Difference between revisions of "RBE10K/Contributors"

Revision as of 12:53, 26 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 in 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.

Current estimations^{[citation needed]} let assume that a ticket for unlimited access to the resources of a RBE10K city will be able to be purchased for AU$10,000 or an equivalent amount in other currencies. The money would be used to purchase all required resources to build a self-sustaining community. The ticket includes accommodation, food, Internet access, education, transportation, entertainment and much more for the whole lifetime of the project. For two years this is AU$14 per day, and if the experiment is successful, extending the validity of the ticket would be free.

There could also be limited tickets, sponsored tickets (ticket for a third person with specific duties) and general donations. All types of tickets and donations could be managed using a Crowd funding platform. What happens with available resources if the experiment fails has to be defined in the terms for participation. Evenly refunding proceeds from the sale of all materials and resources seems obvious.

The terms and conditions for life in a RBE city are simple and adaptable. One of the fundamental values of a RBE is to always strive for the best possible solution. All other values, terms and conditions are subject to change, including constitutional agreements. The brave 10,000 settlers who define and follow the rules of the first experimental city will primarily be engaged in assisting with one or more of the main objectives of the city in their two (or more) years of participation.

Talk about RBE10K on Maker and DIY 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.

Become an educator

http://www.facebook.com/groups/RbeCourseMakers/

The goal of the course maker group is to take the information that is available on the internet and rearrange it so that it can be better digested. The group gets its name from https://www.udemy.com/. Other tools are Youtube and Wikipedia. topdocumentaryfilms.com looks interesting as well. Here is the first course to get a taste: https://www.udemy.com/minerals/. You will see that making these kinds of courses is easy and rewarding.