Green Wiki talk:Village Pump

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This is the discussion page for the Green wiki. To learn more about the purpose of this wiki or to see what others are working on, see the About page or the Project page here on the Village Pump.

Content Development
Here are the content areas we think should be covered on this wiki.. Please feel free to add sections and propose how much to focus on different areas. The Green space is huge and while one day Green Wiki hopes to cover all of it, we must start somewhere :). I would also welcome feedback about the best sources for this information.
 * Question: I have material (listed under Long Island Energy right now, but soon to be distributed around) on several topics that don't fit neatly into the existing categories.


 * Green Business-Sustainable Business Practices -this is a clear category
 * Green Building- falls under the sustainable living subcategory House- but also have info on Greening Schools, municipalities, and businesses- this may also include sustainable code.
 * Green Building may deserve it's own tab instead of falling under sustainable living. It is a huge category that includes commercial, governmental and residential buildings. As building contributes to almost 40% of GHG emissions, its solutions are urgent and vast. Technologies, products, innovation and municipal and federal building codes are advancing at a rapid rate for building responsibly in the US.
 * Green Transportation issues, alternatives and technology
 * Education on the environment and/or energy (related to green building for schools)
 * Reducing municipal emission (our www.coolcities.us campaign, among other things) Combination of issues here too.


 * I'd love some advice on how to organize distribute this material Cassabel 16:54, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Because the wiki is still young there will probably be lots of messy categories, which is totally OK! I recommend just focus on writing lots of good content and we can figure out the categories later. That said, I think almost everything you mentioned above could fall into a large parent category "Sustainable Practices". angies (talk) 17:20, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I would like to see information on Green Jobs and Careers; there is not much information online and the world NEEDS them.
 * I would like to see information on Green Jobs and Careers; there is not much information online and the world NEEDS them.

Act Locally

 * What about a section for regional environmental issues (could be organized by wiki's state/county/town- see Wikipedia Geography for framework we can use). For example- an entry on a specific superfund site, or what materials a town recycles and doesn't- entries in this section would link internally to Sustainable Living, The Green Movement,Legislation and Politics,and Green Science, and externally to other wikis etc. It would provide a resource collection site for community activists on this. (sorry if I'm doing this whole thing wrong I'm a newbie). Cassabel 23:59, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Cassabel, I think that would be great. Please feel free to start one for your area! There are a couple of local-oriented articles now: one for Gainesville, and also a collection of farmers' markets. These are just small starting points and by all means could use expansion and interlinks like you suggested. You can see both of these on the green wiki home page under Act Local on the right-hand side. Mollyh 00:26, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * A question of wiki protocol- Are Farmers Markets a subcategory of Act Locally, AND Act Locally a subcategory of Farmers Markets? Or does that create some kind of wiki-paradox? Cassabel


 * Hi Cassabel, nice to see you back on the wiki! You can do it that way, but kind of makes for a circular navigation experience. I would suggest making keeping Go Local as the parent category, and Farm Markets as the a sub-category. I went ahead and removed Go local as as sub category of Farm Markets. angies (talk) 16:28, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Sustainable Living

 * Eating
 * Shopping
 * Driving/Autos
 * House (green design)
 * Traveling (eco-travel)
 * Vacationing
 * Home products (cosmetics, fabrics, toys, etc)
 * Recycling
 * Solar
 * Gardening
 * Carbon offsets

On the subject of eco-travel I'd like to gather some knowledge on carbon offsetting flights; Whether this is of any use, how the schemes work, what the experts say etc. I know George Monbiot thinks carbon offsetting flights is pointless... Simon Robson 14:28, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * possible shared / overlapping agenda with Sustainable Community Action - a lot of the above and maybe some below might, on sca21, come under 'personal options' and / or 'Green Purchasing'.
 * Hi Phil, thanks for joining the discussion!Feel free to use interwiki links to point to these articles. angies (talk) 21:39, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Some challenges, which if we can find a way round might help move things forward:
 * In what ways is it OK to mention specific products and services without going agianst Wikia terms of service (no advertising)? (eg for purposes of review?)
 * This is definitely going to be a developing discussion for this community. I would prefer not to make any hard and fast policy this early and see how people want to write about products. Wikia has several wikis that are dedicated to products or companies (video games, digital cameras, etc) so I don't think its against Wikia's terms of service to document products. angies (talk) 21:39, 14 May 2008 (UTC)


