On Tue, Mar 28, 2006 at 04:36:45PM +0100, M.B.Gaved wrote:
A. Your Open Guide
- How would you describe the Open Guide to somebody who wanted to find
out about it?
The Open Guide to Boston is an attempt to create a free and open guide to the city of Boston. It is very similar to a number of other services that exist -- CitySearch being the most popular in and around Boston -- but instead of businesses paying for ratings, search results, and reviews, it is something that any user can edit, and any business can add or edit their own listing.
- Who is the anticipated audience for your Open Guide? Who are your
users right now?
Everyone who uses the web to look up information on their favorite restaurants, bars, or anything else. Everyone who Googles for local search results. Anyone who wants to look up what's near where they are, or what's near something else.
Currently the active participating audience is a relatively small, but growing, group of users who I have recruited via online forums about Boston. There are also several people who have come in via Google hits, which is the most common way that people get to the Open Guide to Boston -- approximately 500-600 hits per day come in from users who have googled and found the open Guide to Boston.
- What do you see as the purpose of the open guides? (feel free to get
philosophical!) e.g. how is it different from other wikis/city guides?
Structured metadata allows for machineprocessable resouroces to take advbantage of knowledge that would not otherwise be available about a city. This can be used to a great advantage in many cases: the Google Maps example that Boston first implemented (and later was integrated into the Open Guides software) is an example of this. There are also numerous other applications of providing a machine-readable version of data that can be exploited from outside the system, rather than "APIs" needing to be built in-system.
Full data exports are always the most important aspect of any open data project, and the OpenGuides software provides them in abundance.
- Are there rules and regulations users must follow? How about your
admin team (e.g. how do you make decisions)?
No rules for users. I basically do my best to maintain useful information without it turning into a spam-filled pit. This means that I let through everything except that which is obviously not neccesary: A location can be described in more ways than "It's infested with crackheads", as one editor wrote.
I'm the only admin team there is, so I make the decisions as I see fit, on a case by case basis, when there are problems -- which thus far, there haven't been.
B. Your role in the Open Guide
- How did you come to be involved in the Open Guide?- can you tell me
what you do?
Originally, I was introduced to the OpenGuides project via the FOAF project, as both are working to provide machine readable content to the masses -- one about people, the other about places.
I took an interest in the project, and set up a Guide for Manchester, NH, but never really did anything with it -- it languished into obscurity. However, when I moved to Boston, I was more successful at getting help from other editors.
I'm a developer in the project -- I've made a number of code contributions that increase the usability of the guide. I also maintain and am pretty much the sole admin for the Open Guide to Boston.
- What was your goal when your Open Guide (or your involvement in it)
started? What are the current goals?
My original Open Guide was designed to provide a data source for an RDF tool I was working with, and to that end I populated it with the content of a MySQL database that I had access to for businesses in Manchester, NH.
However, with the Open Guide to Boston, I started it as a solution to people who were looking for a "Boston Wiki" -- something that people could edit for reviews, etc.
My current goal is to be better known than CitySearch.
- How long do you see yourself being involved in your Guide?
For a long time. I've been doing various things with Guides for the past 18 months, and I expect this to continue into the future -- even if it's not as a contributing developer, at least as an admin of the Boston Guide.
- Have people used the Guide in any ways you didn't expect? (and has
'vandalism' been a problem?)
Vandalism has not been a problem. There has, to this point, been relatively little use of the guide outside a core group of technically competent users with the best intentions of the Guide in mind.
C. Publicity and outreach
- Do you publicise your Guide? How?
Not yet. Right now, I'm still working on cleaning up technical kinks with hosting and running of the guide to allow it to be useful to all users: Publicity, until that happens, is more than I'm looking for.
However, I do oftentimes link to the guide when I'm talking about someplace I've been, in various communities online. This has resulted in some users finding an interest in the guide simply from these links (rather than from active publicity) and contributing.
I am working to establish a tool which is usable for more than just technical users, after which I'll be having conversations with local news organizations about what angle I could possibly use in local publicity -- but until the Guide is generally usable by *viewers* rather than just editors, there isn't much point.
D. Future of the Guide
- How successful do you think the project is? Which goals have been
met? Which remain elusive?
I think that the London Guide has proved to be successful, but I think there are other guides which have proved much less so. It's very easy to have a Guide fail to work out -- you need a dedicated group of editors working for a long time to create a useful resource for the public in order to create something that is not going to be ignored. Boston is very close to passing the tipping point where I could stop babysitting it full time, and still have useful content. Many web visitors are now starting to notice it, and things are definitely improving.
I think the key to the Open Guide to Boston success was the ability to build on a dataset which populated much of the metadata for nodes. Typing in tedius addresses and so on is no fun, and the Boston Guide (due to copyright law in the US) was able to build upon Yellow Pages listings to create a database that's usable even without lots of 'real' content. But the real value comes when people start to get interested in editing, and it's not quite there yet.
I don't know what the solution is for this -- how did Wikipedia get started? I've never been able to figure out how you get people to rally around a community -- but I'm pretty sure that you can't force it, no matter what.
- How long do you see the project going on for?
Until it's done. And it's never done. :)
- If someone told you they were planning to start an open guide, what
advice would you give them?
Find a partner in crime. Never start an Open Guide unless you have at least one other person to edit with you. Otherwise you'll spend all your time working on editing, and none of your time actually enjoying the product of your work.
It's better if you can get a whole bunch of people, of course, but I wouldn't hold my breath for that eventuality.
Hi folks.
