User talk:Lonny

(see also User_talk:Lonny/Archive for many past discussions)

Interwiki map

I've requested Appropedia to be added to the interwiki map:

--Singkong2005 ^talk 22:37, 3 August 2006 (PDT)

Great work. I made a change at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Interwiki_map#Appropedia . --Lonny 10:47, 5 August 2006 (PDT)

btw, how do we change the interwiki map on Appropedia? I've noticed that wikia links don't work properly, e.g. wikia:ecovillage. --Singkong2005 ^talk 11:36, 5 August 2006 (PDT)

Wikia should be fixed now. See Appropedia:To_do#Interwiki_Linking for more (techy unnecessary) information. --Lonny 12:52, 5 August 2006 (PDT)

Thanks!--Singkong2005 ^talk 23:35, 5 August 2006 (PDT)

Is there some reason your Interwiki map is a subset of wikimedia's map? There are a number of wikis that have been there forever that are don't seem to be in your map. Can you please add:

EcoReality http://www.EcoReality.org/wiki/$1

Thanks! --Jan Steinman 14:10, 6 March 2007 (PST)

Homepages & URLs

Another question for when you're back and indulging your wiki addiction in a more satisfying way... (though I can imagine being on a boat in Mexico would be a great break from it, to an extent).

I'm planning to make a kind of homepage, or portal for all my various pages, collaborations and interests. My preferred option is to do it here, at User:Singkong2005/Chris Watkins, as it's on one of the two sites where I'm most active; it's MediaWiki so formatting & linking is familiar and easy; you've made it clear, I think, that personal stuff of this kind is welcome here; and I'm notified if anyone edits pages on my watchlist (unlike some of the Wikimedia projects) so I'll know when people have left messages or changed the page.

I figure people will normally find it from a link, or by googling. However, it would be nice to have a url I could put on a business card or jot down from memory when someone asks (not a deciding factor, but it would be nice). This url, http://www.appropedia.org/index.php?title=User:Singkong2005/Chris_Watkins, isn't really good for that - hard to remember, easy to mistype. Any ideas?

I'm not sure why some wikis use /wiki/ in their urls, others use index.php?title= or something like that, while others use nothing - but simplifying that part is one thing that would make it easier to jot down any specific address on the website, just like I can type en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology from memory. Is it something that's easy to change - and worth changing, in your view? Keep in mind I'm not a technical person in that way - I just ask questions :). --Singkong2005 ^talk 01:05, 5 August 2006 (PDT)

I think Appropedia is a great site for this type of thing. One of the missions of Appropedia is to provide a place for networking between active members of the AT and SD community.

I like that... --Singkong2005 ^talk 11:27, 5 August 2006 (PDT)

It is definitely worth changing to shorter names, but we can not change it until we change servers. We need to change servers soon anyways due to the slow loading of pages. I have a server in mind, sustainable hosting. I will work on it more the beginning of next month. Once we have a new server we can make short titles, see Appropedia:To_do#For_Staff. Here are two less than desirable bandaids:

http://tinyurl.com/mr5ta
We could make an html redirect from the short name to your wikipage, and when the server changes, your new short name could go in its place.

Sounds great. Next month is fine, but thanks for the tinyurl.

Perhaps we could allow people to make redirects from a U: prefix - I don't imagine that's a problem. I could use U:CJW. It might be a good idea to lay out two or three guidelines to avoid problems later: 1. People get to keep the redirect once they've claimed it. 2. If there's a possibility of ambiguity, another person can request a dab on your page - e.g. I might need one day to have a note saying something like U:CJW redirects here. For Clyde Wilkins use U:CAW

btw I did a bit of editing on the page today... it looked okay in Opera (as a first draft), but now I see the "middle" bit gets pushed to the bottom in Firefox. I still have a few things to learn about formatting... --Singkong2005 ^talk 11:27, 5 August 2006 (PDT)

Chris, did you know that you already can make a short URL on this site? "http://Appropedia.org/User:Chris_Watkins" should work. --Jan Steinman 14:20, 6 March 2007 (PST)

Nice template

I like the flurry of work you've done in the last 24 hrs. At first I thought the template {{tlc}} was duplicating another one from Wikipedia, but actually yours is better than anything I could find there, and I suggested it as an alternative if Wikipedians want it ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Cl#Cat_.E2.86.92_Category here). Good work. --Singkong2005 ^talk 23:35, 5 August 2006 (PDT)

rollback feature

Hi Lonny,

I've noticed that the rollback link isn't available when I view pages such as "recent changes" . Not that I need it - just curious.

btw, I've been doing some categorization, but there's still some categories which need attending to, but I'm not sure where to put them in the category structure - See Special:Wantedcategories; perhaps also check the links at Category:Appropedia maintenance#Help maintain the category structure and see what you think about them.

Hope Mexico has been good for you. --Singkong2005 ^talk 07:55, 10 September 2006 (PDT)

Hi Singkong,

This feature should be available to you as a Sysop now. I believe that rollback is only available on pages with multiple editors, as the feature rolls back all the changes made by an editor/vandaliser. Can you point me to a page on which it is not working for you? Thank you --Lonny 19:40, 1 October 2006 (PDT)

Please add WikiIndex to interwiki map

I had a look at Appropedia:To_do#Interwiki_Linking and wasn't sure what was meant by "Login to phpMyAdmin" - what and where is this? I gather you are the only user here who is an experienced user of phpMyAdmin?

