JBpedia at 2.

A positive sandwich.

Trying to my get e-mails down to Inbox-Zero, I found an e-mail by Axel/MEX announcing JBpedia 2nd birthday. A bit late, alas, I say Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag!



There has been a lot of talk during the time before JBpedia about getting CISV knowledge online (check out this Devil's proposal), making it available to anybody PLUS allowing anybody to add info. CISV Resources is great, but, hey, it's really only for officially approved documents - so JBpedia is the "open-source"-version of Resources. The great part, is that, from what I can observe, JBpedia wasn't just put there, it is closely monitored and chaperoned, which I think is a great thing!

But this wouldn't be From The Balcony, if I couldn't find anything to criticize so here we go:

If you look ath the most popular pages you ONLY find pages of indiviudal JBs or individual JBers. Was this the point? Shouldn't every JB have a "real" website instead. I guess it's because people are getting used to the Wiki markup, and can't be bothered to get their own website outfitted with a proper CMS. Also the people's pages are nice, but I wonder why people's profiles are so interesting on JBpedia, if there are things like Facebook around. Finally, I don't get why all the programmes have their own pages on Wikipedia - again.

Before I get going to much, let's review the goals anounced on the welcome page:

The idea behind JBPedia is to:
facilitate JB development
provide access to documents and information
expose juniors to what others are doing
motivate juniors to get involved locally and internationally
show how IJB works
connect people from different JBs
generate creativity in JBs
share ideas
facilitate the comunication of different JBs

Wow. Is there anything JBpedia is not there for? I think, JBpedia would be much better, if it was a little more focused. Here are five suggestions:

1. Try and make JBpedia even more of an encyclopedia, Wikipedia-style: Make sure everything related to CISV/JB is well explained, so that newcomers can find their way around.
   
2. Don't abuse the welcome page as a way to promote things. Instead help people find their way around JBpedia. Offer links to the most useful, popular or up-to-date pages.
   
3. Try and move pages that are in fact "discussions" or "diaries" to another place.
   
4. There is a module that allows a Wiki to attach documents - why not integrate the history of IJB including all documents into JBpedia? It would be even better if all documents were transfered into Wiki pages, because then they'd be searchable.
   
5. JBpedia would be great to collect all kinds of activities such as ice-breakers simulation games and running games. Furthermore there could be a collection of themes. In fact, JBpedia has the potential of being the next (and better) activity database! ARMers apparetnly started something here.
   

But since this is a positive sandwich, I'll finish the article with saying, that JBpedia is a huge success, and I'm amazed of all the great articles in there already, and the efforts being made in keeping stuff up-to-date. Go, JbPedia!