Tuesday, 1 Nov 2011
11:00 (UTC-7)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Denton, Texas, USA --
The DentonWiki (https://dentonwiki.org), a collaborative, community-run knowledge commons for Denton, Texas, launched to the public today.
"The focus of the DentonWiki project is to create a fluid, easy to use directory of everything 'Denton,'" says Annalisa Vargas, an undergrad at UNT and DentonWiki volunteer. "If you want to know something about Denton, you should be able to find it on the wiki. The aspect of it being open to anyone allows people to share their own unique knowledge of the town and open it up for others to explore. It also allows local businesses and groups to make themselves known throughout the community."
Look up 'Snow' on Wikipedia and you'll find a dry description of the atmospheric phenomenon. Look up 'Snow' on the DentonWiki and you'll find a thorough list of recent snow days, complete with pictures, stories and history.
"That's the virtue of it," says co-founder of the DentonWiki. "It's information that can influence your day to day life. Wikipedia is great and all, but unless something is world famous, it probably won't have a lot of information on it. The DentonWiki will. And the wibbley wobbley nature of the DentonWiki itself means that information is always being added and updated."
In 2004 Philip Neustrom and Mike Ivanov created the Davis Wiki (http://daviswiki.org), an experimental project to collect and share interesting information about the town of Davis, California, editable by anyone, that soon became the world's largest and most vibrant local wiki -- and now the biggest media source in the city. In a week, nearly half of Davis residents use the wiki, and in a month nearly everyone does. But the Davis Wiki is not a passive medium -- 1 in 7 residents contribute material to the project.
Inspired by the success of Davis Wiki, Ivanov and Neustrom received a Knight News Challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to create the LocalWiki project (http://localwiki.org), an effort to help other local communities realize the power of collaborative local media. The first aim of the LocalWiki project was to create new, easy to use software designed for local community usage. Denton, Texas, is the first pilot community for this new project and software.
Phillip Neustrom even flew from California to help with the launch efforts. "The DentonWiki has the potential to make as big an impact on the community of Denton as we made with the Davis Wiki," says Neustrom, "And I'm beyond excited to watch it grow over the next few years."
As of today, the DentonWiki has over 800 pages about life in Denton. The project officially launched today and is now open to the entire Denton community to read and edit.
Press Contacts
Call or email us for more info!
Philip Neustrom
[email protected]
Phone: +1 (510) 495-1439
Executive Director, LocalWiki; co-founder, DavisWiki.org
Related Press Coverage
June 25, 2010 "Seeing 'Crying Girl' as a Con, Residents Cull Clues Online" - New York Times article on how residents of Davis, California used the Davis Wiki to catch a local con artist. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/us/26crying.html
Oct 31, 2011 "Local Wiki project takes off in Denton" - North Texas Daily article on the launch of DentonWiki. http://www.ntdaily.com/?p=59373
June 18, 2010 "Is a wiki site coming to your city? LocalWiki will build software to make it simple" - article by Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab. http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/06/knight-news-challenge-is-a-wiki-site-coming-to-your-city-local-wiki-will-build-software-to-make-it-simple/
November 6, 2009 "Welcome to Davis, Calif.: Six lessons from the world’s best local wiki" - article by Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab. http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/11/welcome-to-davis-calif-six-lessons-from-the-worlds-best-local-wiki/
More Davis Wiki-specific press links can be found at http://daviswiki.org/Wiki_History#head-57a1ab28d1de655e3083af62cbbf31927525ff87
