What is the How To Live Wiki?
From How To Live Wiki
The How To Live Wiki extends the Wikipedia movement to include three kinds of knowledge not included in Wikipedia:
- Sustainable Development and Disaster Relief How Tos
- Environmental Best Practices
- Personal Decision Support Tools
It is hosted by Vinay Gupta, and all IP is GNU FDL, for compatibility with Wikipedia.
The How To Live Wiki uses categories in a manner much like tags are used in systems like Flickr to allow structured browsing through the knowledge base, and to provide clear and consistent conceptual metadata about the status of an item in the database.
One critical conceptual difference between Wikipedia and the How To Live Wiki is the concept of Development Status. DS simply tags an item as either Speculative, Experimental or Proven, indicating how mature the knowledge about the item is. This makes it possible to discuss material which is not yet fact, and to encourage the testing of promising ideas, while effectively separating the genuinely mature ideas from the rest.
I hope that in the long run, the project may become a resource for field workers to access a knowledge base which is both relevant and freely available. One approach to this is documented in the Provisional Research Workflow.
The project is in its very early stages. I am currently in the process of writing the How To Add Content guide.
Please write to me at hexayurt@gmail.com if you would like to participate, or just find out more.
--Vinay Gupta 13:38, 8 October 2006 (PDT)