In the meantime, could you please add:

WikiIndex http://wikiindex.com/$1

Thanks --Singkong2005 ^talk 20:45, 20 September 2006 (PDT)

I will add it to the WikiIndex soon. Currently I am 60+ hours into trying to switch servers, which is proving to be very difficult (read I am going crazy). Hopefully I will be done soon... then on more rewarding wikiwork. --Lonny 21:18, 20 September 2006 (PDT)

Thanks - stay sane! --Singkong2005 ^talk 22:20, 20 September 2006 (PDT)

I had a feeling that was the reason that Lonny had gone slightly quiet, and I stepped back to make some room. Partly this came from a side project where I'm supporting my wife's company's search for an Exchange hosting service. Man, I had no idea how hard that effort would be. Exchange hosting is, I believe, similar to wiki hosting; a little off the beaten path from basic web hosting. Lots of red herrings, etc. I truly appreciate your effort, Lonny! If there is any research or other useful effort I can apply in support of your work, let me know. --Curtbeckmann 20:16, 21 September 2006 (PDT)

Thank you for your offer of help Curt. I am working with a new server now, DreamHost. They give lots of control and do most of what we need. I quickly was able to get a new version of MediaWiki running on DreamHost, but unfortunately found myself in the Catch22 of needing to upgrade to the new version of MediaWiki before transfering the files... but the new version of MediaWiki requires PHP5, and my old host is still on PHP4... and there are many other complication slowing down the work-around to the Catch22, such as the database expanding incorrectly. I will figure it out soon, and I am very glad and hopeful about the new host. They have a money back gaurantee, in case it does not work out well. I will tell you more as it develops over the next few days. Sorry for the venting. Thank you for the support. --Lonny 20:35, 21 September 2006 (PDT)

Sounds very, very frustrating. I know nothing about this stuff, so I'm not sure there's any point in offering help, but let me know if there's something I can do. Hope it goes well. --Singkong2005 ^talk 21:40, 21 September 2006 (PDT)

It is DONE! Of course there is some more little things to do over the next few days... but the difficult part seems to be done. The speed is incredibly improved. The security is higher. My brain is soup and I need to get a tech person. Thank you all for your kind support and enjoy the upgrade. --Lonny 02:37, 22 September 2006 (PDT)

Amazing! You rock! You're right, this new server is quite snappy! Some questions: 1) How do you want me to pay? 2) Is it "safe" to make edits now, or would it be better (kinder) to wait a day or so? 3) I take it the URL is not yet fully stable (with respect to updating links at my blog)? Thanks for all you brain-liquifying diligence! I can't believe you pulled it off so smoothly! --Curtbeckmann 07:03, 22 September 2006 (PDT)

Thanks, I am glad that you find it snappy as well.

A check would work, or if you have a BankofAmerica account, a transfer would work. I am also open to online solutions. What works best for you? I appreciate the flexibility, I probably should have had you pay directly for the new host, but it was late and I was jaded thinking that I would probably cancel that host as well.
It is safe to make edits now (although you may get an annoying popup about google maps api for a few days, until all the DNS pointers propogate fully).
The URL is close to stable, but it is somewhat regional right now. Two more days, should do it.

Thank you all for your support. I couldn't (and wouldn't have tried) without it. Singkong2005 and Curtbeckmann thank you for your online support, knowing you were there definitely helped. And thank you to all the readers that complained about the speed... It was quite enheartening to know that people use Appropedia enough to complain about it :) Now on to short URLs, interwiki tables [1], google maps api, cite functions and TeX and other fun. --Lonny 10:54, 22 September 2006 (PDT)

Well done Lonny - I didn't expect it to happen so soon. And Curt - thanks for stepping up and giving financial support.

btw, when we move to short URLs, my experience suggests that the old form of URLs will still work, (so old links from other sites will still find the correct page). The link you gave - short URLs - suggests it's a lot more complex than I thought, with perhaps some potential downsides. So if it's decided to not go down this route, that's understandable. (Though if the Wikimedia projects do it, I'd think it can't be that problematic.) --Singkong2005 ^talk 20:02, 22 September 2006 (PDT)

The interwiki table is finally fully up-to-date, thanks to Goodsignal and a late night. For example WikiIndex:Appropedia should now work. Thank you for your patience. We should now be able to keep it up-to-date. --Lonny 04:16, 15 October 2006 (PDT)

Canonization?

As I prepare to aggressively promote Appropedia, I've been thinking about the various compelling advantages that this site has to offer. One of them is "the absolutely necessary presence of a committed, wise, experienced, patient and supportive SysOp (or better yet, collection of SysOps), knowledgeable in things wiki and field tested sustainable technology, without which no wiki has a chance". I nearly used the word "saintly", but not sure it will resonate with the audience as much as I would like.

There is some chance that I'll tone down the accolades, but I do regard you (and Chris, whether he is a SysOp or not) as gifts of the highest order to the community.

Thanks for all you do.

--Curtbeckmann 14:30, 1 October 2006 (PDT)

Singularizing categories

Hi Lonny,

It's great to see such a lot happening on Appropedia - more of a critical mass, a few issues resolved, and a lot of progress being made.

