Talk:Community informatics

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The Community in Community Informatics[edit]

I provided additional background information in reference to how the idea of community fits in reference to the topic of Community Informatics to look at the potential of the discipline in regards to actual human populations. Moreover, I added additional clarification of the definition posed by Michael Gurstein. Eugene37 21:38, 25 October 2011 —Preceding undated comment added 01:36, 25 October 2011 (UTC).[reply]

Untitled[edit]

Much of this article reads like someone's personal essay on the subject rather than an encyclopedia article. heqs 13:21, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed this article does not seem to have a variety of sources and the information is not well cited. I was specifically wondering if there is a source for the section on concerns about community informatics or for the significant investments being made into community informatics. Jh004 (talk) 23:49, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Amsterdam Free City[edit]

Does this refer to De Digitale Stad- (http://www.dds.nl) or another activity? I'd be interested in a link to the reference. mgaved 10:11, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Community informatics is not a part of Information Systems, as the article states, but of the much broader discipline of Information Sciences. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.170.143.157 (talk) 16:16, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would not merge this article with Community informatics, simply b/c SI is an independent field / school of thought that is at large based on the work of Rob Kling. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.90.166.45 (talk) 20:59, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note about merging SI with CI[edit]

Social Informatics and Community Informatics both have a similar science background, but they are distinct in a sense that Social Informatics is more focused on theoretical considerations about social aspects of computerization [1], while Community Informatics has the goal to engineer practical solutions in a social context [2]. This may be illustrated by the analogy of distinguishing "Computer Science" and "Software Engineering". The principal focus of computer science is studying the properties of computation in general, while the principal focus of software engineering is the design of specific computations to achieve practical goals, making the two separate but complementary disciplines [3]. Similarly, Social Informatics focuses primarily on studying social aspects of computerization in general, while Community Informatics focuses on how to design, develop and use ICT in specific communities.

Probably it's good to have separate pages for Social Informatics and Community Informatics, with links to each other and explanation about their relation to each other.

[1] Kling, 2007, What Is Social Informatics and Why Does It Matter? [2] Gurstein, 2007:What is Community Informatics and why does it matter? [3] Parnas, 1998, Software Engineering Programmes are not Computer Science Programmes —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nanirandra (talkcontribs) 21:10, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]


It would be interesting to know why Social Informatics is forwarded to the Community Informatics page. Is there any good reason for that? Nanirandra (talk) 14:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Social Informatics has it's own page. No more forwarding. EDiT755 (talk) 18:48, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Addition to Criticism section[edit]

Added a note about feminist criticism, complete with citation. A lot of the language in this entry does not read like an encyclopedia article. EDiT755 (talk) 18:47, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Attempting to correct for tone =[edit]

Trying to correct for the non-encyclopedic tone of the article. This is my first wiki edit so feedback is welcome. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ndickens (talkcontribs) 17:03, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Two Suggestions to Improve this Article[edit]

Hello everyone. I am Mohammed. I am participating in the Wiki Education Foundation's classroom program to improve the quality of some Wikipedia articles. I would like to improve this article by adding further information to the lead and the background sections and by editing their content. The lead section can be improved by rewriting the definition and by eliminating some of the synonyms that may distract readers. The following book is useful since it presents various aspects of the topic. I am planning to use it to make the lead section clearer than the current version.
Stillman, L., Drnison, T., & Sarrica, M. (2014). Theories, practices and examples for community and social informatics. Clayton, Vic: Monash University Publishing.

