Permaculture Database

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

jedd wrote:

>  Hi Lawrence,
>
> On Saturday 31 March 2007 1:42 am, Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:
>
> > There only needs to be one database, one that contains much plant
> > information, eventually information about other living things encountered
> > in a permaculture system, one that has the ability to reveal relationships
> > between these things.
>
>
>  Is your expectation that the two (or three) components need to be
>  developed consecutively rather than concurrently?

Concurrently.

> > The concept would be a permaculture database, a discovery tool showing the
> > relationships between elements in a permaculture system, useful for system
> > design and guild documention. Maybe a future enhancement could include a
> > general permaculture information resource (a Permapedia).
>
>
>  Leaving the Permapedia thing aside for the moment, can you please
>  expand on the description there .. maybe some screen mockups (just
>  in text on mail, maybe fixed font it if that's easier) showing the way
>  the tool lets a user discover things, f.e.

What we have been talking aboutlately - a permaculture fauna/flora 
relationships database;
a system revealing relationships between plants and plants, plants and 
animals and animals and animals.
Or justleave out animals for time being is this is a better way to get 
started.
I would like to see a relationships database include such things as plants, animals, soil, water features, earthworks, 
climate, tools and equipment, and methodologies.

>  My biggest conceptual problem at the moment is that much of the talk
>  is highly abstracted and very underlying-design oriented, neither or
>  indeed both of which are not very useful for designing the actual
>  system or working out if such a system is actually feasible.

I see what you mean and am trying to make suggestion that are achievable 
software-wise,
within the limits of my knowledge of such (I am learning a good bit reading 
you all).

> > Adding a wiki, blog and cms might make it easier to expand the scope of the
> > project without making the relational database any more complex than
> > necessary.
>
>
>  I'd imagine they'd be a tickbox in the admin module of whatever
>  CMS we were building the system into -- however my concern with
>  wikis, blogs (erk!) etc are that you split your information up at
>  that point, and by doing so risk or guarantee that much of the info

As I see it you're not necessarily splitting your information up and 
parcelling it out to
other web apps but adding on useful apps with features that we will need and 
that are not provided by the RDB.

The extra mailing list for new content providers, wikis, blogs and galleries are simply workspace we provide to the 
content providers, i.e. database contributors, to aid them in their work and give others an opportunity to see what they 
are doing with the possibility of advising and collaboration. Also, a fun place to take a break, do unstructured things 
and keep our community of users and contributors together. It was said a long time ago that haveing a community 
associated with your website is key to its success. I do think that one of our most difficult jobs will be to get people 
to use and contribute to the database. Comments?

>  you want to capture within your tightly defined db ends up as free
>  form and ultimately unrecoverable / unusable data external to the
>  place you really need it.  This is probably a job for training and
>  moderation, but you'll always have unexperienced (with the site)
>  users popping in, and you'll always have the problem that typing
>  away into a non-structured text box is far more convenient than
>  accurately filling in specific pieces of data into many boxes.

Extra features such as wikis, blogs and galleries could be only offered to 
serious contributors
witht he understanding that they will make sure that aaaaany distinct revisions of any of their work will be copied into 
the database and not be left hanging in their blogspace indefinitely possibly to be forgotten.

LL
--
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
Venaura Farm
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://market-farming.com/venaurafarm
http://venaurafarm.blogspot.com/
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech