(Village pump in French sur Ekopedia)
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''To keep track of recent changes to all the pages linked above, check '''[http://appropedia.org/index.php?title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&target=Template:CPheader Recent changes to community discussion pages]'''. You may also place a {{tl|Discussion tracker}} on your user talk page.'' <br>
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Revision as of 12:17, 14 January 2010

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Feel free to ask a general question or make a comment about Appropedia. For policy questions, see the Policy discussion page. 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.

Archive

Older discussions can be found at Appropedia talk:Village pump/Archive. If you wish to continue those discussions, please start a new section on this page - do not add new comments to the archive page.

Topics that have been spun off to other pages

To keep this page manageable, some bulky topics have been moved to their own pages


Section 5

Advertising?

Is there a policy on spamming and ads? I wasn't sure about In-N-Out Burger, doesn't seem to be that related to the project's mission (except possibly the vegetarian thing?). I guess a more general question would be whether there's a policy for determining whether a page makes it into the project's scope? Is there a deletion policy? How about a policy about where to draw the line when a page starts sounding like advertising (e.g. a neutrality policy)? delldot talk 11:50, 23 August 2008 (PDT)

We've talked about being more friendly to commercial enterprises - as long as the content contributes to the wiki in some way, with some practical solution or idea. I think that this article doesn't do so in its current state. Maybe mark it, and invite improvement of the article? --Chriswaterguy 19:55, 23 August 2008 (PDT)
Good point about supporting business if it adds something. I can't see this article ever being useful, but I could be wrong--I don't know anything about this business. What do you think about the idea that if you're not hardline against spam it could get out of hand? I'm pretty against advertising. For example, I don't like the advertising for American Express on the main page. Seems to me if you're going to bring business to an enterprise you've got an ethical responsibility to make sure it's not evil. Anyway, I think advertising presents a conflict of interest that could cost you in accuracy. delldot talk 20:42, 23 August 2008 (PDT)
This article might need to evolve into one about running green & healthy hamburger restaurants, to be useful. In other words, a complete change. The Sun Frost energy efficient shower is more like how I imagine a useful page from a business.
We don't have a problem with spam at present (that I'm aware of) apart from the cases you mentioned. The AmEx mention on the frontpage - I wondered about that, but I'm not personally aware of AmEx being a notably bad company, and I thought that if they're giving $2.5 million away to a good cause, so they can get publicity, that's not so bad - better than getting publicity through conventional advertising spending. But that's just a thought - I'm not sure what I actually think.
Certainly an article on green & healthy hamburger restaurants would be great, but it seems like if you need to do a complete rewrite and a rename, there's no point in not deleting, at least in pure terms of content.
I don't know any dirt on AmEx either, but I bet I could dig some up. :P At any rate, I'm just stating my bias; that stuff makes me shudder. But I do think it's worth considering where the line should be drawn. e.g. if Shell Oil does some philanthropic work, would we lend them these pages for advertisement? I would think of that as harmful. So how evil can a company get away with being? delldot talk 21:07, 23 August 2008 (PDT)

Site notice

I just discovered how MediaWiki:Sitenotice works. I tried it out, and it can leave a message at the top of every page, e.g.:

Appropedia runs on volunteer labor and generous donations. You can support this work by donating to the Appropedia Foundation (tax-deductible in the USA).

Do we want to have something like this? (I do.)

Do we want to have it like Wikimedia sites (note I don't yet know how they do this):

  • with a "dismiss" option?
  • in a box? (this is more visually intrusive, so i'd say only if we have the dismiss option.)

Please suggest better wording of the notice.

Also, after a week, I'd like to replace it with a notice about the upcoming OpenSustainabilityCamp. --Chriswaterguy 20:04, 23 August 2008 (PDT)

Great stuff! I support posting an OSNCamp notification immediately. I like something short such as "Join us at OSNCamp at SFSU on Oct 18-19. Click "here" for info and registration"... with appropriate embedded links, of course. CurtB 17:26, 15 September 2008 (PDT)
Practicing here: Join us at OSNCamp in San Francisco on Oct 18-19! Registration is here
More info is here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Interface/Sitenotice
We should increment the Sitenotice id whenever we update the Sitenotice. I couldn't see info about how links are handled, and what wiki coding is supported, etc. Experiment, I guess...

NOINDEX tag

Useful info for anyone making test pages (like Main Page tests) or any other pages which shouldn't be indexed by search engines - just add __NOINDEX__:

New magic words __INDEX__ and __NOINDEX__ control whether a page can be indexed by search engines (although note that Wikimedia's robots.txt, which excludes things like AfD subpages, takes precedence over this). The keywords do nothing in "content namespaces" ― which means the main namespace on the English Wikipedia, but other sites may have additional content namespaces.[1]

--Chriswaterguy

Musing on subcategories for Programs

I was just talking with Lonny's friend Matthew Marshall, who works in Denver city government. He was asking about programs, such as their program to encourage drivers not to leave their cars idling. I said yes, Appropedia is for content such as that.

However, I'm not sure how to categorize pages such as these, or Environmental Management System, as our Category:Programs is so far about a different kind of program, e.g. the Parras summer programs.

I'm thinking that we need new sub-categories, but I'm just having trouble thinking of the right category names... should Environmental Management System go in Category:Sustainability programs? (too vague?) or Category:Efficiency programs? (Too specific?) --Chriswaterguy 11:31, 30 August 2008 (PDT)

To help explain this to people, I will work on a government portal... or rather, 2 portals:

--Chriswaterguy 21:50, 15 September 2008 (PDT)

Preventing attack with name string

We need to limit length of user names -- always protect highlighted project - and add negative word search to ban user names that would be defamatory. Finally a super user must get rid of string as user name from latest attack. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fixer, 6:43 25 Sep 2008

Agreed - good suggestions.
Protecting projects - I'd hoped we could avoid this, but until we have super-shar anti-vandal tools (and a patrol team covering all time-zones) then we need to protect. Or maybe apply "flagged revisions" to such pages.
Other suggestions: Will see if we can get any MediaWiki gurus to help set this up - let us know if you have any suggestions!
Thanks again for your fixing work! --Chriswaterguy 11:59, 25 September 2008 (PDT)
Lonny has implemented MediaWiki:Usernameblacklist, and also protected that highlighted project, as you suggested. Thanks again. --Chriswaterguy 00:57, 26 September 2008 (PDT)

Collapsing categories

It is nice and neat to have all the categories collapse into the expandable list with the + This system could be improved, however, it categories without any subcategories were signified in some way maybe a - and/or there was a way to expand all the subcategories at once to see the tree under a specific topic. --Joshua 13:17, 2 October 2008 (PDT)

Integrated Systems of Production

I am interested in combining appropriate technologies into "integrated systems of production" designed to reduce cash costs - as an alternative to economies of scale. The classic example is George Chan's Integrated Farm Management System. I have other examples listed in my AboutUs wiki pages.

What if the volunteers at Appropedia agreed to focus on a project such combining a solar energy facility with a Greening the Desert project as a model to reduce global warming by both replacing fossil fuels and sequestering carbon in plants grown where they do not currently grow. I am thinking of things like:

  • Pump in sea water to grow algea for diesel,
  • use the water in evaporative coolers for greenhouses built under the solar panels
  • incorporate dehumidifiers into the design to produce fresh water,
  • provide food, water, shelter . . . for people to build and maintain the systems
  • and as many other things as we can add in - using each resource for as many integrated purposes as possible.

Once the project is defined, we volunteers would then conduct outreach to experts in each aspect of the plan - to both make the plan better and bring more interest to Appropedia.

I am thinking about maintaining a portal on integrated production systems but I thought I would see if there is any interest first. David Braden October 15, 2008

This sounds intriguing. I'm interested, more on the side of how to make this work on a wiki, helping coordinate... but Monday or later will be a better time for some of us to think about this, after OSNCamp 2008. --Chriswaterguy 08:02, 16 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Can we add a category to cover this topic, like: Non-profit social economy or social-ecological sustainable embedded economy, natural balanced economy, .. ? Jafra April 8, 2009

Integrated Systems

Thank you for your interest Chris. I look forward to your comments. I tried to edit the last comment but could not find how to save it. What is the trick to that? David Braden October 16, 2008 9:46 MDT.

Sorry - we've added new edit features, and still having some bugs.
At the top right, click "Generic edit". "Classic edit" would then take you back to the older style wiki editing page... but for some reason it breaks on this long page. Lonny has been working on it, and we're getting help. Thanks for hanging in with us! --Chriswaterguy 15:59, 16 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Template links to Wikipedia

I have moved {{wp sup}} - the superscript link to Wikipedia, like thisW - to {{w}}, for simplicity. (It displays as W, so it makes sense for the code to be W).

I also want to replace the use of the {{wp}} template with a wikilink (to an Appropedia article) and a {{w}} link to Wikipedia. So for example:

W

would become:

water wheelW

No doubt there will be some that don't quite turn out right, and will need to be fixed manually - I should be able to manage it.

Just want to flag it - if no objections in the next couple of weeks, I'll get to work with the bot! --Chriswaterguy 03:23, 2 November 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Rice Hulls

I live in Shreveport,LA and would like to find a source for rice hulls close enought to have them transported to this area. Any help would be great. Can be reached at yahoo as ladyglennaelf.

   glenna

Interaction and linking between Demotech, design for self-reliance and Appropedia

Hello Chris, Lonny and to whom it may concern!

Hope all is well and all of you are enjoying the idea of "Yes we can", though it is sad that Sarah's expensive outfit will not make it to the ward robes of the White House.

In the mean time I have made a short description in the Category Demotech of all of Demotech's designs and writings. All of them link to the more extensive and better illustrated pages on the Demotech website. Maybe that is not what Appropedia likes best, but is is the only workable solution for me, as I regularly update these pages. It does not invite visitors from Appropedia to change anything or add anything. That is counter the idea of Open Source, however it did not happen anyway ever! In principle it is still possible. A visitor could make a new page to comment on what she or he finds at the related page at Demotech. Also each Demotech page is linked to a wiki page that invites comments. Even more: each page at Demotech offers a form inviting to add comments, but it is seldom used.

