Glossary
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Administrator- Administrator is a person (or persons) who can edit protected pages and protect and unprotect pages. Protection of a page means that a non-administrator cannot modify it. Learn more about the different roles on WiserEarth.
Alternate Name- Sometimes organizations are known by a different name, a shorter version, an acronym, or another name in a different language – if your organization has an alternate name, please enter it in the 'Alternate Name' field when entering the name of your organization.
Area of Focus (AOF)- A comprehensive categorization (taxonomy) of all of the different spheres of activity relating to the environmental and social justice fields. All entities entered into the WiserEarth database (organizations, people, resources, events, jobs) can be tagged with several areas of focus. This tagging allows a user to find organizations, people, resources etc., within their Area of Focus.
For each Area of Focus there is a portal, where a user can see a collection of information specific to their topic of interest. Any recent postings (new organizations, resources, people, events, jobs) that have been tagged to an Area of Focus will appear in the respective portal automatically.
Article- Any organization, resource, person, job, event, practice or wikipage on WiserEarth.
Avatar- A digital representation of you. You choose a symbol to represent who you are on WiserEarth. Your avatar may be a cartoon, animal, other character, or a photo of yourself.
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Browsing- Searching by broad category rather than using specific and focused search terms.
Blog- A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and are displayed in reverse chronological order.
Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news, while some blogs function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of most early blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.
The term "blog" is a portmanteau, or, in other words, a blend of the words web and log (Web log). "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. (Defined by Wikipedia)
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Civil Society- Civil society is broadly defined as the third sector of society — voluntary civic and social organizations and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society alongside the state and the market. When most people use the term civil society, they are generally referring to a category of organisations called "non-profit organisations", or more simply "the non-profit or charity sector".
Comments- Comments are a way for WiserEarth users to respond publically to any information or content on WiserEarth by adding text at the bottom of each page.
Community Guidelines- WiserEarth Community Guidelines are the courtesy and interaction code for all WiserEarth users.
Community Portals- The community portals are separate from the Area of Focus portals, in that they create a space for communities already in formation to gather, share information, and grow their networks. These might be regional communities, global networks, alliances, or coalitions that need a place to convene and collaborate. WiserEarth will have a template of this portal and some of its initial features soon.
Community-based Organization (CBO)- A CBO is a group of individuals organized by and for a community for a specific purpose. The community can be geographical, (e.g. a town) or have a common interest, (e.g. organic food systems) and is grassroots in nature.
Contact Email- When entering information about an organization, you will be asked to provide an email address for the key contact at the organization who will deal with external inquiries (e.g. jsmith@wiserearth.org).
Contact Name- When entering information about an organization, you will be asked if you can provide the name of the key contact at the organization who would deal with external enquiries.
Content Standards- See Content Standards
CopyLeft- The information on this site has been "copylefted", the classification of items and content that deems them free for public use. Copyleft means all of its content is available for reproduction as long as it remains available free of charge or penalty. See Terms & Conditions of using WiserEarth
Creative Commons- Offering your work under a Creative Commons license does not mean giving up your copyright. It means offering some of your rights to any member of the public but only on certain conditions.
What conditions? All Creative Common licenses require that you give attribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
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Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.
Example: Jane publishes her photograph with an Attribution license, because she wants the world to use her pictures provided they give her credit. Bob finds her photograph online and wants to display it on the front page of his website. Bob puts Jane's picture on his site, and clearly indicates Jane's authorship.
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Noncommercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only
Examples: Gus publishes his photograph on his website with a Noncommercial license. Camille prints Gus' photograph. Camille is not allowed to sell the print photograph without Gus's permission.
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No Derivative Works. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
Example: Sara licenses a recording of her song with a No Derivative Works license. Joe would like to cut Sara's track and mix it with his own to produce an entirely new song. Joe cannot do this without Sara's permission (unless his song amounts to fair use).
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Share Alike. You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.
