I sometimes come across the idea "Hey, let's start a green wiki!" I sometimes see an alternative thought - one with a lot more promise of making an impact: "Let's see if someone's doing a green wiki already."

Many people have started green wikis - and like wikis on all subjects, most of them wither before they can take off. There are a bunch of reasons, which I'll blog on some time, but the main one is: you need a critical mass.

A major part of our reason for starting Appropedia was to cover green topics, so when we encountered WikiGreen in 2006, we saw value in joining forces - which we very quickly did, giving a huge boost to the profile and energy of the joint project. Now we're looking at doing the same thing with Ekopedia, a very impressive multilingual wiki with a focus on ecological sustainability. In between we created the Green living portal.

Are we there yet? No, but I like the approach we're taking at Appropedia, creating a very broad wiki, and engaging academia, individuals, NGOs and businesses.

There are other approaches, that you'll find listed and compared at that first link (actually it's Green wikis and development wikis). Among the many other wikis is Greenlivingpedia, which I really like. We've been trying to get Peter Campbell (co-founder, who I met in Sydney), to come on board with us, but he has his reasons for trying a different angle. Yet another angle is Wikia's... I'm not at all convinced of their approach, but they do have a boost from Jimbo Wales' profile, and it aims to appeal more to regular folks (rather than the hardcore green and tech people that tend to love Appropedia) ... we'll see how that works.

The Appropedia Blogs are now active - so most of my development, sustainability and appropriate technology related  blogging will be there from now on.

There's still some tweaking to do, though - putting in the open license notices, and making the layout of links more like the Appropedia wiki.  Then to make the Appropedia wiki's skin more like the blog.

I swam in Lake Ontario today. Good time of year for it - while the water is in liquid form.

Beautiful spot here in Kingston. It's good meeting Joshua Pearce (who teaches at Queens University) face-to-face at last, and talking about sustainability, appropriate technology and all that, and ways to get collaboration happening in a much bigger way. And tinkering with his clever piece of solar water disinfection equipment - but I'm not allowed to share details of his specific design, just yet.

I mentioned to an Indonesian friend by email that I was going to Ontario - she said watch out, maybe there's lots of onta (camels) there :-).

Green home designs that cost less than traditional housing - simple changes make such a difference. Especially passive solar design, which also makes for a much more pleasant and comfortable place to live in.

That's real sustainability.

Received an email from the founder of a fairly prominent UK organization, devoted to practical action for sustainability. The query was whether Appropedia was a suitable place to work collaboratively  on a book, which would later be published.

While we'd love to have this content, there are some reasons it may not be an acceptable solution for them. At the very least, contributors need to know what they are committing to when pasting on a wiki, and using a free license.

Rather than just explain this in an email, I thought it was a good question to answer on the wiki: See Original content FAQ.

Note that I'm starting to wonder if our old policy of using the "Original:" namespace is a good idea after all, as it requires a set of gatekeepers for what content is worthy to be placed in this namespace. And yet... an original document by a respected appropriate technology organization, for example, may deserve to be readily available. Or perhaps a link to a "diff," showing the text of the original, with all the changes that have been made since the original document was first placed on the wiki - that will confuse the eye of the average non-wikiholic however.

Tricky issues. Feedback welcome!

Crazy to flush with fresh, clean water, right? Use the water from washing your hands: Wash n Flush. (Huggs, and Stumbles welcome!)



                  

Plan a trip by public transport: Google Transit's on 4 continents now, and just added some more cities. In Australia, they do Perth so far.

aunty_del asks:

Can someone please explain this Earth Hour thing to me?

...this year, it's the same - a lot of hype and photos of dark buildings and not much else. This means I have a few questions.

Is it supposed to be a symbolic gesture or actually do something about energy consumption?

It's symbolic and awareness raising. I don't know that it raises the right kind of understanding, though. Me, I don't like making people think they've done something when they haven't.

If I had a permanent residence I'd be on green electricity, and during Earth Hour I'd turn on every appliance, open the windows and sing for the neighbors to hear "I'm on Green Power - I can use as much as I want!"

An (overdue) article from The Guardian describes how "food miles" is not a very useful concept.

- hat tip to tx_cronopio in pollanesque

 

I've mentioned Appropedia, the wiki for sustainability, appropriate technology and international development. I've just discovered that another green wiki has been started, at Green Options. I have mixed feelings about this. It's great when people want to do something, and a wiki is a fantastic way to collaborate, to pool our knowledge.

But the good is the enemy of the best. Even a good site can be a distraction, if it draws people in but fails to provide the best available content and the most vibrant community. And the best way to provide those things is to work with likeminded people who are already working on the same thing.

WikiGreen recently made the decision to merge with Appropedia - our vision was so similar, it made sense to merge. And tonight I've just received notice that one of the "Engineers Without Borders" organizations is planning to integrate their wiki with Appropedia, for the better visibility and networking. (I'll post again when it's confirmed - I'm hoping this is the start of something big).