Introduction Pages
This platform is a collection of interlinked pages. Every page contains one package of information, depending on its page type. We have three page types to describe our social systems: Workgroups, Efforts, and Products. The Place page type is used to describe collective knowledge about a discrete geography, from a neighborhood park like Grass Lakes Nature Reserve to the South Puget Sound. By defining place we are developing standard ways of talking about the Salish Sea and surrounding lands. Based on our academic traditions, we also organize knowledge around Topics where we aim to develop deeper understanding of whole systems by analyzing specific parts or attributes. For example we might try to understand an embayment by studying the oscillation of tides, the chemistry of the mud, its use by birds, etc.
All these page types interact. On a wiki it is easy to create a link between pages. Instead of repeating everything there is to know about Herring on a page about Cherry Point Driftcell we separate general understanding of Herring as a species on a Herring page, and details about the nuances of the Cherry Point Driftcell are on that page. Each page then links to the other. The goal is not to have a complete story on each page, because the only complete story is the whole ecosystem. Our primary interest is to collect and organize questions and evidence in a way that is well-structured.
Use our Style Guide for creating and editing pages. We introduce each page type, and catalog existing pages of that type on five pages:
Workgroups are what we call a group of people that works together over time with a shared purpose. Most of the workgroups we know are either public or private corporations of some kind. We are interested in what they do, where they operate, the resources they use, and how they relate to other workgroups. Workgroups undertake Efforts and create Products. For large institutions like the US Federal Government, we describe them at the largest scale that is useful (typically agencies) and only dive into more detail when useful.
Efforts are what we call a program of action over time intended to achieve a particular effect. Our sense of an effort is confused by the development of projects seeking funding, which are often parts of a larger effort. If you describe every single action as its own effort you loose site of the larger aims, and that is our goal here. We want to clump projects into efforts so we can see the big picture.
Products are the most important informational artifacts that Workgroups create when undertaking Efforts. These generally include various documents, graphics, websites and datasets. The platform can serve as an archive for these products (where allowed by the owner), or can point to another archive.
Places describe geographic locations of interest. On the platform we systematically describe places at different scales. Within the Salish Sea Bioregion, we identify Regions and within those Catchments and within those Landforms. We refer to the jurisdictional lines of Counties, Districts and Municipalities with Workgroup pages.
Topics describe the atomized knowledge of the academic worldview. We organize our generalized knowledge into categories, starting with a division between Anthropogenic Topics (about the activities and ideas of humans) and Ecological Topics (whereby we try to understand the dynamics of places and other-than-human beings).
