Wikipedia goes local in Monmouth

Monmouth

Since it’s launch in 2001 Wikipedia has been growing at a rapid pace. Its army of volunteer collaborators have now edited more than 20 million articles in just under 300 languages worldwide and it is still growing.

So what’s next?

This year Wikipedia are launching Monmouthpedia, it’s first venture based on location,  a community collaboration for town centric Wikipedia pages. The hope being that residents and visitors will contribute articles and photographs on interesting and notable places, people, artefacts and other aspects of Monmouth life. QRpedia codes could then be placed near points of interest around the town for smartphone users to scan and view the relevant Wikipedia/Monmouthpedia page right on their phone.

The Wikipedia page for the Monmouthpedia project adds:

Articles will have coordinates (geotags) to allow a virtual tour of the town using the Wikipedia layer on Google StreetviewGoogle Maps and will be available in augmented reality software including Layar.

Could you see this model being useful for where you live?

The collaborative part of Wikipedia has always intrigued me and I’d be really interested in seeing it put to work on such a local level.

Image used under Creative Commons: James Stringer

4 comments

  1. Alan Mcglone says:

    Hi Podnosh

    I am writing on behalf of a new digital heritage project, http://www.heritagefootsteps.com.

    This local wiki mentioned would be a good fit with fit our local heritage trail, a mixture of video, still images and text. We are based on campus at the University of Salford and are recruiting student volunteers as well as locals to create content. I think they are the kind of people to contribute to a local wiki and so would like to know more.

    Alan Mcglone
    Heritage Footsteps

    The project is managed by Engage with Media, a non profit limited company

    • Nick Booth says:

      Thank you Alan – looks really interesting. You might also be interested in something we slightly help support in Salford – the Salford social media surgery

      http://www.socialmediasurgery.com/surgeries/salford

      it could be a chance for your volunteers with digital skills to share what they know with local voluntary orgs who in turn could add more material to your project – or a chance for some of your volunteers to pick up new skills.

      Good luck

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