I’d like to hear what others think about the idea of creating a Wiki on democratic economic planning? A Wiki is a website that would enable people in the INDEP community to collaboratively add and organise information on democratic planning in one place.
We already have the excellent resources on democratic planning https://www.democratic-planning.com/ and https://www.planningresearch.net/ so we’d need to think about how a Wiki would compliment or evolve them.
I think it’s a good idea. A wiki adds a digital first output alongside the books and journals already out there. It could also serve as an accessible science communication tool, helping nonexperts by presenting information in an ‘encyclopedic’ style:
“Encyclopedic style means the text is straight to the point, without needing to twist the truth or tell “lies for the children”. However, encyclopedia articles should also be easily understood by as general an audience as practical, avoiding the assumption of prerequisite knowledge and gratuitous use of specialized jargon and advanced technical notation: these shortcuts which save time and effort for experts can easily become barriers for the uninitiated.” [1]
This can also make it easier for readers to locate topics in relation to each other by ordering information, as Jason mentions. And it could provide more context and help make comparisons easier (for example, between different models of planning).
Of course, this would take a fair amount of effort.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:How_to_write_a_readable_article
A Wiki webpage is certainly good.
I like the idea in general, especially if it would have a strong focus on the “science communication” aspect that Jorge mentioned. The team behind the https://www.democratic-planning.com/ website wanted to evolve the website anyway for a while, it’s just time, energy and dynamism, which is missing on their side. I’m a bit split if we should do a) setting up a communication pipeline with the team that could then integrate new input into the existing website and change it or b) create an actual wiki in the classical sense, where everyone can contribute in a more decentralized way. We could also think about how we make the trade-off between both smaller, so that if we do b) the team of the democratic-planning website can take inspiration or just copy content from the wiki to integrate it to theirs.
It’s a great idea. I would be interested in contributing to a MVP of this. I think BookStack would be a good option in terms of implementation of the wiki, since it allows for multiple ways of personalization, i’ts open source, and work with specific-purpose plugins.
@Eric_Meier would you get in touch with the team behind the democratic-planning website and ask them to post their thoughts here?
The advantages of a wiki would be that it is designed to increase community collaboration and spread the workload.
Please count me in, whether for writing or translating. I’ve been thinking about it as well. We could also copy some articles to Wikipedia if necessary.
Great idea. After all, Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites.
It is a great idea. Unfortunately, my background is not economy. But I tried to draw attention to the fact that there is a direction of entropy in human civilization which in my opinion is pointing towards a shared network (wiki) with distributed ownership to map the entire supply chain and at the same time connecting the creators of value and the consumers to maximise equality and productivity.