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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Permaculture wikis & making a major impact

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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Permaculture wikis & making a major impact
  • Date: Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:11:32 -0500

Chris Watkins wrote:

So you can go to Appropedia:Current
dump<http://www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:Current_dump>and get a copy
of the entire site (for an archive, to distribute in a
different form, or to start a "fork" of the project*) or go to
Special:Export <http://www.appropedia.org/Special:Export> and get as many
pages you want, with or without the history. (You can then use the "Import"
page to add the pages to any other wiki, as long as you have admin
privileges.) Other sites may not have the dump set up, but all MediaWiki
sites should have the export function.

*Note that forks aren't actually encouraged in open source or open knowledge
projects, in most cases, but the freedom to fork is an important one.

Why is that not encouraged. I need to google the term to find out more but forks sound like they could be just the thing for some people in certain circumstances. I can see that locating a fork in a new wiki elsewhere might not be good or necessary if the author can make the structural and data changes he wants in the original wiki to exactly suit the needs of his special development effort, thus keeping things "at home".
If a wiki had a large farming section and I was only interested in biological farming and it contained a well developed section on that topic and there was also a large area on conventional agriculture there that I had no control over I might well want to start a fork on another wiki dedicated completely to biological farming. That would make good sense. Artistic license...

Lawrence, do you still have concerns about this?

No. The only concern I ever have is about who hosts a wiki and
how permanent it is; also policy and agenda issues of those in charge,
admins and others, should that apply and be a matter of concern.
That is rarely anything to worry about. In the case of ibiblio, which is strictly non commercial, everything is secure and permanent, webspace (wikispace) is owned totally by individual accountholders or a group of accountholders.

I will have to spend some time at Appropedia to see what you have going there. Thanks for the reply, Chris and have a prosperous 2010!

LL





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