 16:18, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
Mediawiki update is complete. Redirects are working (as is cite.php, and hopefully some other cool features). --Lonny 23:35, 6 July 2006 (PDT)

Namespaces

I haven't figured out whether projects should get their own namespace - one argument for this is that it becomes more obvious that it's a project from looking at the name. One drawback is that linking to the projects pages becomes slightly less intuitive.

I agree, linking should be intuitive. Projects should not get their own namespace. I think that we can take care of everything with categories. After we talk some more about the categories, the About appropedia page should be updated. --Lonny 16:18, 6 July 2006 (PDT)

I notice that Knots: has been used as a namespace. That probably should be changed. Maybe they should go into the article namespace? (e.g. Bowline knot. This would be in Category:Knots which would be a subcat of Category:How to.

The Knots: fake namespace thing should definitely be changed to exactly as you say. --Lonny 16:18, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
Knots are now taken care of. --ATSysop 01:21, 7 July 2006 (PDT)

An alternative is to use How to: is used as a namespace. I think that goes against the common wiki approach (in Wikimedia projects and Wikia) which is to use namespaces only for completely different types of pages: (Special:, Help:, Template:, or project-related i.e. Wikipedia: or Appropedia:), or for completely separate projects (such as the Cookbook: prefix in Wikibooks).

Let me know your thoughts. --Singkong2005 t - c 09:35, 6 July 2006 (PDT)

Counter to what I hoped for at the beginning of this wiki, I think that we can avoid namespaces and opt for categories. Those categories that I would have like to be namespaces can now be just listed under the Category:Fundamental or something like that. More about this on our category conversations above. Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions. --Lonny 16:18, 6 July 2006 (PDT)

Headings with no text

I was wondering whether others agree with me that we should follow the Wikipedia policy of not putting headings in unless there's actually text. I understand why it's done - the headings are thought to be an indication of what is needed... but I feel it looks cluttered, and takes up the time of the reader, looking through the page and realising there's nothing there. Also it may just as likely discourage additions, by placing expectations/limitations on what is to be added. E.g. Category:Solar distillation - I would like to remove most of the headings and let the page develop naturally. --Singkong2005 t - c 05:53, 14 July 2006 (PDT)

I agree that we should not put up headings unless there is content. I do not think we should waste people´s time, by bringing them to blank pages. But I do not feel that Category:Solar distillation fits the description of empty. I think that even mostly blank categories, as long as the have listed subcategories or articles, should remain.
Certainly the categories should remain - I meant just avoiding headings without content. I've made a change here to demonstrate the kind of thing I mean. It's nothing major, but it improves the presentation. --Singkong2005 t - c 12:11, 17 July 2006 (PDT)
I see what you mean. Looks better, not nearly as misleading and now users can browse stubs to see pages that need a good start as well. --Lonny 17:13, 17 July 2006 (PDT)
I think that truly contentless pages, such as PDF should be deleted.
Yes! Done. --Singkong2005 t - c 12:11, 17 July 2006 (PDT)
What do you think about mostly blank pages, such as Environmental art, which seems to have been created and abandoned? --Lonny 10:52, 17 July 2006 (PDT)
There's not much there, and I can't see what it's meant to become. In cases like this, perhaps we could post a note on the creator's talk page, asking if they want to expand it. If not, I'm inclined to delete. Alternatives:
  • Put it in a separate "limbo" category of stubs that aren't necessarily ever going to go anywhere (and removed from other categories). It could stay there for a while, and if there's no change, it gets deleted. Though that's probably more effort than it's worth.
  • The material from the page could just be posted on the creator's talk page, with an invitation to recreate the page if they wish to do so with a little bit more substance. (This is my preferred option). --Singkong2005 t - c 12:11, 17 July 2006 (PDT)
Excellent on the deleted blanks. I like this last option the best. Should we could inlude a link to recreate the page as well (mostly just for newer users), or will this add to our wanted page list? --Lonny 17:13, 17 July 2006 (PDT)
Good point about the [Special:Wantedpages|wanted page]] list. I think no link is best - just the deleted content. If they created it once they can do it again; and they can always ask, or if we really think it's necessary we could add a link to a wikimedia/wikipedia guide to creating a page. --Singkong2005 t - c 19:35, 18 July 2006 (PDT)

License

I want to add material from another site[3] which is licensed under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2. Before I copy, though, I'd like to see a clearer licence notice put on Appropedia pages. I notice that Project:Copyrights is currently a redlink.

