Appropedia

A website for collaborative solutions in sustainability, poverty reduction and international development. A major focus and lens through which these challenges are viewed is that of Appropriate Technology. In particular, the Appropedia philosophy is one of Open Source Appropriate Technology (OSAT), and the site plays an important part in the nascent OSAT movement.

"Appropedia is built upon the remarkable success of wiki-based infrastructures. Whereas existing wikis (Wikipedia is perhaps the most widely known) have focused on the power of collaborative web-based information centralization and developing collaboration policies to make that information solid, referenced and reliable for capturing what is well-established, Appropedia is expanding this concept to include collaborative research, development and problem-solving by incorporating real-world experiences of both amateurs and experts backed by policies that enable critiques, commentary and scoring of solutions.

The "trimtab" concept of maximum results from minimum effort is engendered in Appropedia by the leverage that can be achieved by sharing of information at zero cost to the authors or readers, and by enabling the spontaneous development of problem solving teams of willing collaborators. This is key! The Wikipedias of the world, which focus more on well established facts, will tend to encourage a culture of “let’s just ask the Internet.” By contrast, Appropedia will have a counter tendency of encouraging “I wonder if I can improve on this solution.” This is the state that Appropedia seeks to achieve." (Appropedia:Strategy, which is a value of wiki.)

See Also

• AshokaTech
• Open Source Ecology

Organization

{{{brief_description}}}
Name:	Appropedia
Type:
Founded:	April 2006
Founders:
Location:
Areas Served:	Global
Focus:
Methods:
Homepage:	http://Appropedia.org
Appropedia Partner: