Permaculture Database

[Sean Maley <semaley@yahoo.com>]

----- Original Message ----

From: negiliblek <negiliblek@yahoo.com>
Subject: [pcdb] Summary Of Ideas and Things to Vote on

I. Method of coming to final agreements: Republic, Democracy, or Consensus?

Sociocracy with a Quorum and minimum lead time to provide input (active abstainers count towards the quorum, as do participants; no response assumes a person didn't get the email and needs to be contacted for quorum).  Non-voters in Consensus can get in the way.  Democracy and Representation create top down authority.

II. I propose, ask for a vote on the following:
 A- MediaWiki
Objects?  Since when is a Wiki a Class?  Do you mean to say Wiki pages?

B-Content Management System

???  Wouldn't a CMS primarily apply to bioregion specific needs?  Or do you mean that we will create tools for bioregions to add to a permie standardized CMS.

C- We elect a secretary who will keep track of our decisions and post them via a simple web page that isn't really a part of our main project.

What about independent projects then discuss what to make public, merge, or ignore?  Each person with something to offer can track the decisions and post them for themselves.  During conflict, we can come to consensus for an arbitrator/facilitator.

We must bear in mind that blocking behavior looses participation, which makes blocking a taboo.  Suggest alternatives, point out conflicts, keep personal backup copies, create an alternative for discussion, create a conflict test scenario, or just get out of the way by saying you abstain.  We each have a responsibility to each other to keep the project going, so must take great care to not put bad code into place that breaks other peoples code.  The greater our participation, the more tools (and more useful tools) we will provide.

Problems will happen.  Get used to seeing them as something positive without being phony about it.  The largest points of failure will be design.  Bad UI code or faulty analysis shouldn't take the whole system out.  Faulty table designs in place for months lead to permanently lost data, not the inability to input data (quick bug fix) or an accidental dropped table (restore from backup).  Beware of hierarchy in a relational world.

III.-I propose our initial scope is:  energy web matrices, organisms characteristics, and environmental effects

What about collecting and cataloging available data and tools?  Rich has most of the plant data that you are requesting, plus you can find USDA and ITIS free for the taking.  I can get you a zip code database with latitude and longitude, if you want.  Although postal codes are available for several former Empire colonies, I haven't seen latitude and longitude as available for USA zip codes.

If you want to start collecting other data, such as various yield measures, feel free to forward DDL suggestions.  If you need a PHP page for data entry or display, let me know.  We can always isolate a separate database for a development sandbox.  When we have data collected, then we can look at ways to analyze it.

It would be helpful to maintain this information in a Wiki.  When anyone finds interesting data, let everyone else know and then update the Wiki when it becomes available to the community.


-Sean.

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