Environmental projects, community events & personal commitments.
Project creators launch their ideas and create goals that determine the success of the project. Participants join in, accomplish goals, and earn rewards.
It can be big or small, serious or playful. Get inspired, tap the drum, start a rhythm, and the results will come.
all about buddy checks
what are buddy checks?
Buddy checks are earthbongo's way of helping guarantee the accuracy of the data you see in the charts. Some types of charts require another earthbongo member -- whether or not that member is part of your project -- to take a look at your chart and make sure it makes sense. We call this a "buddy check."
who can do a buddy check?
Anyone who has reached the level of "contributor" may buddy check a chart.
what kinds of things are being checked?
Things to check include whether the chart basically makes sense for your type of project, and that the calculation in that chart also makes sense. Providing a Web reference is important to help someone make that determination.
If someone thinks you made a typo, or are used the wrong kind of environmental chart, or has any other suggestions, they can contact you through earthbongo's mail system and let you know what you can do to strengthen your chart. Sometimes, the person who buddy checks your chart might end up being staff at earthbongo. But often, it will just be another earthbongo member that sees the need and helps out. Using a "buddy check" system helps keep earthbongo's results accurate, and helps build the earthbongo community.
when do you need a buddy check?
When you add a chart to a project where a result in the chart is calculated automatically, that chart requires a buddy check. For example, you might have started a project to encourage people to dry their clothes on a clothes line instead of using a dryer. If you create a chart for this project, you might enter how much co2 can be saved if a person did this for an entire summer (for example: 500 pounds of co2, with a reference found at http://www.cwac.net/energy/energy_saving_tips.html).
You can see those activities that have charts that need a buddy check when you browse the list of activities.
Until a buddy check is done, the project will still accumulate reported values. All project data still gets collected, and nothing is lost.
There is one major exception: If you have reached the user level of "leader", you have earned the right to add charts without requiring them to be buddy checked!
what happens after someone has buddy checked your chart?
Once another earthbongo member has checked a chart and found that it is good to go, that member can click a button on the chart that indicates the chart has been buddy checked. That user's screen name appears then in place of the buddy check button. At that point, any data already accumulated by the chart, and any new data reported, flows up to the corresponding earthbongo community result. For example, if the chart has calculated that people completing a project have saved 20 pounds of co2 so far, those 20 pounds of co2 flow to the earthbongo community result "co2 saved." In addition, from then on, new results reported for this project flow automatically to that community result.
how to do a buddy check
Anyone can do a buddy check to help out another earthbongo member set up their chart. If you see that a chart needs a buddy check, see if the type of data being shown in the chart seems appropriate to you, and look at the link the project leader has supplied for where he or she got the information that appears in the chart. Sometimes, there are multiple numbers out there for the kind of savings the chart is set up for (using the clothes line example above, you'll find numbers ranging from 300 to 720 pounds of co2 saved.) So just make sure it makes sense, even if there are differences of opinion. Some numbers will never be 100% knowable; often, the best we can do is make sure we're in the ballpark, and go from there.
