Permaculture Database

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

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [permaculture] database, wiki, blogs, forums, etc
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:11:20 +0000
From: webmaster@pfaf.org
Reply-To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>

> From: Paul Cereghino <paul.cereghino@comcast.net>
>
> I think the colaborative writing opportunities in a wiki are very 
> powerful.  What I mistrust is that the overall structure of the wiki 
> lacks form.  In other words... the whole is less than the sum of its 
> parts.  However, I am not convinced that a step up in complexity is 
> necessary, but rather a better organization of the wiki concept may 
> serve the purpose.

This is where the social structure fits in. Above the level of the
technical is the social structure, how the different editors work
together and the overall direction of the project. A large part of
wikipedia is devoted to the social structure. The following elements
seem to important:
        A clear goal: what is this project for
        A structure for the community:
        An established decision making process: how do the users decide things
        An evolving set of guidelines: as the project progresses the details 
of
how the information is to be presented

On wikipedia they have three policies:
        
1. as an encyclopedia: Neutral point of view (NPOV) - our basic
editorial policy
2. as a community: Don't be a dick - our basic social principle
3. as a wiki: Ignore all rules - the suggested personal policy

The first determines the shape of the project. In our case NPOV is not
what we want.

It could be possible to establish a more or less structured system, both
in the look of the pages and in the descision making process. In
wikipedia each article has a talk page, where the editors can discuss
the content of that article, they also have various community pages
where wider-scale discussions can be held. There is a big advantage to
keep these in the same system as the actual content, the closeness of
the talk pages enables discussion.

> I'd propose that this is due to to flaws: the 'pages' of a wiki are not 
> classifiable, nor are the ways that wikis connect with each other 
> clearly classified.

> Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language stands out as a stellar example 
> of a dynamic user-engaging presentation of complex design theory.  If 
> something of that power could be constructed for a permaculture we would 
> be on to something.  Why does it work so well?
>
> The structure of each "Alexander Pattern" is fairly constant.  The 
> pattern is connected to larger scale patterns, an argument for the 
> importance of the pattern is made, the argument is discussed, the 
> critical characteristics of the proposed pattern are summarized, and the 
> pattern is linked to the most relevant smaller scale patterns.  Rich's 
> reference to a documentation convention may be a solution.
>
> Each Alexander pattern is roughly located on a 'scale' axis -- from 
> large scale patterns to small scale patterns.  Wikis are not organized 
> along some critical axis in this way.  Can a category be assigned to a 
> wiki page along a scale continuum (landscape > Site > guild), and this 
> axis be used to organize total content?
>
> Each Alexander Pattern is the same kind of animal... it is a pattern 
> describing a spatial arrangement of an element or elements.  Permawiki 
> contains a whole zoo full of animals -- some oink and some fly.  Some of 
> them could qualify as 'design elements' (CHICKEN or FRUIT TREE) while 
> others are concepts (ZONES or KEYLINE) while others are actual design 
> patterns (HERB SPIRAL or APPLE GUILD).  

Yes, design patterns is a good example, in both Alexander and the
GOF-programming language patterns, there is a clear structure to each
pattern: intentions, consequences, ... Evolving a good pattern for
permaculture information is a good goal.

> Can a wiki either be narrowed to one type of page, or have pages 
labeled so that they can be observed in groups of similar pages.. A
network of concepts, a network of design patterns...

> The linkages between these each 'wiki' are only defined by the text 
> surrounding the hyperlinked word.  There is no convention for how 
> concept/elements link to eachother.  Structuring the discussion of how 
> on pattern relates to another may be the critical link.
>
> Here'd be my list of goals for a permaculture wiki:
>
> # The wiki helps a person identify interactions between elements to 
> develop new and unique patterns.  This can happen at various scales... 
> linking systems accross a landscape, or elements within a site, or 
> guilds within a vegetation mosaic.
>
> # The wiki allows a person to change scale or stay within the same scale 
> consciously, and stay on topic.  If the reader is interested in 
> reflecting on concepts, they can follow that path.. if they are deadset 
> on thinking about constructing guilds they can wander at that level.
>
> # the wiki references high-quality sources of information, but does not 
> attempt to contain all information within itself - the function of the 
> wiki is to describe linkages between elements, and design solutions that 
> integrate multiple linkages.  Public domain PDF's could be linked within 
> the server.
>
> # wiki pages would be peer reviewed, and elevated as 'high quality 
> drafts -- the whole wiki could be publishable as a PDF edition by using 
> consistent formating and large scale information structures.
>
> ## In terms of A wiki page should be as short as possible while serving 
> the function on fitting the concept, pattern or element into the whole.  
> I once had a professor who always gave us profound essay questions and 
> then limited the response to two pages double spaced 12 point font.  It 
> was brutal, and took twice as long as spewing out 10 pages of text.  To 
> achieve this the function of an information unit (a wiki page) has to be 
> clear as possible.

From: Sean Maley <semaley@yahoo.com>
> I never had more than a handful of response to my
> Permaculture web hosting cooperative.  Would ibiblio
> sponsor such a coop to get it off the ground?  Would
> ibiblio allow root access for us to install/configure
> software?  I'd love to see this develop into a "highly
> available" global topology of web hosts (talk about
> reliability and permanence).

You know I'm comeing round to the idea a bit more, a host where you
could freely install software, as needed, and also get a bit of income
through hosting some individual permaculture pages. It does need
consideration of the buissness plan. An alternative is to hook up with
http://www.openserving.org/ which has just been set up by Jimbo
(wikipedia) Wales, this look like it will have a a wide range of
software installed.

Lawrence wrote:

> The problem with that wiki is that the install of the wiki software was done 
> by Wikia,
> not us, and there's no way to change the functionality of it. Furthermore, 
> they own the site
> and our data and can it keep online or not as they choose. There's no 
> security there for the long haul.

I tend to agree here, there is a modicum of outside control on wikia.
What seems to be very importnat to be is 'ownership' of the project. If
the project comes from the members of this mailing list it, then I think
it has a better chance to establish that vital critical mass. It is also
vital that its clear it belongs to all of us. This I feel is why some of
the wiki's set up on personal website haven't taken off. Its very
different contributing to what is one persons wiki. Its important that
we enter into this as a group, with consensus from the very start.

A minor point, perma-wiki data is under a free documentation licence, so
we are free to use that data as long as we adhere to the licence. This
is also a vital principal as it allows forking which prevents the
content ever bing locked down.

> Do they allow sever admin level access to the host? 
> Would we create our own logins, or do we depend on
> them for that?  Do we get the "root" password or even
> sudo?

No external hosting service is going to allow root access, just too
dangerous. However this does not really matter too much, for mysql
databases the root user has the power to create databases, anything
within that database can be changed by a regular ibiblio user with
appropriate permissions. Likewise with MediaWiki hosted in an
individuals user account allows complete control of the software
functionality and an ibiblio-user can add extensions etc. Within
MediaWiki there can be various levels of user responsability (and
power): WikiSysops, admins and regular users.

Rich



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