Example: Gus's online photo is licensed under the Noncommercial and Share Alike terms. Camille is an amateur collage artist, and she takes Gus's photo and puts it into one of her collages. This Share Alike language requires Camille to make her collage available on a Noncommercial plus Share Alike license. It makes her offer her work back to the world on the same terms Gus gave her. (source: creative commons)
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Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.
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Deliberation- The second step in the democratic process on WiserEarth. Users may participate in any of the voting and revising of the issues and features.
Discussion forum- An online space where people can debate and discuss issues that interest them, such as which organizations should be included in WiserEarth, or the addition of new areas of focus to WiserEarth. People can post questions and comments and continue a discussion with multiple people.
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Editor- The basic level of involvement with the WiserEarth community. Editors can log on, add, and edit information on WiserEarth. Through continued involvement in the WiserEarth community, editors can become administrators.
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Foundation- A philanthropic organization that offers funds, support services, or other ‘in-kind' support to other non-profit organizations.
Flagging and Reporting- Flagging and reporting are the method of highlighting and responding to inappropriate behavior or information on WiserEarth. For more information on flagging and reporting, click here.
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History (button)- When you are signed in, you can access the history button at the top left corner of most pages. In order to monitor and revert the wiki text section of any page in WiserEarth, the history button is available to all editors to view and compare changes that have been made. Every edit that is made on WiserEarth is recorded and referenced locally through that page's history button. You can access the page's entire history by simply clicking the arrow or the word history in the bar at the top of the page.
HTML (HyperText Markup Language)- HTML is the predominant markup language for the creation of web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document — by denoting certain text as headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on — and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of labels (known as tags), created by greater-than signs (>) and less-than signs (<). (Defined by Wikipedia)
Hub- Hubs are points of convergence for all the Areas of Focus within a single geographic region or existing network. These are an alternate method of organizing all the content in WiserEarth. Instead of arrangement by subject matter, ie: Areas of Focus, the material is arranged by the needs of a regional community or existing network. See: San Francisco Bay Area Hub.
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Internal messages- These are messages sent within WiserEarth between community members to ask a question, for help, or to connect with other users who are interested in the same areas of focus and issues.
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Keywords- The keywords for each Area of Focus make it possible to search more efficiently. These words can be updated with current and proper nouns to make the search for information residing in the given AOF better. Keywords are not Tags, although they are sometimes used interchangeably.
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Live chat- Live chat enables the WiserEarth community to chat online in real time with multiple users within the WiserEarth chat room. Live chat can be used to ask other community members for help with adding content or for other questions you might have.
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Main Email- When entering information about an organization, you will be asked to provide a general contact email address for the organization. (e.g. help@wiserearth.org).
MySQL open source database- MySQL is an open source relational database management system that uses structured query language (SQL) for adding, sorting and processing information within the database.
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Name- Name represents the full name of the organization. When asked to give a name of an organization (which is a required field), please also include the organization acronym here if there is one, (e.g. Pan-African Women's Organization PAWO).
Network / Coalition/ Collective- A group of people/organizations that are connected and are collaborating on a particular issue.
Non-governmental Organization (NGO)- A non-profit group that is independent of the government.
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Open ID- OpenID is a decentralized digital identity system, in which any user's online identity is given by URL (such as for a blog or a home page) or an XRI in the latest version, and can be verified by any server running the protocol.
On OpenID-enabled sites, Internet users don't need to create and manage a new account for every site before being granted access. Instead, they only need to be able to authenticate with a trusted site that supports OpenID, called the identity provider (or IdP, sometimes called an i-broker). The identity provider can then confirm ownership of the user's OpenID identifier to other OpenID-enabled sites, called relying parties or RPs. Unlike most single sign-on architectures, OpenID does not specify the authentication mechanism. Therefore, the strength of an OpenID login depends on how much a relying party knows about the authentication policies of the identity provider. Without such knowledge, OpenID is not meant to be used on sensitive accounts (banking, e-commerce transactions, etc.), but if an identity provider uses strong authentication, OpenID can be used for all types of transactions.
OpenID is increasingly gaining adoption amongst large sites, with organizations like Wikipedia and Technorati announcing that they will support OpenID. (Source: answers.com)
Out of Scope- This term describes an organization that the WiserEarth community has decided does not fit within the parameters of WiserEarth's directory guidelines. "Out of Scope" does not imply a judgement on the value of an organization, but rather how well its mission and work line up with the standards for inclusion set by the WiserEarth community.
In the beginning of this project, Natural Capital Institute NCI set out to catalog all of the sustainable civil society organizations on our planet. This was done with certain parameters of mission and work as guidelines for admission into the database. Presently those guidelines are documented in the WiserEarth Content Standards and for change and reflection on a discussion page.
Open source- Open source denotes that the origins of a product are publicly accessible in part or in whole (defined by Wikipedia), as governed by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), which makes the code and the application freely available for the good of the community. It allows for certain terms, which allow modification and further redistribution of the code and software without payment, but restrict users from selling it. Any and all iterative improvements made to the code by subsequent users are available to all users. The theory of open source is simple: when code is subject to modification and change by many programmers, it rapidly evolves and improves.
- Read about the WiserEarth Platform going open source.
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Personal Profile- Your personal profile is your home on WiserEarth where you can write about yourself, add photos and videos, and choose your areas of focus to connect you with other people and organizations on WiserEarth who share similar interests. You can also choose organizations, area of focus portals, and other users and add them to you Watchlist so you keep up to date with new content on WiserEarth.
Phone Number- When entering an organization, you will be asked if you can provide an phone number.. Enter the phone number including country code and area code which could be used for external enquiries.
Portal- A WiserEarth portal has been created for each of the Areas of Focus within the WiserEarth site. Each portal consists of vertical website pertaining to a particular topic area. It can be used to by the community to share knowledge about a specific field, collaborate, post events and build community-driven action around a particular topic or cause. Portals collect up-to-date information that is being generated and tagged throughout the site for that specific area of focus. The portal serves as a launch pad for a user to easily enter in to any of the major site capabilities while remaining focused in their interest area. See: Women and the Environment.
Protected Page- Protected pages, including the home page, portals, About Page, and Using WiserEarth, can only be edited by people with editor status.
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- Relational Database
- A database that maintains a set of separate, related files (tables), but combines data elements from the files for queries and reports when required. The concept was developed in 1970 by Edgar Codd, whose objective was to accommodate a user's ad hoc request for selected data. Most every business database management system (DBMS), including Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MySQL, etc., is a relational database management system (DBMS).
Release Cycle-
On WiserEarth, the way we update and add new features or fix bugs on the site, we split out the year into release cycles, usually about 1-2 weeks long. We slot in a certain number of issues to address, translating user feedback and bug reports into technical tickets that the developers can work on. Once all the tickets in the release cycle have been completed and tested, then we will update the website with all the new fixes and start on the next release cycle.
Resources- The resources section includes a wide collection of books, journals, awards, government programs, articles, quotes, standards, internet resources, blogs, databases, directories and other forms of data that have been posted by the WiserEarth community. Anyone can search, add to or repurpose this library of community resources and information on their own website . Resources are searchable by keyword, name, area of focus, country, website, author, publisher, type of resource or scale of activity (e.g regional/global/national).
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Sub-portal- The organization of material that is titled beneath one of the 44 main subject areas of the Areas of Focus and the subsequent webpage. WiserEarth has been ordered by 372 current issue areas called Areas of Focus. Each of these have been arranged into 44 major headings to make it easy to search. All 416 have a page called a portal on WiserEarth, of which the 372 are termed sub-portals.
Sustainable Civil Society- Civil society is broadly defined as the third sector of society — voluntary civic and social organizations and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society alongside the state and the market. The human associations that pursue the common interests of social justice and environmental sustainability within civil society are comprised of hundreds of thousands of non-governmental organizations, community-based organizations, foundations, institutes, networks, associations, and other groups at local, regional, national, and transnational levels, working in peaceful, constructive ways. This subset of civil society is called Sustainable Civil Society (SCS).
