Talking about community wikis
December 10th, 2011 § 5 Comments
I recently came across Localwiki.org an open-source platform to drive community-based wikis. It currently powers Denton Wiki. It reminded my of one of my New Years work-related resolution from 2009 – to start a community Wiki.
That resolution never got anywhere, mostly because it didn’t really fit my schedule of projects and because at the time the process for setting up useful wiki was still daunting. The Local Wiki project seems to have solved that hurdle. From the demo video, it’s pretty feature rich and has a slick admin interface. Easy to set up pages, create templates, manage media files and a nice mapping feature.
In the next month or so I’m hoping we’ll be able to install this and start playing around with a local wiki.
In the meantime, we’ll need to start brainstorming to develop a framework of pages/categories and also develop a list of local agencies that could become partners. And I envision monthly meet-ups to keep the community involved and aware of the project.
Some early ideas for pages that fit our community:
- History
- Architecture
- Sports
- Wine
- Agriculture
- Schools
- Arts
- Music
- Parks
I’ll be posting updates as we move forward.
I’d love to hear from anyone that has helped set up or is involved in maintaining a community wiki or if you have an upcoming project using Local Wiki.
Great post, Carlos!
I’d definitely encourage you to just jump in and start playing around!
One thing people tend to get caught up in is the tendency to think about the project as a big, completed thing — which can be daunting! As corny as this is, this Will Smith video actually does a pretty good job explaining this
Just add neat stuff!
Thanks Philip. Will definitely start playing around with it once we get it installed. Will keep on eye out for new communities using your software.
I went through a similar thought process a few years ago: that we need local wikis in the communities my company serves (as well as here in Tacoma). I went so far as to buy domains for all of them but stopped there. Then I realized that (duh) organizing a community effort for the wiki can’t be done (well) remotely and that I’d have to either do it myself in Tacoma or convince one of our staffers in another community to try it there.
I love that it works well in Davis! I’ll definitely be watching your efforts in Walla Walla.
As always, I think we need the buy-in of some key people and orgs in the community and a good amount of seeding. We’ll see how it goes. I’m hoping to post an update in the next few weeks.
[...] community organizing and hopefully implementing what I learn into some digital projects like the community wiki and our redesign. It’s an opportunity to step away from the laptop and online social [...]