User:Pfwebadmin

About Pathfinder:
The company I work for (Pathfinder International) is a US-based non-profit that works to improve the reproductive health of women, men, and adolescents throughout the developing world.

We've been around for almost 50 years, and we work in about 20 countries in Africa, Asia & Latin America.

This is my talk page on Wikipedia, and this is the Wikipedia article on Pathfinder. Kinda neat story on getting that article started. I've been loving watching all things wiki progress the past few years, especially Wikipedia. I very carefully and respectfully navigated successfully the murky and dangerous waters around Autobiography articles. I'm at hoping that as others in my company do the same as they come to know Wikipedia. We'll see.

I'm prolly gonna try to see if I can participate in or encourage somehow the creation of something in the vein of some policy/policies that Wikipedia can proffer to organizations to voluntary adopt (and order their employees to follow), but that's not really relevant here (more here). Just jotting here so you get to know me a bit:).

Feature Garden?
Obviously, this doesn't really belong on my talk page, but I'm just jotting right now, and didn't want to go posting on the projects page yet.

I think I'll try to start a WikiCities project that would be a place for people to drop and grow these sorts of things, but I wanted to jot this down somewhere handy now. I went looking for a project that it would fit in, but didn't find one yet.

FeatureGarden Wikicities Site? A Feature Garden Wiki? A place for non-developers to dream, wonder, hope and complain about applications? For developers to troll, get inspired, collect whatever’s worthwhile, and maybe contribute/nudge things in realistic directions?

Off the cuff first pass at "Key factors of success will be:"'s / Guiding Philosophy / Commandments:


 * A guiding principle in the vein of: “Please try for No complaints without at least something that you feel points to an Opportunity to Improve the application(s) being discussed, but if you need to just complain then please try to keep it as polite as possible.” ? Which needs work, of course:)..
 * Guiding Philosophies will be always under revision, by way of encouraging their comprehension & adoption by participants and by way of improving them.
 * Wikipedia policies and tendencies will be relied on to inform debate where no explicit/distinct guiding principle has yet been fleshed out, but the mission of this wiki is distict from Wikipedia and frequently the policies there won't work to translate directly here. This place is inherently pro-POV expression, albeit expression within certain guiding priciples like positivity.


 * This wiki will encourage a very low barrier to entry for participation. Anyone can start a content area on any application and just leave one random thought.
 * Need to figure out a tag-line to that effect, and incorporate somewhere very prominent throughout the wiki.
 * Not sure if wikicities has a login requirement option, but if it does it won't be used at first at least.
 * Sister project for feedback to non-software stuff?


 * Swearing and expressing the opinion that some software is bad will be permitted, but somewhat discouraged. A guiding principle will be to feel free to edit swears out of other peoples' posts, and anyone who uses swears will by doing so forefeit any 'right' to complain that their post has been edited inappropriately.  With the saying something's 'bad' thing, it will be trickier.  I'm inclined to say we should try to avoid feeling free to edit out that, but this bears more thought.  Maybe come up with a principle in the direction of "if you feel something crosses that line and need to change it then here's the suggested way: z/y/z and bad becomes 'bad for me'" kinda thing.  This needs lots more mind cycles.
 * The fact that this wiki is _not_ connected to the applications being discussed will encourage open debate.
 * The many eyes thing helping to nurture and grow Feature Garden ideas.
 * Maybe facilitate the funding of open-source feature development?
 * Encourage anyone to point out possible problems with suggestions, but keep it as a mission of the wiki that everyone try to offer the way to workaround or avoid problems.


 * This kind of thing almost wants to be either integrated with Documentation project, but maybe would be better off separate.
 * Representatives of the entities being talked about will be encouraged to feel free to edit mercilessly but carefully when contributions cross the line with respect to trying to keep it positive andor posting untruths. A kind of modified NPOV policy will be hashed out over time, and because of the nature of this sort of content, its application will involve frequent and spirited debate.


 * A complaint that is not grounded solidly is frequently at the very least a pointer to an opportunity to improve usability of an application.


 * Many companies foster this sort of thing, but there aren't very many that don't do it without strings attached.
 * Users are encouraged to organize and add, but discouraged from deleting except for extreme stuff. Maybe also figure out a principle for deleting or archiving as time makes content irrelavant.
 * Software producers, whether companies or not, will be encouraged to put themselves forward in the way that they want in a "space" that is connected to, but distinct from the primary content of their section of the wiki. (e.g. put 'the company line' and other stuff that wouldn't necessarily pass whatever test this wiki decides is right for accuracy in the primary "space.")


 * What else? This page is editable by you.

Anyhoo:

My random idea that I'm just jotting here now.
FireFox browser plugin suggestion?

Couple un-fleshed out bits:


 * a plugin to add an advertising area to the browser (a la ad-supported version of Opera)?
 * ability at the user level to specify, or "donate" where some or all of the user's clicks are going?
 * larger communities (e.g. Wikipedia's? FireFox's) could maybe help fund theirselves a bit?
 * Frankly, I'd like to have this even if it were just Google populating it with links based on whatever Google Magic they could work by monitoring what page I'm on etc. Opera used google results for its adware function, and I miss it in FireFox.


 * I'm kinda surprised they haven't done it yet, actually. They've got that toolbar, but that just lets you actively search. It makes you do something to see the relavant.


 * Text only? Full-on advertising space?  Configurable?


 * I know Google publishes some of their APIs etc., and so I'm wondering if this could be done without any help from them by someone to fund Mozilla/FireFox. I, and I'd guess many others could quite possibly be willing to trust them enough to install an extension that showed me rich advertising content if they make sure to be open about how they implement vis-a-vis privacy considerations.  Maybe even the folks at Google.  Prolly not the folks at Yahoo, though they haven't really done too badly on those fronts.  Almost certainly not anyone else.

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Anyhoo,, whew.. Tired of typing now.

All for now,


 * )Ben