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Taxonomy- Taxonomy (from Greek ταξινομία (taxinomia) from the words taxis = order and nomos = law) may refer to either a hierarchical classification of things, or the principles underlying the classification. Almost anything, animate objects, inanimate objects, places, and events, may be classified according to some taxonomic scheme (Defined by Wikipedia). WiserEarth has created a taxonomy of areas of focus relating to sustainable civil society.
Tech Ticket- A to-do item that the technical team has made a priority and added to their to-do list. Items include new usability features and corrections to reported bugs.
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Username- The name you choose to use on WiserEarth to identity yourself to other community members and to log in. The username is also how the community links to you throughout the site. This can be your personal name, a nickname or series of letters and numbers.
User Profile- This is where you can search and connect with other community members with common interests and ideas. This page contains all information relevant to the user such as username, areas of focus, mailbox etc. Most information in the profile is optional and at the discretion of the user. The only required fields are username, city, country, and email address.
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Village-based Organization (VBO)- A VBO is a grassroots group of individuals organized by and for members of a village or small community to address specific issues (e.g., village recycling).
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)- This is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or through any other IP-based network. It is also called IP Telephony, Internet telephony, Broadband telephony, Broadband Phone and Voice over Broadband. (Defined by Wikipedia)
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Watchlist- The watchlist is a feature which allows a user to select a single page or article, automatically linking it to their personal profile. The function provides an alert to the user when any edits or changes are made to that selected page. To add certain pages to your Watchlist, go to the page you want to add and click on the link called "Add to watchlist" located on the right column of the page. To review your watchlist, go to your Profile Page, by clicking the link in the upper right-hand corner, and then clicking Watchlist.
Website- Website addresses or URL's are listed on the site by entering www followed by the website address. e.g.www.wiserearth.org
Wiki or Wikipage- A Wikipage is like a blank sheet of paper. Wikipedia defines a Wiki as follows: A wiki is a simplification of the process of creating HTML pages combined with a system that records each individual change that occurs over time, so that at any time, a page can be reverted to any of its previous states. A wiki system may also include various tools, designed to provide users with an easy way to monitor the constantly changing state of the wiki as well as a place to discuss and resolve the many inevitable issues, namely, the disagreement over wiki content.
Wikipedia- Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers; its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Web site. The name is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia.
WISER- WISER stands for World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility. WISER is a collaboratively written, free content, open source platform that links NGOs, funders, business, government social entrepreneurs, students, organizers, academics, activists, scientists and citizens. WISER creates the space for civil society, the private sector, and government to collaboratively define, address, and solve social and environmental problems. WiserEarth is the first of 3 WISER projects. It will be followed by WiserBusiness and WiserGovernment respectively.
WISER Platform- WISER Platform is the technology that makes the collective awareness, support, and communication possible. The software and information generated by WISER is created under open source license as governed by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), which makes the code and the application freely available for the good of the community. It allows for certain terms, which allow modification and further redistribution of the code and software without payment, but restrict users from selling it. Any and all iterative improvements made to the code by subsequent users are available to all users. The theory of open source is simple: when code is subject to modification and change by many programmers, it rapidly evolves and improves. It is the same principle that informs all of WISER. If we can provide a means to freely exchange information and communicate ideas, it will vastly accelerate understanding, social evolution, and adaptation.
WiserCommons- WiserCommons is a member-centric network in which participants agree to cooperate in the creation of public goods to be freely used by all members of society. WISER Commons will establish cooperation agreements and protocols so that the work done by one organization/website can be easily and in some cases automatically repurposed by another. This represents a pooling of resources, and creation of public goods, precisely the activity WISER hopes to foment.
WiserEarth Content Standards (WCS)- WiserEarth Content Standards (WCS) are the community-defined standards that outline the basic requirements for the inclusion of an organization, resource, job, event, and other content, in the WiserEarth directory. The most basic requirement for inclusion is that new content is concerned with protecting the environment, social justice, and indigenous issues.
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The picture posted has no relevance to this page.