Permaculture Database

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

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [permaculture] To wiki or not to wiki
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 10:03:39 -0800
From: Paul Cereghino <paul.cereghino@comcast.net>
Reply-To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>

Wiki can allow for the collaborative development of a concrete scope of
work... defined goals and objectives... draft, edited draft, and final
page structures... etc -- the things that will take this from an idea to
a project.... you don't have to hunt for the most recent plan... you can
just go look at it, debate it, tweak it, agree, and move on, with the
agreement clearly documented and easily referenced, revisited and
updated in the future..  List strings are great for brainstroming but
poor for production.  I do empathize with the connectivity issues.  I
suspect that the list will serve best for running dialogs/brainstorming,
but development of scope, phasing, and production issues may be better
documented on a wiki.
Paul Cereghino, Olympia, WA

jedd wrote:

> Hi Rich,
>
> ] ... I'd also like to back up Grahams point that if we 
> ] get a wiki going, we will want to migrate most discussion onto the wiki. 
> ] The soon we get experience with using a wiki the better.
>
> I'm not so sure about this.  Yes, it may be good to have the
> discussion on a wiki, but wikis are painful (you have to be
> net connected for starters).  Email lists that are archived gives
> people (well, me) optimum access to discussion information, and any
> person that comes along afterwards can read the archives.  Of course
> they fall down when people top-post, fail to snip, fail to change
> subjects, fail to initiate new threads when they should, etc - but
> wikis can be just as easily corrupted by ignorance - and a list of
> geeky types is less likely to have such bad habits.  </optimistic>
>
> Anyway .. my main point there is actually that because a wiki is
> not where we're aiming at, using one at this stage might either
> distract or misguide or both.
>
> Unless of course we are aiming at just a wiki, in which case .. what
> are we talking about?  Just install it and populate it (well, just
> about) and away you go.
>
> I think we really do need to work out what we're aiming at, and I
> suspect that screen shots (input forms and results pages) would
> make this a lot easier for people, including me, to get heads around.
>
> Jedd.