Permaculture Database

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

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [permaculture] database, wiki, blogs, forums, etc
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 08:28:22 +1100
From: jedd <jedd@progsoc.org>
Reply-To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>

On Sunday 17 December 2006 5:56 pm, Paul Cereghino wrote:
 ] 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

 Paul, entirely agree about this.  Wikis are conceptually much like
 a very large whiteboard with lots of post-it notes stuck to them,
 and lines drawn across the board indicating connections between
 the various notes.  You can remove and add and change notes, and
 re-draw the lines as much as you like, but the position of them is
 mostly irrelevant to their meaning.

 Permaculture components are in many cases defined by their position,
 and certainly their interrelationships are implicitly defined by same.

 Mapping the latter (information rich) onto the former (structurally
 inappropriate) simply won't work as some might want to believe.

 I'm sure there are very poor analogies to weakly demonstrate this
 problem -- here's one I prepared earlier -- trying to explain the
 nature of object oriented coding to a tribesman.

 Happily, a segue to OO is useful here -- from what you're describing
 it sounds like a pseudo-OO-wiki would get us half way there,
 so long as it had strong typing and inheritance.  It'd fall down
 again though with the lack of ability to have very many multiple
 and non-static parents.

 ] # 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.

 I disagree about this aspect.  External linking can be painful, and
 reduces the usefulness (as far as my needs go) of an off-line copy
 of the repository.  From a practical point of view, hunting down
 and then fixing dead links is a mugs game, but it's infinitely easier
 to do if you own both ends of those links.

 If data is free / public / equivalent, then in a world where 600page
 books take up less than 10mb, and 300GB costs less than $A150, there's
 no compelling reasons to rely on other people maintaining data that
 we consider important enough to reference.

 ] 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

 This is what academicians do for fun in their twilight years, eh?

 Jedd.