permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

Michael Pilarski wrote:
> Many years ago, Mollison's "Permaculture: A Designer's Manual" was 
republished in the US by Island press.  It is the same book inside, but 
the Island Press version had a bland cover graphic (and different 
title).  The good thing was that the binding was excellent.  Much more 
durable than the chintzy Australia binding.  I would always buy used 
copies of the Island Press edition for the binding.

Thanks for letting me know about this. I wouldn't mind having a used 
copy of that version; will check Amazon for that next year.

So, what about the revised version of the PDM? Is that still in print 
and how does it differ from the first version? Is it also published in 
the US with better binding?

Seriously, I think that this list + its archives represent material that 
could be incorporated in an open source, updated, collaborative PDM, 
accomplished online in a Wiki, the best E-medium for doing that sort of 
project, better than blogs, lists and forums while websites are 
excellent but fixed and non-interactive, i.e. static file display.

A Wiki is a whiteboard where many people can collaborate to write a 
single document or multiple documents. Information resources can 
accumulate in a wiki, sorted topically, and can be close at hand for 
editors working on documents to use.

An idea for collaborators to use.

Each contributor posts a prioritized list of subjects he has the most
interest in and/or the most expertise in. This is posted in his page in 
the Wiki. For the most important items in that list he creates new Wiki 
Categories for them. If they already exist he simply links his page to 
those categories. This facilitates collaboration on subject of interest 
to any number of editors. Category naming conventions will be important 
(See Wikipedia's guidance about that).

In my page I would link to categories about farming perhaps and or 
agriculture or maybe to gardening if that exists, or food production
or any number of categories. I would then create in one or more of those 
categories a sub category, Double digging. There I would build resources 
on that topic with internal and external links to other resources. 
Double digging would have its own links to an array of appropriate, 
related categories. Other sub categories might include Drainage
and Water channeling. Water impoundment would be a major category.
Anyway, this way lots of people could work collaboratively on 
documentation in category or subcategory pages. Deciding which major 
categories should exist and appropriate names for them would be an 
important task. Pond, lake, pool, swamp, wetland would exist under
Water impoundments. Ecology could be another category with lots of 
external links to the Wikipedia plus permaculture-specific resources.
Actually, it looks like, with MediaWiki, categories are like chapter 
titles with information contained therein as articles or sub categories 
which are also possible in categories.

Agroforestry, tree farming, forest management, tree crops, forest 
gardens could all be categories you could contribute to.

I don't know how many here would want to work on such a project but I do 
know that we could accomplish the creation of a collaborative PDM this 
way. Power To Permaculture People. I favor the name or alternate name,
PC Owl, the all knowing permaculture online resource or knowledgebase at 
permaculture.info.