CorningWiki:About

About the Project:

CorningWiki v1.0.0 (2015/01/04)

This is us flaunting what people have said about us:

"Impressive" - Darin Robbins, Green Party Candidate for Mayor of Corning

CorningWiki is a Wiki to help the residents and visitors of the Corning, NY area find and promote goods, services, events, etc within Corning and it's adjacent villages and towns, and to help electronically preserve the area's history. It is open to anyone who wants to add more information to it just like Wikipedia. It is our online Commons.

CorningWiki Manifesto
By Brandon Smith, founder

Information has much power. It can be used to destroy or create, enslaven or free, or even help or hinder all of existence. I believe in the freedom of information, privacy, sharing, speech and all four in combination. These are human rights that everyone must have. When a small group of people harbors information, keeping it for themselves, it hurts all of us. I believe in an equal share of advertisement with businesses and groups and the like. I don't believe in a company or organization of any kind exploiting and/or brainwashing others to put convenience over freedom, knowledge, and humanity as a whole by forcing people to use a format or protocol that restricts or hinders their freedom or other human rights. We need open information. We need to be able to discover and understand our universe all the way down to our own town. We should not have to find information by jumping all over the Internet just to obtain a phone number for a pizza shop or something, risking our personal security and privacy. I wanted to make sure that the information I find could be kept free to all and that I don't have to worry about risking my personal privacy and security just for finding information. In Corning, there is much focus on Corning Incorporated and The Gaffer District. An unfair focus. Please be aware that I am not attacking these organizations. I am simply stating this truth. The people outside of the district and Corning Inc. work just as hard as they do and don't get a fair share of the publicity. That's not right. "There must be a better way to do things." I said. Thus the creation of CorningWiki. CorningWiki is a place where the residents, and visitors, of Corning, NY can find, copy, modify, and SHARE information without restricting their freedom or invading their privacy. A place where every business owner has a fair right to PR. Information on here is protected from the greedy hands of copyright using carefully chosen software and licenses. All textual information is protected by the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license so that whoever you give information to also gets the freedoms that were bestowed upon you. I also prohibit the use of media that contains Digital Restrictions Management so that we do not have to be pressured into using non-free software in order to view information. I have enforced licensing, usage, and privacy policies, of which will continue to evolve and change in order to address and resolve unforeseen loop-holes (I'm human, it happens), that respect YOUR freedom and privacy. I have also enabled full-site encryption which will get stronger as the site grows. Information will be free.

Thank you for your time and good health,

Brandon

Software and Services Used to create CorningWiki

 * Mozilla Firefox
 * MediaWiki
 * Gimp
 * GNU Emacs and org-mode
 * GNU Nano
 * InkScape
 * Apache
 * OpenSSL
 * OpenSSH
 * GnuTLS
 * DuckDuckGo
 * Kdenlive
 * mySQL
 * Filezilla
 * GNU+Linux Mint (During development)
 * Ubuntu GNU+Linux

Many thanks to

 * Andoryuu Narukami: For his tremendous efforts with setting up SSL for CorningWiki and creating the awesome 404 page. And a typo.
 * Danny K: For his insights with SSL.

Many MANY thanks to

 * Dr. Richard Stallman for starting the Free Software movement and everything that has spawned because of it's creation and for his efforts.
 * Aaron Swartz for inspiring and helping me realize just how precious the freedom of information truly is. May you rest in peace.
 * Ilya Zhitomirskiy and the rest of the "Core Four" of diaspora* for the inspiration to build a new place, using Free Software, that we can all be free at.
 * Jacque Fresco of The Venus Project for always inspiring me with trying to think of and make better ways of doing things.
 * Frank Zappa for the one quote of his that got me questioning things, "Without deviation, progress is not possible".
 * The MediaWiki devs on the IRC chat that helped me with so many issues when building this site. <3
 * My childhood hero Goku. For teaching me to keep fighting and going beyond my capabilities.

Research Contribution
The CorningWiki server is running BOINC for the Collatz Conjecture project and folding@Home. You can join the "People of Corning, NY" team for folding@home by using this information.

For reference:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.".

 Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!   