I posted a question about singularizing categories at the policy discussion page. Cheers --Singkong2005 · talk 16:06, 15 October 2006 (PDT)

FYI: osafa.org

Hi Lonny, I stumbled accross Appropedia only recently, it's great! I had a similar idea in regards to sustainable architecture and started to work on it: Open Source Architecture for Africa. It's somehow in between Appropedia and, say, a SourceForge for buildings, with a close focus on Africa. I will try to study Appropedia and learn from it, as soon as time permits. Cheers, --Helge.at 06:29, 31 October 2006 (PST)

fyi: FAB@home

fyi: http://128.253.249.235/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page (via) --Helge 02:43, 2 November 2006 (PST)

Very cool. --Lonny 03:06, 2 November 2006 (PST)

Logo progress

I think we're very close on logo. One more round? It would sure be cool to close on it! --CurtB 06:41, 3 November 2006 (PST)

Revisit licensing

I took the liberty of moving this conversation to Appropedia talk:Copyrights#Revisit licensing. --Singkong2005 · talk 20:07, 20 November 2006 (PST)

message from anna

I would appreciate tags that point other users to my pages for language editting... how can I add this? I will try to organise the schematic of the Night Reader... thanks for your motivation :-) --Demotech (anna) 13:22, 4 November 2006 (PST)

Hi Lonny and Anna. I took the liberty of creating a new category, Category:Articles asking spelling and grammar review, which can be added to articles to mark them as in need of assistance. (I also marked Night Reader as being in the category.) I created some instructions for that category and listed it under Appropedia:Community portal for helpful sorts.

I expect that some kind and anonymous soul will help out, otherwise Anna will have to wait for one of us surly administrators :-) --CurtB 19:34, 4 November 2006 (PST)

Hi Lonny, With the Robe/Rope pump that was a typo... I mixed it up... The location of Learning from Poverty is fine. Thanks for looking after my pages... :-) --Demotech (anna) 05:43, 17 November 2006 (PST)

Hello Lonny, aahrg. I uploaded a photo for the article in Category: Active citizenry which is way to huge... How can I delete it? Or better, how can I make it smaller? I cannot use the programm "Easy Thumbnails" since I dont have windows... --Demotech (anna) 08:13, 27 November 2006 (PST)

Hi Anna,

Thank you for noticing the offending file size and letting me know. I deleted the image.

As for image resizing: Which Operating System do you use? If it is linux, do you have ImageMagick or Gimp? If it is Machintosh, which version? --Lonny 09:45, 27 November 2006 (PST)

I'm using mac OS X 10... --Demotech (anna) 11:06, 27 November 2006 (PST)

Hi Anna,

Sorry for the slow response. Check out the following link about how to use the Automator in OS X - http://www.playingwithwire.com/2006/11/resizing-images-from-comfort-of-your.html , let me know if that does not work for you, and I will create my own tutorial. Did you see the proposed edit that someone made to Learning from poverty? Good luck, --Lonny 12:11, 28 November 2006 (PST)

It worked out! It's embarassing how little I know about my computer... muchas gracias! I wonder who edited Learning from poverty ... maybe someone from the studentworkforce joined? I gave an introduction to appropedia last week... --Demotech (anna) 13:58, 28 November 2006 (PST)

Por nada. There is so much to know about computers... sometimes it is good to be a little ingnorant (until you need something). Cool, I am sure your introduction to Appropedia was great. The username of the person that edited the article was Vacuum1313 (feel free to leave them a thank you note), to see the history of the article click the history tab, which should bring you to history. --Lonny 15:17, 28 November 2006 (PST)

Hello Lonny, I am really inactive at the moment, but I am still here... :-) I wonder if you know howtopedia. It's another wiki dealing with "simple technologies, simply shared". see: http://howtopedia.org They have articles in english, french and spanish... all together about 200... Only a few contributors there have userpages and nobody has a talk page, so it is rather difficult to contact them... It is pretty kool that there are other encyclopedias on appropriate technology...but it would also be kool to have everything collected at one place... So, what to do with howtopedia? port content from "them" to "us" and vice versa? On appropedia is one article about compost toilets, which is also at howtopedia. So, is there already cooperation? Or is "Practical Action" (creater of the article) just contributing to both projects..? How did you do the merger with wikigreen? Wasn't wikigreen bigger then appropedia? Why did not appropedia migrate to them..? uuh, tons of questions... greetings --Demotech (anna) 05:54, 22 January 2007 (PST)

Hi Anna,

Great to hear from you, I am very glad that you are still here. One of my students will be recreating and adapting the Night Reader this semester. They will be uploading a page about their work, and editing the existing page. Can they ask you some questions?

We are familiar with howtopedia, and have briefly discussed collaboration with them. I, too, am excited that there is so much activity around appropriate technology, but hope that we do not split efforts too much. We have not done any porting between the sites, but we have both partnered with Practical Action (therefore ending up with some duplicate pages).

So far three wikis have merged into appropedia. The founders of WikiGreen chose to merge into appropedia because although they had a higher page count, they had much less activity. In fact, as a testament to the amount of work they did, most of their pages seem to have been ported/created by a small number of individuals. Given that appropedia has a thriving, albeit small, membership, the founders of WikiGreen decided to merge with us. Between all of these mergers and the original activity at appropedia, we know have over 1000 content pages.

Does that answer your questions? --Lonny 14:44, 22 January 2007 (PST)

Lonny, hello from Demotech! Reinder here! Tell me more about your and your student plans for the NightReader. The NightReader as published is fully outdated. Just missing time and support to do something about it right now. Two interns (university students) want to work on it for many months. Difficult though to give them support as Demotech plans to travel to Guatemala first then to other project locations this year. Can we think of any cooperation from all these students? The biggest problem is that the problem is not technical anymore. I know hope to guide this project into social science research. Would there be an interest in this respect somewhere?.
Regarding HowtoPedia, I am not so happy about their approach. I wish they would copy the openness of Appropedia, better merge with it. Greetings, Reinder, Demotech

Nudge, nudge

Hi, Lonny. I know you're perpetually swamped, but I'll nag anyway. Please prioritize some attention on the vision / mission effort :-) Thanks, --CurtB 12:39, 9 November 2006 (PST)

Porting, historical link templates, “Beyond Dams” stuff

See the conversation that has developed at Curt's page, on porting and templates (following from recent emails). --Singkong2005 · talk 08:08, 13 November 2006 (PST)

Recent changes patrol... change your profile?

