PlanningWiki:About

From PlanningWiki

PlanningWiki is intended to be a general user-contributed encyclopedia, glossary, reference and resource guide, directory and compendium of best practice that to planning, urbanism, and the built environment. The content of PlanningWiki is free, and is written by people from all around the world. This Web site is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct, or improve information throughout the encyclopedia, simply by clicking the edit this page link (with a few minor exceptions, such as protected articles and the main page).

In every article, links will guide you to associated articles, often with additional information. You are welcome to add further information, cross-references, or citations, so long as you do so within PlanningWiki's editing policies and to an appropriate standard. You do not need to fear accidentally damaging PlanningWiki when you add or improve information, as other editors are always around to advise or correct obvious errors, if needed, and the PlanningWiki encyclopedia software, known as MediaWiki (which also powers Wikipedia), is carefully designed to allow easy reversal of editorial mistakes.

Because PlanningWiki is an on-going work to which in principle anybody can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source in some very important ways. In particular, older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles may still contain significant misinformation, or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this in order to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation which has been recently added and not yet removed. (See PlanningWiki:Researching with PlanningWiki for more details). However, unlike a paper reference source, PlanningWiki is completely up-to-date, with articles on topical events being created or updated within minutes or hours, rather than months or years for printed encyclopedias.

PlanningWiki needs your contributions if it is to become a valuable planning-related resource, and eventually become an freestanding, independent Web site. Currently PlanningWiki is being populated with edited planning-related entries from Wikipedia. We hope you will expand upon these articles, and add your own.

If you have not done so, we invite you to take a few moments to read What PlanningWiki is (and is not) and Researching with PlanningWiki, so that you have an understanding of how to use, rely upon, or contribute to PlanningWiki as you continue. Further information on key topics can be found below.

Happy browsing!

See also: PlanningWiki:Introduction.

For help topics, questions and contact information, see Help:Contents.

For news about the site, see PlanningWiki:News.

Contents 1 Making the best use of PlanningWiki 1.1 Exploring PlanningWiki 1.2 Basic navigation in PlanningWiki 1.3 Using PlanningWiki as a research tool 1.4 Summary of strengths, weaknesses and article quality in PlanningWiki 1.5 How PlanningWiki differs from the "Green Book" and other planning reference guides 1.6 Disclaimers 2 Contributing to PlanningWiki 2.1 Who writes PlanningWiki? 2.2 Editing PlanningWiki pages 2.3 PlanningWiki content criteria 2.4 Editorial administration, oversight and management 2.5 Handling disputes and abuse 2.6 Editorial quality review 3 About PlanningWiki 3.1 PlanningWiki history 3.2 Copyright 3.3 Behind PlanningWiki 4 Feedback and questions 4.1 Frequently asked questions (FAQ) 4.2 Giving feedback 4.3 Research help and similar questions 4.4 Community discussion 4.5 Contacting individual PlanningWiki editors

Making the best use of PlanningWiki

Exploring PlanningWiki

Many visitors come to this site to acquire knowledge, others to share knowledge. In fact, at this very instant, dozens of articles are being improved. You can view the changes at the Recent changes page. New articles are also being recorded. Many different kinds of people help to write PlanningWiki articles.

PlanningWiki also has many on-going projects. The hope of any contributor is to provide useful and accurate information to others, and the projects help coordinate efforts. Most articles start as stubs, but after many contributions, they can become featured articles.

If you can't find what you are looking for, see Where to ask questions for a list of departments where our volunteers answer questions, any question you can possibly imagine.

Once you have determined that there is no article on PlanningWiki on a topic you are interested in, you may want to request that the article be written (or you could even research the issue and write it yourself).

You also can view random articles.

Basic navigation in PlanningWiki

PlanningWiki articles are all hyperlinked, or cross-referenced. Wherever you see highlighted text like this, it means there is a link to some relevant article or PlanningWiki page with further in-depth information elsewhere if you need it. Holding your mouse over the link will often show you where a link will take you. You are always one click away from more information on any point that has a link attached.

There are other links towards the ends of most articles, for other articles of interest, relevant external web sites and pages, reference material, and organized categories of knowledge which you can search and traverse in a loose hierarchy for more information.

Some articles may also have links to dictionary definitions, audio-book readings, quotations, or the same article in other languages.

You can add further links if a relevant link is missing, and this is one way to contribute.

Using PlanningWiki as a research tool

Main articles: Researching with PlanningWiki, Citing PlanningWiki

As a wiki, articles are never complete. They are continually edited and improved over time, and in general this results in an upward trend of quality, and a growing consensus over a fair and balanced representation of information.

Users should be aware that not all articles are of encyclopedic quality from the start. Indeed, many articles commence their lives as partisan, and it is after a long process of discussion, debate and argument, that they gradually take on a consensus form. Others may for a while become caught up in a heavily unbalanced viewpoint which can take some time - months perhaps - to extricate themselves and regain a better balanced consensus.

In part, this is because PlanningWiki operates an internal resolution process when editors cannot agree on content and approach, and such issues take time to come to the attention of more experienced editors.

The ideal PlanningWiki article is balanced, neutral and encyclopedic, containing notable verifiable knowledge. An increasing number of articles reach this standard over time, and many already have. However this is a process and can take months or years to be achieved, as each user adds their contribution in turn. Some articles contain statements and claims which have not yet been fully cited. Others will later have entire new sections added. Some information will be considered by later contributors to be insufficiently founded, and may be removed or expounded.

While the overall trend is generally upward, it is important to use PlanningWiki carefully if it is intended to be used as a research source, since individual articles will, by their nature, vary in standard and maturity. There are guidelines and information pages designed to help users and researchers do this effectively, and an article that summarizes third party studies and assessments of the reliability of PlanningWiki.

Summary of strengths, weaknesses and article quality in PlanningWiki

PlanningWiki's greatest strengths, weaknesses and differences arise because it is open to anyone, has a large contributor base, and articles are written by consensus according to editorial guidelines and policies.

• PlanningWiki is open to a large contributor base - so it is less susceptible to retaining bias, is very hard for any group to censor, and is far more responsive to new information, especially information not widely known in the West, and it is more easily vandalized or susceptible to unchecked information later needing removal.
• PlanningWiki is written by consensus - so eventually for most articles, all notable views become fairly described and a very neutral stance can be achieved even on emotive subjects, and the reaching of consensus takes considerably longer than a simple drafting, and is occasionally made harder by extreme-viewpoint contributors. (Articles also tend to be more fluid or changeable for a long time compared to other reference sources until they find their "neutral approach" that all sides can agree on.)

Key strengths: (PlanningWiki:Why PlanningWiki is so great)

• Having a very large number of active writers and editors in many languages, PlanningWiki often provides access and breadth on subject matter that is otherwise inaccessible or little documented.
• PlanningWiki often produces excellent encyclopedic articles and resources covering newsworthy events within hours or days of their occurrence.
• PlanningWiki is one of few sites even attempting neutral, objective, encyclopedic coverage of popular culture.
• Regional and cultural bias found in many publications is significantly reduced on PlanningWiki.
• In comparison with most web-based resources, PlanningWiki's open approach tremendously increases the chances that any particular factual error or misleading statement will be relatively promptly corrected.
• There is no one central point where censorship can be imposed, and therefore censorship by any given group, restriction to "officially reported" sources, or "pushing" of any particular viewpoint, whether official or unofficial, is difficult to achieve and almost always fails after a time.
• In contrast with many Web resources, information added to PlanningWiki never "vanishes", and is never "lost" or deleted.

Key weaknesses: (PlanningWiki:Why PlanningWiki is not so great)

• PlanningWiki is new, and few people know about it. Planning is a very specialized field, and the number of people who may be inclined to create or edit an entry is limited.
• PlanningWiki's radical openness means that any given article may be, at any given moment, in a bad state, such as in the middle of a large edit, a controversial rewrite, or recently vandalized.
• PlanningWiki operates a full editorial dispute resolution process, that allows time for discussion and resolution in depth, but also permits months-long disagreements before poor quality or biased edits will be removed forcibly.
• While blatant vandalism is usually easily spotted and rapidly corrected, PlanningWiki is more subject to subtle vandalism and viewpoint promotion than a typical reference work.
• There is no systematic process to make sure that "obviously important" topics are written about, so PlanningWiki may contain unexpected oversights and omissions.
• Articles may be incomplete in ways that would be less usual in a more tightly controlled reference work, for example some aspects may be well covered but others briefly or not at all.
• PlanningWiki articles may have a tendency to reflect the point-of-view of the author and by implication the author's cultural and socio-economic background. While most articles may be altered by anyone, in practice editing will be performed by a certain demographic, and will thus necessarily reflect a certain degree of implicit bias.
• Many contributors do not yet comply fully with key policies, or may add information without citable sources.

Quality of information (Reliability of PlanningWiki, Researching with PlanningWiki)

While PlanningWiki articles generally attain a good standard after editing, it is important to note that fledgling, or less well monitored, articles may be susceptible to vandalism and insertion of false information, although this usually ceases to be as significant a problem as articles mature. Inappropriate edits are often noticed and corrected within a relatively short time on most articles.

How PlanningWiki differs from the "Green Book" and other planning reference guides

Major areas of difference between PlanningWiki and a traditional planning reference guide include the very low "cost" of adding additional articles or information, or expanding existing material; the ability to provide both overview summaries and extensive detail without becoming hard to read; ease of reading due to wikilinks replacing in line explanations; timeliness accessibility and ease of editing in the editorial cycle; and low environmental cost (no paper or distribution impact on the environment).

Disclaimers

Main article and text of disclaimers: PlanningWiki:Disclaimers.
PlanningWiki disclaimers apply to all pages on PlanningWiki.

PlanningWiki, in common with many websites, makes its disclaimers highly visible. a practice which at times has led to commentators citing these in order to support a view that PlanningWiki is unreliable. A selection of similar disclaimers from places which are often regarded as reliable (including sources such as Encyclopædia Britannica, Associated Press, and the Oxford English Dictionary) can be read and compared at Non-PlanningWiki disclaimers.

Contributing to PlanningWiki

Main articles: Contributing to PlanningWiki, First steps in editing articles, Bootcamp

Guide to fixing vandalism: Help:Reverting

Anyone can contribute to PlanningWiki by clicking on the Edit this page tab in an article. Before beginning to contribute however, you should check out some handy helping tools such as the tutorial and the policies and guidelines, as well as our welcome page.

To minimize spam and vandalism, anyone editing a PlanningWiki article must have a registered account at the Cyburbia Forums. The Cyburbia Fourms uses a hardened version of the vBulletin forum registration system, and is less susceptible to spambots and vandalbots than the default MediaWiki registration system. PlanningWiki article discussion is routed through the Cyburbia Forums, rather than the default MediaWiki talk page. If/when PlanningWiki is successful, it may be "detached" from Cyburbia; when that happens, users will need to re-register on PlanningWiki.

It is important to realize that in contributing to PlanningWiki, users are expected to be civil and neutral, respecting all points of view, and only add verifiable and factual information rather than personal views and opinions. "The five pillars of PlanningWiki" cover this approach and are recommended reading before editing.

Who writes PlanningWiki?

Main article: PlanningWiki:Who writes PlanningWiki

There is the potential of tens of thousands of regular editors - professional planners, architects, landscape architects, citizen activists, engineers, urbanists, students and even knowledgeable casual readers. Anyone who visits the site can edit it, There are mechanisms that help community members watch for bad edits, administrators with special powers to enforce good behavior, and a judicial committee which considers the few situations remaining unresolved, and decides on withdrawal or restriction of editing privileges or other punishments when needed, after all other consensus remedies have been tried. The site is currently owned by Cyburbia, which is largely uninvolved in daily operation and writing. If it proves popular, PlanningWiki may "detach" from Cyburbia and become an independent entity.

Editing PlanningWiki pages

Main article, including list of common mark-up shortcuts: PlanningWiki:How to edit a page

PlanningWiki uses a simple yet powerful page layout to allow editors to concentrate on adding material rather than page design. These include automatic sections and subsections, automatic references and cross-references, image and table inclusion, indented and listed text, links ISBNs and math, as well as usual formatting elements and most world alphabets and common symbols. Most of these have simple formats that are deliberately very easy and intuitive.

PlanningWiki has robust version and reversion controls. This means that poor quality edits or vandalism can quickly and easily be reversed or brought up to an appropriate standard by any other editors, so inexperienced editors cannot accidentally do permanent harm if they make a mistake in their editing. As there are many more editors intent upon good quality articles than any other kind, articles that are poorly edited are usually corrected rapidly.

Please note that PlanningWiki markup is much different than the bbCode markup system of the Cyburbia Forums and other message boards.

PlanningWiki content criteria

PlanningWiki content is intended to be factual, notable, verifiable with external sources, and neutrally presented, with external sources cited.

The appropriate policies and guidelines for these are found at:

1. PlanningWiki:What PlanningWiki is not summarizes what PlanningWiki is, and what it is not.
2. PlanningWiki:Neutral point of view PlanningWiki's core approach, neutral unbiased article writing.
3. PlanningWiki:No original research what is, and is not, valid information
4. PlanningWiki:Verifiability what counts as a verifiable source and how a source can be verified
5. PlanningWiki:Citing sources sources should be cited, and the manner of doing so.

Editorial administration, oversight and management

Template:Main The PlanningWiki community is largely self-organizing, so that anyone may build a reputation as a competent editor and become involved in any role they may choose, subject to peer approval. Individuals often will choose to become involved in specialized tasks, such as reviewing articles at others request, watching current edits for vandalism, or watching newly created articles for quality control purposes, or similar roles. Editors who find that editorial administrator responsibility would benefit their ability to help the community may ask their peers in the community for agreement to undertake such roles; a structure which enforces meritocracy and communal standards of editorship and conduct. At present around a 75-80% approval rating after inquiry, is considered the requirement for such a role, a standard which tends to ensure a high level of experience, trust and familiarity across a broad front of projects within PlanningWiki.