 * What is the best way to deal with Green wash?
 * Same thing here, I think we will have to just wait and see what/if the problem is. I hope this community grows large enough that enough unbiased voices will ensure that doesn't occur. angies (talk) 21:39, 14 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Is there a need to include something on the limitations of, or controversy surrounding 'green purchasing / sustainable consumption / ethical consumerism, etc Philralph @ sca21 17:16, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Sure, feel free to start the article :) angies (talk) 21:39, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

What say we break out and divide up "Green Building"? I'm specifically coming at this from the angle of somebody who's looking forward to becoming an owner/builder but there's such a paucity of solid "best practices" type information freely available. I'm seeing this potentially as a general "Green Building" section with subsections for new construction, retrofits and modifications. It's not all so terribly complicated but it hasn't, to my knowledge, been brought together in one place before. Urzl 03:37, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Sustainable Business Practices

 * Carbon offsets
 * Sustainable Web-hosting http://www.sustainablehosting.com/
 * Company Initiatives (PGE, Clorox, GE, Ford)

Agriculture

 * Sustainable Farming
 * Community Supported Agriculture, CSA
 * Farmers Markets

Renewable Energy

 * solar Panels
 * bio diesel
 * Carbon
 * Ethanol
 * Wind

Green Science

 * Climate Change
 * Global Warming

Legislation & Politics

 * Environmental Laws & Legislation
 * Kyoto
 * State laws/Bills

Green Media

 * Movies/Documentaries
 * Green bloggers/publications

The Green Movement

 * Non Profit Organizations
 * Activists
 * Events
 * Propose adding here green programs sponsored by local governments - allows users to identify "green" cities/localities and see in one place the actions, municipal regulations, statistics, etc that make that place green. So an article on Portland, OR as an example detailing that City's work towards encouraging bike and transit use, green design, and other activities. Links from this page would then link to articles on local issues, regulations, events, organizations, etc. Localities have much of this information.
 * I had envisioned this sort of thing in the get local section- i.e. what is your town doing. However, it would be even better to have those actions compiled in this green movement section, with links to the individual programs in the get local category! Cassabel 17:53, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Greenhouse Gas Inventories
I would like to create a section with links to various local and national greenhouse gas inventories. It would also point people at the specific ways of calculating emissions so that they could start their own local inventories or learn to influence future community developments, eg land use or transportation decisions. I keep having conversations with various people and organizations about who does what, and I'd like to create a public space where this information can be maintained and shared.

See the Carbon emissions article for some content that I've added. I would like to be as specific as necessary, discussing, for example, what various fields in various national databases mean and so on, and since this wikia is declared to be consumer-friendly, I figured I'd check here first. There are lots of organizations that collect such information, but it's usually siloed. There is a mailing list (http://www.ghgnetwork.org/) with a web archive, but it's not nearly as usable as wiki. Let me know what you think.

(See my blog for an example of things I'm working on.)


 * Hi, Simonf, Looks excellent topic / content. I think it'd be great to have this, either here or (if anyone has a problem with that) over at Sustainable Community Action wiki Philralph @ sca21 08:18, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Philralph! I'll stay here for now and will move some content to SCA if someone thinks it's necessary. Is there a substantial difference between the two? --Simonf 12:26, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * That's great, as long as it's in one of the two. I'm still puzzling out your question myself. SCA had been going for 3 plus years when wikia invested (including seemingly quite a bit of staff time) in setting up this alternative or additional option. If they thought SCA has been getting it wrong somehow, they didn't seem to want to tell us how, and so far haven't seemed very willing to talk with us much at all. There may be some good 'wisdom of crowds' type reason why it's being done this (seemingly less connected) way but I must admit to struggling to see it fully as yet Philralph @ sca21 18:53, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Public Domain Content
The following are list of sites who's content is in the public domain and can be used by green.wikia.

Ekopedia and others...
I arrive and actually I do like most of the people create a new subject without being sure that there are none already talking about this... I am part of Ekopedia. It is a participative encyclopedia about alternative techniques... It started in French but it is now developing in many others languages...

Check Ekopedia

We earlier tryed to have a collaboration with Tiptheplanet... It did not work out... Pity so much dubble information...

Check TipThePlanet

On their Website I now discover Appropedia seems to be the same also...

Check Appropedia

I have to had this student initiative...

Check Demotech

So I feel a little bit sad to see so much person motivated but not working together... If you feel like talking about and trying to create synergie... mail me at olivier(a)kaospilots(dot)nl

Thank you

Capitalization
Should articles be capitalized like Nuclear Power? If this is so, should the title be referenced within the article using normal grammar? --Dragonc laws (talk ) 02:06, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

The only justification for not capitalizing titles that I have seen on wikia is that wikipedia doesn't. Nearly all the style guides I've seen reccommend capitalization, though they differ on what words to capitalize. I learned from reading the works of famous typographers that their primary concern in typefaces is readability, and readability is strongly tied to familiarity. I'd suggest we do what the vast majority of others do and adopt a capitalization style that is common. Grammar Girl did an informative article about it here. I'll paste a relevant paragraph here, but the article is well worth reading:

"The Grammar Girl website now uses Associated Press style, which I can also explain to writers by giving them a relatively short list of words that are not capitalized: “a,” “an,” “and,” “at,” “but,” “by,” “for,” “in,” “nor,” “of,” “on,” “or,” “so,” “the,” “to,” “up,” and “yet.” I considered using the more complicated Chicago style, but I found that having to figure out how words are being used is too difficult. It’s hard enough to get people to follow straightforward rules, and when I ask writers or even editors to figure out whether a preposition is being used adverbially or adjectivally before they decide to capitalize it, either they can’t do it or it’s so difficult that they don’t even bother to try." Yambub (talk) 13:36, January 6, 2015 (UTC)

WikiNode
This page set up to help with any interwiki collaboration Green wikia may become interested in. It'd be good to have a link to this from the sidebar - a good place is at the end of the community listing/headings. If Green wikia genuinely aspires to become 'central' then talking with potential allies has to be a part of this doesn't it? Philralph @ sca21 10:10, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi Phil I totally agree that we need to start working more collaboratively with sca21. I am having trouble though understanding the wikinode project? Is it a ways of creating a hub to organize all the sustainability released wikis across the web? Please let me know the best way to support this effort. angies (talk) 19:03, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi Angies, the WikiNode is more a beginning to help with possible future collaboration, a sort of list of who's out there. So for example I noticed a list of other wiki and other sites in lh col when signed out. I've added these to the wikinode, which of course focuses on wiki (other sites set up Green or sustainability rss feeds for). If there are other eg any listed on the sca wikinode you can just copy details across (didn't add renew energy as looks inactive). I tend to regard any that start editing and ask about collaborating as being collaborators. (Each wiki's wikinode contains a list that that wiki thinks appropriate for them eg sca and green wiki nodes don't necessarily have to be the same). Jimbo Wales dropped by recently to sca and talked about links and other stuff. Although its not essential it would be good if anyone from green wiki that sees stuff that perhaps ought to be on sca or at least linked to there, felt free to add at least some links. As part of ideas for Interwiki collaboration month I'm thinking of suggesting / starting some sort of table as to who tends to do what eg whilst sca covers all areas we perhaps have more on the uk than anyone else, whereas green might tend to get more on the USA (?), Ekopedia (French version) perhaps best starting place for French content, etc.

On 1 August 2008 (above) a suggestion or request was made for a link to a WikiNode in the sidebar. Am I correct in thinking only admins can do this? It look as if neither of the two admins, nor any of the 5 staff have replied.

