Permaculture Database

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Wikipedia's Permaculture Problems
Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2006 23:15:30 +0000
From: webmaster@pfaf.org
Reply-To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>

> From: Rael Bassan <rael@ripco.com>
> Subject: [permaculture] Wikipedia's Permaculture Problems
>
> On skimming the wikipedia's permaculture article, 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture It was obvious that additional 
> editing is needed.
>
> To reduce edit war energy, perhaps the changes could be collectively 
> burnished in a more open wiki, before submission to wikipedia.

I would not worry too much about edit wars, there been very little
action on the page in ages. Also its probably better to engage with
other editors on the talk page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Permaculture rather than compose a big
edit offline.

> At first glance, these sections drew my attention:
>
> 1) Permaculture design for ecologinomic (ecology-economic) ethics.
> The horrid neologism "ecologinomic" is missing both quotes and definitions 
> in dictionaries (Websters and the top two neologism dictionaries listed at 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neologism which includes The Internalational 
> Dictionary of Neologisms, http://www.neologisms.us/ curated by 
> permaculturalist mIEKAL aND.)

Yes there is a lot of Odem/emery related info in the article. Mainly due
to one editor Sholto Maud, who does not seem to be too active now. While
some of this is relevant and interesting it is a bit on the side of
POV/undue weight (there are WP guideline on this).

> 2) In the Critiques section they have:
> Some critics have argued that permaculture is best suited to tropical, 
> mediterranean or desert conditions, but isn't suitable for a cool temperate 
> country such as the UK. [5]

The critiques section is mainly my work. Its important that we try to
give a balanced view of the topic, its an encylopedia article, rather
than an advocacy piece for permaculture. I added this section in
response to a question on the talk page commenting on lack of critiques.


Strangely the reference [5 =
http://www.resurgence.org/bookshelf/burnett0805.htm], which I added, did
not support the claim. I think this critique is more of a critique of
permaculture as a synonym for forest gardening.

This section could defiantly be improved, I didn't find much in the way
of informed criticism of permaculture. A good critique section could
strengthen the article and the concept as it shows that there has been
an examination of any weaknesses, and as good permaculturalist we should
be continuously be review our ideas (i.e do our SWOT analysis).


> Which ignores the many UK usages that follow in the Contemporary examples 
> section:
>
> 3) In the Contemporary examples section, they request:
> Please wikify (format) this [North America] article or section as suggested 
> in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style

Basically this section could do with a complete revamp, written in an
encyclopedic style with some of the more notable projects. The current
content might be more appropriate in the links. Both Graham and I are UK
based which probably explains the rather UK focus of much of the article.

So feel free to dive in.

Rich (Salix alba on wikipedia)

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