If we're going to do the recent changes patrol (I just signed up myself), I would suggest that we all set our profiles to "mark my edits as patrolled", an option available to sysops. (Chris and I have already done this.) Alternatively, perhaps we should all CLEAR this option? But since we do the most edits (seems like) we can make the patrolling job a lot more realistic if we mark our edits as patrolled and focus on others... What say you? --CurtB 15:36, 13 November 2006 (PST)

Biodigesters / Anaerobic digesters

Hey, Lonny, I've been following this biodigester thread that I encountered recently on looking at the http://www.AIDG.org (actually, http://www.AIDG.net). It looks like great technology, popular in many places (UK and Europe mostly, but also Cuba and East Asia), that is fairly feasible to implement in rural areas, but I haven't found a good how-to, and haven't found the right site to submit a "can we port your stuff" request. I mention it here because it seems like the kind of thing that might be part of CCAT or whatever. See also wikipedia:biodigester, and here is a link to something that might be relevant:

http://web.archive.org/web/20041205105156/www.ce.ufl.edu/activities/waste/wddndx.html

I still plan to keep poking around on this technology, as well as other technologies that are references at the AIDG.net site, but wanted to mention this for your "lesson planning" benefit :-) --CurtB 15:24, 14 November 2006 (PST)

Okay, so just found a great source of content, I think: http://www.habmigern2003.info/biogas/Baron-digester/Baron-digester.htm

It's a little old (2003?), but if I can get hold of Gerry Baron, I'll ask permission. --CurtB 15:38, 14 November 2006 (PST)

Just though I'd mention, I'm very interested in this topic but haven't had the time to really research it. Did some Googling once, and found some info on plastic bag digesters (in Vietnam I think) which sounds like an elegant solution. I also didn't see anything very authoritative. It would be worth asking permaculture people - PermaWiki is pretty inactive, but there might be lurkers around if we ask a question. Or doing a search in Google Books. --Singkong2005 · talk 05:25, 15 November 2006 (PST)

Reminder about updating "Highlighted project"

For contrast, I like the Ersson's rainwater capture project, but really any will do. My motivation is to keep the main page fresh. I'm thinking of other ideas in that vein, like revising some of the text, tweaking the colors etc. --CurtB 10:40, 30 November 2006 (PST)

Any word from OneWorld?

And did you get my check? :-) --CurtB 22:30, 3 December 2006 (PST)

No word from OneWorld, but we are listed as an organization. I need to contact them again, about becoming something more like a partner. I was not charged, so I am sure that something went wrong. I have not received your check yet. Thank you for sending it. I will let you know more about OneWorld soon, please let me know if you find out something as well. --Lonny 22:44, 3 December 2006 (PST)

Random venting: I've spent most the day trying to fix our low Google PageRank (only a 2). One thing I have discovered is that the Google Sitemap scheme I was employing does not work with the short URL scheme we are using, plus there are now better Sitemap generators. Frustrated. But the activity at Appropedia is fantastic and is keeping me charged! Thanks for listening, that's all for the whining (for now). --Lonny 22:44, 3 December 2006 (PST)

Not sure if you check in on the Appropedia talk:Statistics tracking page now and then... Great stuff, especially the incremental (not long term average) "page views per edit", which is now in the mid to high twenties (depends a lot on how aggressively people are editing). I like that metric because it eliminates the "yes, but aren't most of those page views driven by the large growth in edits?" distraction. That is, page views per day are WAY up (1300/day or more), and it's not just do to edits, because of the "views per edit" metric.

Is there really nothing from the Google analytics? *sigh* Well, take a break, and swap it later, or perhaps Google will fix it if you are willing to wait. They have before.

By the way, do you think there is value in list page views on the main page? That is pretty exciting (more exciting than page count, for me), and is similar to the Wikipedia article count. --CurtB 15:19, 10 December 2006 (PST)

I received your check yesterday. Thank you. I left a message for OneWorld about Appropedia's partner status, which seems to be in error as they have not charged us and have us listed as being a member since 1970. I will let you know more as I find out, and I will not cash your check until they charge us.

I do check the statistics page, and Google analytics is working well (I check it frenetically and use the information to direct advertising, blog comments and sitemaps based on keywords and visitors). I could send monthly updates to the admins if you think it would be worth it.

I see some value in listing page views on the main page (in what way is this similar to the Wikipedia article count?). I think that it would only be worth putting on the main page if we made it automatic.

Our PageRank is unreasonable low, and I still do not know why. In fact Appropedia's PageRank is currently lower than Pequals, which seems impossible as Pequals has less links to it and much less activity. Three (of many) possibilities:

There is a problem with the way Google is PageRanking.
We have some outgoing links to banned or reprimanded sites from our pages.
We were PageRanked during our switch to shortnames, and something went wrong. In which case we will need to wait a couple of months before it is corrected.

Fortunately PageRank is but one of very many aspects that direct links to Appropedia. I think that we are somewhat on track for relevant links, and I would like our numbers to increase 10 fold by the end of summer.

Thank you --Lonny 22:14, 10 December 2006 (PST)

I don't know how the other admins feel, but I would be very interested in the analytics to help understand which comments, etc, have the most impact. You mention advertising. Are you spending money on that? (I ask for both budgeting and impact reasons.)

