{"id":20216,"key":"Information_silo","title":"Information silo","latest":{"id":1206826,"timestamp":"2025-11-27T20:56:06Z"},"content_model":"wikitext","license":{"url":"https://www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:Copyrights","title":"CC-BY-SA-4.0"},"source":"'''Information silos''' prevent [[knowledge sharing]] - it is the very opposite of [[open sustainability]], and [[open knowledge for aid and international development]].\n\nWhen [[Environmental|environmental organizations]], [[Aid and development workers|aid organizations]] and [[:Category:International development|development organizations]] act in a proprietary way towards their knowledge, this creates an information silo - information which cannot be shared, remixed, improved or freely used. This restrictions inhibits education, the flow of knowledge, and creativity.\n\n== What not to do ==\n\nInformation silos can occur through:\n\n* Thinking that information related to your aid and development projects is only of interest to your organization.\n* Enforcing copyright\n* Making no clear license statement, which in most countries makes the work copyright due to the [[Wikipedia:Berne Convention|Berne Convention]].{{W|Berne Convention}}\n* Granting limited permission, e.g. for [[Non-commercial clause|non-commercial]] and [[education]]al use. This enables only simple and limited sharing which is not usually of great value beyond sharing your information on the web in the first place.\n* Keeping your organization's wisdom on hard drives, internal networks, in filing cabinets, or (even worse) only in your head, rather than sharing on the web.\n\n== How to be open ==\n\nThe solution is to:\n\n* Make the information you use internally available online, and\n* Use an [[open license]] (one that allows derivatives and commercial use), and\n* Consider contributing directly to a wiki, for example [[Appropedia]]\n\n{{Page data\n| license = CC-BY-SA-3.0\n}}\n\n[[Category:Knowledge sharing]]\n[[Category:Commons]]\n[[Category:Open development]]\n[[Category:Open sustainability]]"}