Maldosari, not sure which part of the book you mention here you are going to use and specially how to improve the lead section Rostaf (talk) 14:35, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Rostaf, Hello Professor Farzan. Thank you for the feedback. The introduction of this book includes further information regarding the definition, and the author presented general overview of the topic while introducing the chapters in the book. For instance, the authors mentioned three important dimensions each community informatics works upon. I thought that adding these dimensions will improve the lead section. Also, the book has many chapters, and I may add more details as I find something important.Maldosari (talk) 04:22, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Maldosari, I think what you mention about the introduction of the book is clear and the three dimensions will be useful for the article. However, if you can provide specific sections and pages that will be used to improve the article, it will help anyone to critique what are you going to improve in the article. Also, the three dimensions that you mentioned, if they have details about each one, then you can create a new subheading to mention them in more details. TheRakan (talk) 02:51, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, the background section can be improved by introducing how communities are formed and evolve. Knowing how communities are formed and how they evolve are important factors that have to be considered while designing and building new technological solutions. The following book includes several chapters that are related to the topic; specifically, I am planning to use the first chapter as a reference to add this part. This information may be added in a separate subheading.
Azzopardi, A., & Grech, S. (2012). Inclusive communities: A critical reader (1. Aufl. ed.). Rotterdam: SensePublishers. doi:10.1007/978-94-6091-849-0

Maldosari, this citation is relevant and seems beneficial to the article; The first chapter looks interesting tho seems to be more focusing on inclusion and exclusion in the communities. Please go ahead with reading the chapter and integrating relevant parts to the article. Rostaf (talk) 14:35, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Maldosari, What will be the name of the new subheading? TheRakan (talk) 03:07, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
TheRakan, Hello Rakan. The name of the new subheading will be understanding communities.Maldosari (talk) 23:18, 5 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also, some sentences in both sections lack proper citations, and other sentences indicate stating personal opinions. I am planning to review these sentences, match them with proper citations, and eliminate the signal words that indicate personal opinions. Maldosari (talk) 03:27, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Changing the tone of the article, editing, and adding information from a useful recent reference[edit]

This is Rakan AlHaqbani and I'm trying to update this article since that I am a part of Wiki Education Foundation's classroom . I found a book that can help updating and improving this article. The book is called: "Connecting Canadians: Investigations in Community Informatics" (edited by Andrew Clement, Michael Gurstein, Graham Longford, Marita Moll, and Leslie Regan Shade). The book was originally published in 2012 and has updated information about the topic by professional in Information field. TheRakan (talk) 12:22, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I will change the background section to have a more scientific and neutral definition of community informatics. In addition, it will have a brief history on how it started and some examples of projects and works in Community Informatics. Moreover, since the Network section doesn't have much information, there's a section in the book that has accurate and more dense information about this subheading. I'll edit and add some information here. Next, there are some examples about the Canadian experience that can be mentioned in the practical section (which can be separated as a subheading). Also, there is the conceptual approach section in the book that has more information and details that can enrich the article. Next, there are information in the article without a reference or with an outdated information that can be updated.

TheRakan, You can sign your posts on talkpages by adding four tilda signs at the end of your message like I have done here Rostaf (talk) 15:05, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
In terms of your changes, I am not sure which part of the book you cite here. I will help if you provide more details on the book chapter you are going to cite. Thanks. Rostaf (talk) 15:05, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Rostaf, Thank you Dr. Farzan for your response. I signed my post but mistakenly at the beginning instead of the end. I edited that now. About the book, there are sections that I can use in the book like Community Networks and Local Libraries p.341, The Library Ideal and the Community Network p.367, and Toward a Conceptual Framework for a Community Informatics p.6 & p.35. the last section was written by the founder of this field Michael Gurstein. TheRakan (talk) 01:13, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
TheRakan, Hello Rakan. Your suggestions of improving the article are great. The article lack focused and specific examples which are related to the topic. The reference that you chose seems to be focused and extensively discusses the topic. Regarding the Network section, I think that the title of this section needs to be changed to a specific title so that it becomes clear to readers. When we read it the first time, we did not get what it meant to be. The conceptual approach section has much information, and you may try to edit it and see if there are some irrelevant sentences that could be erased. Also, you mentioned, Michael Gurstein, who is one of the founders of the community informatics. I found a talk on Youtube which was presented by Professot Gurstein discussing community informatics. We may find useful information in the talk. This is link to the talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWpFiebFRDI&t=449s. Maldosari (talk) 05:07, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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