Illustrative is it to look at the Appropedia page 'Night Reader' (see: http://www.appropedia.org/Night_Reader ), I have no idea when this page was copied from the Demotech web page http://www.demotech.org/d-design/designA.php?d=44 This Demotech page contains so much more relevant info and does NOT contain some harmful misunderstanding of the original design now to be found in the Appropedia page. I know that I can correct such a mistake, I even could add that educational tools to make the NightReader are available at Demotech, but it is a lot of extra work and in my real life it just does not get done.

So I prefer a well illustrated and inviting introduction of each of the Demotech designs, writings and concepts, with a clear link to Demotech. But also with a notepad attached to that Appropedia page on which comments can be left without first linking to Demotech. If ever on a beautiful day someone really would do some work on such a design, but would not like to involve Demotech in it, then this notepad page could expand into an alternative for the original Demotech initiative.

I have a few related questions: At http://www.appropedia.org/DemoSticks_displays there is to be found DemoSticks displays. This page could be removed, as a link to a link to the complete and lateste updated page is available at by the page http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Demotech_Means_to_get_informed Same for the Appropedia page http://www.appropedia.org/Demo_Camp_Units and the Appropedia page http://www.appropedia.org/Demo_Camp_Einheiten, all of them can be replaced by the page http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Demotech_Means_to_get_informed

But I would like to add a small picture of each item next to the text, very much the same as I did it at http://www.demotech.org/d-design/d-categories.php?cat=1

Would it be possible to batch upload the about 50 small 180 x180 px pictures each of them an illustration of the listed Demotech design initiative?

Another question is how to create links in other Appropedia lists, say 'Water' or 'Sanitation' or other topics that Demotech designs relate to. Where to find such lists?

To conclude with a real burning question: I look for a research center or anything that functions like that for doing design research on toilet systems. Right now I work on three sanitation systems, the Hy2U (see: http://www.demotech.org/d-design/designA.php?d=91 ), the BathroomBox or SolarSanitation (see: http://www.demotech.org/d-design/designA.php?d=53 ) and the BathroomToilet-unit (see: http://www.demotech.org/d-design/designA.php?d=36 ). Support for this work in my own workshop in the Netherlands has vaporized, so I want to move out and find a place where an institute, school of interested people would welcome work on these designs, preferably close to users for which these designs are meant. It would take one or two months. There is always the possibility to come back when the work catches on and needs further support. These designs already have a long history behind them, had some success and I think it is a big shame that I have not been able to give pace to the research still needed. OK, where is that institute, school or are those interested people? Please let me know at info@demotech.org

Kind regards, Reinder / Demotech http://www.demotech.org .

I'm happy to see more linking - even if it's not on Appropedia, it should be at least indexed and linked here.
For the Appropedia community's information, can I ask what the "harmful misunderstanding of the original design" is? (Just a quote is fine.)
Batch upload of images: I previously couldn't find anything about how to add this feature - maybe I wasn't using the right phrase, but using your phrasing I found mw:Extension:MultiUpload, Batch Upload Images to MediaWiki and more references. We are looking for tech help for a number of things, like setting up a test wiki for the extra features we want, and this is another good thing to try out... if you know anyone who can help with adding features to MediaWiki, let us know!
Batch upload of images - Take 2: If anyone understands how to use a perl script, it may be that this perl script to do batch uploads of images doesn't require changing anything on the wiki...?
Re toilet research - I have asked the Appropedia twitter network. You could also ask on Global Swadeshi. --Chriswaterguy 19:02, 12 November 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Chris, thanks for feed back, re. happy to see more linking ... Please instruct me how to link and or index the items in the Appropedia Demotech category to the Appropedia categories of 'Water', 'Sanitation and others. Where to find such lists? Maybe there are related list or categories in the content of the new big partners.
Re: Harmful misunderstanding: The NightReader should NOT use WHITE LEDs. Yellow LEDs are OK for reading, they work with consideralbel less voltage, are cheaper, probably use less milli amps as well. The NightReader is really targeting at the minimal amount of light, NO MORE than needed for reading those 6 lines of a page in a book. In practice that is just enough. The related big working condition is NOT ATTRACTING INSECTS that otherwise would crawl over the lighted section of the paper and hinder concentration on work. Not attracting insects too asks for minimizing light to what is needed, as well as a proper cap that shields the light of in all directions apart from where your eyes have to see the paper. The NightReader is in a delicate balance of many functions and working methods to realize these functions. But further optimalization is always possible. Recently Demotech made a new model that works in the same way, but that is far easier to make and has some other advantages. Expect soon info on this on the Demotech NightReader page. But then what to do with the present NightReader publication at Appropedia? Whose responsability is it to update such info, initially posted not by Demotech? This is the same question as I put to the Village Pump as in regard of the outdated Appropedia DemoUnits entries.
Thanks for the link to Twitter. I have to find out how this works.

You people are good! Ferreal yall!

Ifn ya have a newsletter er sumpn'.....hook a brotha up. Please. :)

ian ..sacredpond@hotmail.com

peace

Hi Ian,
Thanks for the message. We don't currently have a newsletter, but we are working on one. We'll let you know when one comes out. Thanks! --Lonny 23:54, 12 November 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

ThinHouse

Oregon family working toward a sustainable 2000 watt lifestyle. See www.thinhouse.net.

Webpage editing screen

For some reason my actual webpage shows something completely different than my editing page and I can't figure out why.

It is under

http://www.appropedia.org/index.php?title=Arcata%27s_Oxidation_Pond&action=edit

Is the lack of "WYSYIWYG" confusing you? Unfortunately, we still have to edit the "wiki markup" but hope to have it working like a regular editor one day. See Help:Contents too - that may help.
In the meantime, you can use preview to see how things display. Do you have someone (a classmate) you can sit down with and figure this out? --Chriswaterguy 14:58, 17 November 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Good suggestions - Sharon

Health hazard if used for drinking water

Researchers found that plastic water bottles release cancer-causing agents after they are boiled, even after they are rinsed out. ref Be careful not to eat or drink off of heat-treated bottles. This is especially true for pregnant women and young children.

How to request a category rename

We're just getting started adding some location pages for Illinois. We created Category:Cook County. It should be Category:Cook county, Illinois. An admin person has to make this change. Right? How to we request a rename of a category? User:Bmorrisett

No admin is needed for this. You just have to go into each page and edit it to change the category name. Once there are no pages referring to the old Category you can propose the Category for deletion or just redirect to the new Cat.filceolaire 22:09, 28 November 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Okay, thanks. How do I propose the Category for deletion? User:Bmorrisett

To propose a category for deletion use the {{Delete}} template by pasting that code into the top of a page. Thank you, --Lonny 04:50, 4 December 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Also, If you've got a lot of pages to recategorize (say 10 or more), then I can help - leave a note on User talk:ChriswaterguyBot saying exactly which category to change, to what. Only do that for non-controversial changes, or where consensus has been reached. Thanks. --Chriswaterguy 16:58, 13 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

SSB Maker

I would like to get in touch with any of the team members of the SSB Makers.

My email is glotieno@gmail.com Regards, George

Hi George,
You can try to leave a message on the talk page of the Interlocking_Stabilized_Soil_Block_(ISSB)_Maker project page. Or you can try to email the page editors directly with at:

Good luck, --Lonny 04:50, 4 December 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

SD wiki sites list

Chris, I added to http://www.appropedia.org/SWS_included_sites_list, as there seemed to be more than just your search output there. I made a page: to try to keep with your format of the name and only the name in the list: http://www.appropedia.org/Connection. I hope you think it's in the right place. I actually think it might be better to use a short sentence (up to 200 char?) with every link, so people don't have to go through a whole learning process to see what's there.

best, phil

Please DELETE roadside.jpg

Copyright issues

Thanks Acg34,

The photos are now deleted. --Lonny 21:28, 7 December 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

wiki-net

Mattis Manzel:
Hi everybody. Pretty nice wiki work you are doing, as far as I can tell after some reading. I'm working on the wiki-net. If you ever feel like experimenting with it in any context, feel free to. As an example see the kabo-wiki-hive. Have a nice day all.

:(

I'm spamming your site on Wikiversity, apparently.

Comment on the bookmark gadget

I personally find the bookmark gadget to be poorly placed right under the logo. About 80% of the time (or at least it seems that way) when I try to click on one of the menu links, I inadvertently swing over the bookmark widget and it pops open and obscures the link I want. And this from a widget that I have never used and do not expect to ever use. That is to say, it's all pain and no gain from my perspective. I'd like to hear from others if they think that a) it's a cool tool, and b) it should be placed there (versus, say, along the top edge of the page where my cursor rarely goes).

Thanks for the feedback, all. CurtB 01:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for the feedback. We have placed the search box above the navigation sidebar boxes. The bookmark tool is in the same location as before, but now I think it won't get in the way of navigation. Please let us know how that works out. PS placing the bookmark tool there, instead of the lower left, has quadrupled its use... but that is not worth being annoying. --Lonny 16:59, 27 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Layout problem

Layout falls apart on Google Chrome (1.0.154.43): the sidebar on the left is pushed below the bottom edge of the main content block. (I'm using XP, and an 1280x800 resolution.) --86.101.62.230 21:11, 16 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you. We are currently working on that and should have it fixed in less than two weeks. --Lonny 00:24, 27 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The {{delete}} tag

I'd like to suggest that:

  • the {{delete}} tag be added at the top of an article, and not used to replace the text
  • users are encouraged to add a reason for deletion, in the form {{delete|reason}}.
  • this template be used sparingly. It is easier to improve an existing article than create a new one.

