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What is the Nearshore Wiki?
The nearshore wiki is an open non-governmental platform hosted by Western Washington University to support information sharing and collaboration among restoration practitioners in Puget Sound coastal ecosystems, for the purpose of adaptively managing nearshore ecosystem protection and restoration actions. The structure of the wiki is developed and maintained by WWU and a core group of community members (the moderator council) By maintaining a structure that can be used by local on-the-ground efforts we maintain the focus and relevance of the Wiki to improving the effectiveness and efficiency of nearshore ecosystem protection and restoration, and increase interaction between academic communities, and the restoration and protection communities of practice. Individual agencies may find the content and analysis produced in the wiki very relevant to their need to inform management and decision making with best-available science. These agencies may independently use the analysis developed therein to form policy, or may mandate participation in the wiki as part of agency contracts.
Who owns the Wiki?
All content is distributed under a creative commons attribution share-alike license. The ‘inner wiki’ is edited and maintained by the moderator council, and is primarily used to organize wiki content to maintain coherence and legibility. The ‘middle and outer wiki’ is developed by the wiki community, with varied levels of constraint over authorship regulated by a social contract. Our objective is to allow editing in a way that supports the integrity of individual work, while allowing for vigorous critique within a community of peers. Wiki content explicitly does not reflect the opinion, policy or recommendation of any agency, and references the importance of peer reviewed scientific literature and systematic and transparent methods observation (though not necessarily limited to measurement).
How is the wiki structured?
The wiki uses a hierarchy of 'nameplaces' and categories to increase the legibility, accessibility, and applicability of content. This hierarchy is organized around concepts developed by the Puget Sound Nearshore Ecosystem Restoration Program and the Estuary and Salmon Restoration Program who are provide agency leadership in adaptive management of nearshore ecosystem restoration and protection.
The inner wiki includes the home page, four pages for each of the Puget Sound systems described by Shipman (2008): River delta, Beach, Embayment, and Rocky Shoreline. Each system page identifies and links to a set of topic pages. These topics reflect the elements of a conceptual model that introduce the greatest uncertainty into the selection and development of protection and restoration actions. These pages are edited through the agreement of the council of moderators with the intent of providing a clear science-based policy support to programs working in the nearshore.
The middle wiki is more dynamic, and describes adaptive management objectives identified under each topic. An adaptive management objective is a specific predictive capacity that is important for reducing uncertainty about a particular topic, for example within the delta system, under the vegetation topic is the objective: “predict future delta vegetation based on salinity, inundation regime, and soils.” Once an objective page is created, it is edited it is moderated by a workgroup of individuals that are actively working on the issue, and are invited by the moderator council. The objective page attempts to answer three criteria are currently used by nearshore programs to drive funding decisions (ESRP 2009):
1. What is the current status of our ability to make an accurate and precise prediction? 2. How challenging is it to increase our predictive capacity, in terms of the duration and intensity of investigation required? 3. What is the anticipated policy benefit of increasing this predictive capacity in terms of our selection or development of actions?
The outer wiki is composed of SITES, DOCUMENTS, EFFORTS, and SPECIAL TOPICS. These may be directly linked to by inner and middle wiki pages, and in addition are categorized by SITE and TOPIC to create links between the inner wiki and the outer wiki to support the development of automated link tables.
How does the kind of page affect editing and content?
Each type of page follows a template. These templates improve the legibility in wiki content.
The invitation process for wiki users to edit a page is also determined by template. Some pages are open, some are moderated and some are closed or private. Where page content is not open for edit, there is always an associated critique page, which IS open to edit and provides a forum for unconstrained critique of the associated page requiring invitation.
What is the purpose of the various page templates?
