Re: [OGDev] help with some questions? (WikiSym 2006)

I'm following Dom's lead. Hmm I was at a dinner party and I think I described it like, The Guide is a website about Saint Paul (now the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul really) that anybody can edit. I started it as a way to keep track of things I've found in St. Paul, but now I'm using it to discover things in the Twin Cities. Ultimately I'd like to see it as an alternative venue for people who live in the Cities to comment freely about them. I'll explain further below, but I originally planned (and still do plan) on starting an OpenGuide to Orlando to balance the crass consumer guides that exist out there. When I moved to St. Paul I decided to do something similar to track the places I found here. Well it's different from other wikis in that it's a city guide, and it's different from other city guides in that it's a Wiki! Seriously though, the software is better organized for the purposes of being a City oriented wiki than other platforms, especially with crschmidt's google map hacks. For example anymore I find it faster these days if I know something is in the guide and I need say a phone number or website ... I search the guide first, then fall back to Google (usually to add it to the guide so next time I get it in the first try :D). Saint Paul is small, and doesn't have a very large user base (yet). It'll gain more purpose as we grow. But the fact that it's relatively easy to edit, amazingly easy to add pages to, and even (mostly) blank pages have some utility (all you need is an address/long+lat and you get a map) I think is thrilling. In the US copyright laws are such that I can add address book type information, and with the geocoder.us website I've quickly populated the guide with lots of (mostly) empty pages. I now use the guide to find new restaurants, or places to visit. I am my admin team. I play it by ear, and try to follow the examples set by the london, oxford and boston guides. I figure people with users must be doing something right. I listened to Earle give a speech at YAPC::EU 2003 and it played right into plans that my wife and I had had about starting a Guide Book to Orlando when we moved home. Turns out we didn't exactly move home, but I still started a Guide. Mostly for my own benefit. I run the Twin Cities (St. Paul) guide, and do server maintenance for both saintpaul.openguides.org and victoria.openguides.org, and eventually I'll ressurect orlando.openguides.org. My goal was to start something I found useful. My goal now is to create something others find useful and want to contribute to as well. Well we plan on living in the Twin Cities for another 7 years. I hope by then I can find someone to give regular administration duties over to, and I can start/build/work with the Orlando guide. Vandalism is my biggest problem. There's only me, and I'm horribly busy, so I'm not as fastidious as some about checking the spam on my Guides. Orlando finally succumbed to a level of spam from which I didn't want to try to revert. Do subscribe to your guide, or at least check the recent changes page regularly (thrice weekly?). I've had exactly 4 people other than myself that I know of edit the guide. Nobody is using it in a way I haven't expected yet. I'm trying hard to get it to that point. The minute someone says "oh hey did you see|try|do this with the Guide" and they're talking about SaintPaul ... I'll know I've made it. This is probably why I have no users :) I haven't attempted to publicise the guide at all yet. I've mentioned it in passing to a few friends. I've populated it with stuff that 's getting fairly decent hits on Google. I'm gonna try to add a lot of useful content when I can ... Two years ago when I started my guide, I was the first non UK. We've come *along* way since then. We now have three US guides (as of today!), one Canadian Guide, and 13 (!!) UK guides. We've come along way baby. As long as people are still interested, I see it lasting for a very long time. Make sure you're willing to commit to it. The more you put into it the more you'll get out of it. Don't do it alone. Find friends, get them to add content. If you're in the US, find a source for raw address data ... and use geocoder.us to convert that to Long+Lat to bootstrap your guide. Then fill in the blank pages. Don't make it stop being fun. Hang out on #openguides on irc.perl.org and mooch off the prodigiousness of others. -Chris