In the spirit of "being bold," I've edited the instructions on the template page: Template:Delete#Usage. How does all that sound? --Chriswaterguy 22:17, 31 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

downloadable

Hi, I am a new user who hasn't contributed at all. I haven't looked at much here but I am familiar with the name (I assume this is a good info spot) and, upon request of a friend seeking "appropriate technology" info in a setting absent of internet connections, if I thought that most or all of this site be a good reference for him as it is, could I download the whole thing for a cd/dvd (or do you have a downloadable version)? If not, can someone with the ability upload it to a file-hosting service for this purpose? (I tried the "download the dump" idea it did not work. It was a 30MB xml document which just crashed the browser Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1, or displayed the whole thing in programming text) RTG 16:51, 1 February 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

We've talked about how to make this work - e.g. see the options Lonny mentions at User_talk:Lonny#how do i download this booklet.
Also see Appropedia:Offline browsing - this is a collection of advice and links from friends at OLPC, but I don't think any of us have tried it on Appropedia yet. If you try it, let us know how it goes! --Chriswaterguy 02:08, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Deletion policy

I'd like to propose we develop a clear deletion polity, so I'm starting one at Appropedia:Deletion policy.

As we've had a practice of teachers deleting students' work that doesn't meet standards, this will have to be clearly addressed. We want to make things as clear as possible for students and teachers, while also working smoothly with the rest of the community.

Please check out the draft, and help improve it, or comment on it. Thanks. --Chriswaterguy 03:35, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

David Reber nominated as admin

I've nominated User:David.reber for adminship. See Appropedia:Administrators/Nominations#David Reber . --Chriswaterguy 06:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Adminship - making two levels, and changing the name

I've suggested changing the name "admin" to "librarian", as in the Spanish Wikipedia. Another option is "steward". Please leave any comments or suggestions at Appropedia talk:Administrators/Process.

I've also suggested making two levels of adminship - see Appropedia:Administrators/Process and leave comments on the talk page. Thanks! --Chriswaterguy 19:49, 13 February 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Search Appropedia with one click: handy bookmarklets

Set up bookmarklet in your browser - then you can highlight text on a web page, click a button on your bookmarks toolbar, and perform a search for that term on Appropedia. Also works for other sites.

See Search bookmarklets for details. --Chriswaterguy 21:42, 4 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Usability / Making it accessible for beginners

Hi,

this is probably a difficult problem, and I haven't fully fleshed it out in my own mind, but:

It's pretty difficult to quickly navigate to content that is likely to be useful to a lot of people. For example, I tried issuing the following queries:

  • "light bulbs" (i.e. trying to learn about energy-efficient lightbubls)
  • "energy efficient house" (how to make house heat/energy efficient)
  • "carpool"

None of these queries give me anything remotely relevant (or even easy to comprehend) in the top results.

Similarly, it's not at all intuitive how to navigate to the content above from the front page.

I think this is a serious problem, as it will result in many (esp. first-time) users getting frustrated and turning away. I know that people read/write Appropedia for many purposes, but I believe that the majority first-time visitors probably want something that's simple and general.

The solution to this is not easy, but off the top of my head I can think of a few things:

  • A "simple" portal with simplified/limited content (something like Simple Wikipedia [2])
  • Improving tagging / search technology (e.g. does the current search engine have a "PageRank"-like feature that prioritizes pages by their popularity)?
  • An introduction/guide on the front page (that lets you quickly learn about / navigate to general issues of interest).

I'd be very interested in thinking about these problems further. (I'm a computer science grad student with a background in HCI).

Thanks so much for your message, Kkireyev! I agree that we need major improvements in navigation. I had to look up HCI (Human-computer interactionW - that's very relevant to the work we need to do improving the site, so we'd love to work with you on this.
We do have some plans in these areas, but it's been slow work because there's so much to do, and not many of us with tech skills (my own tech skills are very limited). Any help you could lend, both on conceptual and practical levels, would be greatly appreciated.
The first thing I'd suggest is to join the Tech for sustainability wikis - that's where we talk about tech ideas. Perhaps you could introduce yourself there, copy this message there, and tell us a bit more about yourself?
Re the portal and the front page ideas - we're thinking about adding a navigation tool like the one at Appropedia:CategoryTree to the front page, but I'm still working on the images. See also Main Page tests - that's very much under construction, but it shows some of the attempts made to tidy and slim down the front page, and make more room for important stuff that helps people navigate. Feel free to play around with that page if you like.
Re the search engine - updated comment: Wikipedia has a nicer search engine, which was announced here. It's apparently not part of a new version of MediaWiki - we could do with some tech help in working out how to apply it to Appropedia. I don't know whether this is the kind of thing you're interested in, but if you know anyone (or anyone is reading this) who can help, please let us know! --Chriswaterguy 16:37, 7 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Open Green Map

We should consider partnering with Open Green Map to integrate the GIS functionality we have been looking for into appropedia. Any thoughts? --Joshua 18:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I love it, I love it, I love it :)

am glad to be here within ... thanks for all have constructed this great work. Jafra

Swadeshi Business Models with ecology as business partner

There is no category about economy here to look up or construct such business models!

My personal motivation is that I am planing to return to my home-community which is NOT independent and controlled by foreign power. Socially, the community is heavenly collapsed like so many indigenous communities fall as victim of absurd , political power, profit and industrialization.

To start new sustainable human and moral eco-business in such a community I thought about the principles. On of them to have ecology as corporation partner as it is participating on productions and produced value. Having ecology as partner of production and consumption cycle will create a balance within our relationship to it and to each other as we all share it.

In old-school, state taxes used to cover this responsibility. But I can imagine that future value-corporation community will take more direct influence on their ecosystem if they consider themselves as such. To take ecology as partner is essential as all of us would have the same partner to adjust , revise and tune how much products actually we need with.

There many good sites http://www.corporation2020.org , http://www.futureofed.org/driver/the-maker-economy.aspx, .. but I did not find any document in which the ecology is explicit partner of the corporation. The idea would be to map "natural capital" involved in the business as virtual partner. Part of the revenue will have to flow back to sustain natural capital and make it more "wealth" (wellness) The patterns here are very helpful: http://www.conservationeconomy.net/pattern_map/noflash/index.html

Do you know any business model, where ecology is direct part of the shares so that I can study and use it for my business idea? Jafra April 8, 2009

Sorry we haven't been much help - I'd suggest posting this to the forum at Global Swadeshi. I'm sure you'll get a response there. --Chriswaterguy 17:57, 25 April 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Understanding natural systems & choices

I've studied natural systems as a general subject for years. Much of the subject is about why they fool us so much, and how they do so much for us we don't understand. It's a big subject, and not even the sciences of ecology and economics have quite realized the importance in living systems in particular, of their being made of independently responding parts.

The general idea of science is still that systems follow the rules we perceive, though that's also the problem, in that they keep making up their own rules too and catch us off guard. Is there an interest in that here? What aspect of understanding natural complex systems would be appropriate here? I have a things showing my range of interests on my archive site, and on the blog with it where I collect recent letters I liked. It’s possibly just too big a subject with too many differing opinions, but maybe it could be a place where people could try to articulate their opinions with the help of others sharing some of their view. I think many of our solutions of the past are our problems of the present, for example, and that people are not carefully thinking through the present solutions any better.

Would there be others interested in building a page or small area on how the natural behavior of systems alters our choices? Phil Henshaw Apr 14, 2009

Sounds like an interesting area to explore - supporting this kind of understanding of the nature of natural systems would be great.
I don't promise to be actively involved (a finger in too many pies) but I'll certainly watch with interest and contribute where I can.
Btw, the copyright notice on your site is almost the same as saying CC-BY, but from a legal standpoint it's not quite the same, and some people will be hesitant to reuse your content. I'd suggest going to http://creativecommons.org/license/ and setting up the license, with the CC mark to put in your footer. If you need help, let me know. --Chriswaterguy 20:56, 20 April 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

best permaculture videos, especially for dry areas

can you help me finding good permaculture videos, especially for dry areas (short rainfall) ?

Which external links to include in a page?

A link has been added, to several Appropedia pages, to a website which is about an interesting and relevant topic, but which has almost no content. I'm wondering how to deal with that - flag it as a new site awaiting content? The fact that there's no obvious way to for someone to contribute makes me inclined to delete it, but then it gets extremely subjective. We need some sort of criteria to make it more objective... Appropedia:Criteria for external links.

Also, I'm wondering whether to remove the external links section from portals. A portal is mainly a guide to what's available on the site. If we do have external links on a portal, they should be of the highest quality, and then it requires vigilance to keep things that way. --Chriswaterguy 04:25, 3 July 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

References

I noticed some time ago that wiki-specific things like {{references}} doesn't work, requiring the need of typing it in html (eg </references></references>) Can this be fixed, I find wikiformat more suitable —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 91.182.204.231 (talkcontribs) 14:24, 5 September 2009

We can definitely add templates that you find useful. Which one(s) are you talking about specifically. I looked at Wikipedia:Template:References, but that doesn't seem to be the one you are talking about. Thanks for your suggestion, --Lonny 19:28, 7 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Sorry about the mistake, I meant {{reflist}}, it doesn't work here. {{reflist}} ins't set up on Appropedia.

{{subst:notes}} works which substitutes in {{notes}} (though just using {{notes}} would also work. However, I do think it would be useful to set reflist up too KVDP 11:06, 11 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Anonymous editing

Perhaps that anonymous editing can be switched off. As the site is becoming more popular, the risk of vandalism increases. Since getting a username isn't that much trouble and it certainly decreases this risk by a great percentage, I think that anonymous editing should be switched off. Another argument to support this is that Appropedia doesn't have the number of moderators like wikipedia and that the data stored here is very important. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 91.182.204.231 (talkcontribs) 15:29, 5 September 2009

Thanks for your input. Vandalism has been a problem many times in the past. We have discussed the options and have, so far, opted for leaving Appropedia open while increasing other forms of security. We have made it more difficult for bulk vandalism and our response times in fixing vandalism seem quite high (anyone want to do a statistical analysis?). I appreciate your concern and feel it myself. At the same time, we want to encourage editing and allow for as many chances for that type of engagement. In addition, we have been very lucky to have a community that watches for vandalism. A couple members only edit when removing inappropriate material. Hopefully we will continue to find even better ways of encouraging editing and soon dwarf the already impressive 73k edits we have so far.
Thanks again, --Lonny 19:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I also support the vision that only members are to be given permission to edit the appropedia articles. This, as an organisation I recently contacted (Ingenieurs zonder Grenzen) also shared this vision. In addition, appropedia should divert from wikipedia, as more and more appropriate technology organisation (which need to work in difficult situations) shouldn't have to fear that their articles (on which they depend atleast to a certain degree) are corrupted by anonymous users. Perhaps appropedia members can fend off vandalism for now, but as the site grows, this may not be the case in the future. It's better to be safe than sorry.

KVDP 09:42, 20 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Site reorganisation

Folling Chriswaterguy's suggestion, I placed my proposal for reorganisation/simplification of appropedia here. Following the responses here, perhaps changes can be made.

in the menu, one finds navigations community, topics areas and toolbox. Why not simply make 1 box and simplify it as with howtopedia. For example, About: place this all the way down; merge with Mission-article Recent changes and Categories: remove Help: refer to wikipedia's wiki help ? Article adds weight to site and is still too basic for good understanding Organisations: refer to wikipedia's AT organisations category ? If kept at Wikipedia, the list is kept up to date for free. Discuss: rename to colloquium or discussion? Random: remove Blog: perhaps you could move new items to the main page ? A seperate blog again adds more work and the blog doesn't have such big a function? If it is intented as a place to connect, perhaps instant messaging, twittering, ... could be more useful (would recruit more people too). To combine several messengers, a multi-messenger can be used. Appropriate tech: why is this category needed ? It's appropedia, so everything should be appropriate (eg cheap and eco-friendly) The categories you made at category are perfect to represent all categories (locations can perhaps be changed to AT villages, organisations moved to wikipedia) Green living: change to appropriate living habits (its appropedia, so we should always behave green, no need to mention it) Projects: just list in the corresponding categories, remove "projects" How-to's: remove; i'm guessing that we'll make every article a how-to ? Toolbox: remove all but printable version; guessing no one uses these anyhow (atleast I don't) KVDP 09:55, 9 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think it would be a mistake to have direct links outside of the site in the main menu - so no wikipedia links for content that is only relevant to appropedia e.g. organizations focusing specifically on AT. I agree that the Random link could be removed without hurting anything. The toolbox is useful and I would not cut anything else -- for finding appropedia from the outside we need the keywords. At some point we have to normalize the use of topic areas as either portals or as categories -- either way they need to be taken care of by a user or group of users.
My main question is on the highlighting of new pages, users, and categories - normally puts the least developed content on the first page. This is good for encouraging people to create pages - but bad in terms of capturing users if they visit the front page first and click on an empty or early construction peice. What do people think about putting the category tree up front?

Comparison of alternative ICE fuels

I placed the article Comparison of alternative ICE fuels here. It was removed from wikipedia but if this article get improved it may be later transformed to later reuploaded at wikipedia. Some info from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Energy_content eg, ... can be implemented. KVDP 18:43, 26 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Excellent. I just made a few edits. --Lonny 19:16, 26 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Attribution and citation templates

I just realized that we have two categories and two terms being used for the same function - attributing content taken from other sources. The categories are:

I think citation should refer to trusted or notable sources of information, whereas attribution refers to crediting material that is reused on Appropedia. So I plan to recategorize/rewrite/rename templates to reflect this. --Chriswaterguy 17:47, 2 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This makes sense to me. --Lonny 02:06, 8 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Update on attribution templates

I've been finding a heap of content suitable for reuse on Appropedia - see especially Blogs relevant to Appropedia and Appropedia:Porting pages #Finding other open content information.

So now there's a generic attribution template to use: {{attrib}}. You just have to remember to add the three key parameters, in any order - url, author, and license. (e.g. {{attrib|url=http://www.urbansprout.co.za/population_growth_has_no_relation_to_global_warming|author=Ahmed|license=CC-BY-SA}}

Templates for specific sites can also be found (and new ones added) in Category:Attribution templates.

Please make use of these - add, remix and attribute! --Chriswaterguy 17:47, 2 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Other templates

I noticed that {{summarize}}, {{mergeto|}}, {{mergefrom|}}, {{improve}}, {{wikify}}, ... work but don't look nearly as good as in wikipedia (no real templates, no image, ...) Perhaps the template designs can be taken from wikipedia and slightly modified for appropedia

KVDP 09:45, 20 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Article Incubator

Something we might want to emulate, for articles that we think are problematic to leave in the main section of Appropedia, but which might be developed into something better:

Wikipedia:Project:Article Incubator, a space for the development of new articles with potential, has been launched... The aim of the incubator is to save articles from deletion if they show the potential to meet Wikipedia standards. It is suggested as a better solution than userfication as it allows collaborative editing and improvement to continue, and avoids issues over ownership where there are multiple contributors. - Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-10-05/News and notes #Article Incubator launches.

--Chriswaterguy 15:58, 6 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Water harvesting

Some time ago, I decided to make a wikibooks article at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Rainwater_harvesting This as the rainwater harvesting article at Wikipedia kept going into the wrong direction due to other editors. The rainwater harvesting articles at appropedia still need some work (too restrictive on the types that are mentioned, quite long and sometimes confusing eg see the paragraph at http://www.appropedia.org/Original:Rainwater_harvesting#First_flush_systems) Since then, the wikibooks article was evaluated, renamed and included in a book called Georgia water If anyone wishes to improve the articles, I think it is best to start off with looking at this Georgia Water document (see my suggestion at the Georgia water talk page) and modify this book and link to subdivisions in appropedia for extra information on subtopics. The appropedia article too can be improved by adding additional systems and keeping them simple.

Changing another person's project page

One thing we haven't worked out is what limits we have to editing another person's project or organization page. A trivial example is this line from Usui Rice cooker:

This cooker is relevant for any place where rice is a grown and is a staple of the diet (all of Asia, as well as parts of Africa and South America).

I've changed "all of Asia" to "most of Asia," to be more accurate. I don't think the author will mind, though they might think I'm pedantic. My concern is that there will be cases where more controversial changes might be made. Does the project's author have the final say, is it a question of consensus in the same way as any other wiki page, or do we need a different approach. There's a problem if the author has the final say, as the claims may be misled (cars that run on water) or even deliberately misleading (I can sell you a kit to make your car run on water). Perhaps we should go with the "same way as any other wiki page" but be open to letting the policy develop as we go? --Chriswaterguy 05:52, 16 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Good pages on Appropedia? Please nominate!

Which are the best pages on Appropedia? Please nominate at Category talk:Good Pages!

This helps us choose pages to package for Appropedia's OLPC content bundle, and to use for promoting Appropedia content. --Chriswaterguy 16:06, 19 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Language learning lessons

I noticed a while ago that appropedia is also working on making articles in other languages. Perhaps that instead of doing this, it may be better to simply integrate English leaning lessons and lessons in other languages instead. A big issue in appropriate technology projects is that communication with the locals is often a problem, and employing locals in on-site projects is this aswell, as it relies to a degree that others are capable of speaking english or another language understandable by the project direction.

English learning lessons should certainly be integrated, as locals will need to be able to learn the currently available manuals by appropriate technology organisations, and as its the current lingua franca (understanding this is actually is prequisty for anyone)

Lessons in other languages could then again be used by project engineers to familiarize/communicate to the local population (which often don't speak more than 1 language). I think some main languages as Mandarin, Arabic, Portugese, Spanish, ... could certainly be integrated. The lessons can include text and audio. The audio could then be learned with simple digital audio players (an example of audio lessons is http://www.arabicpod.net/)

The lessons could probably be composed with the lessons given otherwise by the US government, and other governments (eg the lessons given in refugee camps with refugees to be integrated into the US, ...) As these are US government documents, they could be simply copied. Also, they are of a greater level than eg arabicpods

KVDP 09:57, 20 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm a big fan of language learning, and especially open materials for language learning. I've contributed to Wikibooks:How to Learn a Language as well as the Indonesian Wikibook, and I'd love to see better English lessons freely available.
My suggestion is that:
  • we support whichever site is doing the best with materials on English as a foreign language (Wikibooks? Wikiversity?) as well as P2P University, which gets learners together, takes open materials, and structures them into actual courses. As individuals and as a community we can participate, and we can have relevant pages on Appropedia linking to relevant pages on those other projects.
  • we continue to work on getting Appropedia into multiple languages - move forward the reach out to language departments at educational institutions and explain the benefits of service learning in language education - see Language education-based translation.
How does that sound? Note that I don't have an actual objection to such material on Appropedia - my aim is to enable this collaboration to grow in the most effective way possible.
(When we have a way to host and edit a page on more than one wiki, so that different communities can edit the same document, then we might choose a slightly different solution. And with the MediaWiki API now working, that mightn't be far off.) --Chriswaterguy 05:42, 22 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Outsourcing the work to an other wiki sounds good; however, I am not sure whether wikibooks/wikiversity can already take on this job. Also, I am not aware that they have audio to listen to the lessons (eg on a portable media player) as I described.

Also, there is an underlying reason why I posted this thought. As I described, I am not sure whether the best approach is to translate technical manuals to another language (I personally btw only follow the opposite route; eg translating manuals to english from another language and not the opposite). Instead, I think it is best that if eg a local wishes to learn to construct, ... something from the manuals at appropedia, this should only be made possible in English. This in a way forces someone to learn English first, which is, I believe, one of the first things anyone should do when trying to increase his knowledge/become more educated. Learning English, as it is the lingua franca, and not just the language of some nation, no matter its size, can not be considered wrong (eg unlike when any other heavily spoken language is chosen) and as most literature is available in English, ... (and not just AT literature) anyone will need to learn it anyhow. In addition, when engineers and local learn english, they can communicate better, and have additional benefits aswell. KVDP 14:37, 24 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Re: This in a way forces someone to learn English first, which is, I believe, one of the first things anyone should do when trying to increase his knowledge/become more educated. - I'm glad that it's a non-native English speaker saying these things!
My first reaction was to disagree, as there will never be the same degree of understanding or participation if it's in a non-native tongue. We also want to serve everybody, and I think it will be a long time before everyone speaks English. We want our content (online, in printed form or however) to reach and serve people in villages and slums who may not have a great education, but who may be tinkerers.
Btw, English isn't even a good, easy or logical language, so it's unfortunate that it's the global lingua franca. I propose Indonesian :-) - but I don't expect to get much support for that.
But then I thought some more. Translating everything into every language won't happen soon. What I think will happen much sooner is good quality machine translation - Google Translate is already very good for Spanish to English or Indonesian to English, and a number of other languages as well. Perhaps our medium term goal should be to have key navigation pages and critical how-tos in people's native tongues, plus whatever people choose to translate, plus either:
  • the full range of pages would be accessible by an integrated translator, whether from Google or somewhere else; or
  • machine translation used as a starting point for translated pages, with tweaking done by humans. This would require improving translation tools for MediaWiki to make it really effective.
I certainly agree that assisting people in learning English is a great thing. I'd like to see English-speakers learning other languages as well, but in terms of economic opportunities and access to knowledge, English learning is a top priority. I'd be really interested in doing something with P2PU on this - unlike Wikibooks etc, they focus on putting together courses based on material that already exists, which I believe is the best way forward now. One of the challenges is that the earliest stages would be partly in the learner's own language, so probably the place to start developing courses is where the students are taken from basic English to more advanced English. Btw have you looked up OCW materials on learning English? --Chriswaterguy 04:29, 28 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Btw, English isn't even a good, easy or logical language, so it's unfortunate that it's the global lingua franca. I agree to this if basic English is used. However, as some "English-variants" as Globish have shown, allot of confusion and words that are unlogical in English can simply be taken out. Studies have shown that english is one of the most easy languages to learn (unlike my language, aswell as others such as Russian, ...). In most of my writings I btw already try to use more simple words (not because I am myself not capable of a more advanced level, but because I believe more simple words are the way to go), and this is also the reason why I created pages such as Engineering terminology. Finally, regarding the translation programs, I also noted some suggestions found trough my thinkerings about appropriate technology devices in computing. See Linux-OS improvements, used in cooperation with a new type of UMPC. Btw I also don't quite believe the OLPC is truly an appropriate technology, as the OLPC is a device that doesn't really allow to view/study electronic documents aduquatly due to its small screen, ... Perhaps that regarding that latter, the OLPC-bundle tag, may be switched with eg {{Netbook/UMPC-bundle}} (more generic, doesn't advocate a specific product)
KVDP 10:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I believe we should try to serve as many people as we can now. It is easier to translate articles than it is too teach language, not to mention there is no hubris in translating texts as there is in mandating who should know what language. In addition, not only is China quickly becoming a major world power, but there are more speakers of Mandarin than English... maybe it is time for us all to be learning Mandarin. 谢谢你 --Lonny 08:25, 6 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
A good point, Lonny, but (besides being the lingua franca), English is still an easier language to learn. I just finished a map about languages that could be useful, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Main_world_languages.png

KVDP 12:51, 13 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

AT organisations presentation, category

At present, there are no categories for documents of specific AT organisations. In addition, AT organisations should probably have a small page at appropedia in which they can present their organisation. Also, I am wondering whether the making of templates or logo's could be useful (eg to mark at the beginning of a document, that it has been taken over from a specific AT organisation. This, simply so as to show which organisation has supplied the information and give them the full credits (which they already have, but it is somewhat more clear this way).

KVDP 14:42, 24 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

How does this compare to Template:Tlc? Thanks, --Lonny 18:30, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Indeed, this categories may be used, I didn't notice them before. However a small coment dough, if for example you mark an article with eg "Engineers without Borders", this could mean that it's simply an article that might have a specific correlation to this organisation, but doesn't necessairily mean it's an article made by them. In addition, I'm not sure whether all categories here are actually organisations (aren't some of these simply projects by an organisation?), and some organisations aren't described seperatly. Eg referring to Ingénieurs Sans Frontières, 2 organisations exist (eg Ingénieurs Sans Frontières-IAI (Belgian) and the French Ingénieurs Sans Frontières. Oddly however, the organisations work entirely seperate, and this is also (partially?) true eg towards Engineers without Borders (aldough Ingénieurs Sans Frontières is the exact translation of Engineers without Borders). As such, the organisations all need to be listed under the same category.
Also see Category:PATB. There's Category:Beyond dams, which we'd probably swap for institutional categories if we had more material from the orgs that authored Beyond Dams. These categories need much more work, but we certainly do want to see categories like you describe. --Chriswaterguy 04:05, 28 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Logo change

Appropedia:Logos

remodeled logo

A while ago, I proposed to change the logo to the one used at http://villageearth.org/pages/Projects/AT/ATblog/2007/03/village-earth-joins-appropedia-wiki.html Perhaps that this suggestion can now be executed ? This new logo is (I think) nicer, as the surfaces around the wind harvester are colored in, and as the green-blue coloring is removed. Note that, as the image presented there is is completely black/white, some coloring will need to be included, but the coloring is then best done on the black border lines (eg changing some of these to green), instead of in the image itself. Also, perhaps this new image (which is already available at appropedia at aprologo-final.png) can form the basis for another new image. This new image is probably best a crossover between the transition culture image (http://transitionculture.org/) and the current one (eg zoomed out, more abstract than realistic). Also, perhaps that instead of a house, a dome-like shelter is best drawn as these are generally the most appropriate structures used in AT (examples: Steve Baer's zomes, the design I made at File:Semi-buried_dwellings.JPG, the aluminum can domes from Earthship Biotecture, ...) The plants shown are best also abstract (eg only a few grains). They should however be shown in a plot, rather than on the sides (note that the image now also shows a leaf, which may be removed from the image and a 2 plants (which don't look like grains/rice at all, rather more like Typha). The wind energy harvester can remain, but I wonder whether it's not useful to also include another renewable energy power source (eg waterwheel) or a concentrating solar power structure (the latter may be more appropriate as they generate more power; then again wind isn't hugely present in certain areas (eg tropical belt). However, drawing several energy harvesters do complicate the image. Personnaly, I was thinking about a style resembling the Hagia Sophia; where the windturbine or CSP functions as the "pillars"; eg so as not to come too close to only the Arabian style and keep it generic; fusion-like in appearance, rather then reflecting a single style).

KVDP 08:27, 26 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I actually like the colored version, which is newer. I also like it better since I saw Appropedia Logo Animated (short video). I don't think it goes very well with the current skin though - I'm looking forward to getting some expert tech help with re-skinning the site.
In theory I think a simpler logo would be more attention grabbing. But I won't comment on specific suggestions as I have no artistic ability and have no idea how to implement them and make them look good :-). --Chriswaterguy 04:11, 28 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Finished my draft logo as can be seen above. Needs still quite some work but already shows the specifics of how I would design the logo. Not sure however about the wind energy harvester; as can be seen in the now updated wind energy page, little energy can be harvested in the tropics/subtropics. Perhaps that high altitude wind harvesters may however generate somewhat more power however; in this case, the tower from the wind energy harvester needs to be removed from logo and swapped with a balloon and wiring. In addition, the text added is also a good indicator to put people on the right track. Revewing the Appropedia:CategoryTree, I however saw that additional subcategories need to be made;
  • Category:Energy -->A section needs to be made on energy production (or rather Energy harvesting) and energy storage & use
  • Category:Food & agriculture (perhaps rename to "food production"?) -->production of staple crops and production of supplemental crops category needs adding (eg as certain foods as fruit, etc... can't be used to form the core of the system and are only needed to provide additional substances as fibres, certain minerals, and also some vitamins (B,C, ...)
  • Category:Construction and materials -->add subcategory on construction of sleeping rooms, construction of communal rooms (eg dining area, ...) Categories need adding so as to make completely clear that if some rooms are made for 1 person, they aren't appropriate technology anyhow (no matter with what material it's made)
  • Category:Health and safety -->rename to Category:Healthcare; add subcategory sanitation (which is also a method to stay healthy; also see sanitation in the broader meaning eg as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation; hereby including eg personal hygiene) Add subcategory Medication, Vaccination, ...

In addition, I added the note "the appropriate technology cooperative library", in analogy with a preposition made a while ago. Aldough it may be used as a subscript however, I still find that Appropedia itself is best changed to AT CoLib, as appro -pedia actually means appro-encyclopedia; and an encyclopedia (like wikipedia) it is definitly not, its rather a grouping of AT-information.

Perhaps a category "Room heating & cooling" aswell as "Ecosystem repair" can also be added; the second one can be used to contain the original environment rehabilitation manual, for the first I already ported some of my Wikipedia-articles (which have since then been removed)

KVDP 16:24, 4 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Categorization

Re the category comments above and User talk:Chriswaterguy #Recategorisation - I was already a bit unhappy with some of the category names - but hadn't thought of better alternatives for many of them. Specific comments:

The thinking about sanitation was probably that it's a subset of water if it's considered to be primarily about sewage management. Probably a sanitation could be made, should probably be moved out of the water cat and relevant subcats only (i.e. sewage or sewerage) would be categorized in water, but sanitation itself should not be. I hadn't done much on categorization here because there weren't many pages to be categorized, but I don't see a problem with a basic structure being created now.