An arbitration committee sits at the top of all editorial and editor conduct disputes,<ref>The founder of PlanningWiki is the sole individual empowered to override this process,

Handling disputes and abuse

Main articles: PlanningWiki:Vandalism, PlanningWiki:Dispute resolution, PlanningWiki:Consensus, PlanningWiki:Sock puppet, PlanningWiki:Conflict of interest

PlanningWiki has a rich span of methods to handle most abuses which commonly arise, which are well tested and should be relied upon.

• Intentional vandalism can be reported and corrected by anyone.

• Unresolved disputes between editors, whether based upon behavior, editorial approach or validity of content, can be addressed through the talk page of an article, through requesting comments from other editors or through PlanningWiki's comprehensive dispute resolution process.

• Abuse of user accounts, such as the creation of Internet sock puppets or solicitation of friends and other parties to enforce a non-neutral viewpoint or inappropriate consensus within a discussion, or to disrupt other PlanningWiki processes in an annoying manner, are addressed through the sock puppet policy.

In addition, brand new users (until they have established themselves a bit) may at the start find that their votes are given less weight by editors in some informal polls, in order to prevent abuse of single purpose accounts.

Editorial quality review

As well as systems to catch and control substandard and vandalistic edits, PlanningWiki also has a full style and content manual, and a variety of positive systems for continual article review and improvement. Examples of the processes involved include Peer review, Good article assessment, and PlanningWiki:Featured articles, a rigorous review of articles which are desired to meet the highest standards and showcase PlanningWiki's capability to produce high quality work.

About PlanningWiki

PlanningWiki history

PlanningWiki was founded as an offshoot of Cyburbia, a planning and built environment-related portal site that serves as an online community for planners, urbanists, students, and others involved in or interested in the shaping the built environment. Planningwiki was intended to replace the hierarchical Resource Directory of links to planning-related Web sites, serve as a virtual equivalent of the "Green Book" and other reference guides for planners, provide a resource for general and localized planning knowledge that would otherwise be considered too narrow and specialized in scope for sites such as Wikipedia, Digital Universe, and Everything2.

This is the second attempt to create a planning-related wiki on Cyburbia. The first attempt used a version of MediaWiki that was not integrated with the vBulletin userbase, and was subject to vandalism and spam. Being a new site, there were not enough editors to watch out for or clean up wiki spam.

Copyright

All the text in PlanningWiki, and most of the images and other content, is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Contributions remain the property of their creators, while the GFDL license ensures the content will remain freely distributable and reproducible (see the copyright notice and the content disclaimer for more information).

Behind PlanningWiki

PlanningWiki uses the MediaWiki software, which powers Wikipedia and hundreds of other specialized wikis. vbWikiPro is a commercial script used to integrate MediaWiki into vBulletin, the message board software that powers the Cyburbia Forums.

Feedback and questions

PlanningWiki itself is run as a communal effort. It is a community project whose end result is an encyclopedia. Feedback about content should, in the first instance, be raised on the discussion pages of those articles. You are invited to be bold and edit the pages yourself to add information or correct mistakes if you are knowledgeable and able to do so.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Template:Main

FAQ index: Index of all PlanningWiki FAQ pages

Giving feedback

The PlanningWiki Editors subforum on the Cyburbia Forums is used for discussion of an article or policy's contents, to report vandalism (you're encouraged to fix vandalism yourself as well as report it), dispute resolution, and general discussion among PlanningWiki editors.

See also:

• Bug tracker, for reporting issues with the PlanningWiki web site or the MediaWiki software that runs it
• PlanningWiki:Help desk - PlanningWiki's general help desk, if other pages haven't answered your query.

Research help and similar questions

Facilities for help for users researching specific topics can be found at:

• PlanningWiki:Requested articles - to suggest or request articles for future.

Because of the nature of PlanningWiki, it's encouraged that people looking for information should try and find it themselves in the first instance. If however you come across valid information missing from PlanningWiki, be bold and add it yourself so others can gain from your research too!

Community discussion

For specific discussion not related to article content or editor conduct, see the PlanningWiki Editors subforum on the Cyburbia Forums.

For other user discussion of PlanningWiki in general, see PlanningWiki:Community Portal.

Contacting individual PlanningWiki editors

If you need more information, the first place to go is the Help:Contents. To contact individual contributors, leave a message on their talk page. The standard place to ask policy and project-related questions are the PlanningWiki Editors subforum.

For a full list of contact options, see: PlanningWiki:Contact us.