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 3,256 edits of 582 pages in 147 articles and 207 registered users in this wiki community. Here are the popular pages, showing how many hits they've had.
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 with similar aims and interests:
Water Wiki on Wikia (currently focused on Colorado and California)
Akvopedia, a wiki devoted to water sanitation and water projects around the world
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.
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.
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:
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:
Notes
- ↑ Compare Emily Gould's account of her life as a blogger, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/magazine/25internet-t.html?hp
