sustainable living guide

Dandolo · Post by **Dandolo** » Sun Apr 08, 2007 11:33 am

I was wondering if we could set a meeting date? I wouldn't be able to attend unless it were towards the end of May, but if this is too late or if people will have left by then, there could be one earlier.

beev · Post by **beev** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 4:57 pm

Students at Leeds University have produced "The Green Guide: Towards Sustainable Living in Leeds"

It seems to me to be a really good model for for this type of guide. It covers all the main topics such as travel, energy, water, waste, ethical shopping, ethical banking etc, and it's well informed and well written.

I think if there is to be a similar guide produced for Edinburgh, it would be good to use the Leeds one as a model, especially as theirs is licensed under GNU. Obviously the local info would need to be changed, but the lifestyle stuff they've written is ripe for reproduction, and appropriating it would save quite a bit of work.

I think People & Planet already produce something similar, no?

If forest produced a green guide, what kind of circulation would it have? Who would be the target audience?

swithun · Post by **swithun** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 5:08 pm

We were talking about this at the Community/Environment+Garden meeting (minutes to come). The idea we had was to start off using a Wiki to collate material from multiple sources and contributors. It was mentioned that you, Neil, might know something about a Forest Wiki that may or may not exist. If it does exist, what state is it in? Can we use it. If it doesn't exist, could one be set up on the Forest domain? If not, I can host one on my (home) server. If there isn't an existing installation to use, I need to evaluate some and see which is most suitable.

Apparently Sean also has experience of setting up Wikis. Do you have any advice you could pass on?

One thing is the whole free to edit/vandalise thing. I'm happy to have password protection, even if this goes against the spirit of Wikis. I don't foresee unknown people wanting to contribute (anything worthwhile), so there is no reason for not asking people to register in some way. Anyone disagree?

The initial target audience was going to be students and this guide would be distributed somehow during Freshers' week, I think. If P&P did something similar, should ours be less geared towards students? If not, then there is no problem.

beev · Post by **beev** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 5:23 pm

There was a forest wiki. I installed a MediaWiki (as used for wikipedia) on our server. It worked. Tragic thing was, I could never figure out how to make a new post. So it was dormant for a while. Then it disappeared.

I think password protection would be essential. Too many vandals (and shameless self-promoters) out there.

Would also be good to incorporate a guide to other cool non-profit orgs in the world.

I'm into it.

Dandolo · Post by **Dandolo** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:54 pm

How's this coming along?

beev · Post by **beev** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 5:30 pm

Probably will be more likely to move forward when we have a crack web team assembled. Ie: in 2011.

chombee · Post by **chombee** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:30 pm

I setup this: http://www.opirg-carleton.org/fairtrade/

It's a few years old but still gets used now and again. I set an edit password, but revealed the password on the front page, so that any human being who was paying any attention would be able to edit. Seems to have worked, never had a bad edit that I recall.

The vast majority of the editing came from the core group of people who were members of fairtrade carleton in the real world. We even had a session or two where we all got together and researched and wrote things for the wiki.

We did also get a contribution from an apparently random visitor from the web every now and then. though.

There was a paper zine that was produced by taking content from the wiki once enough had been collated there.

pmwiki is a good wiki software to use. Easy to setup, use and maintain, doesn't require a database, easily themable and has lots of themes available, lots of plugins too, and a huge user mailing list. A lot of people seem to go for a fat wiki engine like mediawiki (which runs wikipedia), it uses a database, has lots of very powerful features that you'll never need, and is generally inappropriate for small projects if you ask me. These wikis always look the same too. Not cool. Most important thing to do when you setup a wiki is upload enough good content that people will care, and make it look nice.

Dandolo · Post by **Dandolo** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 7:11 pm

Hey that's really good. It doesn't look like wikipedia so the average visitor that's ended up there from google won't even notice.

beev · Post by **beev** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 7:18 pm

Yes, pmwiki sounds good. Here are their requirements:

1. PHP 4.1 or later
2. Some sort of webserver that can run PHP scripts.
3. Write permissions for the webserver user account in the PmWiki tree. (Required for editing only.)
4. No file type extension restrictions on your host (usually from free web hosting providers)

PmWiki has been reported to work with the following OS/webserver combinations:

* Apache 1.3 or 2.2, on roughly anything (Unix, Linux, Windows, and Mac OS/X)
* Microsoft Internet Information Server, on Windows
* I got it to work on appWeb (a very small, php-enabled webserver) executing on a Linksys NSLU2 Network Storage Link device (runs Unslung 5.5 beta which is a Linux derivate for embedded systems). Still have to work out why file-uploads does not seem to work, however. --Hans-Göran Puke
* PmWiki works very well on x86 Linux + LiteSpeedWeb Server Standard Edition --Jeff Muday

Shannon · Post by **Shannon** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 7:35 pm

Yes, I would love to start this thing off as a wiki. Do you have the time to set us up a template sort of like you did in Ottawa, Sean? Also, would we be able to host it on our website for the time being?

swithun · Post by **swithun** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:08 pm

I've installed PmWiki on my server. It is much easier to use than the last Wiki I had the misfortune to work with years ago. A nice choice.

We want to use the Wiki initially to just collect and collate information, with the main aim being a printed artifact, right? So making it look nice at the moment (or ever) is not important.

