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This is not an official document of the Natural Capital Institute and does not necessarily reflect the views of WiserEarth Staff or the editors.  It is intended to prompt discussion among the community.  Please feel free to edit this space as you see fit.
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This WikiPage is intended to describe ever more fully the vision of WiserEarth and to assemble a long-range plan for the development of the site and the community.  We hope that the information here will catalyze the volition, momentum and action necessary to create infrastructure for Natural Capitalism.  This will be accomplished by working to guide evolution of the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility toward an identity relationship with Civil Society.  I spell out WISER here because I think it recieves insufficient attention.  WiserEarth is not intended to have interests of its own beyond the need to represent entities and relationships already present in Civil Society for the purpose of exposing unseen responsibilities.

Principles

WiserEarth is based upon six fundamental principles that are applied to everything we do:

These principles form the building blocks of ideas that may be called upon to justify proposed elements.  Text below in Italics indicates current perceived needs that follow from the WE principles.

Transparency
WiserEarth is open to full public scrutiny. Likewise, users who edit and add content are asked to fully identify and make themselves known to the community. All software will become open source. WiserEarth does not charge fees nor accept advertising.

We need to incorporate more rigorous processes for encouraging users to supply identifying information, both simple contact information and network integration.  Perhaps methods for restricting a user's ability to edit certain information based on corollary information supplied is in order or a specified membership entry route that guides a new user through the network pathways based on expressed interest and involvement. [1]

Respect
WiserEarth honors the uniqueness of each individual and organization with respect to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, and religious beliefs.

Community
WiserEarth is community-driven and is not centralized, bureaucratic, or turf-based. WiserEarth is about understanding each other, building bridges, creating friendships, and celebrating the rich dimensions contained within the global community.

It is necessary to devolve authority (editing capability in this case) in order to avoid centralized, bureaucratic and turf-based development.  It is a glaring flaw that Areas of Focus are not editable without working through the bureaucratic channels of content ownership currently present and evolving.  It will be necessary to develop self-governing structures to avoid control by central authority.  Computer programmers will always hold a natural position at the apex of community leadership but may gradually make tools accessible to those most able and willing to use them.

Networking
WiserEarth enables connectivity and networking, the exchange of services or information between different individuals, groups, companies, or institutions. From a technical perspective, it means that WiserEarth will provide for all types of connections so that low-bandwidth Internet users can also access the information and tools provided on the portal.

I would recommend clarifying this principle as it confuses some important terms, that is, networking describes a means to an end - inclusivity.  Perhaps this idea, that all who have an interest in civil society may join the community and that WE will do all in its power to overcome the hurdles to membership that prospective users face, leading to a more robust contribution to planning.

Collaboration
WiserEarth brings people together to share information across the global non-profit community, and help create alliances. By working together, we can work smarter, and use our resources more efficiently and effectively.

We believe WiserEarth must accept a mandate to enhance collaboration between component parts by incorporating elements of a semantic web architecture whereby users may expect to be directed by transparent algorithms designed to engender balance between the needs and resources of agents for Civil Society.  This is to say that there should be an emergent intelligence endemic to community involvement.

Visibility
WiserEarth enables small organizations to become more visible, as well as the entire network itself — only by holding such a "mirror" up, can the movement recognize its value and power.

Long Range Plan

Step 1: User Selection (community principle)
WiserEarth must promote self-selection and identification through modifications of its registration process.  The proposal here is to limit editing access to the site to those people and organizations invited to perform a specific action, such as post a job or contribute to a page.  This will reduce the incidence of bewilderment as well as inactivity among new users and ensure that participants do indeed possess a commitment to strengthening Civil Society.

Step 2: Establishing Needs (networking and transparency principles)
In order to best serve its users, WiserEarth must incorporate a method for expressing the needs and offerings of new users as well as an easy way for existing users to do the same.  This data must be extractable for the purpose of describing generally, what users can do to best satisfy the needs of Civil Society as represented by the WISER.

Step 3: Broadcasting Needs (collaboration and transparency principles)
The process of describing the collective needs of the WiserEarth community must incorporate a distribution function in order to guide user activity and direction.  This could take the form of daily features deriving from established needs (which in turn is community supplied).  It is a shame that the home page of WiserEarth has failed to respect the community principle (centralized authority over this content).

Step 4: Matching Needs with Offerings (collaboration)
WE would be endlessly more dynamic if algorithms automatically linking SPECIFIC NEEDS with SPECIFIC OFFERINGS, were established to present users with an iterative top list of productive actions.  This function would operate much like Google Ad-Sense in that a user's activity, referenced to the activity and expression of others would determine content proposed.  At some point, software could even be introduced that allows users to rate the success of the basic matching system that would then use these rankings to overlay rules on top of this simple matching structure.

Step 5: Network Selection (inclusivity principle - natural selection of networks)
A successful platform of the above described structure could be multiplied and opened for development and use in other contexts, such as business or government sectors.  These new instances of the framework would tend to be compatible and would allow more complete representation of and negotiation of natural forces governing Civil Society and even the natural world.  Networks may even exist in parallel and evolve by how effectively they represent reality.  Users will tend to use the networks best able to educate and empower them.  Those variations most able to serve users will be those most closely identified with reality and of course will affect the real world, creating a feedback loop and ever-increasing integration and efficiency.

Discrete Projects

Projects will be listed and linked below representing the steps above in order to provide those interested in guiding development a way to decide where they may work best.

User Selection
Establishing Needs
Broadcasting Needs
Matching Needs
Network Selection