Creating a city wiki.

December 28, 2006 8:51 AM

I've been thinking of creating a wiki for my city. Is it worth it?

I live in a medium size city in an unwired part of the U.S. In other words, if you search for my town, you don't find much. I was thinking of creating a wiki for my town, starting with the basics, weather, neighborhoods, restaurants, things to do, events, etc., things that might help those thinking of moving to my city, and stretching out to include enough info that long time residents would use it. What's online now in regards to my city is pretty pathetic.

I have a few questions.

1. Is it worth it? I know that's a subjective question, but does anyone think this is a bad idea? Although a wiki is an open environment, I doubt most people here know what one is and I'll be the lone contributor for a while. Should I scrap the wiki part and just create a standard city info website?

2. Would it be ok to use advertising to help with the costs, or is something like this better run as a dot org.

3. Does anyone know of any city wikis that are well done, that I might model mine from or get inspiration?

Thanks for any help/advice.

posted by gtr to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Boston Wiki. I've used it a couple of times, but Boston's big enough that I can more often take advantage of CitySearch and such. Wikis like this are probably more worthwhile when you don't have the bigger services, as in your case, so I'd say yeah, why not?

Do you have the people who would be committed to adding content? I'd think that's the most important thing you need to consider.
posted by olinerd at 9:02 AM on December 28, 2006

Weather is not a wiki subject really.

Resteraunt reviews are cool though, along with contact info for EVERYthing in town. The other small page I use for my town is a movie time page. It's nice to have an aggregation of all the theaters in town, so I don't have to bounce between corperate pages.

Using advertising would be fine, but if possible keep it local and small. And never take money for content, but only for obvious ads, you don't want to ruin trust w/ the consumers of the data.

I'm thinking it's a generally good idea (and cheap to try), but I'm not sure a wiki is the best way to go. Maybe a larger page w/ a wiki as part of it. That way you can guarantee some data, while other parts that make sense are user editable.
posted by cschneid at 9:03 AM on December 28, 2006

Wow. I live in that city, and I never knew there was a Boston Wiki!
posted by canine epigram at 9:11 AM on December 28, 2006

The idea is not a bad one, it is just hard to pull off.
It is like opening up a restaurant, some will have crowds lining out the door, and most will be half-empty.
Advertising won't really help unless you get huge amounts of traffic, so you are better off keeping good will and trying to get money some other way.
The best example of a city wiki I know of is that of Davis, California, a close-knit, well-educated university town with strong sense of community.
It has grown from a dozen pages on a Macintosh laptop to 8000 pages at a real hosting facility.

The home page: http://www.daviswiki.org/

History of Davis Wiki: http://www.daviswiki.org/Wiki_History

Recent comment about Davis Wiki:
http://eastwikkers.typepad.com/eastwikkers_/2006/03/33_wikis_5_davi.html

Be prepared for heated debate in odd places, like in the comments area of a restaurant page:
http://www.daviswiki.org/Bistro_33
posted by rayval at 9:29 AM on December 28, 2006

rayval: I use the davis wiki all the time! And to the OP: Yes, a wiki for a small town would be really useful.
posted by special-k at 10:34 AM on December 28, 2006

Another good small town example .
posted by beagle at 4:49 PM on December 28, 2006

And small towns may work better. I did the logo for this one, but I still can't say it ever got traction, and the creator got a job at the St Pete Times...
posted by baylink at 9:25 PM on December 28, 2006

Thanks for all the great advice everyone, especially the example sites.
posted by gtr at 11:16 PM on December 28, 2006

I just learned of an Oberlin College Wiki that is a worthwhile case study.
posted by gbinal at 7:37 PM on January 3, 2007