Difference between revisions of "RBE10K/Contributors"

Revision as of 09:16, 14 February 2013

RBE10K Project Participation is open to anyone who has an interest, regardless of an intention to live in the experimental community itself (i.e. be one of the Brave 10,000. This Wiki is the main platform for the engineering of the systems and methodologies that will support the community, and anyone is welcome to participate in one of many ways. The word engineering doesn't mean a contributor has to be an engineer, but simply a contributor of ideas, skills, and general information that can be useful for the project. Any information that is too loosely formatted for the standards of this Wiki would better be added in personal pages; that information can later be picked-up to enrich information properly formatted and organised in main wiki pages. Anyone can create new pages, however it is advisable that in doing so, conventions are followed for readability and homogeneity, so that the Wiki has a stable look, very much like the Wikipedia.

Getting started

Participating in the project begins by registering as a user of the wiki, either through the normal registration form or using a Facebook account by clicking on the link on the top-right of the page. The current contributors to the project are registered in the RBE10K Project Participants page, and anyone is invited to add themselves to the list. In line with the Project's values of openness, honesty and individuality, we request that each contributor create a personal wiki user page with their own understanding of an RBE and the objectives sought after through participation in RBE10K.

Why using this wiki and not other tools?

The reason for using a Wiki instead of, for example, a perltree, is because, even though it is not as visually stunning or an easy to read interface, it is a platform that is massively cooperative, just like the Wikipedia. External sources of information are great, but they offer no chances to improve upon them, so it is better to dump information found in external sources (whilst maintaining proper referencing and acknowledgement to those sources in the most academic way possible, just like the Wikipedia) so that other contributors can comment or expand on them, or even correct errors if there were any.

MediaWiki, the open source platform that this Wiki uses (which is the same the Wikipedia uses, and it is built in conjunction by the Wikipedia foundation) offers many great features for cooperation. Some of these features are part of the tool itself, like an ability to register as a user, create personal pages, communicate with other users privately, create or edit pages, list changes made by others, be notified by email when watched pages are edited to (help follow up, be notified of new material being added, or ensure quality of the information is maintained to this Wiki's preferred standards), discuss the contents of any page, and many more. The platform also offers plugins that can extend the features, such as the ability to login using a Facebook account, or share pages on a variety of social networks, or extend functionality such as merging users that were created twice accidentally, or creating tables with information spread through several pages.

But something very important is that the tool allows for setting up practices for maintenance and collaboration, it allows for self documenting, and grouping pages by category. These practices are, perhaps, the most important part of the Wikipedia, and are not embedded or managed automatically by the website itself, but rather allow the contributors to structure the information in such a way that it is easy to maintain, edit, monitor, ensure quality is appropriate, and ensure the discussion pages are organised in a default and convenient format for readability and workability. All these practices can be described in the Wiki itself, and heavy duty contributors would be better prepared if they read, keep in mind, and abide these practices. Currently, however, no practices have been documented in this website, and this Wiki is borrowing the practices established by the Wikipedia. If you want to know more, please check out Wikipedia's practices for editing (see Wikipedians).

Who can participate of the RBE10K?

Everybody is welcome to participate of The RBE10K Project. Nevertheless, there are a number of requirements that need to be met in order to have a positive (rather than a negative) participation. Should those requirements not be met, there are plenty of other similar projects that may be more adequate for participation instead, such as The Venus Project, Transition Towns, or even a political party or a church.

Participation of the experiment as a settler

The most important aspect settlers/experiment volunteers must consider is that the viability of the project depends entirely on the commitment of every volunteer to make the project work, i.e. a commitment to voluntarily learn about and follow the rules for participation. Rules are simple and commonsensical, however having been raised in a system that does not promote nor particularly encourage personal responsibility, the commitment must not only be sincere, but also aware of the consequences for the future of the project in taking the rules too lightly.

RBE10K cities would require each newcomer to bring some of the necessary materials and resources to help build the community, for a value of roughly 10,000 units of their currency (€, £, US/NZ/CA $, or roughly equivalent), non-refundable (except on RBE10K experiment failure, in which proceeds from the sale of all materials and resources would be evenly refunded), and as per the requirements specified in the knowledgebase, using a system to establish allotments and administration priorities. Every newcomer would also be required to agree to a simple list of terms and conditions for life in a RBE, including giving up rights to property, trade, blame, personal opinion outside matters of personal preference, etc. Such terms and conditions are essential for becoming one of the brave 10,000. Settlers would also be encouraged to commit to a minimum of two years participation in the community, while engaged primarily in assisting with one or more of the three main objectives of the city.

Participation by talking about RBE10K on Maker forums

There are many DIY, Maker and Hacker communities around the world. Getting some of those people to join RBE10K would raise the chance of the project because a true RBE needs lots of technical talent. In the spreadsheet you can see I looked up RBE10K members on Facebook, and matched them each with a DIY group, then I noted everything down to keep track. Ideally you would match RBE10K member and DIY group locations, keeping everything in one spreadsheet. I hope you want to join this little PR effort.

Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ah17T_zD896VdE1pLUJidVlUeTFzOW03QzNkLWY1dVE&usp=sharing

Website with list of forums: http://makezine.com/groups/index.csp

Look me up on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/wouter.drucker

--wouter.drucker (talk) 22:16, 13 February 2013 (UTC)