Oakland Wiki has been invited to have a monthly or biweekly column on the local news site Oakland Local. We hope to have columns written by different people in the Oakland Wiki community. Please add ideas for columns you'd like to write (with your name, if you are volunteering to write them!) or columns you think would be interesting. Once we have a few in place, we can propose the suggested columns to Oakland Local and see what happens!

Proposed Columns

  • What is Oakland Wiki?
  • What I've Learned on Oakland Wiki
    • short perspectives from different people
    • mk30 volunteers to collate from different Oakland Wikians

 

 

Things We've Learnt

Oakland Wiki is in sum a collective space for different residents' memory, experiences, perspectives knowledge and learning about the diverse city of Oakland. As we have now seen the generation of ## pages  and countless more edits and revisions, it is worth reflecting a little on learning we have enjoyed from this space:

Structures and places that used to exist. Nostalgic notions of places that I never knew -- and they weren't perfect.

Oakland is home to amazing buildings, murals, statues and sometimes placards of bygone places that tell a little about the city's stories. For example the Moore Dry Company had been one of the biggest plants in the world and sat at the foot of Adeline St. in West Oakland. And the Southern Pacific Railroad Station at 16th St., still stands regal in its abandoned state.

And then there are the places - buildings, railroad lines, whose existence in Oakland is completely indiscernible today. Imagining the former Oakland, where railroads ruled the city might seem like an ideal in comparison to the freeways and roadways of today, were themselves problematic. Their entire management and expansion were sustained through the rule of force.

- Sanborn Fire Maps.

  • something about murals?
  • historic buildings?

Encounters and sitings with the fauna and flora of Oakland.

An aspect of Oakland that does not get as much coverage is local nature.

  • Raccoon
  • Turkeys
  • Helicopters

Community! And Debating Truths on the Oakland History and Figures

Known Unknowns

Then, there are all the things that we didn't know much about. New neighborhoods. City Council Meetings. Local developments. With the local fleet of tweeters in the city, Oakland Wiki has become a space for developing stories on pertinent city news like the Trayvon Martin protests and the  Domain Awareness Center.

 

 

  • Oakland Wikipedian of the week: What inspires you about Oakland and the Oakland Wiki Community? And feature the pages you've contributed to, favorite page, etc. ... a way to add a personal touch to the Oakland Wiki experience? 
  • Overview of meet-ups/edit-a-thons and themes? Solicit ideas for more meet-ups and themes!
  • Compare/contrast Oakland and SF
  • "This Week on Oakland Wiki"
    • interesting NEW articles
  • "Did you know..."
    • any interesting content from the wiki, not necessarily new
  • "News in Perspective"
    • something where we can provide the background of some news item, for example, the recent appointment of Thomas Frazier to the OPD Compliance Director role: http://oaklandwiki.org/Thomas_Frazier
  • Setting weekly editing ideas, for example "did you know that the Oakland Unified School District used to be.... This week, take a picture of your neighborhood school and add it to the wiki!"
  • What do you think about featuring a wikipedian? or something on the editathons?
    • both good ideas! - mk30
  • Neighborhood Spotlight
    • Columns about specific neighborhoods (history, community, etc.)
  • Topics in Oakland History
    • Topics can be as narrow as individual people and places and as broad as "history of Oakland highways."
  • Teaching with Oaklandwiki.org - wikipedia has been doing a lot of outreach to teachers. Oaklandwiki is even easier to use/learn! http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Using_Wikipedia_as_a_teaching_tool_in_higher_education_(Bookshelf)
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