[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Wiki Spot project

[phoebe ayers]

fwd'ed from wikipedia-l. I can vouch for the Davis Wiki -- it really is an
amazing local resource, and is a nice example of people using a wiki for
sharing information. They have very different principles from our projects
(reviews are ok, NOR is not a relevant concept) but they ended up with a
friendly, community-oriented, very detailed encyclopedic resource of
information about a small town, that is deeply rooted in the town's existing
culture. If anyone is interesting in starting a wiki for your own town, I'd
encourage checking out Philip's new venture, which I think has a lot of
promise for building online communities around physical places.

-- phoebe

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Philip Neustrom <philipn at gmail.com>
Date: Sep 4, 2007 7:58 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiki Spot project
To: wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org

I wanted to let folks on this list know about a new, milti-community
wiki project I've been involved with called Wiki Spot
(http://wikispot.org).  We are a non-profit organization that aims to
help communities use and maintain wikis, interconnect wikis where it
makes sense, promote the adoption of wikis as a tool for enriching
communities, and generally provide a trusted, non-commercial home to
community wikis.

Philosophically, our drive lines up very closely with the Wikimedia
Foundation: we are dedicated to free software and release all of our
code under free licenses and we strongly encourage the use of various
free-content licenses.  What is very different is the scope and range
of the communities we provide a home to.

Wiki Spot grew out of the Davis Wiki project (http://daviswiki.org),
which has had an amazing an unexpected impact on the local community
of Davis, California.

The Davis Wiki won an award from the Davis City Council
(http://daviswiki.org/Thong_H._Huynh_Awards#2007) for our work in
community involvement -- an award usually reserved for traditional
media like radio and tv stations.  We've helped people find their lost
pets (http://daviswiki.org/Lost_Pets), find the best bathrooms in town
(http://daviswiki.org/Bathrooms), documented urban art
(http://daviswiki.org/Urban_Art), been the host of countless local
political debates, thrown parties
(http://daviswiki.org/Davis_Wiki_Wacky_Woo_1), and done lots of other
crazy and amazing things as a community.

With Wiki Spot, we want to provide a safe place for other communities
to easily do the same kind of things we've been doing, because we
truly believe in the power of local community wikis.

Anyway, I encourage you to get involved and help out if this sounds
like something you might be interested in.

Best,
Philip Neustrom
http://wikispot.org
http://daviswiki.org

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