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Welcome to the collaborative design wiki!
This is meant to be a public wiki associated with my personal blog called collaborative design. The blog is just by me (and its commenters), but the wiki is for everyone who shares this interest to contribute to. (There are also blog comments and a forum -- see the blog's About page for details.)
Unfortunately you need a GitHub account to edit this wiki (which is free and safe to get, but still a roadblock I'd rather not impose on everyone -- so if you know a good free wiki host, please mention it on that page so we can consider moving this wiki there). If you have one, to edit this page, login and click the edit button above right (but it might be better to create a new page, and to first read the info below). Notice the preview tab above, and remember to use the save page button (bottom right) when you're done.
The main purpose of this wiki is to be a place to collect pointers to people and projects related to collaborative design, by which I mean the general topic of many people working together to design something, as well as software tools and processes useful for that (whether they exist today or not). (Some people use the term specifically about "graphic design", but personally I am more interested in collaboratively designing things like complex software systems, nanomachines, social policies, or scientific theories. But anything which fits this general topic is welcome here.)
Especially useful things to add to this wiki include:
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organized pointers to people, their blogs (including your blog), mailing lists, forums, websites, software projects, research papers, Wikipedia articles -- but everything should have a synopsis (a short phrase will do) making it clear why you think it's useful here (unless it's in a context that makes that clear, like a list, or otherwise obvious).
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a comparison matrix customized to our interests.
Ground rules:
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please don't add things which are completely off-topic, but anything marginally related (or useful for people with this interest to know about) is ok if you keep it organized. If you're not sure, add it!
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That implies that if you think someone else added something off-topic, I'd rather you reorganize it (move it onto an appropriate page, or into unsorted stuff if no better place is obvious) than remove it (unless it's obvious spam). That is, reorganize rather than remove.
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for anything meant to be a personal opinion, please sign your contributions (real name not required, but some name is desirable) when not doing so could cause confusion (that is, don't fool a casual reader into thinking a single person wrote what was actually written by more people). Note that this does not apply to "factual" entries like lists or objective descriptions (the sorts of things that would be ok in a Wikipedia entry).
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Keep pages not too long -- make new ones as needed. (I don't yet know how well this GitHub wiki handles simultaneous edits to one page by different users.)
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If you find some other wiki or large online resource we should know about, please point to it, but it's not useful to start copying tons of stuff from it to here. We'd rather go there and look at it. Of course it's ok to copy specific things that are very relevant here (license permitting).
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Speaking of licenses, I gave this wiki's underlying GitHub repository an Apache 2.0 license (normally used for code). I think that means (roughly) that if you post your own idea here, you're granting everyone a license to use it (in case you happen to patent it). (I'm not a lawyer and that's not legal advice -- read the license! And please let us all know if you think I'm wrong about this.)
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As with all git-backed wikis, a complete edit history (of anything that was ever saved) can be viewed by anyone. Don't add anything private, even temporarily -- I know of no practical way to delete it from the history.
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I hope this goes without saying, but please be civilized (respectful, not rude).
So where should you add actual content? On an appropriately named new page. (There is a list of all pages near the top right, which is a good enough "site map" for now.)
Thanks, and enjoy!
-- Bruce Smith (GitHub username: oresmus)