LocalWiki is a collaborative project that aims to collect and

open Open or OPEN may refer to: Music * Open (band), Australian pop/rock band * The Open (band), English indie rock band * ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969 * ''Open'' (Gerd Dudek, Buschi Niebergall, and Edward Vesala album), 1979 * ''Open'' (Go ...

the world's

local Local may refer to: Geography and transportation * Local (train), a train serving local traffic demand * Local, Missouri, a community in the United States Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Local'' (comics), a limited series comic book by Bria ...

knowledge. The LocalWiki project was founded by DavisWiki creators Mike Ivanov and Philip Neustrom and is a

501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, Trust (business), trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of ...

nonprofit organization based in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. LocalWiki is both the name of the project and the software that runs the project's websites.

History

In 2004, Ivanov and Neustrom started DavisWiki, an experimental project to collect and share local information about the town of

Davis, California Davis is the most populous city in Yolo County, California, United States. Located in the Sacramento Valley region of Northern California, the city had a population of 66,850 in 2020, not including the on-campus population of the University of ...

, editable by anyone. It became a large and active community

wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

. According to its founders, at least half of the local residents use it. The LocalWiki project aims to provide "institutional memory" and context for local news. LocalWiki is built on the Django framework in Python. In June 2010, LocalWiki won a $350,000 grant from the Knight News Challenge. After winning the grant to develop the software, they ran a

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

project to raise $25,000 to help fund outreach, which was successful. In December 2011, the project announced its first "focus community", Denton, Texas. Its second focus community was the Triangle region of Durham, North Carolina, with initial contributions about transportation infrastructure and parks, and a goal of compiling information about historic events. A nonprofit in

Tallahassee, Florida Tallahassee ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of and the only incorporated municipality in Leon County, Florida, Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Fl ...

helped start TallahasseeWiki with knowledge from residents. The LocalWiki project for Oakland, California is supported by volunteers meeting in person to collaborate on historical information. In 2012 the LocalWiki team assembled a comprehensive high-definition map of the Antarctic continent, available on "Open Antarctica", a LocalWiki instance for Antarctica. Neustrom explained that the map was "pieced together from very-hard-to-find NASA aerial imagery and coastline datasets". In April 2015, Idmloco focused on Davis LocalWiki as part of a public relations operation for U C Davis chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi.

Functionality

The LocalWiki software includes a

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for what you see is what you get, refers to software that allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed document, web ...

editing interface to help make editing simpler. It also includes mapping features: each article can have an associated annotated map, and the website has an overview map with those annotations.

Notable LocalWiki communities

As of 2013, major LocalWiki communities include

Santa Cruz County, California Santa Cruz County (), officially the County of Santa Cruz, is a county on the Pacific coast of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 270,861. The county seat is Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz County comprises the Sa ...

;

Oakland, California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...

; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina;

Denton, Texas Denton is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Denton County, Texas, Denton County. With a population of 139,869 as of 2020, it is the List of cities in Texas by population, 20th-most populous city in Texas, the List of Un ...

;

Ann Arbor, Michigan Ann Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the List of municipalities in Michigan, fifth-most populous cit ...

;Ann Arbor’s Wikipedia: Writing what you know about in town
, Ann Arbor Observer, July 2013 and

Tokyo, Japan Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

References

External links

* Official LocalWiki website
LocalWiki repository on Github
{{Volunteered geographic information Collaborative projects Creative Commons-licensed websites Organizations based in San Francisco Wikis English-language websites Spanish-language websites Content management systems Internet properties established in 2004 Volunteered geographic information

History

Functionality

Notable LocalWiki communities

See also

References

External links