permaculture

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

On 4/16/2012 3:46 AM, Chris Watkins wrote:
> Btw, does anyone have any news on permaculture.info? Is it possible to
> recover the information that was on there?

http://www.permaculture.info renders:

<>
PIW has a problem

Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.

Try waiting a few minutes and reloading.

(Can't contact the database server: Access denied for user 
'pcplantdb'@'vhost3.int.ibiblio.org' (using password: YES) 
(mysql.ibiblio.org))
<>

You mean, is it possible to obtain a typical database dump from the 
permaculture.info MediaWiki?

PIW was Permaculture Information Web or permaculture.info or 
Permaculture Wiki.

It's a long story. You should already know most of it.

It would appear to me that the public is owed this wiki as $15,000 was 
paid to Scott's Permaculture Institute by a foundation in California to 
create and put online a permaculture plant and animals database, which 
turned out to be a wiki thanks to $500 paid to Richard Morris to install 
MediaWiki on ibiblio for that purpose. Stepanie Gerson wrote the grant 
proposal and the money was recieved by P.I. to pay for programming and 
any other expenses. Most of the money and much valuable time was wasted 
coddling one of the project group members who wanted the database to be 
done in some oddball language which could not be hosted by ibiblio. That 
little diversion failed so Richard then created and administered a wiki 
at ibiblio for use of project members. A lot of nice information and 
graphics was created and that is what you have seen online for years 
until the present.  I'll bet that due to lack of use and administration 
it got hacked and filled with spam so ibiblio took it offline; see error 
message above. Originally it was hosted under the ibiblio domain.

When I think of the time and effort I spent 1) making it possible for 
P.I.-Scott to own permaculture.org and 2) much of the same for 
permaculture.info, purchased during the course of the database project,
for the project, and by the main programmer, who had the domain 
registered by some oddball company in France and was hosting it himself 
on one of his own servers. That of course went downhill fast. It was a 
MySQL/PHP database using the Plants For A Future dataset. After years of 
communication Scott was able to get the domain away from the French 
company. I offered to move that registration to Register.Com and have 
domain hosting done by ibiblio/UNC so we could continue developing the 
wiki. I spent many hours online and on the phone with register.com 
moving registration to them and with ibiblio/UNC setting up hosting. It 
finally was ready for us to resume work. Richard was still helping with 
administrative duties but noone was doing any work on the wiki so it 
fell into disuse and was finally taken offline. I have no idea whether 
P.I./Scott knows about the state of this project and its online presence 
or has any plans for it, fix it, move it, abandon it. Seems a very big 
waste for it not to continue when you consider all the money, time, 
effort, skill and hope that was put into it.

You could 1) contact Scott/P.I./Scott's wife who does all the web 
development for their organization 2) ibiblio, to a) with Scott's 
permission, get a database dump to add to Appropedia b) take over 
administration of it with P.I./Scott's permission and resume development 
at ibiblio with them as host. 3) move domain hosting to Appropedia's 
domain host and seamlessly integrate it with Appropedia or put it back 
online as a separate Wiki alongside Appropedia.

I prefer that it go back online with ibiblio as host and one or more 
volunteer adminstrators. It has free hosting at ibiblio and can securely 
reside there indefinitely. If registration of the domain has lapsed, 
which I doubt, that is another matter.

At this point there seems to be very little  happening with a serious 
online permaculture database or wiki so if you can resurrect 
permaculture.info or add its dataset to Appropedia that would be a good 
thing, certainly better than the present situation with what was once a 
substantial project. If you want me to help in the same capacity as 
before, communicating with ibiblio and register.com, I will do so.

Lawrence London


> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 01:06, Chris Watkins
> <chriswaterguy@appropedia.org>wrote:
>
> > Hi folks - have you seen the *Open Source 
> > Permaculture<http://www.indiegogo.com/OpenPermaculture>
> >   *project? They're fundraising, and are just over a day from the finish
> > date.
> >
> > I believe this will be a real boost for permaculture. For one thing,
> > they're being really collaborative - e.g. for the permaculture wiki,
> > they'll be using Appropedia. And for the ebook, when we put an argument for
> > using an open license (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike), they
> > agreed and acted on it. And Sophia Novack seems to have a history of
> > getting things done.
> >
> > So, I'd encourage you to keep an eye on this project. And if you're in a
> > position to contribute, please do. If you want to read more:
> >
> >     - Open Source Permaculture: Interview with Sophia 
> > Novak<http://lynnfang.com/2012/03/open-source-permaculture-interview-with-sophia-novak/>
> >     , *Upcycled Love*.
> >     - Crowdfunding Open Source 
> > Permaculture<http://www.shareable.net/blog/crowd-funding-open-source-permaculture>
> >     , *Shareable*.
> >     - Open Source 
> > Permaculture<http://www.permies.com/t/13927/permaculture/Open-Source-Permaculture>
> >     , discussion on *Permies.com*. ("Open source" "open content" and "open
> >     licenses" explained)
> >
> > (Btw, I see that Permaculture.info was up briefly but went down again -
> > this is really unfortunate, and it highlights the need for a central,
> > well-maintained resource, with public backups, that we can build together.)
> >
> > Cheers
> > --
> > Chris Watkins
> >
> > Appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.