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.

• wikitext standard efforts, notably at Metaweb and Meta-Wikipedia.

• United Wikipedias Forum - how to get a huge 40-language project governed in Simple English without a cabal taking it over completely. Obviously this must be done here too.

• 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.

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

• 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!

• redefinition of mandatory label terms like dolphin safe, which we must track closely.