Do you agree with having a link to a WikiNode in the Sidebar? Yes No

Why should it be necessary to set up a poll for something so relatively simple? Is it just me or is the lack of a link to special pages in the sidebar not as open and transparent as things ought to be? Philralph @ sca21 09:26, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Logo
Like the new logo! Philralph @ sca21 09:55, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * thanks! angies (talk) 02:13, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Public Launch and New Logo and Design
Hi Everyone, Wanted to let you guys know that tomorrow we are publicaly launching Wikia Green to the press. Jimmy has been doing interviews all day with outlets such as Tree Hugger, Grist, Cnet and Wired who will be posting stories tomorrow to go along with our release. I will publish the release here on the wiki tomorrow morning. We are hoping this added press attention brings in lots of new contributors who are excited to get to work! Please take extra care to welcome new contributors and show them the ropes. We are very exited by the progress this small community has made and are excited to spread the word!

You also might have noticed we gave Wikia Green a facelift this week. The creator of some great logos and skins for some of Wikia's largest wiki sites such as ffxi.wikia.com, and marvel.wikia.com, took a crack at building one for Wikia Green. I definitely think it gives the wiki more of a personality. Would love to hear any feedback you guys have! angies (talk) 02:13, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines for Posting About Your Green Business, Product, or Service
Hi there - A lot of regular contributors on this wiki own green businesses or sell green products and services and bring their welcome knowledge and insights to the articles here. However some also use the wiki as a way to more or less advertise themselves. While I personally love to learn about new stuff in the green space, I'd like to suggest the following guidelines to keep the quality of articles a top priority over personal promotion. Comments and suggestions are welcome! Mollyh 21:07, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * 1) Post to an appropriate page. The Green productspage is a compendium of green products and services, and is an appropriate place to post a brief summary. You may also want to describe product/service/business in more detail on your user page.
 * 2) Describe why your product/service/business is green using your best judgment. This is a green community, and people are very sensitive to greenwashing.
 * 3) Do not post personal contact information such as your email address in an article. It is fine to add this to your user page if you choose to do so, but this is considered inappropriate in an article itself.
 * 4) Do not categorize your user page so that it will show up on category pages for Environmental Issues, Organic Gardening, etc.
 * 5) Showcase your knowledge. The best way to gain trust is to create relevant content that adds value to the green wiki.
 * 6) If you are posting content that you wrote for your business's website, be sure to indicate the original location of the content and that you are posting it with permission if it is copyrighted content.
 * 7) Finally, if you would like to advertise to a targeted green audience, contact Advertising.

Site name
This always happens in a lot of wikis. What exactly is the name of this wiki? In the logo and the main page, it says "Wikia Green". In most other places, however, it is called "Green Wiki", such as in the name of this page and at MediaWiki:Sitetitle. So...what is it called? → ΑΧΧΟΝΝ fire  00:28, August 27, 2010 (UTC)

Share A Dream
Hello Green Wiki Community,

We are an NGO called Share A Dream, specialized in communication about other NGOs. Our goal is to promote local projects and initiatives around the globe to raise social awareness about causes that are far away from those who have the ability to help. To raise awareness about these problems, we use multimedia like videos and photos, which are posted on our blog, social media and website. This way, we help these organisations to find the volunteers, expertise and donations they need.

At the moment, we are at an early stage of our development (Share A Dream was created 2 months ago). We left to South America one month ago and already covered two projects in the suburbs of Buenos Aires and Cordoba. The first project page and video is going to come out on the 16th of February and for this occasion we need to reach as many people as we possibly can.

We had a look at your website and really enjoy reading many of the interesting subjects you discuss. Through your forum, you have a vast reach to a very large audience. If you like our project, it would be of an incredible help if you could post some content or article on our organisation with a link to our website and Facebook/Twitter on your page. If you are interested, we can send you the link to the video of the first project as soon as it comes out on the 16th, so you can lead your followers directly to it.

If you are interested to know more about us, here is the: Link to our website: https://www.share-a-dream.org/ Link to our Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/letsshareadream/

In the meantime, thank you a lot in advance for your help and support and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

Share A Dream

Share A Dream (talk) 10:38, February 16, 2016 (UTC)