Spies = intellipedia, river movement = riverpedia

Currently, our national site boasts a glossary link, but it goes to USGS’ website. That’s less than ideal. And, one of better pages that define the various terms used in river conservation work is on a website that has been on its way out, restoringrivers.org.

The staff survey we did last month revealed that over half of my co-workers felt we do not speak to our newbies, first time web visitors, well. Not sure if a running list of river terms breaks down those barriers, but what if our river glossary was dynamic. Yup, a Riverpedia. That would be pretty cool. We could capture all of the terms relevant to river conservation virgins to the leading professionals—and the professionals could help us edit the list!

We’re already exploring wikis internally for document control purposes, but I really like the idea of exploring a Riverpedia. This would first of all allow anyone in the organization to add new words, edit existing ones, and / or manage pages relevant to their specific work. I really like the idea of decentralizing knowledge…as well as the need for multiple updates to be completed by the web team.

Techsoup has a new glossary that is a great example of how we could structure our Riverpedia.