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cd3wd

dear all

as the originator and master of cd3wd, please feel free to take advantage of the great quantity and quality of material already in cd3wd (850 mega zipped, 1.2 giga unzipped). and note 

that in order to be of some use to the 3rd world, cd3wd is very much designed for OFFLINE useage as well as online useage...

http://www.cd3wd.com/CD3WD/

best regards

alex weir harare zimbabwe africa

cd3wd

Hello Alex,

Thank you so much for you excellent offer. Cd3wd is a fantastic resource and so important, expecially for those areas with limited internet access, but with a cd drive. I think appropedia would love to take you up on your offer, especially for those resources most useful and adaptable to the online wiki community. We will work on developing some type of byline or box, to be included on ported pages, that states:

This information is from cd3wd, the offline wiki for the 3rd world, please visit cd3wd for more information.

What do you think?

--Lonny 10:46, 14 August 2006 (PDT)

Tracking progress

Should we maintain lists somewhere (perhaps on Organization pages) of what content has been ported? That is, supposed you're a newcomer volunteer willing to port some pages. How do you know what's been ported? You can find the template and then click "what links here", which will give you a list of Appropedia pages (can we place a link to such a special page? I'll try it), but it's not always clear (as in "Beyond Dams") which Appropedia pages map to what source content... In the absence of that guiding information, I would expect a willing porter to hesitate (I know I haven't bothered to port any Demotech content in part because of that), in which case, we've missed an opportunity. --CurtB 10:52, 12 November 2006 (PST)

Here is my suggestion, and example action, for those organizations with over some number (3 or 4 maybe) of users and ported pages:
  1. Promote their organization page to a category
    • Articles can not be moved into the category namespace, so the contents must be just copy and pasted into the new category page
    • Redirect the article to the category
  2. Add the following to the template:Organizationpage (the one included on ported pages), such as Template:Attrib Demotech:
  3. Make additional actions such as:
    • Editting the organization page to mention the new features, such as the ability of users to add themselves as members of the category, or the need for porting pages).
    • Commenting on the talk pages of organization members about the new features.
    • Emailing or commenting on the organizations website about the new category page.
What do you think. --Lonny 14:12, 12 November 2006 (PST)

Where to invoke the template?

I notice on this page (Porting pages) that it is recommended to include the source template (like "Attrib Ersson") at or near the bottom of the article. But I think we ourselves (certainly I) have been placing it at the top, and I would prefer it that way, because it provides context as the reader begins to absorb the article. Ah, heck, I'm gonna be bold and change "bottom" to "top", but at least you know why :-) --CurtB 15:05, 19 November 2006 (PST)

Agreed! I considered doing the same. --Singkong2005 · talk 19:57, 20 November 2006 (PST)

Titles of original documents

A thought regarding the name of Solar thermal energy PATB - if we're using the original owner of the material in the page name (which I think is good), then should we change other pages to be consistent? E.g. move Reducing runoff (original) to Reducing runoff (IRN and AR).

My first thought was to replace "PATB" with "(Practical Action)" or "(Practical Action Technical Brief)" in the relevant page titles, but the full version of IRN and AR gets unwieldy. So I guess abbreviations are better - or we could use abbreviations for long names, and in full if it's a short name. Singkong2005

The Solar thermal energy PATB has not been protected, and is not an "original" yet in my process. I had added the PATB to the names more for uniqueness than for information. That was also why Lonny added Ersson to the rainwater capture page name. My preference is to be consistent about using "(original)" because it's easy to say "don't put original on other page names", but seems trickier to say "don't put names that might be original sources at the end of page names". So I'm going to stick with the practice of "(original)" at the end. This all implies that there will be a Solar thermal energy PATB (original) shortly. That's my plan, but...
I would prefer Solar thermal energy (original) (as discussed below - I think we're in agreement). Except for that point, I'm cool with your approach. --Singkong2005 · talk 02:59, 8 December 2006 (PST)
Where I am a little puzzled is how best to get derivative editable pages up and going. I mean, it's easy to create an editable page, by any name, (heck, we already have them), but I think there are various discouragements from editing. Here are some examples:
  • Project pages do not encourage editing, because they are most often a document describing an actual activity, not some recommended or proposed or planned activity. As such, how can some unrelated individual alter that? On the other hand, a how-to seems, by its nature, to invite contribution.
If a "project" page is ported into Appropedia, perhaps we should treat it like any other project page. Most of the time, people won't contribute, for the reason you stated, and that's as it should be. But if someone wants to add a category, improve formatting, or add a link, they are welcome to.
  • Custom pages, such as the PATB's, can seem (to me, anyway) to be so packaged and self-contained that it almost seems to be a violation to modify them. That could easily be my own lack of experience, but I have a concern that others lack of experience will lead to similar reluctance
I wouldn't have thought it would be a problem... being a relatively complete and well-structured page, they don't scream "edit me!" but that's okay. They'll still be modified and expanded over time, and if they are merged, for example, then there'll be obvious work for editors to do. --Singkong2005 · talk 02:49, 8 December 2006 (PST)
  • In some cases, the page names (like "PATB") might be a discouragement to editing, because it seems as though there is an implied "ownership" of the article or page.
What to do? I'm thinking that source documents that are discouraging can be used for content, but that perhaps we don't fully copy/paste into the editable docs. Especially when creating an editable page from an original project, I would suggest that we morph the project page into a how-to page. Here again, we could possibly use multiple sources. We have (I think) 2 rainwater capture projects that could be leveraged to develop a rainwater capture how-to.
I would suggest that we do fully copy & paste into the editable docs, as a matter of policy... This makes it possible to track exactly what has changed from the original doc. It also makes the porting process easier and less open to disagreement. Of course, we may then immediately make any necessary changes (giving the same end result as your suggestion).
I'm inclined to look at these things on a case-by-case basis, splitting, merging and recategorizing (how-to/project...) as appropriate. --Singkong2005 · talk 02:49, 8 December 2006 (PST)
Similarly, editable page names can have the PATB removed.
I strongly agree that editable pages shouldn't include terms such as PATB. --Singkong2005 · talk 02:49, 8 December 2006 (PST)
Interrupted in the midst of this comment by my 3 year old. Unfinished, but that's the gist of it! --CurtB 07:08, 7 December 2006 (PST)

Revisiting original doc names

In the light of our original content policies, which have changed since the above conversations, I'd suggested that the protected original documents can mention the name (or abbreviation) of the author or contributing organization. I think that helps when people are browsing category pages or search results. --Chriswaterguy · talk 21:27, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

Porting speed

We have an enormous amount of material we can port, but it takes time. Suggestions welcome on making it faster...

See esp http://openwetware.org/wiki/Converting_documents_to_mediawiki_markup - documents to wiki via HTML. Doesn't mention PDFs though.

Porting from PDF

Let's see if we can smooth the path for PDF porting... What takes the most time and effort?

  • tables are the biggest pain.
  • images (uploading)
  • references? Probably these are just in footnote form, with no way of automatic conversion. They can be left in this form - it's not ideal but they can be tidied up later. In the meantime, the content is available, which is the main thing. (Wait a year or two for a bot...?)

Note: m:PDF Export - we can export easily enough. If only we could import so easily. --Chriswaterguy · talk 21:41, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

Possible tools/techniques:


Here's how a similar problem was tackled (not sure of source format): RoboHelp2Wiki.

There's a few hits on google:PDF-to-wiki - I might look later, gotta go now. --Chriswaterguy · talk 22:14, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

Porting from HTML

Most of the work is in:

  • references
  • images (uploading)

--Chriswaterguy · talk 21:41, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

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