Water harvesting I think is a good name for a subcategory of water. "Water" also covers wastewater and natural waterways.

I think it is not quite clear why I made this change (with allot of my modifications at Wikipedia and Appropedia, there are sometimes underlying reasons which are relevant but difficult and time-consuming to explain; (often it's simply quicker to simply do the change and explain the modification if there are objections); however I think I need to clarify my modification I made here. The reason sanitation is to be placed out of the water category is because, simmply stated, water should not be used in sanitation at all (eg by using composting toilets, ...). Adding water (aldough used in most sanitation systems to eliminate any possible odours) pollutes water, and increases water use (by easily 75% !). As such, black water simply shouldn't be used in AT at all (not only because of the wastage of water, but also because of cleaning costs), and a recategorisation such as the one I did, also immediatelly redirects development workers into a right direction/way of thinking.
Indeed, many blackwater systems still remain, and we could thus best categorise them in the category they will fit if they are converted to a more proper system (eg blackwater piping may eg be converted to route "grey water" or otherwise polluted water (eg water polluted by oil spills, ...) to a cleaning plant. (Note: by greywater I mean water that is "organicly polluted water; eg using organic soaps, ...; water with synthetic soaps are also "otherwise polluted water")
Also I chose "water harvesting" as a name making it clear that we collect, or gather water; it's not used to refer to "rainwater harvesting" (this schould be made instead a subcategory under "water harvesting". The articles about natural waterways (I'm not sure which articles these include) are I'm guessing also made to detail the gathering of water from these waterways (and thus not simply articles about the flow of rivers, ...). As such, these can also be included in the category. Wastewater (as mentioned before) needs to go to the subcategory sanitation (which is a subcategory under Healthcare).
Regarding categories/subcategories, I btw noticed that very few Appropedian's actually label the articles correctly (which in some part may be caused by the categorisation) but also because few people take the time to do it correctly (this is also the case on Wikipedia). For example, many articles are labelled several times (which eg causes single articles to appear in the major categories, and also causes a certain categories to be labelled to several larger categories. It would be best to only label each article once (to the relevant subcategory).

Category:Food and agriculture isn't a very elegant name, but it makes sense to me as a catch-all category, which helps make a minimal number of fundamental topic categories. I see on Appropedia:CategoryTree that you've gone with Category:Food production, processing and storage - my preference is to keep names short unless the longer form is really needed, e.g. Category:Food.

Yes, I thought about this too. "Food" seems more suitable. In this case dough, the subcategories "Food production", "Food processing" and "Food storage" should be added.
Another thought - topics like Soil and Vermiculture don't relate directly to food, and there are Nonfood crops... so perhaps they should go in a Category:Agriculture. I'm still thinking about how to arrange this, since they're very closely connected, and having a minimal number of very broad topics at the base of our category scheme (e.g. Category:Food and agriculture) makes sense to me. It'll be worth a look at Wikipedia does it. --Chriswaterguy 08:56, 13 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

"Healthcare" to me sounds more like medical treatment (checking Wikipedia:Health care, it does seem to be about professional health services), whereas "health" is more general. "Health and safety" is even broader, and includes topics which are not about health in the normal usage, e.g. earthquake safety.

Just "Health" is simply incorrect. Healthcare makes it clear that we are actually performing actions to maintain (eg using personal hygiene, sanitation, ...) or improve our health (eg with medication, vaccinations, ...). Note that the meaning is thus broader than medication alone. Simply using health could eg simply refer to our current health, without really doing any action about it (which may also cause incorrect labelling by Appropedians, ...) Adding the ... and safety makes the whole even more unlogical; safety just hasn't have anything in common with health(care). Perhaps that the "Earthquake safety" subsection can be placed under the category "Construction and materials" (I assume that most documents deal around the strengthening of eg houses, ... to withstand earthquakes.
Re Healthcare: "the meaning is thus broader than medication alone" - logically this may seem so, but English is not always logical :-). In practice it refers to treatment. Health and safety are naturally connected, referring to the physical integrity of the body, so I think it makes a nice base-level category. Also in response to Category talk:Health and safety#please put the Health and Safety page back, I'm changing this back for now - however, I agree that there can be some work to recategorize the pages within this category (or even to keep suggesting alternatives to "health and safety" as the base-level category).
I think that the more we stick to the simplest appropriate category names, the less confusion and disagreement there'll be. --Chriswaterguy 07:03, 13 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

More general comments to follow... --Chriswaterguy 12:46, 1 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Maybe we need some principles at Help:Categories (that page is probably out of date, also). E.g.

My preference is to use Wikipedia categories as a default, and then modify as needed. I have plans to import Wikipedia articles (to be pared down and used as topic stubs) and this will automatically import that structure. This way just seems easier, but also benefits from the thinking that's gone into it on Wikipedia - but that's not to avoid needed changes.

I'm not completely sure about this. At first glance this seems fine, but see the remark at water harvesting, I'm not sure whether Wikipedia articles are also rigged with a similar labelling. For most categories however, I expect little trouble for using this approach.

Short easy to remember category names are preferred.

To help navigation, we balance having A. a narrow multi-tiered category structure (with not too many subcategories) and B. a very broad structure, with less clicks to make going from one category to another, but more confusing profusion of pages and subcategories. But then, maybe this is irrelevant and we should just focus on putting things in the right category. --Chriswaterguy 13:00, 1 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

For reference: Appropedia:CategoryTree is a nice-looking page that eventually might be a major navigation tool for Appropedia. Appropedia:Fundamental category tree is intended to give a more thorough look at the category structure, and I see it as an important tool that can be used now in thinking about and maintaining the categories. --Chriswaterguy 13:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The Fundamental category tree seems useful. However, the category trees doen't appear to be the same than for the regular CategoryTree. Perhaps that the category tree of the CategoryTree can be taken over for the Fundamental CategoryTree, and the extra categories (eg regarding Appropedia:... pages (eg regarding administration, members, ...) can simply be added next to the other regular categories. These extra categories can then simply not be shown in the regular CategoryTree.
Finally, also take a look below for the suggestions regarding the categorisation of Category:Energy

12:34, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Motto

At present, the motto is "sharing knowledge to create rich, sustainable lives". Aldough this is already a good motto, an alternative could be: "the appropriate technology cooperative library (aldough I find that simply changing "appropedia" to "ATCoLib" would be better here, eg differentiates towards wikipedia and makes the site less "popular" in appearance, hereby perhaps increasing our appearance, ... towards the AT organisations.

In the latter case, here is another motto (also noted at wikipedia, but I guess they won't change theirs any time soon):

"providing a way to see the big picture" This relates versus eg what's right in front of us in society. This motto is a bit deeper in meaning, and its meaning is that we can use the site to take a step back and analyse the current society, and our function within it, then take out the design flaws and also correct regarding to our own job/function within this society. KVDP 12:34, 30 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi KVDP. I'm not sure I agree with you on the big picture. I've been hearing about big picture strategy or thirty years. I suspect that we can do more good here by filling the details, one device at a time. Providing practical implementation help on a thousand different measures, leaving people to chose for themselves which to try out but giving them a forum to report back on what worked and what didn't. After we get that feedback we can start thinking about producing handbooks of best practice based on that experience. Joe Raftery 23:31, 30 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

General engineering wiki

Perhaps that it may also be useful to make appropedia easier available to general engineers (not just appropriate technology engineers). This may be useful as there are much more general engineers and very little useful sites exist with engineering information. Making appropedia more easiliy accessible to general engineers will probably allow general engineers to take over some approaches, technologies for use closer to home (eg poor communities within the developed world), and also probably make them more susceptible to the cause of aid projects in general. In practice I propose that:

  • images of AT documents of participating organisation showing distinctly 'foreign' engineers are discarded and swapped with versions simply showing a person that does not have any distinct facial charisteristics or skin color (meaning not 'foreign' nor of any other race (eg Caucasian); this may allow the documents to be read only for their technological value and remove some of the obvious correlation with humanitarian aid, ...
  • not sure how this is done in a wiki, but improve ranking with search engines (eg on keywords as engineering (without "appropriate"), ... Also, specific attention needs to be made to the ranking at some special search engines as AEoogle (http://www.aeoogle.com/)

KVDP 16:40, 4 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Regarding images: I favor as many different examples as possible. I am not sure what foreign means, but I am pretty sure it is easiest and most congruous to use the real images from whatever engagement is being represented.
By "foreign", I meant obvious signs of facial charisteristics or facial color (eg "race"). Dough I am myself completely color blind regarding this matter, I am aware that showing such images depicting the representation of a person of another race may scare away certain general engineers (eg those not coming from AT). In addition, even in areas within the developing world, showing images of people from another race, gender or even from another ethnic group can give problems and can scare them away. I therefore advocate the removal of any such images (or altering them with a person bearing none such facial/body features) so as to provide people the possibility of getting into AT slowly without inmediatelly focusing/making clear that we may work with people of different race, gender, ethnic groups. Regarding the work on the images however, mostly it is enough to simply replace the cover image (the other images often only show the engineering componenents, ... itself)
Regarding search engine ranking: This is very important. We are always doing work (and have made quite a bit of headway, with a Google Pagerank of 6 and similar Moz Rating), but so much more is needed. Links from other sites is a great way to achieve better ranking, e.g. blog articles about Appropedia.
Regarding AEoogle: We can submit reciprocal links at http://www.energyplanet.info/submit.php. Having a link on a topic page like Human power to AEoogle seems appropriate. To do so, add in Human_power#External_links the following code - *[http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/ Alternative Energy News] Then we can submit a link at AEoogle to the Human power page in their Human power category. This should work.
Thank you, --Lonny 08:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

AAI projects

In order to increase cooperation, I think it would be useful to implement "wikiproject" pages into appropedia ("approprojects" or appropedia article improvement projects). The difference between the "user request" page (aswell as the outdated to do page) would be that with the wikitags noted above ({{improve}}, {{wikify}}, ..., the page can be automatically updated (rather than manual) and "teams" can be made (eg for certain tasks as taking over a certain document or the documents of one AT organisation to Appropedia, ...). At present, this does not happen (everybody can improve Appropedia or make a new article singlehandedly), but in some cases people simply can't improve or add new things as they don't know what new things to add or in some cases they wish to add documents from AT organisations but they simply don't have the required copyright permissions by this organisation (which a specfic user might have) or don't have the skills to take over certain information (eg images imbedded in a PDF-document, text in an other language, ...). Making teams could eliminate these problems, and also convince some users of taking on some articles they wouldn't have commenced on in the first place.

For the creation of the pages, and the set-up in general, wikiprojects at wikipedia may be looked at (using the edit page) and a similar approach/code can be used.

KVDP 17:45, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'd love to see this happen. I feel like there's not enough of an active community here to really get subprojects like this happening just yet, so I'm really most interested in building the community, for now. I plan to tidy up the Contributors homepage and Appropedia:How you can help soon.
I'm also working on engaging with people, plus getting a lot more content on the wiki (and appreciate your work on this, KVDP). I figure that the more good content, the higher our profile will be, and the more people will come. It's also about seeding content, so people see what our scope is, what kinds of pages we have and feel more bold to add their own knowledge.
Getting more learning institutions involved is great too - they produce a lot of great content plus the occasional student remains a part of the community after their course is finished. --Chriswaterguy 04:36, 28 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
See also Category:Appropedia Action Groups & Category:Appropedia site collaborations - worthwhile efforts but not much activity there. The main value of pages like this seems to be as reference points & resource pages for people wanting to contribute - and that's what I observed at WikiProject International development also. Looking at it that way, it's a great idea to work on these kinds of pages & collaborations any time, even before there's a community that's constantly interacting.
I think the discussion lists are another great way for people to stay connected. --Chriswaterguy 04:58, 28 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
What about using the {{Wikify}} and {{Improve}} templates like we use {{Cleanup}}? Then we can use a category like Template:Tlc and make our appeal for how people can help out more clear. I am sure as KVDP mentions, there are some people that would love to just help wikify some pages, e.g. Joey. This could be a step towards having concerted teams working on general Appropedia pages. --Lonny 05:08, 28 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Note that it may be useful to let {{Cleanup}} signify that the headlines/categorisation is off, rather than simply letting it signify that a page needs to be improved (for this the appropriate tags are better used, allowing people wanting to perform a certain task of coming into action). Also, I think it would be useful of using the User:XXX page to add information of what a user job the user is performing at present. If the user get ill, runs out of eager, can no longer receive internet access or is otherwise prevented of performing a job, it will allow the take over of the tasks by other appropedia members. I already done this on my user page.
KVDP 11:59, 30 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I really like the idea of more specific templates for cleanup, wikify, etc. I don't have time to work on it right now, but happy for someone else to take a lead. --Chriswaterguy 01:46, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Perhaps one more idea; perhaps it may be useful to make a list with the instant messenger contact info of all appropedia/ and WikiProject_International_development members. Especially regarding the voting on the removal of pages (eg at wikipedia), this can be very valuable as it allows to gather votes very quickly (a request at the individual appropedia user pages or at the village pump is indeed also possible, but doesn't allow a quick response time). However, the instant messenger then needs to be used only for requesting specific things (eg help on a specific issue, voting, ...) and not to simply conversate with the members (which asks times from the members and prohibits them of doing something else). Regarding this latter, I'm guessing that the "mood" indicator (which most messengers have) also comes in handy (which would allow to signify others when you do have time to talk; this eg allows others to get to know one's strengths which is useful later in requesting things to the most appropriate person). I think it would be best to use a multifunctional messenger (a few years back I used Gaim; now Pidgin, but others exist aswell.
91.182.170.69 10:11, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I like keeping in touch with people via IM. I'm normally careful about sharing my ids publicly, but I'll try it and see how it goes - I've added them to my talk page.
I've used Gaim but I was getting spam through my yahoo account so I stopped using it - now I just use Skype & Gmail chat (Google Talk). Is there another I think about trying?
Mel (User:Mchua) likes the idea of an #appropedia IRC channel, but that needs work, and (again) a larger, more engaged community. If I find an IRC client for Linux that I'm happy to run full time, and that alerts me to any activity on the channel, I'll try staying logged into the channel whenever I'm switched on. I'm willing to work on that if there are a few of us doing it: Appropedia:IRC. --Chriswaterguy 01:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The IRC-channel is a thought that has also crossed my mind, but this idea isn't useful for a few reasons:
  • an IRC-channel, as it is shared, promotes group talk and thus useless chatter, the idea as explained above is to limit idle chatter as much as possible and allow provide a user to communicate more easily/rapidly in order to cooperate better; note that personal messages can however be given, but the main channel keeps open where shared communication persists
  • Regarding Skype and Google Talk; don't these require a specific e-mail adress (eg @gmail.com) ?, not sure how Skype works (by making new username or with e-mailadress); I proposed a multifunctional messenger to get around this requirement of a specific emailadress/account, so that people using a different emailadress or use a specific messenger to communicate with others outside Appropedia can simply continue doing so. If Pidgin isn't suitable, one can use other messengers too (people can even choose their own messenger as they're multi-protocol). Adium and Empathy are the other messengers besides Pidgin which seem to be most appropriate here. Finally regarding the phoning, I'm guessing this feature won't be needed for the moment (as Appropedia is still being constructed), but it may be useful for AT engineers in the future (as internet phoning allows to make cheap lon-distance phonecalls to those not connected via the internet while being busy on a project). Even this is a possibility with certain messengers as Empathy (not Adium dough; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_VoIP_software). In addition however, we can use Jajah aswell so as to avoid needing to use Empathy if we don't like it. If everyone agrees, we can start off by making an Appropedia user database page with the e-mailadresses/usernames for instant messaging.

Regarding this latter dough, it may be useful that anonymous user editing is switched off on the whole of Appropedia, and that all pages can remain to be viewed without (free) account, except for some specific pages such as this database page. Finally, perhaps it's also possible to switch off the showing the full names of page modifiers/creators at the bottom of every article. Instead, the Appropedia user name can be shown. These measures will eliminate the problem of spam we may encounter if we start setting up this new service, ... KVDP 09:27, 16 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Development category - name change.

I'd like to move Category:International development to Category:Development. I initially preferred "International development" as this is a more specific term and excludes (say) software development. However, I've come to realize that international development overlaps with other fields, and the broader term is more suitable. As it says on Wikipedia's Development category,

The Development category relates to issues of economic development, development aid and international development. See also Sustainability.

We could add the term sustainable development.

This move will also put us in sync with Wikipedia.
I'll wait a week before moving (till ~22 Nov). Let me know if there are any objections. --Chriswaterguy 01:43, 15 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
In some of my articles, I also marked them with "Sustainable engineering"; however I used this category simply as a temporary (still non-existent) category before the categorisation is worked out better (a preposition on this can be some sections more above). Like sustainable development, I don't think this category actually makes it easier to find certain articles, as its mainly too broad (at appropedia only povides sustainable technology, so sustainable development would be applicable to all articles). I think it would be best to implement more specific categories and place them correctly in a tree (subcategories under main categories)
KVDP 08:50, 16 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
More specific categories - that appeals in a way, but in many cases it's difficult to choose which category... I guess those articles go in multiple categories. Let me look at the contents of Category:International development and Category:Development again, plus Wikipedia's Development category, and think about it more. --Chriswaterguy 05:23, 21 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

How is the rich editor?

How are people finding the rich editor? Is it making things easier for new users?

If it's working well, should we change the default editor to WYSIWYG for new users?

Of course it's possible for each user to change their default (under the Misc tab in Special:Preferences, and deselect "Start with rich editor disabled") but it would be much nicer for new users to just land in a rich text editor that works well.

(As for the "how to do it": I suspect if we just change the default preferences settings (as we did with changing the selected namespaces for search) it will change the default editor for all users who register from now, and for anon editors.) --Chriswaterguy 18:13, 19 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Second thoughts: Not ready yet. It's still got some significant problems, changing the formatting, adding line breaks, entering some special characters and capitalizing wikilinks - e.g. see this edit - clearly it made a lot of changes through the whole page, not intended by the editor, who was just adding a single line to the table. --Chriswaterguy 13:02, 5 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Welcome committee

New idea - streamlining the standard welcome tasks, and freeing up community volunteers/interns to do more individualized work. See Appropedia:Welcoming committee. (I don't know that it's relevant right now, but the page is there when needed. --Chriswaterguy 16:17, 21 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]


Warnings for parabolic solar cookers

We have a few Parabolic solar cookers and I'm concerned about the advice and designs that visitors to Appropedia are receiving.

See the conversation at solarcooking.wikia.com: Are there dangers with parabolic solar cookers?. "Modern parabolic cookers like the SK14 and the BS-M1 Solar Cooker have a very short focal point (inside the dish) actually to make it very difficult for anyone to blind themselves." - which leaves open the possibility of harm from any other kind of parabolic solar cookers.

My own inclination is to advise people to try other kinds of solar cookers and avoid these. Other kinds also cope better with indirect solar energy e.g. warm but slightly cloudy days.