This may seem anal retentive, and I'm sure they wouldn't mind us using it, but I want to do the right thing by that site's contributors, especially since I'm hoping that they'll come over here to be part of an active wiki. --Singkong2005 t - c 01:21, 17 July 2006 (PDT)

This does not seem anal rententive. Sorry for the slow, inconclusive response, and thank you for putting pressure on this needed component. I have been reticent on this part because I have questions/concerns. The vast majority of the media on appropedia is user created. I do not think that the majority of this content is appropriate for commercial use. What do you think about something like Creative Commons (example license link). As for the text content of appropedia, I am still researching the GNU-FDL. Currently, I am a little put off by some parts, and very excited about other parts, and either way I have benefited much from other GNU works. I think that, for appropedia, encouraging users to submit and assuring free access are paramount. Anybody have any swaying comments or brilliant suggestions? --Lonny 19:05, 25 July 2006 (PDT)
Some quick thoughts...
Re the GNU-FDL:
  • It does allow commercial use, but I'm not sure if that's a problem. Commercial use isn't necessarily a bad thing - the sort of commercial use that this material might be put to probably isn't going to be a "bad" kind of commercialism.
  • I think the licence does prohibit the material being used with a more restrictive licence (e.g. a book with a conventional copyright applying to material taken from Appropedia), so I would think that's the most important thing.
Re the Creative Commons license:
  • It's very simple and elegant. Don't know if it's too simple, though - all that text in the other licenses might be excess verbage, or then again it might actually serve a purpose.
  • The example given specifies non-commercial. Using this particular form of CC licence might mean that we're not entitled to incorporate material that's licensed under GNU-FDL (as Creative Commons is a more restrictive licence). We could still use information from elsewhere, but would have to rewrite it... which we'd probably do anyway. I might be wrong about all that, though.
GNU-FDL seems the simplest route to me - I'm happy to use something which has been decided upon by other communities such as Wikipedia. (Though I'm not sure if the community decided on it, or the foundation, or if it's a historical thing from the people who first started it.)
Those are my thoughts - I'm probably not going to think much more deeply than that about these issues (my eyes glaze over when I see pages of licence-related text) and at this point I don't see a major problem with either option.
--Singkong2005 t - c 02:22, 27 July 2006 (PDT)

Language userboxes

This is really not a high priority right now - however it would be nice if eventually we had a system of language userboxes, like Wikipedia:Template:Babel. However, using the Babel template requires the existence of the full range of language userbox templates like Wikipedia:Template:User es-2 - up to 7 for each language.[4] Manually copying them all is not a practical option - is there another way? --Singkong2005 t - c 00:05, 18 July 2006 (PDT)

If the answer isn't to hand, we could ask at wikimedia.org - especially if there's a page there for those actually dealing with the software. There may be a way of copying a whole range of pages, e.g. using a "getwiki" command? --Singkong2005 t - c 21:22, 22 July 2006 (PDT)

Openness and anti-vandalism measures

I've assumed that the reason anonymous editing isn't allowed on Appropedia is to prevent vandalism. Wikipedia does allow anonymous editing, but has a much larger community, including lots of technically minded and Wikipedia-obsessed people, running bots and watching recent changes via IRC channel... so vandalism generally gets reverted very quickly (e.g. Tawkerbot2 typically reverts vandalism in something like 15 seconds).

Now, obviously we can't compare with that, yet... but are we in agreement that it's desirable to allow anonymous editing if we can minimise the effect of vandalism and spam? I would like to see this allowed, as my experience & observations on Wikipedia suggest that:

  • the lower barrier to entry means more contributions
  • anonymous editors can end up getting more involved, registering and contributing regularly
  • most anonymous contributions are actually valuable - I had assumed that most of the "bad edits" would be from anonymous editors, but when I've checked, that hasn't been the case at all.

If we did want to go down this path, we'd have to think about how we do it in a smaller community of editors like this one. Even if we grow by a factor of 10 or 100, we won't have Wikipedia-like abilities for fighting vandalism. So how could we do it - is there a way we could safely allow anonymous users?

Some suggested steps:

  • Perhaps someone (Lonny?) knows where to ask for advice on this, e.g. on a Wikimedia technical discussion page/list.
  • Wikipedia has a feature, where if an anonymous editor adds a link in their edit, they are required to do one of those anti-automation things where you read the funny-looking letters and type them in.
  • Perhaps we should follow Wikipedia's example in not allowing anon editors to create pages.
  • Do some more Promotion of Appropedia, mentioning it on permaculture, eco-village and sustainability lists, sites with a similar kind of focus, and to organisations like the various Engineers Without Borders organisations.
  • Make sure we have a robust Recent changes|Recent changes patrol. (I'm not sure if this requires people to be admins, in order to be able to "Mark as patrolled"). If we have a large enough "RC patrol" from a range of time zones, and with differing sleeping habits, we can come close to a 24 hour patrol. Note that the RC patrol is not just for vandalism - it's to check recent edits more generally, doing touch-ups, fixing links, making sure new pages are in the right categories, etc.
  • Learn about using the anti-vandalism tools and bots used on Wikipedia. (Start at Vandalism - that should lead to some relevant links).

Thoughts? --Singkong2005 t - c 21:18, 30 July 2006 (PDT)

Program categories

If there's a lot of programs in a certain area, and they're listed in the appropriate category, then someone browsing the category will find it hard to tell at a glance which are the articles about the topic and which are the program writeups.

To solve this, I've decided to be bold and start creating program categories, e.g. Category:Solar programs, which are subcategories both of the topic (Category:Solar) and of Category:Programs. (See Category:Programs - any such category will show in there.)

An alternative would be to make all the articles as category pages (perhaps that's already the policy?) and so anything not in the category namespace must be either a how-to or a program... However, that still seems a bit confusing, for people creating or reading pages, especially for anyone not familiar with the category policy. --Singkong2005 t - c 21:38, 30 July 2006 (PDT)

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