The nearshore Wiki currently uses seven page templates,
SYSTEMS Edit by invitation of Moderator Council Within the inner wiki there are four system pages based on the division of the Puget Sound nearshore landscape into physiographic systems: River Deltas, Beaches, Embayments, and Rocky Shorelines (Shipman 2008). System pages typically contain maps and information about the distribution of those systems, a conceptual model of system dynamics, a list of important adaptive management topics, and a brief justification for the importance of each topic, and links to any sites, efforts, or documents categorized by that system. TOPICS Edit by invitation of Moderator Council Topic pages are essentially living white papers, documenting in brief our understanding of a particular aspect of a system that is valued as an ecosystem service for example, forage fish beach spawning. Topic texts may cite to documents or efforts to describe our understanding of dynamics and functions. Topic pages culminate in a list of adaptive management objectives. OBJECTIVES Edit by invitation of objective workgroup Each objective provides a springboard for investigation. Objective pages describe a particular predictive capacity, evaluate the potential policy value of improving that capacity, and link to specific efforts underway to address an objective. Specific objectives maybe identified as a priority for funding programs. A group of interested individuals are identified to be co-editors of objective pages based on their interest and activity in a particular objective. SITES Free edit A site page describes restoration and protection sites, typically at the scale of a physiographic system, for example, Nisqually Estuary. DOCUMENTS Free edit (initial description only edited by author) What a PDF document and/or a data set is uploaded to the wiki it is associated with a document page. The page includes a statement by the document author that is controlled by the author, and a critique and discussion of the document authored by the wiki community. EFFORTS Edit by invitation of effort workgroup An effort page describes a particular line of investigation that may be associated with one or more sites, objectives, or documents. Effort pages are authored by the Investigators to provide a platform for sharing information. SPECIAL TOPICS Free edit An additional content page is created to contain information that is more dynamic or uncertain, or where more open input is requested. An ST page is typically linked to one or more SYSTEM, TOPIC, or OBJECTIVE pages. An ST page may be created where several different topic or objective pages refer to a particular set of important phenomena or observations, but where repetition would clutter content… for example salmonid dispersal and migration in the nearshore, or forage fish life history. The Valued Ecosystem Component white papers published by PSNERP are good examples of Special Topics.
CRITIQUES Free edit – typically dialog Critique pages are pages that are associated with every wiki page that is closed to editing. In includes comments and ideas about how to improve the page in question, and is open to all members of the wiki community. Authors of closed pages are anticipated to respond to critiques. How do I edit the Wiki? Editing privileges are managed by a social contract (rather than permissions). A text box at the top-right of each page describes the an y page flags and reminders of critique and editing protocols associated with the social contract, and a link to the social contract page. While technically any user can edit a page, some page templates are ‘owned’ by identified users and editing is restricted under the social contract. All edits are attributed to specific users in the edit history, and page moderators can receive an email notification when edits occur, so violation of the social contract can be easily addressed. Such a system of self management takes advantage of the edit log and notification functions of WikiMedia software, and engenders communication, mutual respect, and fluid adjustment of privileges without unnecessary intervention. Any user can create a SPECIAL TOPIC page, add to a CRITIQUE, or start a description of their own EFFORT, and categorize their work to link it back to the inner wiki, without invitation. Registration is moderated and limited to individuals with a verified and transparent real world identity, and can be terminated for those unable to meet the needs of the social contract. Member ship is limited to individuals participating in the restoration or protection economy or related academic fields. What is the inner wiki? The inner wiki is made of a set of system and topic pages that are edited and maintained primarily by specific volunteer moderators. The inner wiki is not intended to contain content, but rather to organize and show relationships and summarize other pages. Each SYSTEM and TOPIC page in the inner wiki is associated with a category that can be applied to any other wiki page. These pages are edited on a periodic basis to reflect the addition of new topics or objectives into the organizing framework. While wiki members may create new pages to describe their sites, efforts, special topics and documents, and may categorize their articles, they ask permission from work groups or the moderator council to incorporate those new topics into the SYSTEM, TOPIC and OBJECTIVE pages that fundamentally organize the wiki for the purpose of providing decision support to agency policy. What if I disagree with the content of a page I am not invited to edit? Critique pages are associated with every page where invitation is required by the social contract. Wiki community members may provide critique freely within constraints of the social contract, which is intended to focus on encouraging dispassionate analysis based on observations and evidence. Workgroups and the moderator council are expected to respond to some extent to critique comments. Should a substantive technical critique be developed, it should at minimum be fleshed out as a special topic page and linked from the page in question. What happens when two wiki members cannot agree on how to edit an open page? If there is an unresolved disagreement over an editorial choice, the standard protocol is to have a fork in the discussion. Two competing ideas are presented by the different individuals. Those diverging ideas may terminate the article and result in creation of two new pages to reflect different lines of reasoning. Thus the structure of the wiki reflects divergence in reasoning among the wiki community, leaving the reader to develop their own opinion based on the quality and weight of evidence provided, and the critique
What are article flags?
Members of the moderator council can apply flags to articles that could use work to improve their quality or improve consistency with the nearshore wiki social contract. This encourages wiki members to make edits, while accentuating the importance of the critique content.
