Welcome to the Mad River Valley Energy Wiki
From Mad River Valley Energy Wiki
Vision
The vision for this site is:
A community created "living document" to serve as the go-to reference regarding energy information in the Mad River Valley. Think Wikipedia, except focused on energy in the Mad River Valley.
Community Created
This is a COMMUNITY website for EVERYONE. By contributing, in whatever small or large way, YOU can help make this website a great resource for us all.
To support community participation, this website is designed to allow anyone to edit, alter, and contribute to the website at any time. This allows for greater accuracy and more timely updates regarding the efforts being taken.
Contributing to the website is easy. First, you create a new account and confirm your email address. Once logged-in, you click on the edit tab for any page or section (perhaps this one?) you would like to alter.
Make your contribution! For more information, see the "Contribute your energy-related knowledge and ideas" section below.
Current Status
The Mad River Valley Energy Wiki is just getting started. The project is actively seeking contributors who can enhance the site with their knowledge. See the Wish List for ideas on how you can contribute.
Ways you might use the Mad River Valley Energy Wiki
Here are some examples of how you might use this site to:
- Learn about what sort of energy projects are happening in the valley.
- Discover what funding is available for your energy projects.
- Share your knowledge on energy topics and help put it into context for the Mad River Valley.
- Spread the word about your energy project or an energy-related idea you have.
- Check for upcoming energy-related events, or add your events.
- Browse the energy categories to learn more about each topic as it relates to the Mad River Valley.
- Update pages where you can add value to the page, or just fix a typo.
- Research information for the energy section of your town plan.
Audience
The audience for the Mad River Energy Wiki includes:
- People interested in launching new energy projects
- Town Planners
- Students
- Anyone interested in energy in the Mad River Valley
Scope of the Mad River Valley Energy Wiki
The scope of the Mad River Valley Energy Wiki includes:
- Projects related to energy, including currently active projects, as well as ideas for projects and completed or inactive projects
- Funding opportunities, such as grants, competitions, and other sources of money for energy projects
- Residential and Commercial Energy Consumption
- Energy forms/uses, including
- Electricity
- Heating
- Transportation
- Categories of energy including:
- Biomass & Biofuels
- Energy Efficiency
- Energy Conservation
- Fossil Fuels
- Geothermal
- Hydroelectric
- Nuclear Power
- Solar-Photovoltaic
- Solar-Thermal
- Wind
Goals
- To keep the information both accurate and up-to-date.
- To be fact-based, not opinion-based.
- To make energy information as accessible as possible to everyone in the community.
- To link to other information whenever possible. Minimize re-writing of information.
- To encourage community participation and contributions.
- To balance community contributions with reliable information and security. Studying Wikipedia conventions for this.
A Note For Vendors
There will be a "Local Vendors" yellow pages sort of listing for each energy category (as applicable). Please feel free to add or edit your listing in the appropriate categories. Please do not add a separate page to the Energy Wiki for your business. Instead, include a link to your website in the "Local Vendors" page.
Contribute your energy-related knowledge and ideas
Create a user account and confirm your email address
Step 1: Create a user account. Click the "create account" link in the top right corner of the page.
Step 2: Click on the link sent to your email address. You must confirm your e-mail address before editing pages.
Step 3: It is requested that you enable email notifications on your preferences page (link in top right corner when you are logged in).
Edit pages or Create new pages
Once you have created a new user account and confirmed your email address, you are ready to edit pages or even create new pages.
Create a page from a boilerplate for projects, events, funding opportunities, and general topics
There are boilerplate pages to help you if you want to add a new project, event, funding opportunity or general topic to the site.
Create a page from scratch
Step 1: First, search for the topic you plan to write about. Check the navigation links (see left side of the page) and try some searches to see if you can find an existing page for the information you plan to add to the site. If you find a page, check it out and add some of your knowledge to the article if you so desire.
Step 2: If you do not find an applicable page, you can create that page. Re-enter into the Search box the exact name you wish to title the new page, including capitalization. Note that we can effectively "change" the page title after you have saved it, but it is preferable that we do not do that because there are some consequences from doing so. Please try to name pages with titles which are clear and seem correct to you, but do not sweat it too much either.
Step 3: Click the create this page link on the first line of the resulting page.
Step 4: Add some very basic initial content to the page you have created.
Step 5: Click "Save page".
Well done. You have now created a new article on the Mad River Valley Energy Wiki. Thank you for contributing to the Mad River Valley Energy Wiki!
Tips
- Do not feel that you need to get all of the content done in your first sitting. Most wiki pages grow incrementally over time. Come back and edit the page whenever you want to add to it.
- Do not worry, you cannot break anything. Any mistakes can be reversed because all past versions of a page are recoverable.
- Click on the "Send feedback" link on the left side of page if you need any help or have any feedback about these instructions or the site in general.
- If you are creating a new page for a new project, event, funding opportunity or a more general topic, please use the applicable boilerplate pages to help make it easier to organize the information on the site. Thanks.
Resources to help with formatting and other user help
MediaWiki is the name of the software which runs this site. It is the same software used for Wikipedia. Below are some resources for editing pages on this site. If you have questions, do not hesitate to contact the moderator of this site.
Who is facilitating the effort?
A team of folks with the Valley Futures Network Energy Group have been working on the foundation for the Mad River Valley Energy Wiki.
Learn more About The Mad River Valley Energy Wiki
Learn more about The Valley Futures Network.
Got Feedback?
Have feedback? Let the team know. There is a "Send Feedback" link in the "general navigation" box on the top left side of every page ("Send Feedback" is the last selection in the navigation box.)