But at least I'd suggest that we make a Parabolic solar cooker safety page and link it from all relevant pages. I'm no solar cooking expert, so I'd welcome perspectives. --Chriswaterguy 14:42, 26 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

windpower pages

Hi all, I was a bit surprised to find no Windmill page.. but there is Category:Wind power and Category:Wind Energy. The latter seems to be a single page that would be better as an article than a category description... and it seems like Windmill should at least link to the relevant categories. Advice on how to proceed/how to merge? I'm not 100% sure of house style around here :) best, -- Phoebe 19:30, 30 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I boldly went ahead and redirected category:Wind Energy to Category:Wind power, and moved the text from the wind energy cat page to Windmill. Rvv if inappropriate, obviously. -- Phoebe 19:45, 30 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thank you for being bold! That Category:Wind Energy page was from a wiki that merged into Appropedia, and the content wasn't integrated yet. Good to finally have a windmill page! --Chriswaterguy 18:12, 1 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Regarding this, I'm wondering whether it' not better to move this category to Category:Wind energy harvesting; indeed it sounds somewhat more long, but I think it would fit better in the subcategory: Category:Energy harvesting, itself a subcategory under Category:Energy production (itself a subcategory under Category:Energy)
KVDP 12:30, 2 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I'm not clear how Wind energy harvesting differs from Wind energy...? And if they're the same, I'd favor the simpler one. -Chriswaterguy 13:18, 2 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The reason why this ...harvesting needs to be added is simple: the main term (also popularly used) is energy harvesting (="energy production", see below). This also inmediatelly gives a general idea on where the categories are placed in the category tree. Using simply wind energy I think complicates matters in the end, and the term is generally incorrect as Wind energy harvesting refers to the harvesting of wind energy, and not simply the presence thereof.
Regarding the energy recategorisation however, perhaps that "energy production" is best swapped entirely by "energy harvesting". Currently, energy harvesting usually refers to the gathering (or "producing") of energy on a "green" way (eg wind, thermal, solar, ...). However the term can perhaps be used for other methods as well (eg nuclear energy: fission, fusion, ...). If this isn't the case, even then the simplification can be done as I don't think we'll need to make articles about these other energy sources anyhow (aldough nuclear power plants exist in some developing countries; eg Southern Africa, Central/South America, generally their maintenance and repair won't need to be done by any organisation engaged in development/humanitarian projects).
KVDP 09:05, 7 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
So if there's a more basic page which somehow relates to wind energy but not directly to its harvesting, that then needs a separate category, and we have another level of categories?
Well, .... yeah, basicaly. Perhaps that it sounds a bit silly at first (the article "Wind energy" doesn't exist here yet, but one could make it and make it include whatever we want, thus including wind energy harvesting aswell). However, if this is done, it wouldn't be "wind energy harvesting", and if we want full coherence of the categories, it might brings us in trouble with other categories. For example with water, and water harvesting; some articles could then be easily mislabeled. We thus need to be really narrow in our categorisation.
I still don't see the need for harvesting, and I'm inclined towards the simpler style of naming, which also makes it easier for readers to guess the name and add a category to a page. I'd like to hear other opinions though. --Chriswaterguy 09:38, 7 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Feedback please! Suggest moving from manual to topic pages

Please see the discussion at Talk:AT villager recruitment. This is an important discussion, and it would be great to get input from others in the community.

See also Talk:Appropriate health care manual 2#Eugenics_and_sterilization - some of the content that sparked this conversation. --Chriswaterguy 08:30, 2 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Anybody? --Chriswaterguy 13:24, 5 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes. I think it would be a great idea to collect pages into manuals however I don't think these pages are ready yet. I have started work on movig Appropriate health care manual 4 to Vaccination (just need the redirect on Vaccination to be deleted.)Joe Raftery 08:35, 20 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
You may start the splitting up of the manual, vaccination and phytotherapy, and perhaps others will make new useful articles indeed. However, I would like to see Appropriate health care manual TOC and Appropriate health care manual 1 kept (eg with a banner explaining the current controversy, and that the manual is not yet ready). This, simply to keep my ideas (which could be adjusted later-on) and some specific guidelines I added (eg regarding to use of Köppen climate regions, ...)

KVDP 08:57, 21 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Imported pages

We have a lot of imported pages from a variety of institutions but there is nowhere on these pages, that I could see, where it spells out under what permission these pages have been copied. This could be a problem later where our right to copy is disputed and no one can remember who said it was ok.

Can I suggest that there should be an organisation page for every organisation whose content we reuse and that page should have a paragraph detailing how we got permission and what the limits of that permission are. Where permission is for certain documents only the organisation pages should state that and, if neccessary, refer to to pages for each document for more details.

The Appropedia:Porting pages should talk more about permission.

Joe Raftery 08:53, 20 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have rewritten Appropedia:Porting pages and Appropedia:How to port pages as I think they should be with much more on getting permission and providing attribution. Can someone review and tell me what they think? Joe Raftery 16:31, 20 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks Joe - this is important! I saw some of your rewrite and it looks good so far.
I think you're on the right track with the organisation pages. Agroblogger/license is one example of how we can do it, when there's nowhere external to point to, to verify the open license. Attribution templates can point to that.
Do we have a page somewhere listing the cases where permission is unclear? If not, we need one. I'm thinking of e.g. the Practical Action pages (who definitely said they were okay with our license, but we need to have things in writing) and the Beyond Dams pages (who apparently said it was okay to share, but I'm not clear if they gave clear informed consent to our license). --Chriswaterguy 08:53, 22 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I've created a template {{License information missing}}. I haven't figured out how to get it to add the page to a category. Can someone help with that?Joe Raftery 00:28, 28 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I have made the following changes:
  • added the {{{1}}} so that a date would be visible based on user input into the template... feel free to remove this from the template and/or augment the few pages with the template to have a |date in the template call (e.g. {{License information missing|December 2009}}).
  • Added Template:Tlc in a way that is transcluded into any page this template is placed on. Feel free to change its name or whatever else is needed.
  • I added that new category to the more general Template:Tlc.
  • Added two categories that categorize the template itself (not the pages the template is included on).
You can see these changes at http://www.appropedia.org/index.php?title=Template%3ALicense_information_missing&diff=100174&oldid=99938. Please let me know if anything doesn't work or needs attention.
Thank you for your awesome work. --Lonny 01:45, 31 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Target audience Appropedia + data extrapolations

At the moment, Appropedia does not yet have any clear target audience. Aldough Appropedia states that it targets "the poor", it is not clearly described what is meant by this. For example, there are people that live at 2 $/day, but there are also "poor" that live on 0,5$/day, this is still a difference of about 400%, and this could certainly matter regarding the people that could be helped by Appropedia (some will fall out of the target audience, unless eg their income can be raised at some way). This because the material eg to generate power, ... have a certain cost, regardless of whether it is AT or not.

I think that it is best to make a chart on this. In the chart, perhaps we could include a comparison of helping via individual way, and via a communal approach (I believe the latter would be less expensive and thus allow to help more people on a same budget, however don't have any hard data as of yet).

Perhaps we could also include a comparison between a regular village, a regular village helped wy simple development aid and a village helped by AT.

Also, it would be useful to have a comparison table between the AT-villages, some (such as the UN millenium villages), aldough well intented, have far less great efficiencies than other villages (eg Ekwendeni) (wrote a little something at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Villages_Project#Critics a while ago). It is vital that we come up with the most efficient way so as to inform how to help as cost/effective as possible. KVDP 08:48, 21 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Actually our target audience is "everyone" - the person who wants to choose the greenest car as well as the person who is too poor to easily access the site directly (but who may benefit through a neighbor, relative, NGO representative or government body sharing or applying the knowledge.
However, I can see that sometimes we would want to distinguish between solutions for particular socio-economic groups, and even have ways of navigating particular content. I can imagine a BOP (Bottom of the Pyramid) navigation template for example. As for distinguishing the levels, I'll be interested to see what you have in mind.
I'd love to see comparison tables for many things, and definitely for Appropriate technology villages and other approaches to community and intentional community. There are some very bad ideas around (the book Walden Two springs to mind, and I'm sure there are more recent examples) but my opinion that something is bad isn't of great value. An unbiased factual look at how such communities have fared in practice would be extremely valuable. --Chriswaterguy 08:35, 22 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

CC-BY-SA page changed

I've rewritten the CC-BY-SA page. Can someone go over there and check it matches what you think? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 16:28, 27 December 2009, Joe Raftery

Thanks. I made a couple small changes there... mostly to remove the gender specific pronouns (e.g. his, he's, etc.). Thanks again, --Lonny 08:57, 6 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

electric circuit designs for AT

I was thinking of making a seperate page called Electric circuit designs for AT in which there is a link to a subpage "Elektor circuit designs. Elektor is a [Science and technology magazine] that has published some useful schematics/devices for AT purposes. Other magazines may also have additional useful schematics, ... as time progresses, these too can be linked from Electric circuit designs for AT. Aldough the designs could be linked from the technology in question (eg a schematic for LED-lighting could eg be placed simply at the Lighting page at Appropedia, these extra pages would be needed so as to allow to communicate with the magazine better, and eg relay them the information of what designs need to be open-sourced or atleast better available (the designs are btw not all from the magazine themself, but from seperate writer/engineers).

at present, the designs are selected and which could be useful (eg regarding our AT villages idea) are:

See all designs at: http://www.elektor.com/magazines.46742.lynkx?filterGuid=a304c412-9a5d-433e-b92a-a58dc1744964

In addition, if they deem it would make a good project/article for their magazine, perhaps they could also help us with some ideas at eg http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Topic:Self-sufficiency and http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology_designs#Electronics ,...

I'll sent them a mail regarding the ideas KVDP 10:51, 5 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Looks like great content. --Lonny 08:14, 6 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
but not free. The General Terms and Conditions page says Use of this site and its content is permitted for personal, non-commercial purposes only. so we should probably link to their pages but not copy them. I suggest we create a page for the web site describing what resources it has and the license terms. Then we can link to that page whenever we mention a project from there.Joe Raftery 09:13, 10 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Sounds like a good plan. Ultimately I'd like to see comprehensive info on topics like this developed here, as free content (aka open content). But clear relevant links to high-quality info is the next best thing. --Chriswaterguy 16:01, 11 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
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