I think posting "page views" is similar to Wikipedia's page count in that both seem to be a form of "rah rah, look how we're doing". Our page count is fairly modest, but our total hits (128,000) is getting interesting, and the pace of hits (1,400/day) is very promising! I'll look into automating it. If that's not an option, I think our next re-work of the main page could direct some traffic toward the Check progress page. --CurtB 06:32, 11 December 2006 (PST)

I forgot to mention...I'm not too worried about the PageRank problem...but maybe I should be. My daughter works at Google, and I can ask her (she used to work with the Ad group, and I think has some awareness or connections into how PageRank works). --CurtB 06:34, 11 December 2006 (PST)

Missing Buttons in the edit bar?

Do you see text, e.g. "Bold textItalic textInternal link", in the edit bar above a edit window instead of buttons? --Lonny 22:47, 3 December 2006 (PST)

I didn't see that, but User:Vacuum1313 commented that the "bold button" didn't work, though it worked fine when I next tried it. The toolbar looks fine as I type this... Perhaps it's browser specific?

I think it has something to do with capitalization and rewrites of the 2nd level folder (in this case Skins vs skins). I will keep working on it, please let me know if you encounter it. --Lonny 09:36, 4 December 2006 (PST)

As for whining (section above) I must say you're not really trying. But yes, the page views here have really rocketed. Even though page edits are up a lot, views per edit have doubled recently (around 30 by my guesstimate) which has me giddy. --CurtB 07:44, 4 December 2006 (PST)

Sitemap is working again, as of 2AM! --Lonny 09:36, 4 December 2006 (PST)

Finalize: Singular or plural categories?

Just had a chat with Curt... quite productive. One question to finalize: Singular or plural categories? Curt says "I have a tiny-tiny bias toward plural cat pages, am fine with whatever you both agree on, and will do legwork in whatever direction." My own preference is still for plural. I know you're a flexible guy, but I wanted to get consensus.

If we leave it, we have more work to do later, and moving a cat page erases the edit history. --Singkong2005 · talk 17:53, 13 December 2006 (PST)

What is the plan for categories such as Category:Sanitation? --Lonny 10:22, 14 December 2006 (PST)

Was that question incomplete? Aha! As I make my edit, I notice the missing ":" that caused the category to disappear! I have repaired it! I would say that Categories like "water" and "sanitation", that are not generally "countable" would be left as singular. I describe it that way because "Water" can be pluralized, but "sanitation" probably does not get pluralized ever. Gee, seems like the list gets long quickly:

Sanitation
Water
Electricity
Solar (not a noun?)
Adobe
Health
Culture
Power
Transportation
Education
Food
Cooking

Hmm. Makes me reassess my tiny-tiny bias toward plural. I knew this would happen. I have some small list of issues with singular, but without much experience I'm unaware of the large list of issues I might have with plural categories. Sigh.

Chris, you mentioned that "we will have more work to do later", but of course, that's only if we decide to change later... Or am I missing something? That is, if we decide to stick with plural categories now, and DON'T change our minds later, is there some load of work to do?

I mean that we currently have some plural cat names, & some singular... we'll have to change some, for consistency, and the sooner the better. --Singkong2005 · talk 06:18, 15 December 2006 (PST)

Okay, so I've gone back to the Appropedia:Policy discussion page and notice that you've kind of been here. The long list that I made above seems to suggest a tendency to select nouns that don't pluralize well, i.e. are not countable, for topic nouns. But in the cases where they are countable (like Materials, or Category:Composting toilet), I prefer the plural. Perhaps putting the policy in those terms would make it fairly simple.

Yep, it's countable nouns that are the issue. Category:Sanitation would stay the same, same as "public health" and "sewerage" in Wikipedia. Or another perspective... in plural usage, we talk about sanitation in many places, or toilets in many places, or several countries... not sanitations, and not toilet in many places, or several country.

I don't know if this is confusing to some people - it seems natural to me, though I am very sensitive to the oddities and inconsistencies of English (which became very clear to me when I first tried to explain English to Indonesians). --Singkong2005 · talk 06:18, 15 December 2006 (PST)

The good news about some "mixed" approach like this is that many category names would not need to change.

Chris, would it be fair to ask you to take a first swing at articulating the policy in a short paragraph? You can say "no" and I'll take a swing at it if that's your answer.

My left hand is killing me - too much typing? ergonomics? - so if you could do it, much appreciated... --Singkong2005 · talk 06:18, 15 December 2006 (PST)

Hah! I thought I had clicked save on this, and so went randomly off to work on other stuff. First thing I did was to create a new category Category:User resources, and it wasn't for 3 minutes that I realized that I had made it plural without even thinking about it. I must say, I would not like the singular version. *sigh* Okay, this time I'm gonna click save. --CurtB 14:02, 14 December 2006 (PST)

Chat

It would be great to chat soon by phone (or Skype/Google voice if i can find a mike...) Interesting connections with people in the last couple of days have prompted many thoughts about promo, who is most receptive, some great producers of potential content, and about making clear to people what exactly we offer. but i'd rather talk than type. --Singkong2005 · talk 06:22, 15 December 2006 (PST)

I can call you on a land line so that we don't have any lag. Or we could try skype as well. I am excited to talk. When is good for you? --Lonny 14:41, 15 December 2006 (PST)

Oops, I'd meant to mention Curt as well - a three way convo would be ideal. My free hours are irregular - you could try SMSing me... I'll email you with details. --Singkong2005 · talk 03:26, 16 December 2006 (PST)

Moderator for Transportation?

