Education

With fear and trembling I added the top-level category Education. In my view no AT effort will ever be successful if it is not linked with a change of view and growth in understanding beyond the local community, and this is achieved by a pulling-yourself-by-your-bootstraps process of learning.

Even though being part of making high quality education to those who otherwise cannot afford it is my Life Project, I know I am very small to do it alone. I find the wiki concept a God-sent way to cooperate with like minded people. I will be happy to give this a push, and maybe later on specialize in my areas of maximum experitise, such as knowledge management, risk management and leadership training.

IHN, Yamaplos 20:19, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

I think that education is an excellent top level addition. Especially as this too is my life work. It is very interesting that one of the main intents behind this wiki, i.e. education, failed to make it onto the initial list of topics. Thank you for putting it there. Lonny 00:03, 9 May 2006 (PDT)

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)

Topic & Fundamental categories

Category:Topic and Category:Fundamental are actually very similar - can we merge them? Perhaps Topic (or Topics, as it's plural) is the more understandable name, while fundamental is the more accurate name (after all, subcats are also topics - the point of this category is to show the most fundamental topics). --Singkong2005 · talk 08:46, 15 October 2006 (PDT)

Here is my proposal, please comment:
  1. Categories in the Category:Topic area are topics, such as Category:Water, Category:Adobe and Category:Greywater
    • These topic categories are about subject.
    • These topic categories hold pages from the other areas, and categorize them based on topic.
  2. We add Category:Area for the different areas, e.g. Category:How to, Category:Project and Category:Thesis.
    • These area categories are about form.
    • These area categories hold pages from different topics, and categorize them base on type of page.
  3. We use Category:Fundamental for all area categories and first level topic categories.
--Lonny 12:22, 15 October 2006 (PDT)
Responses:
  1. Check my understanding of this:
    • In this scheme, categories not about subject areas, such as Category:Appropedia maintenance and Category:Templates, belong in Fundamental, but not in Topic. I see the value in this - it makes it much clearer and tidier when browsing by topic.
    • So, it seems logical that we plan to move all non-meta, non-maintenance content etc into the Topic category (i.e. all projects and info, but not "Template:", "Appropedia:" and "Help:" pages).
  2. I'm not convinced, yet, of the need for Category:Area. I think it's simpler for Category:How to, Category:Project and Category:Thesis to stay in Fundamental. Fundamental will also be less cluttered if we follow the policy of moving all topic categories to Topic. We can always try it, and change back if necessary), but I'm inclined to finish the topic issue and related editing first.
  3. Re: "should Category:Open source be removed from Category:Fundamental since it is a subcategory of Category:Information and communication technology?" Absolutely - and done.
Singkong2005 · talk 16:58, 15 October 2006 (PDT)
Adding the Expert link to the topic header causes a funny looking TOC. Other ideas for inserting the expert? --CurtB 16:06, 18 October 2006 (PDT)
Not sure what you mean... could you clarify? --Singkong2005 · talk 20:35, 22 October 2006 (PDT)
Wikipedia:Category:Categories (the most basic level in Wikipedia's categories) might give a few ideas for our taxonomy (i.e. category scheme) - it's been worked out very neatly there. I'm not sure if this is similar to what you're suggesting. It may be that it's just our terminology that's different - in which case we can consider which is the preferable system. (There's some advantage to using the same naming system as Wikipedia, to minimize confusion; though of course there are also differences in structure, with Appropedia's various page types, which will mean a slightly different category structure.) Also have a think about the Wikipedia convention of singular names for pages, but plural (where applicable) for categories.
A major difference between our categorization structure and that of wikipedia, is that wikipedia has one main area, Encyclopedic, whereas we have many, such as Project, Topic, Organization, etc. (soory if I just repeated myself here). --Lonny 12:19, 9 November 2006 (PST)
One question: Is there a particular reason that Category:Alternative building and other content pages are still in Category:Fundamental whereas Category:Adobe and Category:Earthen plaster have been moved to Category:Topic? Or is the plan to eventually move all such content to the Topic category? Just not sure if I've missed something... --Singkong2005 · talk 20:35, 22 October 2006 (PDT)
An answer (or two): Based on #3 above, Adobe is a subcategory of the top-level topic category - Alternative building, therefore Adobe is not in fundamental, but alternative building is. That said... I still think that this could be resolved with a seperate category for top-level topics. Then topic would be in category fundamental, and we could have a seperate browse by topic category listing top level topics such as Alternative building. What do you think? --Lonny 12:19, 9 November 2006 (PST)
I'm still confused. Let's take it from another angle: The top level category for topics should contain only subject categories, not projects, or pages like Appropedia:Maintenance, Template:Catneeded or Help:Contents. So the very top level category in Appropedia (perhaps we could use Category:Categories as in Wikipedia) should be used to lay out the different types of material in Appropedia (Projects, Appropedia, topics...).
One of those second-level categories (whether we call it Fundamental as in Wikipedia, or Topic or Topics) would then become the top level category for topics.
Now, having said all that, and I see that Wikipedia:Category:Categories is more complex than I thought, having more than one entry point to the various topics.
Anyhow, I don't think we have to decide everything now... but I would definitely like to have some degree of agreement and clarity so that we don't mix the different content types (as currently is happening in Category:Fundamental). And as always, I'd be inclined to copy Wikipedia except where there is a good reason not to - as it makes it easier for people moving between the two sites, and also draws on the benefit of their experience. --Singkong2005 · talk 16:41, 12 November 2006 (PST)

Okay, trying to tackle this from a fresh angle, and taking action step by step. I've given this some thought, and have taken some action, which leads to a question about further action.

I've made a top level category called Category:Categories, which (so far contains two subcats:

This separates the two main classes of pages from each other. (If Category:Categories is not the preferred name, that can be changed easily enough.)

The next question is about these categories, currently in Category:Fundamental:

Now, these are quite different types of pages. I see two potential ways of dealing with them:

  1. Make most or all of them subcategories of the top level, Category:Categories. I favor this option. In this case there remains the question of how the Fundamental, Area and Topic categories relate to each other - I would put all pages into one of the above cats or a subcat thereof, and not have "renewable energy" or "adobe" or "alternative building" in the fundamental category; however I feel I still haven't understood Lonny's plan (nor certain aspects of Wikipedia's top level categories).
  2. Leave only the two subcategories in Category:Categories, considering this to be the most basic division, i.e. between admin and content. In this case, the longer list of categories (Events to Topic) would all go into Category:Fundamental. However, this is creating a whole separate level, just for the sake of separating out one category (Appropedia administration) which I think is acceptable to be placed with the other main categories, (Organizations, Projects etc).

I will refrain from carrying out either option, as it might be going directly against part of Lonny's idea. But we should resolve it ASAP, as the categorization scheme seems messy at the moment. --Singkong2005 · talk 03:38, 15 November 2006 (PST)

Confusing...

At the moment this category page is confusing, as there are two sets of categories: the manually edited topic structure which starts at the top of the page, and the automatically generated category at the bottom. And naturally they will never be completely consistent. How should we deal with this - a very clear note at the top, or spin off the manually generated topic structure to a separate page?

Lonny, if you have a chance, please look at answer my last question immediately above this one (timestamp: 20:35, 22 October 2006 (PDT))... I'm hesitant to make a lot of edits to the category structure at the moment as I'm still a bit confused. --Singkong2005 · talk 04:55, 9 November 2006 (PST)

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