Essential projects

Essential projects are interesting projects we can't really ignore. They are doing things that we have to do, and we are far better off working with them, than ignoring them. In many cases they will be doing something before we do it here, and maybe better. So tracking them closely is useful.

• Consumerium itself, of course!

• Wikicompany - a community built, free content, worldwide, business directory.

• Living Platform - useful to emulate to set Publish:policy as it has very similar problems notably with factions and challenges of remaining troll-friendly despite intense feelings about things

• Interra - interraproject.org - a card to enable "purchasing from locally owned and sustainable businesses" that "donates automatically to community organizations" and even "facilitates connections" like factions or Serendipity.

• GFDL Corpus despite the various thugs trying to control it for their own commercial interests

• wikitext standard efforts, notably at Metaweb and Recyclopedia, and GetWiki software project.

(note: Meta-Wikipedia is now devoted to software imperialism and mediawiki hegemony, and cannot be considered a valid forum to discuss any such "standard"; As an example of a failed attempt to organize against a cabal, see theUnited Wikipedias Forum - how to get a huge 40-language project governed in Simple English without a cabal taking it over completely. Obviously this has failed.

• http://www.responsibleshopper.org/ A project run by Co-op America that has very convergent goal with us. They actually have a DB online with 350 big companies investigated. Truly worth a visit.

• Transnationale - Consumer guides to Multinationals and shopping. Transnationale.org provides comprehensive information on more than 10000 companies around the world. We report social and environmental behaviour, financial data, list of brands, membership to the most influential lobbies, public relations and ?opinion making?, managers name and position, shareholders and subsidiaries, plants locations and offshore centers, brand and corporate image management. Membership is required for full access

• http://badcorp.org/ - they have very interesting search engine for figuring out who owns who! This is essential to track those constantly-changing names.

• UnitedDiversity - Also referred to as "udoo." (United Diversity Open Organisation). A very interesting London based group dedicated to building commons and sharing resources: to improve quality of life for all while simultaneously reducing ecological footprint. [1]

This is a primarily social effort, it seems. They have open space meetings called WTF and interact with large groups of people. It's a pro-democracy group, actively working to organize people. They are interested in things like community currency, flash mob, and open space.

• Wikitravel - a travel guide - boycotts should include not going places where people do rotten things, since tourism has an eco-impact and sends messages of approval too.

• http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/opensource/greenscan/ - GreenScan, an Adbusters project to create a hand-held barcode scanner with a simple output system. Scan a product: if you get a green light, it is ok to buy. Red is bad. What they don't yet realize is that building a specific access device without a database and information infrastructure, won't do much good. Go visit them and keep reminding them of this!

• Internet UPC Database - database of manufacturers and products with UPC codes, searchable online and downloadable version which is not as up-to-date as the online version but is strangely licensed under GPL

• FLO - for Redefinition of mandatory label terms like dolphin safe, which we must track closely. what is the best source on this issue, and who tracks whether labels are ecologically sane or not?

• Propaganda and no body detection, since these always work to the detriment of some body. See Disinfopedia:propaganda and the propaganda glossary underlying it.

• CorpKnowPedia - tracking the corporate landscape - dedicated to building a database to track the behavior of corporations.

• Serendipity - a technology originally developed for dating, using Bluetooth, but which would be even more strategic to help people with similar buying criteria meet and help each other - [

More bluetooth pipedreams that don't work with the current implementations from [Al Jazeera

Feeling frustrated? Do something useful, it'll make you feel better

• http://www.thehungersite.com - Donate food by visiting this site. You will see some advertisements from companies that are donating the financial capital to make this happen. If you don't want this to happen you should close your eyes.

All of the above are essential since not doing them leads to the wrong result, or no result (also wrong) at the point of purchase. For instance to not know who owns who can let a company that is truly horrible compete simply by creating a front company. To not have Adbusters helping to create and publicize the standard barcode we agree on, means we lose essential publicity and help from them, and their programs of anti-propaganda billboards and truth-telling. To not include travel is to have no influence on the largest discretionary decision people usually make in a year - where to spend their vacation. The ability to check which tourism packages are best or worst with a single click or code is a huge edge for a happy future! Letting no body convince you that some body doesn't matter, or matters less than the no body who says so, is a sure way to help no-body corporations and ideology destroy some-body apes, dolphins, forests and this planet.

The following has recently moved under the umbrella of an enemy project:

• Simple English Wikipedia - educating people all over the world, finding out what they care about, recruiting those who can keep opinion wiki up to date. This is the translation base for all Wikipedias, and may be necessary for use to provide background notes in any language for Consumerium advice.

Now it will be necessary to fork this project, perhaps working with a valid and neutral international agency such as UNHCR which actually cares about the providing of essential survival and liability and risk information to people in simple language, and which probably has good resources for dealing with this.

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• Recyclopedia (at this URL - probably the most closely aligned encyclopedia project, and using GetWiki. We might consider this to be the best prototype yet of the future Development Wiki. Recyclopedia is down for an unknown period
• http://www.wtfcon.org - WTF's The Future? A wiki that organises moots for techno-hippies and anarcho-geeks. A truly cool use of emergent democracy. wtfcon.org is down - content moved to UnitedDiversity, see above