This such a delightful and useful metaphor. What a great way of explaining the real joy and challenges facing Wikipedians in 2008 and in the present.

It would be really interesting to compare the size of these different neighborhood areas. And how they have changed over time in relationship to local anchor institutions. This might be best presented through maps of each area (both historic and contemporary).

This is a really fascinating argument to me.

I know I've heard anecdotes from people who work in building trades or restoration about "quick-fix" approaches that cause big problems later on. I'd love to collect a few examples and include them here!

What is a small or medium-sized historic buildings exactly? Any person's understanding of what makes a small, medium, or large building may depend on the size of other buildings in your area and the amount of time and money you have available.

This is a great point that could be illustrated with a specific example comparing the cost of maintenance over a ten year period versus the cost of replacing or repairs building elements if no maintenance took place.

I'd be very interested in seeing some information about the typical life cycle for different building elements or materials. Of course, we want to save elements whenever we can. But how do you know when a building element is too far deteriorated to repair or restore in most cases?

Many people prefer to share their writing and resources as Markdown files. What is Markdown?

Markdown is a way to write content for the web. ... Unlike cumbersome word processing applications, text written in Markdown can be easily shared between computers, mobile phones, and people. It’s quickly becoming the writing standard for academics, scientists, writers, and many more. Websites like GitHub and reddit use Markdown to style their comments. If you have ten minutes, you can learn Markdown!

Learn more and practice with the interactive Markdown Tutorial.

GitHub is one alternative to the educator-focused platforms mentioned in this document.

Examples of open educational resources published using GitHub or GitHub Pages include:

• The Programming Historian (GitHub repository)
• Creating a Minimal Edition: From the Manuscript to the Web
• Humanities + Design: Building a workflow for digital research and publication
• Working with spatial data for the web

This document talks about educational resources being "enhanced" but some educators and scholars may worry about their work being misused or modified in inappropriate ways or exploited for commercial gain. In "Forking the Academy", Konrad M. Lawson lists disciplinary and personal obstacles to sharing and collaborating:

• The Economy of Citations
• The Taboo of Plagiarism
• The Cult of Originality
• The Brick in the Wall
• The Fear of Transparency
• The Incompleteness Aversion
• The Stolen Idea
• The Fear of Misuse

Read Lawson's ProfHacker series on GitHub for more on how scholars and educators can collaborate on open resources.

The CC Search Tool is a convenient way to search for Creative Commons licensed material on Google, Google Images, Flickr, YouTube, Wikimedia Commons, and other websites.

How do you assess the "quality" of educational materials or resources? One important consideration may be the accuracy or truthfulness of the resource.

Learn more about how to identify and see through "bullshit" with a free online resource Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data.

Meeting people "where they are" is difficult when a university campus is literally or figuratively separate from the surrounding communities. Staff or volunteers with historic sites and museums often encounter similar challenges.

At UMBC, initiatives such as Breaking Ground try to bridge these gaps by bringing students into surrounding communities. Museums and historic sites may find useful advice in "Positioning Your Museum as a Critical Community Asset: A Practical Guide" available as an online resource and a 2016 book.

How can scholars and educators create classroom spaces that work as "commons"? How can you seek this goal both online and in-person?

Two useful approaches to active listening include:

• Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process (See this short video about the process)
• Stanford Design School's “I Like, I Wish, What If” Method of Feedback (PDF)

Students and scholars may use tools that are unfamiliar to outside partners such as Blackboard or other learning management systems. Community groups or nonprofit partners often have limited time or resources to invest in buying or learning how to use a new tool. Recognize the limits of existing tech skills & infrastructure but don't be afraid to try something new.

Find more tools using ProfHacker, a group blog published by the Chronicle for Higher Education, by browing categories for reviews, software, productivity, and teaching.

"Social infrastructure" is only one term that can be used to talk about this idea. Other similar concepts include:

• Community identity
• Organizational capacity (or capability)
• Social capital

Some approaches, such as network weaving or capacity building, seek to expand or strengthen these relationships to build more effective organizations. Read more in "Building Smart Communities through Network Weaving" (PDF) by Valdis Krebs and June Holley.

This engagement guide is written for readers with an interest in civic technology. But it remains relevant for many other domains. Try translating this guide by replacing the words "civic technology" with...

• Course design
• Educational technology
• Public history
• Public humanities
• Or some other topic of interest to you.

Are all five modes of civic engagement still useful to you? Which approaches work for your field? Which do not?

1. Start with people: Work with the real people and real communities you are part of, represent, and/or are trying to serve
2. Cater to context: Leverage and operate with an informed understanding of the existing social infrastructure and sociopolitical contexts that affect your work
3. Respond to need: Let expressed community ideas, needs, wants, and opportunities drive problem-identification and problem-solving
4. Build for best fit: Develop solutions and tools that are the most useful to the community and most effectively support outcomes and meet needs
5. Prove it: Demonstrate and document that community needs, ideas, skills, and other contributions are substantially integrated into — and drive — the lifecycle of the project."

From Criteria: People First, Tech Second

The structure and rhythm of the academic calendar can make it more difficult for students and scholars to work closely with community-partners.

How do you make time for students and scholars to create something for a community, listen to community input, and incorporate ideas from community members into their work? Can this take place in a single semester?

Could this be encouraged by providing students with sample presentation materials? Or creating a project style guide that students could optionally use to ensure the project is presented through a consistent voice or visual design?

Open licensing with Creative Commons (or other open-source licenses) is one way of setting guidelines for reuse of project materials in whole or in part.

This is not only important for students but also for projects that involve collaboration with community partners.

If members of a community where you are doing research or teaching are contributing photos, stories, or feedback to a project, scholars need to ensure that community members can access their own contributions into the future.

To accomplish this goal for students and community partners, scholars need to make a digital preservation plan at or near the beginning of any project. Learn more about personal archiving from the Library of Congress.

Collaborative tools and equitable approaches can help make sure your meetings and project communication meet this important standard.

Examples include:

• Using Google Docs for collaborating on meeting agendas and note-taking (See ProfHacker on Google Docs and collaboration in the classroom)
• Using Trello for project planning and roadmapping (See examples of public roadmapping with Trello)
• Using conscious language when communicating by email, chat, or in-person (Get help from the Conscious Style Guide)
• Using techniques that encourage equitable participation (e.g. AdaInitiative's unconference session role cards)

"Milking the Deficit Internship," January 6, 2016 (2016 MLA Position Papers, Digital Edition) by Spencer D. C. Keralis is another relevant reading on labor and power in the academy and the student labor economy.

How do you empower student or outside partners to make "credit decisions about the intellectual design" when they may not share the same knowledge or approach as a scholar? In some cases, this is a difficult question to answer.

This is an excellent suggestion! If this support is built into the student-scholar collaboration, then it ensures all student collaborators receive credit for their contributions—not just students who seek that support from scholars.

How do you give credit to collaborators? Think about an academic book. A work might include a dedication to a beloved partner or mentor; an introduction listing student researchers; citations of influential works; an afterword on the history of the research project.

To name your collaborators, write a list:

• Names for everyone who contributes to a project;
• each person's role or contributions;
• when those contributions took place;
• and how to contact them if you have questions later.

You need to tell collaborators how credit may be presented at the outset and tell them when you fulfill that promise.

Consider these questions:

• Are there any contributions that do not require credit?
• Do all collaborators receive credit in the same way or place?

Take five minutes to watch “Pay your F-ing Interns” by Elissa Frankle, an Ignite talk for the Openlab Workshop Unconference, December 1, 2015, in Crystal City, VA.

This is a helpful introduction to organizing zine-making workshops that could be useful to librarians, historians, or educators.

Yes! We need to pay attention to our motivation and attention – especially when you work in historic preservation or another field where there are always a variety of urgent issues in your community or organization at any one time.

I wonder how this works in a classroom context and not just a workplace. Could you invite students to learn about a topic and then use this exercise to generate project ideas?

IMHO: These questions provide a lens to help the reader consider how to know when culture change works and when it doesn't.

I love this strategy of expressing honest and earnest questions about how our feelings shape our work as people.

This is a very useful summary of parts of what makes almost any advocacy project successful.