Appropedia

Appropedia is one of several sites for collaborative solutions in sustainability, poverty reduction and international development. Appropedia is a wiki-based website like , a website where a large number of participants are allowed to create and modify the content directly from their web browsers. Appropedia is a primary site for collaborative solutions in sustainability, poverty reduction and international development. Appropedia is an open website for users to co-create sustainable solutions, questions, and information; it serves as a resource area for other organizations.

Appropedia is being used by a number of nonprofit organizations and individuals working in the sustainable development space because it simplifies the administration of collaboratively organizing information, project examples, best practices, and “how tos”. Examples of organizations using this wiki are Engineers Without Borders and Demotech. It has been expanding rapidly as other organizations utilize its information transfer and collaboration capabilities.

History

After years of other online and offline sustainable collaboration projects, Lonny Grafman started Appropedia in April 2006 with a focus on appropriate technology, defined very broadly. He was assisted by Aaron Antrim and Gabriel Krause in the decision to use the mediawiki engine for Appropedia.

In May 2006 Lonny started a conversation with Chris Watkins (aka Chriswaterguy) via his userpage.[http://en. .org/w/index.php?titleUser_talk:Chriswaterguy&oldid60689402#Appropedia] Chriswaterguy was focused on appropriate technology articles in , but by June 2006 he was convinced to join forces at Appropedia. Appropedia now more explicitly covered broader issues of international development and sustainability - a logical combination due to the large amount of overlap and synergy between these topics. It also developed a policy of complementing , referencing encyclopedic material there, and focusing instead on project information, original research, how-tos, networking and other material.

A note left on another site led Curt Beckmann to join Appropedia, bringing energy, new ideas and different perspectives. Like minded people and organizations were happy to give permission to use their material (see below).

Contact with WikiGreen in late December 2006 led to an enthusiastic response from Ericblazek[http://www.appropedia.org/index.php?titleUser_talk:Chriswaterguy&oldid10789#Wikigreen], and a very quick decision to join forces. (Chriswaterguy logged on one day to find that the merger, which he had supported, had been agreed upon and implemented by those on the other side of the planet, largely while he was asleep.) It was decided to use the name Appropedia, at least for the time being. This brought an enormous amount of content, the work of Ericblazek and Roy Dent, ported with permission from various publications, including some content from CD3WD.

Since then Appropedia has made connections with more and more people and organizations:
* International Rivers Network gave permission for several pages worth of content.
* Practical Action gave permission for over 100 articles
* Demotech, an organization in the Netherlands have built many, many pages
* A long-running discussion with Village Earth led to their wiki merging in March 2007. This was the original wiki on appropriate technology.
* Discussions with Architecture for Humanity, who have set up the Open Architecture Network. Their website serves a different purpose to Appropedia, and the exact form of collaboration is still to be decided, but we have agreed to support each others' efforts.
* Sustainapedia, a planned website by a group of people with a similar vision and much ambition, led by Ryan Legg, and Jim Harris of Cleantech. The Sustainapedia and Appropedia teams quickly agreed to join forces, and are now working out the details.
* The How To Live Wiki, the site of Vinay Gupta, known for the Hexayurt, merged much of its material into Appropedia in March 2007, and Vinay joined the Appropedia team.
* The Sgoals wiki, focused on Sustainable Business practices, joined shortly after Howtolivewiki
* Students for Global Sustainability Wiki merged in January 2008.
* CCAT, the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology, partnered with Appropedia to move their project pages to Appropedia in April 2008.

Present

Currently, Appropedia houses more than 10,000 articles, which is somewhat of an indication that the appropriate technology movement started by E. F. Schumacher in the book Small is Beautiful is actually finally gaining some traction.

Sources & other lists
* Das Grosse, Internationale Solarverzeichnis - the list above was taken largely from this site (choosing those organizations with names related to appropriate technology).
* Appropriate Technology - Institutions & organisations, publications and information.
*
* Engineers Without Borders International, Links

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See Also

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