A Wiki idea

A Wiki idea

What is a Wiki?

A wiki is a website where users can add, edit or remove information, with minimal or no registration. Administration has the ability to revert pages on the website to its previous setting to minimize vandalism, editorial errors and disputes. The concept behind the wiki is instead of having one author write a book in three years, have 1000 author write the same book in a day.

Why a wiki for Guyana?

Guyana have no central source of information, we have many brilliant writers and historians dispersed around the world. A wiki would catalogue our history by the masses rather than the privileged few. The amount of information available out there can only be contained by a wiki, surely not by a book or a regular website.

What will a Wiki cost?

A wiki will not cost much more than a regular website. The software for a wiki is free open source. Of course you would have to have a domain name and hosting.

Who should own and run this wiki?

The Government of Guyana and the Ministry of Education should be responsible for the wiki, not because no one else can endure the cost of the technology nor have the technical skills necessary to set up the site. The GOG should run the wiki because they owe the people an existing frame work to catalogue our history, our people and our culture. A wiki also promotes the idea that no one owns information and inaccuracies does not last for long.

Why make this proposal on an open forum and not to the Ministry of Education?

I propose here mainly because this embodies the Socratic idea (not in the Nietzschean sense) that we know nothing and can learn only through the sharing of ideas, a true wiki form of thinking. I would welcome any criticism on my idea.

Will a wiki for Guyana work?

Consider this; wikipedia.com is more popular than youtube.com according to ComScore Media Matrix with about 155 million unique users per month. Wikipedia is among the 10 ten searched term for 2006 at google search.

The Ministry of Education can use its large faculty base for editing and also launch students writing competition. Schools with computer labs can let their students do online projects. The $100 laptop is knocking at our door for 2007 (laptop.org) which President Jagdeo promises to buy, oh and by the way laptop.org also has a wiki community. There are many more ideas that we can get from users of the wiki itself.

A wiki is a simple idea with infinite possibilities.

Asif Mohamed

The fast and the dead

The fast and the dead

Look I am tired of deaths by vehicular accidents. How many people have to die before we come up with some type of comprehensive plan to deal with this situation? Guyana is far from the developed world we often use in comparison to draw conclusions, but there is a big difference between doing something and doing everything and there is no excuse for doing nothing.

The government should provide some type of transportation. I am aware this has been tried a few times before and it should be tried again. Even if public buses run twice a day, that would be a great start. There are always passengers upon arrival of the ferries, who want an alternative to the music deafening rockets that can topple in high winds and crumple like paper on any impact. There are always students after school, especially in areas with one road, who deserve a cheaper responsible alternative to those pedophile satisfaction machines under the disguises of speed and cool.

Don’t give me any new laws, but enforce those already in place. There need to be transparency in the law enforcement sector, also truthful claims of abuse and bribery should be followed up without putting the victims in further harm. The heavier a minibus is the harder it is to control and increases its breaking distance according to The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (UK). This is one of the least enforced traffic laws in Guyana and a potential hazard to all passengers.

Traffic lights, better roads, bridges and infrastructural problems means little if we cannot correct the most basic of factor behind vehicular deaths, which is the vehicle itself. Guyana should implement a crash test system that makes sure vehicles used for public transportation are up to standards upon collision. Whatever standards we have now, is obviously not working.

The World Health Organization has estimated that in 2002 almost 1.2 million people died in road crashes worldwide and as many as 50 million were injured. Unless action is taken, global road deaths are forecasted to double by 2020 and yet many of these deaths and injuries are known to be preventable.

Guyana is not the only country faced with these problems. South Africa is in the process of replacing its mini-buses with safer newer models, while Beijing replaced its mini buses with safer taxis at the dawn of the new millennium (www.peopledaily.com.cn).

I am in no way proposing any lasting plan; my main goal is to gain the attention of the parties responsible for dealing with transportation issues, policy making and law enforcements. None of these problems are unique to Guyana on a global scale, and with transparency of existing laws and plans we can all come together and find some lasting solutions to our problems and attempt to solve it.

Community Policing Group cannot contain sophisticated, armed, gangster-like criminals.

Community Policing Group cannot contain sophisticated, armed, gangster-like criminals.

I am no security expert, but from a layman’s perspective, reviving of community policing group (CPG) will not ease crime in Guyana to the hopes of the new Home Affairs Minister. The Home Affairs Minister is hoping the revival of CPG would be part of the solution against violent crimes like those at Canal No. 2. (Source Stabroek News Editorial, Nov 02)

CPGs and their predecessors (local vigilantes) were meant to curb petty crimes not by confrontation but by prevention. The level of sophistication of the armed criminal gangs roaming the country today cannot be dealt with on the armed civilian level. Trained professionals like the police suffered many casualties over the years in confrontation with criminal gangs.

Mr. Home Affairs Minister, we do not need a step down from the police, we need a step up from the police, maybe a special task force to deal with these problems. A CPG group would be open target to the mob-like criminal elements.

Civilians can help in other ways, like mending long term rifts between communities due to racial, economical and political polarizations etc, with the help of all ministries within the Government. The last thing we need to do is encourage local militias to take the law into their own hands. I am not pacifist but look at the situation in Sudan for example, where the Government has civilian armed forces fighting against the Southern Rebels with accusations of genocide on both sides.

Guyana’s problems cannot be solved with any short term plan, we need a transparent security plan, one opened to public scrutiny, this is the only way we can discuss it, compare it against what have worked and what have failed in history, and also borrow from countries that faced the same situation we do today.