A big thanks to all of you who've replied so far with answers to our questions :) In the spirit of openness I thought I'd do the same and answer our own questions on list. Mark and I co-coordinate the Open Guide to Milton Keynes, but these are my own personal responses, to which he may disagree ;)
Tom.
A. Your Open Guide ------------------
1. How would you describe the Open Guide you work on to somebody who wanted to find out about it?
It's a city guide to Milton Keynes that anyone can contribute to, by adding entries or editing those written by other people.
2. Who is the anticipated audience for your Open Guide? Who are your users right now?
Ideally anyone who lives in Milton Keynes, is visiting, thinking of visiting/relocating, or just wants to find out a bit about the place. A major target group is postgrad students at the Open University, who fit most of the above criteria and can sometimes have a bit of a culture shock when they arrive in this unique city. Right now it would be hard to say who our end users (as in viewers) are. We get a reasonable number of page requests a day, but of those that are real people its difficult to ascertain the value people get from the guide at this stage. In terms of contributing users, these are mostly people at the OU who we've told about the guide, and latterly members of MK Perl Mongers (who we found out about through OG, not vice versa!).
3. What do you see as the purpose of the open guides? (feel free to get philosophical!) e.g. how is it different from other wikis/city guides?
Partly as a comprehensive guide to "stuff" in the city. However, this is fairly well covered by mkweb.co.uk in a factual kinda way. The unique role of the OG in my view is to allow for (non-commercially driven) opinions, reviews, and local knowledge that aren't enabled in other MK city guides, or don't fit easily within e.g. a 5-star rating system. The scope for talking about *anything* in the OG is one of its strongest points; where else could you add entries describing roundabouts? ;)
4. Are there rules and regulations users must follow? How about your admin team (e.g. how do you make decisions)?
We have a wiki etiquette page, mainly ripped off from the OGLondon (thankyou!). Aside from that we rely on people using common sense. If they don't then we (the admin team) take some form of action (edit the content, tidying things up, remove the page, whatever seems appropriate). The admin team is Mark Gaved, Chris Schmidt providing the hosting and tech wizardry, and me. We tend to each have specific roles we've slotted into. So far we've taken unilateral decisions where these have been fairly uncontentious; if they weren't we'd probably just discuss it by email or F2F to find a resolution.
B. Your role in the Open Guide ------------------------------
1. How did you come to be involved in the Open Guide?- can you tell us what you do?
I heard about the OGs via Mark Gaved, and then in more detail through chatting to Jo Walsh, Saul Albert, and Paul Makepiece. The combination of local focus, open and lightweight editing, and the output of RDF/XML all appealled to me. Mark and I had been toying with the idea of starting the MKOG but didn't have a handy debian box to run it on (and didnt want to brave the install by any other means than apt-get install); when Chris Schmidt offered hosting I jumped at the chance and the guide was running in less than a day (thanks Chris!). I mostly do a mixture of content admin and designy, vaguely technical things. Obviously Chris looks after the hosting, but recently i've been working on streamlining our guide from a usabilty point of view by working on the templates and css. Content admin-wise i add stuff, tidy up other stuff, remove weird entries, and try to ensure good cross-linking is done within the guide (personal priority issue that one ;)
2. What was your goal when your Open Guide (or your involvement in it) started? What are the current goals?
Original Goals:
a) create a useful resource for accessing local knowledge about MK. it's a new city and can be hard to assimilate. b) make a contribution to the growth and community integrity of the city. c) help new postgrad students arriving in MK d) easily generate a load of rdf/xml for semantic web projects e) get some review kinda content about MK online, for possible use in my phd research
My current goals remain the same :)
3. How long do you see yourself being involved in your Guide?
As long as I live in MK, and maybe even beyond. i figure you don't have to love somewhere to remove spam.
4. Have people used the Guide in any ways you didn't expect? (and has 'vandalism' been a problem?)
Yes. One contributor has added some pages about historical stuff, which we didn't expect. There have also been a few entries promoting one pizza company and slagging off another; part of our local pizza wars. most interestingly there was also some bizarre but related spammy stuff attacking Stelios of easypizza/easygroup.
C. Publicity and outreach -------------------------
1. Do you publicise your Guide? How?
Kind of. So far we've only promoted it to people within the OU (and MKPM), fairly informally. we've run a couple of little hands-on session for early adopters. as we approach 500 entries we're thinking about how to publicise it more widely (local newspapers perhaps), but are keen to streamline the editing process for novice users before we do so.
D. Future of the Guide ----------------------
1. How successful do you think the project is? Which goals have been met? Which remain elusive?
Hmmm, hard to say. When we see regular entries from unknown contributors i'll then feel we've been successful. Ditto when i hear people mention the guides without me mentioning it first! As far as my goal of giving something to the community is concerned, i've tried, so that feels good, and will keep trying. as for the others, the guide could still fail to reach tipping point, so they may remain elusive.
2. How long do you see the project going on for?
Hopefully indefinitely. At the moment it's a bit too dependent on Mark, Chris and I being around to look after it, and any one of us leaving would be a heavy blow to the guide. We need more admins/contributors to make it sustainable long term.
3. If someone told you they were planning to start an Open Guide, what advice would you give them?
I'm very much in agreement with other respondents. Go for it, but understand it will take work; get a buddy; no get 10 buddies. work out what you want your guide to be for (whats your niche?), and on that basis decide your strategy for population of the guide (even if that's "do it all myself cos i have the time/motivation").
openguides-dev@lists.openguides.org
-
Christopher Schmidt -
Tom Heath