permaculture

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

neshura wrote:

> At one point I started writing the skeleton of a pc-wiki that would
> spider, analyze, and structure the whole of the PC list archive so
> that I could browse the emails in a rich-context format, i.e. with
> plant names linked back to a best-guess PFAF link, similar emails
> grouped together and taggable, annotation and deep-linking of common
> terms, author-grouping, and url-scraping into a "bookmarks" page for
> myself.

Neshura:

Please go ahead with your PC Wiki project converting the PC list's archives 
into
a more useful format. I have done this sort of thing with various list posts 
(anything that conforms to the
UNIX mailbox format with appropriate leading To header) using mhonarc or the 
revised Hypermail.

After briefly considering making the archives private I have decided against 
ever doing that. There are too many
benefits derived from public archiving, Google, what you propose to do and what I and others use Hypermail and mhonarc 
and other software for in creating legitimate educational resources on the Web, enhanced still further by Google.

As far as I an concerned anyone wanting to take any or all of the archives, convert them and ut them online in their own 
website
should be encouraged as long as it is for legitimate educational purposes and not for personal financial gain. Legally, 
I believe the archives are in the public domain. Any email gating of this list should be thoroughly scrutinized before 
that is allowed. Your use of that method and that used the Scandinavian PC list mirror site wouldbe approved.

> But I got distracted, probably by something shiny. Anyway, since the
> archive is freely available for viewing and copying right now,

It will remain open. Anyone really bothered by that or by legitimate mirroring always have the option to unsubscribe 
from the list. Of course, there's no way to purge the archives of posts they have already made. That option was 
available for a while as a Mailman hack but the new MM version disallows that.

> Since there *is* useful information in the list from which people
> might profit, like much of the Internet except probably the wholly
> useless blogosphere, perhaps a permie-friendly Creative Commons
> license on content is in order.

Absolutely.

> I would release whatever worthless rambling I write into the public
> domain and good luck to the scammers, but there are certainly more
> knowledgeable and experienced permaculturists as well as authors who
> might have more concern.

I hope you will go forward with your PC Wiki. If you'd like for ibiblio to 
host it for you
just contact them at info@ibiblio.org.

> Any thoughts?

It is a wonderful idea and very generous of you to offer to create this 
valuable resource. Go for it!

> -neshura