Solar Cooking Wiki - Web history

In April of 2007, the Solar Cooking Wiki was created as the Solar Cooking Archive Wiki to emphasize the close relationship between the wiki and an existing website called the Solar Cooking Archive. Then, in 2013 the name was changed to the Solar Cookers International Network to clarify the relationship between Solar Cookers International (the sponsor of the Network) and the Network members. In 2018, the current name (The Solar Cooking Wiki) was adopted for the sake of clarity.
==Background==
In 1995, Tom Sponheim, a volunteer for SCI, created the Solar Cooking Archive. Tom maintained the site for the next 10 years on a volunteer basis. While he worked closely with Solar Cookers International, Tom funded and provided most of the editorial direction of the Archive himself.
In the meantime, SCI created a site that covered its organizational structure and solar cooking activities: http://solarcookers.org.
During the early years of the Solar Cooking Archive, Tom gathered information on solar cooking and collected it in one place (hence the name Solar Cooking Archive). Over the years, more and more solar cooking enthusiasts submitted plans and other materials for posting in the archive. Volunteers from around the world translated some of the documents into other languages.
At the Granada solar cooking conference in July 2006, it became apparent that there was a great need for conference participants (and others) to stay in close communication after the conference. Tom gave a short presentation at the conference on ways the Solar Cooking Archive could be enhanced to support more two-way communication, including making some pages wiki-based. Tom had done some work on the Wikipedia encyclopedia project, so he decided to use that skill to create a wiki-based site. The Solar Cooking Archive had never had pages dedicated to each country where solar cooking was taking place. Nor did it have pages for each NGO or individual. If such pages were to be added, it made sense to make them wiki-based so that Solar Cookers International didn’t become an information bottleneck by allowing others could add their own information. 
The Solar Cooking [Archive] Wiki grew quickly to more than 700 articles. Many people from around the world contribute to the information presented on the Wiki. 
	
		Site
		URL
		Purpose
	
	
		Solar Cookers International
		http://solarcookers.org
		Information about the USA NGO Solar Cookers International, which sponsors the Solar Cooking Wiki
	
	
		The Solar Cooking Wiki
		http://solarcooking.org
		This wiki site (full URL: http://solarcooking.fandom.com)
	
Category:Help