Hi Lonny. Aaron just expressed a strong interest in moderating the Transportation topic. In my mind, you moderate the moderators. Is that true? If so, contact him, please. If not, correct my misunderstanding :-). Thanks, --CurtB 14:25, 17 December 2006 (PST)

Hi Curt. Yes, for now I would like to moderate the metatopic moderators. I will contact Aaron, whom I feel would be an excellent transportation moderator. See some of his work at http://aaron.arcatacommunity.org/ and Aaron's contributions, especially Category:Transportation. See Apply to be a topic moderator for a start to a formalized process. --Lonny 02:02, 18 December 2006 (PST)

Both belong in Category:Power and energy

Hi Lonny. I was tempted to move both of your re-categorized "power and energy" articles up to the higher category a few days ago. Not sure why I didn't. I'm also not sure what the experiment is... (i.e. what kinds of observable results are there?) but I don't have much issue with the categorization :-) Perhaps with the analytics that are set up, you can see the paths that users take as they wander through Appropedia? If that's true, then I guess I can understand the experiment concept... That would presumably be a navigation experiment? --CurtB 15:04, 18 December 2006 (PST)

A note left for you?

Hi Lonny. User:Stef Breukel left a note at User_talk:137.150.15.157. With a bit of poking, it would seem that this IP address is usually you, perhaps not realizing you weren't logged in... Almost certainly someone at Humboldt based on various edits made by this IP address going back to August :-)

Anyway, wanted to let you know. The talk page is not very useful, and should presumably be removed at some point, but wanted to give you a chance to reply to Stef. He may also be interested in categorizing his pages under Category:Articles asking spelling and grammar review. Of course, I can tell him that, but wanted to give his message a chance to reach its intended recipient first... If that's you? --CurtB 16:43, 21 December 2006 (PST)

Thank you Curt. Here is the content of that note:

Thank you for editing I am from the Netherlands and my English is not very good. I am shore there are a lot of other grammar folds in myn spelling. P lease visit the "3rd world arm lamp" page.

I am stil working on it, but now it begins to get clear hou this lamps looks like and works..

This page needs review for grammar, spelling and/or layout. You can help by editing this page ????

I like to hear other and better experiances of people that make and use this kind of lamps and lamp stands

Stef Breukel

I will reply at his talk page. --Lonny 17:13, 21 December 2006 (PST)

INFORM, Inc

Hi Lonny, I wasn't sure where to put this. Could go on the talk page for INFORM, but in a way it didn't seem right. The person who wrote that is almost certainly Liz McClellan. She goes by "Cityzen Jane" on a blog that I subscribe to. I dropped her a note, she replied that "I will check you out". I didn't know if she meant Appropedia, or my blog. Then I noticed her profile mentioned a presence at Omidyar. At Omidyar, I learned her name and that she was at INFORM. A short bit later, INFORM popped up. Coincidence? Anyway, I mention all this just to share (for all readers) the curious pathways of networking.

Interwiki map

Hi Lonny, I've posted a question at Appropedia talk:Interwiki map - no rush, just letting you know. --Singkong2005 · talk 05:38, 29 December 2006 (PST)

Hi Chris,

I have handed this over to Gabe. Thank you, --Lonny 10:58, 29 December 2006 (PST)

Another WC comment

I left another comment at WC, this time related to Vermiculture. First comment, and the article was very fresh, so I think we'll see a ton (okay, maybe 40?) of hits. I'm curious how the number may be different from the previous (delayed) WC comment, so I'd appreciate any info you get on it when you get a chance. Already I see some evidence, because there was an anonymous edit of the CCAT vermiculture page, correcting a couple of typos. Yay! I got a similar thrill earlier today when someone anonymously corrected a link in the derived version of the Sawdust toilet article, which I had recently created. That's the first edit I've seen to any of the articles that I ported. Yippee! --CurtB 17:58, 3 January 2007 (PST)

Good work! I'm very aware that you're doing a heap of valuable work, and I feel quite slack in comparison (but the nature of wikis means we contribute when and as we're able, so I know I can put in more work at another time). Your work is appreciated! And Lonny's & Gabe's too of course, probably much under-appreciated, being largely behind the scenes. --Singkong2005 · talk 18:05, 3 January 2007 (PST)

Appreciation all around. I am very happy with what everone here is doing. Thank you all. --67.127.55.64 19:42, 4 January 2007 (PST)

I changed the full word to WC. We know what it means, and we won't get the undesired search hits this way. --CurtB 21:03, 4 January 2007 (PST)

Discussion tracker

As you mentioned recently, it can be hard to keep track of what's happening on the community discussion pages, with there being such a number of pages, so I had a first go at a {{Discussion tracker}}. {{Discussion tracker|Lonny}} gives:

Hope you find it helpful. --Singkong2005 · talk 19:27, 11 January 2007 (PST)

This is great! Thank you Chris. --Lonny 01:24, 13 January 2007 (PST)

Photos on profiles

Hi Lonny, I was just browsing some old stuff on my talk page, considering what to archive. Came across a comment of yours endorsing the photos-on-profiles idea. I had the sense you intended to add your photo. Did it fall off your todo list? Or perhaps I misread your intent. I notice (thanks to the joy of Google Images) that your picture is already here on the Parras Invitation page, so I can insert it for you :-) But seems a tad "forward" of me. --CurtB 16:52, 18 January 2007 (PST)

Done. I do endorse photos on profiles. Thanks for the reminder. --Lonny 22:19, 28 January 2007 (PST)

Update the quarter on your calendar?

