Water Wiki:Community Portal

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Who can participate?

Anyone is welcome to the Water Wiki community; we value diverse points of view on water, water policy and water law. However, we will try to enforce some norms, as set out in the Guidelines for articles and edits. 

How do I participate?

If you would like to edit or write a new article, you must first create an account, and you are also encouraged to say a little about yourself on your own personal page (which you can find by clicking on your login id on the top menu line to the right of the browser window). 

Who's participating?

As of now, there are 6,793 edits of 1,191 pages in 350 articles and 501 registered users in this wiki community. On April 24, 2010, we passed 5000 edits..

wiki growth


.Here are the popular pages, showing how many hits they've had.  Here is the Google analytics report on visitor numbers from May 2008 - May 2009. Here is the report from May 2009 - May 2010 (missing a period in late summer 2009 when we changed server locations).


Why bother to edit or write new content here?

This site will be an important source of information for policy makers who are considering changes in water law and policy. Plus, it's a great way to learn and to share your learning. Some people wonder about the difference between a wiki and a blog. At the margins, the two forms can merge,  but philosophically Water Wiki proposes there is this difference: aim to hone, not spew.[1] The ambitious hope for Water Wiki is that it not just help illuminate water issues, but that it help us evolve toward a pluralistic community of expertise-- in other words, that it help build a bridge between what many believe are three irreconciliable approaches to governance: pluralism, governance as a vector of the clash of diverse interests; communitarianism, governance as enforcement of community norms; and expertise, governance as the rational application of scientific thinking to public problems.

How can I leave suggestions for improving this site?

The discussion page for this Community Portal is where you're encouraged to post to do items for the wiki as a whole...


Other sites of interest

Here are some other wikis, blogs and web 2.0 sites with similar aims and interests:

Atlanta Water Shortage wiki

Akvopedia, a wiki devoted to water sanitation and water projects around the world

Community of Practice  on Water- and UNDP-related activities in Central and South-Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia.

Great Lakes Wiki

IWA WaterWiki, a wiki for the global water community focused on water, wastewater and environmental science and management

San Diego Watershed Wiki - A collaborative tool to disseminate the region's water quality data and encourage public participation.

ScotusWiki -- this link takes you to the Entergy Case, an interesting 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case

WaterCrunch -- an excellent blog on water issues, this one focused on the Southeast, from Robert Osborne in Clemson, S.C.

Water SISweb-- an aggregation site that brings together articles from many places on water resources

Water Wiki on Wikia (currently focused on Colorado and California)

Water Wired -- an excellent blog on water issues from Michael E. 'Aquadoc' Campana, Director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds (water.oregonstate.edu) at Oregon State University.

Who are the star contributors so far?

Todd Nicolet and John Gullo of the School of Government set up the site. Richard Whisnant, Jeff Hughes and Sarah Bruce were the first contributors. But the community really came together in a barnraising in mid-January 2008. And the first real stars of the barnraisers were Shadi Eskaf and  Leslie Kleczek. And so Shadi and Leslie are our inaugural barnstars.

BarnStar.gif
BarnStar.gif

Those of us on the UNC/Duke Water Allocation Study team wondered how long it would take for someone outside the team to post their thoughts and do some work on the wiki--and how constructive the contributions would be. Our questions were answered in the sixth week of the wiki with excellent contributions by Sydneypaul and Riverfox on the interbasin transfer discussion page, and elsewhere. For us, their contributions felt like sweet raindrops in a deep drought. Thus they are our inaugural rainstars.

RainStar2.gif
RainStar2.gif


Sybil Tate began adding great content in february 2008 (first use of tables!) and James Bryan begin contributing his thoughts on coastal stormwater, along with other aspects of coastal water management. Sarah Bruce begin a new chapter for the wiki, on stormwater education, one of her special areas of expertise. Hence three new stars:

RainStar2.gif
RainStar2.gif
RainStar2.gif


Ian Hadgraft and Joel Galbraith did an awesome job with great speed in the redesign of the main page, September 2008. The main page pre-redesign was looking really ragged. Two more stars:

RainStar2.gif
RainStar2.gif



Notes

  1. Compare Emily Gould's account of her life as a blogger, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/magazine/25internet-t.html?hp
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