Permaculture Information Web

[Richard Morris <webmaster AT pfaf.org>]

Heide Hermary wrote:

>   Any research relating to plant culture or adaptations should be 
> linked, but I don't really see this particular type of research being 
> useful to what we do. 

> We do need to clearly define our focus.

Yes indeed. We do really need to do this. Maybe we are jumping the gun
diving right into schema. Before we really know the sort of data and 
focus the system has.

A bit of stuff is happening on the piw wiki.
http://www.permaculture.info/wiki/index.php?n=Main.HomePage
Mostly this is of a technical nature. But there does need to be
some higher level docs about the general focus of the system.

In particular there is some work on the RequirementSpec
http://www.permaculture.info/wiki/index.php?n=Main.RequirementSpec
This does try to focus more on the "What" we are trying to do rather 
than the "How".


I supose the general idea as it stands is that we want information
        on plants
        on the relationships between plants
        on related concepts
audience I see as being permaculture people primarily. Although there
is a big range of other people who will also be interested in this info.

Quite what info we want about plants is vague at the moment.
I guess we want information which would allow people to
        Sucessfully grow a plant
        Select suitable plants for individual conditions
        Select plants for suitable aplications (eg basket weaving)
Thats the core stuff theres lots of other things that we could include
        relationships between plants
        identification info
        photos
        nutritional information
        cultural information
        yields
        botanical information
        etc..
        links to other info
        discussions about plants Q&A
        suppliers places to get plants
I guess most of this should go in.

> This doesn't mean it has to be narrow, but it does need to be defined,
> and then stick with it.

Indeed, this is a good point. One of the reasons wikipedia has worked is 
that there was a clear idea of what it is they are building: an 
encyclopedia. That really defines the sort of info they want.

Rich