Currently says Fall 2006... --CurtB 17:06, 19 January 2007 (PST)

Done. Thanks. --Lonny 22:20, 28 January 2007 (PST)

I plan to move area categories this weekend

Using pywikipedia, I can pretty quickly move all the Area Categories from singular names to plural names. Chris is obviously a big fan of this, nudges now and then. The tools seems pretty smart, but still might not handle everything, like edit history of a category. I'm not too worried about that. But I want to hear from you before I charge ahead. (I plan to make a list of the categories first, which you could pre-approve if you prefer.) What say you? --CurtB 07:13, 16 February 2007 (PST)

Standardising namespace is a really good idea. I'm hoping you mean that you will be changing plural names to singular names, rather than what you said above. Most wikis (crucially wikipedia) use singular names, and if all wikis use the same namespace, it becomes easier to move information between them. So, please change them to singular, not plural! I note that under the Nudge Nudge heading above, someone else is agreeing with this. - Anon

Hi Anon. Too bad you're anon, cuz it makes it harder to connect with you. The "nudge, nudge" above was also me (CurtB). And unfortunately, I was talking about going singular-to-plural because my resident Wikipedia expert (User:Chriswaterguy) was telling me that WP is more biased toward using plurals! I don't actually have a strong bias, but would tend to follow the WP approach. So I guess I'll to investigate for myself.

One possible explanation is that I (and Chris) are discussing Category names, not namespace names. We don't plan to go with plural namespace names. As I say, I'll need to satisfy myself which way WP prefers to go with Category names. Actually, I've heard that WP will sometimes have both singular and plural names, like "Opera" (which is a category of articles that refer to the topic of opera in the abstract) and "Operas" (which is a category full of articles about individual instances of the art form). The categories we are referring to tend to fall into the "Operas" case. That is, we have categories with articles about projects, not about the general concept of project. --CurtB 11:47, 16 February 2007 (PST)

I think Anon might have been referring to the Namespace as opposed to the Area Category. I think that we have reached consensus about the area names, i.e. we are changing Project to Projects, and How to to How tos (the How tos area sounds so bad to me, okay that was the last jibe I swear. Nope, one more - now the category bar will never read like Australia | Greywater | Project. Okay the demons have been expunged, moving forward...). Curt maybe you could post the list (linked from here) and leave it open for a little bit (36 hours?). Anon please come back and let us know what you think, especially when looking at the list that Curt posts. Thank you all for your hard work, patience and dedication, --Lonny 12:24, 16 February 2007 (PST)

Category name change planning

Okay, here is my plan. Pluralize these kids:

Greenhouse ‎(5 members)
How to ‎(44 members)
Organization ‎(36 members)
Photovoltaic ‎(9 members)
Porting helper ‎(2 members)
Program ‎(5 members)
Project ‎(43 members)
Project by timeframe ‎(3 members)
Thesis ‎(3 members)
Tool ‎(1 member)
Topic ‎(17 members)

These get special attention:

Policy ‎(1 member) (wanted category, should be "Appropedia official policy" to follow Wikipedia convention)

What about Category:Appropedia policy? That's in existence with 6 members; perhaps leave "official policy" until we have enough policies to want to separate drafts, suggested policies and official policies (official = agreed by consensus I presume). --Chriswaterguy · talk 08:33, 18 February 2007 (PST)

Projects ‎(1 member) (will remove this category prior to moving “Project” to “Projects”)

Not sure about these guys. Will leave them alone for now.

DIY ‎(32 members) (should these be "how tos"?) They look like "how tos" to me. But we should check, moving again when needed. Hmm... --Chriswaterguy · talk 08:33, 18 February 2007 (PST)
Household Cyclopedia ‎(30 members)
Living roof ‎(1 member)

Warning: this will happen sometime tomorrow (Sunday, PST). --CurtB 23:50, 17 February 2007 (PST)

Extensions for RSS, etc?

User:Trav left a note on my talk page asking about which extensions we used. I'm clueless! So referred him to you via a note on his talk page. --CurtB 15:46, 19 February 2007 (PST)

Reverting back-to-back spam

I saw that you had some trouble rolling back consecutive spams. I've had that also. I happened to be attempting that one day while Chris was online, and IM'ed him about it. He suggested that you view the most recent valid historical version, then do edit / save. It worked like a charm. Perhaps this belongs in an admin help page? --CurtB 12:18, 21 February 2007 (PST)

I thought you might want to be the first to see this article

Public Interest Environmental Law Conference Baron 15:22, 24 February 2007 (PST)

Hi Baron, Thank you for posting about the very important elaw conference. --Lonny 18:48, 26 February 2007 (PST)

Category:Heat - gentle nudge

A gentle reminded that Category:Heat is "very under construction... please check back 20/7/06 - I guess you could try to get one or more of your students to take it on, as a project... just a thought. --Chriswaterguy · talk 05:06, 5 March 2007 (PST)

Hi Chris, Thank you for the gentle nudge. I deleted the Category:Heat page as I do not think it should be a Category, it should be a Heat_basics page that is listed under Category:Energy (and maybe others). I will restart it as a page probably next month. Thank you, --Lonny18:22, 5 March 2007 (PST)

Your thoughts requested...

at User_talk:Chriswaterguy#Greenlivingpedia interwiki. Thanks.

I was going to request input from the moderator of Category:Alternative building, but then I realized we don't have one yet...

