Tag: monmouthpedia

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