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| foragemarkuplanguage [2010-09-10 19:04] – 86.95.48.238 | foragemarkuplanguage [2010-09-15 14:07] – 145.50.39.12 |
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| Foraging takes time, knowledge and a detailed understanding of an environment, it can't be done haphazardly. It makes sense for local communities to maintain their own applications limited to a few streets, a neighbourhood or a cryptoforest. In fact territories as large as Utrecht (a medium sized city) are already much too big to exhaustively document all its edible plants. But this is why the search and documentation is open to all you will say but if open source teaches anything it is the fact that a 'community of users' will not form around an empty product. The data must be rich to be meaningful and it must be meaningful for others to contribute, critical mass needs a lot of initial mass. | Foraging takes time, knowledge and a detailed understanding of an environment, it can't be done haphazardly. It makes sense for local communities to maintain their own applications limited to a few streets, a neighbourhood or a cryptoforest. In fact territories as large as Utrecht (a medium sized city) are already much too big to exhaustively document all its edible plants. But this is why the search and documentation is open to all you will say but if open source teaches anything it is the fact that a 'community of users' will not form around an empty product. The data must be rich to be meaningful and it must be meaningful for others to contribute, critical mass needs a lot of initial mass. |
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| What is needed is a uniform way to share data. Different projects have different needs and objectives but we can all agree that plant name (latin and vernacular), location (gps coordinates) and time of observation are key, the name of the observer and a description field are useful. Other interesting factoids like taxonomic data, the most likely time to harvest, issues with food safety, recipes, medical uses, but also known problems with pollution and/or ownership in a given area could all be generated from this data from other (local) databases. | What I seem to be saying is that the technical part has been solved many times, but that the social part, the creation of a good community, is lagging behind. As is only fitting for a time still maddingly obsessed with the same old post-ice-age neolithical prejudices. |
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| | The need to share data we can all agree on. Different projects have different needs and objectives but we can all agree that plant name (latin and vernacular), location (gps coordinates) and time of observation are key, the name of the observer and a description field are useful. Other interesting factoids like taxonomic data, the most likely time to harvest, issues with food safety, recipes, medical uses, but also known problems with pollution and/or ownership in a given area could all be generated from this data from other (local) databases. |
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| Every project might try to solve the same problems (from a technical point of view) but they are all doing it using the same framework: google.maps. The data of the Urban Edibles Amsterdam website, for instance, can be downloaded as an RSS-file([[http://maps.google.nl/maps/ms?hl=nl&ie=UTF8&t=h&source=embed&msa=0&output=georss&msid=117889007389820522179.00045cc416710da996793]]) and this already solves some aspects of the problem, but with some loose ends. What follows is just me thinking aloud: some notes on a quasi-RSS for foraging: FML: Forage Mark-Up Language. | Every project might try to solve the same problems (from a technical point of view) but they are all doing it using the same framework: google.maps. The data of the Urban Edibles Amsterdam website, for instance, can be downloaded as an RSS-file([[http://maps.google.nl/maps/ms?hl=nl&ie=UTF8&t=h&source=embed&msa=0&output=georss&msid=117889007389820522179.00045cc416710da996793]]) and this already solves some aspects of the problem, but with some loose ends. What follows is just me thinking aloud: some notes on a quasi-RSS for foraging: FML: Forage Mark-Up Language. |
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| Surely there are better ways to do it. IF AT ALL: should newcomers/outsiders be allowed to plunder the limited resources of a local community? Or publicize the existence of such resources? | Surely there are better ways to do it. IF AT ALL: should newcomers/outsiders be allowed to plunder the limited resources of a local community? Or publicize the existence of such resources? |
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145.50.39.11