Perhaps we should invite Peter to be moderator for Category:Sustainable buildings, which could have Category:Alternative building as a subcat. --Chriswaterguy · talk 16:02, 16 March 2007 (PDT)

Photovoltaics how-to?

What do you think about moving much of Category:Photovoltaics to a how-to? --Chriswaterguy · talk 02:53, 4 April 2007 (PDT)

Hi Chris, Great question. I have thinking about what to do with these types of pages. I do not think moving it to a how to is the best idea, as I feel that how tos should be followable step-by-step methods. I do think that the amount of content on Photovoltaics hides the category links below. Here are a two possible solutions:

Create a standard _______ basics, for each category page. In this case, Category:Photovoltaics would have a prominent link to Photovoltaic basics.
Move the subcategories and pages above the content. There is a mediawiki extension that does just that.

I would like to develop a standard. I think that #1 sounds best so far. Do you have any ideas?

When we do come up with a standard, we need to think about what is appropriate on a category page. If we have no text on category pages (as is the standard on some wikis) then we have users needing to click again to find any real information. If we do have text, how much and what type?

Thank you, --Lonny 19:21, 4 April 2007 (PDT)

Yep... #1 is a variation on the Wikipedia approach, and I can see the reason for it. I also see why it makes sense to take a different approach, and keep the topic and categories both high profile, since we have multiple content types.

I need to think more about this. --Chriswaterguy · talk 02:04, 24 April 2007 (PDT)

The top of any topic page would have a template notice something like "For more pages on this topic, see the Sanitation category. That works well.

I'm not sure whether to use "XYZ basics" or just have the page name = topic name. This is Wikipedia's approach, albeit in a context of only one content type to deal with. It also makes the abovementioned template workable using {{PAGENAME}}. And I'm not sure yet whether the info will necessarily be basic and would rather let that question be answered organically. --Chriswaterguy · talk 05:48, 24 April 2007 (PDT)

I like this discussion of moving the hefty content to a separate page. Low-content category pages are fine (essentially, a few sentences describing the nature of the category), and don't need a separate page. As for naming, I have a slight bias toward using the same name, as WP does, but to me this is a detail. Of course, it's a detail that needs to be worked out :-). But as long as the naming is algorithmic (standardized), it shouldn't be too hard to alter the algorithm. I think there ought to be a way to write some template that points to the page if it exists, but I could be mistaken about that. Also, since if there is no page, then the category name wants to be a redirect (I think), and that could spoil the "if exists" test... Anyway, I'm getting lost in implementation details. --CurtB 10:07, 24 April 2007 (PDT)

I'm now leaning strongly towards this change, after thinking about how we deal with topics with multiple aspects - whether the topic deserves subcategories and whether it deserves multiple pages on different aspects, are not quite the same question. It's also easier to create topic pages if we don't have to think so hard about how it fits with the category system.

Shall we make this our new policy, at Appropedia:Topic content? We'll also need to adjust pages and sections such as Appropedia:Categories#Topic_categories Run it past major topic contributors, and Appropedia team members including User:Vinay Gupta and User:On2Leggs before making the changes? --Chriswaterguy · talk 19:03, 29 April 2007 (PDT)

Promote feed-back from user to designer

Hello!

Please help me out! The original, self-made/designed/originated material I contribute to society through the website of my foundation Demotech (www.demotech.org) is also ported by Appropedia. This I highly value for two reasons:

Outgoing:

To be among the mind stuff of people with a similar mindset, to have an opportunity to be inspired, to learn in general

Incoming:

To create the opportunity for feed back from users. This world needs rapid development of any item of Appropriate Technology. Without a mechanism of DIRECT and EFFECTIVE feedback from users on content such as what Demotech offers, further development of this content may stagnate. However, when feedback opportunities are provided this development may soar!

For this reason the sole condition for use of Demotech designs is to provide a link back to its origin attached to the information from Demotech. And please, let this link not only contain name and (web)-address of the author, but also a few lines that the author expects explicit and detailed feedback as a rightful reward for its otherwise freely to be used contribution.
As I looked at Creative Commons Licenses, I found the license 'Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0' that seemed somehow to answer what I look for. However not with the specific request condition as named.
I fully realize this condition can not be enforced in practice. Similar as the condition to pay for 'share ware'. But non the less it should be a condition that remains attached to the content as it spreads.

Three questions:

Is the 'Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0' -license endorsed by Appropedia?
Where can I find earlier discussions on the topic of feed back on behalf of continuous development?
Where is info to be found on how design-communities may best originate and function on Internet?

Thanks for a rapid response!
--Demotech, design 14:03, 16 April 2007 (PDT) Reinder/Demotech

Hi Reinder,

Great to hear from you. I hope you received the email from my students. Your comments and questions are excellent and extremely pertinent. As requested, I am reposting your comments to the Village Pump for group discussion to follow. We are also considering starting a forum, so that it is easier for even more people to be involved.

Appropedia uses the GNU-FDL license. Here are our conversations on the topic of license - Appropedia_talk:Copyrights. Please feel free to add your comments there, where a more focused group can respond.

Thank you, --Lonny 18:51, 11 April 2007 (PDT)

To sign your comments use the following code: --~~~~

Lonny, hello!

Thanks for help and hope more clearity will come. And yes, I received the mail conserning the [=NightReader=]. I'll come back to it soon.

--Demotech, design 14:03, 16 April 2007 (PDT) Reinder

main page counter?

Lonny -- it looks like the main page counter has been stuck on ~58k for awhile -- is this correct? Is it counting? I tried reloading it and nothing changed - only one hit per ip? Cheers - Joshua ps - love the new chicken highlight