I haven't figured out how to enable passwords for editing, so don't have too much fun with it. Shall we get started with it on my server, or get it moved to theforest.org.uk? I had uptime of over 260 days until the other day until Pomme turned my server off, thinking it was the plug for the washing machine.

chombee · Post by **chombee** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:08 pm

I would need the login info for our webserver, like the ftp url, username and password. I can install it and setup a template. I don't particularly want to get caught up in spending hours administering one of these right now though. The office computers are taking enough of my life. So it would be a hands off approach. Take a look at the skins gallery and tell me which one you want.

chombee · Post by **chombee** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:09 pm

Beat me to it, Swithun. Yes, go with yours.

Newington Bandit · Post by **Newington Bandit** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:29 pm

swithun wrote: I had uptime of over 260 days until the other day until Pomme turned my server off, thinking it was the plug for the washing machine.

gna gna gna gna....

Dandolo · Post by **Dandolo** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:40 pm

Is it ready then? ie have the "initial setup tasks" on the front page been done? Also, can you make {{templates}} in this wiki ?

swithun · Post by **swithun** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:26 am

The initial tasks have been done. What are these {{templates}}?

Some things we need before we let the public at this are a style guide and a page which describes the sort of things we want to have. We don't want people submitting articles which need heavy rewriting because of bad grammar. And we don't want to have to reject well written articles which are outside the scope of the guide. Do we? I don't.

Dandolo · Post by **Dandolo** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 11:32 am

Super, never mind the templates, these are from mediawiki and it's true, we won't need them. It's nice you're optimistic about public participation, Swithun. Sure, we won't delete stellar albeit tangential contributions outright, but maybe we could find another wiki to move it to or something, ad hoc. About these passwords, is there a way to leave the talk pages entirely open to anyone so it's up to us to copyedit and work submissions suggested on the talk page into the article space without breaking the flow of the text?

Dandolo · Post by **Dandolo** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 11:36 am

But yeah, it's important to establish the scope of the wiki first. Consistency is important but maybe we want to wait until a consensual style emerges before prescribing any. I don't mind re-writing bad grammar as long as it's scrutable.

beev · Post by **beev** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:35 am

I made this image for the previous (Media)wiki. It looked pretty good. Maybe it can be incorporated into the new one?

danny · Post by **danny** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 5:49 am

Puttin the 2011 plans on the back burner for a mo, is there anything that we could get ready for the Freshers fair at the End of September?

Dandolo · Post by **Dandolo** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 1:08 pm

if you were up all last night with ideas please share

dan · Post by **dan** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 12:19 pm

which fair are you talking about? Edinburgh Uni? We have stall space could put forest info on it too that would be good and fine.
D x

ravanwin · Post by **ravanwin** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 5:43 pm

we should go to that freshers fair thing.

dan · Post by **dan** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 6:02 pm

hey it can only be me on the stall I think, but maybe it's in shifts/ But anyway I can put some info about forest on there. yes i can. It's on Wed and Thurs. They have no more spaces for stalls, I'm sharing one already cos I missed the deadline.

ravanwin · Post by **ravanwin** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 6:14 pm

thanks dan. we'll sort some stuff out.
r

danny · Post by **danny** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 8:28 pm

I could be up all night with ideas, if that's what's called for yes but not working with some cheeky cyberspace moose though. Give me a REAL moose to work with and maybe I could get something together.

Shannon · Post by **Shannon** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 2:12 pm

From swithun on another thread:

Yes, the URL of the sustainability wiki is swithun.servebeer.com/sustainability. I think Dandolo added a link to a talk page, and then I added a page on cleaning.

The Leeds green guide is here.

Editing wiki pages is pretty easy. What we want at the moment, I think, is lots of text and ideas. The appearance doesn't really matter at this stage. To create a new page, you first need a link to it from an existing page. So, you need to edit the existing page to add a link, which is done with double square brackets, like this: [[ NameOfPage | link text]], which would go to NameOfPage when you click on 'link text'. Save your edit and click on the new link to add some content.

There are links to help pages in the left hand column on all the wiki pages. If you are editing someone else's page, be nice, unless they have written some real crap.

dan · Post by **dan** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 9:35 am

i doing freshers fair tomorrow and thurs. is there anything for me to bring to it from Forest?
D x

beev · Post by **beev** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 10:24 am

Yes, take some of Alex's tabletop thingies.

ravanwin · Post by **ravanwin** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 11:18 am

some GHB, Records and maybe the poster about using the hall?

i'll be in from 9.30. let me know if you need a hand.

r

Shannon · Post by **Shannon** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 2:31 pm

Did you get it sorted Dan?

Gaz · Post by **Gaz** » Fri Nov 23, 2007 11:30 am

Hmmm.

Thought I might revive this one.
It's not being used is it?
That's a shame.
Some people don't like the fact it's not part of the forest website.

Well why don't we just have a new page created.
Make the password for it public/semi-public and then people can make of it what they will.

Or we can embed the Swithun page into a new page on the forest website
http://swithun.servebeer.com/sustainabi ... n/HomePage

Ideas?

Forest BB

sustainable living guide

sustainable living guide

Freshers Fair is at the end of September!

A message to the moose