On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 10:43 PM, Robert Rohde <rarohde(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Another idea that I encountered somewhere (not currently sure where)
was to create a global wiki directory to essentially replace the
yellow pages. Something managed under a wiki model to include the
names, addresses, phone numbers, websites, and a short description of
any and all local businesses. Commercial businesses are a fine
example of entities that are usually verifiable but not notable from
Wikipedia's point of view, and having a central repository of
directory information would generally be useful. A crowd sourced
directory would suffer from the general problems of accuracy that all
our wikiprojects have to worry about, but probably has the potential
to include more comprehensive information than the commercial
providers can manage.
This would be nice to tie in with OpenStreetMap, so that amenity=fast_food (
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dfast_food) could be
additionally tagged with something like
guid=309FAF94-9FC6-11DE-A978-099455D89593, and then
http://xx.local.wikimedia.org/wiki/309FAF94-9FC6-11DE-A978-099455D89593would
have the directory information (in the xx language). The wiki would
probably contain lots of information not included in OSM (OSM are IMHO a
little bit overly copyright-paranoid), but in theory one could make a
smartphone app which lets you find the nearest fast food restaurants (OSM),
take you to a description page for the nearest one (wiki), provide driving
directions (OSM)...