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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 02:03:55 -0500

Chris Watkins wrote:
On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 17:11, Lawrence F. London, Jr. <
venaurafarm@bellsouth.net> wrote:

*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.


It is allowed because freedom is important, and sometimes forks lead to
successful projects. It is discouraged because it usually doesn't lead to
anything - so at least it deserves some deep thinking before taking the
plunge.

Poorly planned forks, or forks where the issues could have been resolved
within the original project, lead to a loss of synergy, a spreading and
dissipation of the creative energy.

That makes perfect sense. Well said and thanks for the explanation. I should have already known that.

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".

Yes, google it, and yes, there is a time for forking.

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...

"that I had no control over " - I'm not sure what you have in mind. In an
open wiki that has maintained a collaborative, supportive spirit, you would
usually be able to contribute, but no one person has control.

What I should have said is that, if after working on a wiki for a while doing extensive work on biological farming resources, there suddenly appears a major effort to build an area on conventional farming (chemicals, gmo, nanotech, nonsustainable stuff, etc.) then I would pick up my toys and leave, carrying away a nice fork that I and others had built.

Which reminds me of Bob's comments about Wikipedia, which is not so friendly
these days. Appropedia is certainly *much *friendlier, and with help from
the broader community, we hope to make it even more friendly and supportive.

I just looked at your site and was very impressed. I would like to contribute whatever I can that might be useful to other contributors there and to visitors, users of your wiki.

Probably best to link to my own marketfarming wiki for the bulk of what I have to offer rather than my duplicating that work at appropedia. I have a marketfarming list and see the need for all to have access to an encyclopedic resource on the topic, gleaning the best knowledge from list content, providing answers to most often asked questions, Q&A, FAQs, etc. One cool thing I have toyed with for years is creating mini forum archives on special topics, i.e. soil quality, soil microorganisms, compost tea, remineralization, etc. I create these using Thunderbird email folders which are also Unix mail files, convertible to sortable forum archives for web access using Hypermail or Mhonarc. That is a handy tool and I have gotten good feedback that it is useful.

In reality appropedia contains many important subject areas and a well defined mission. Many of those subjects are best covered at a multiplicity of other wikis (& blogs) rather than trying to have everything important about those subjects exist exclusively at appropedia. I would be interested in filling out your agriculture areas with external links to valuable resources all over the web and at my own site as well as adding unique information there.

am about to fall out, need sleep

I noticed you are in Australia, a place I would like to visit if I could. Some of my earliest agriculture contacts were FidoNet BBS users and sysops from there, later the Internet..One very interesting fellow was involved with subsurface irrigation systems for broadacre farming,
a system that added nutrients using a unique and proprietary process.
He mailed me a big package of brochures and technical information on his company's product; I still have it.

Cheers,

LL

More later.

LL






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