

Show HN: LocalWiki, the open platform for local knowledge - philipn
https://localwiki.org/

======
britta
Aw yay, I took that photo on the new homepage! It was during an editing party
at the Prelinger Library in San Francisco
([https://localwiki.org/sf/Prelinger_Library](https://localwiki.org/sf/Prelinger_Library)).

I've been a Wikipedia editor for many years, and last year I started splitting
my editing work between Wikipedia and LocalWiki. There is so much I love in
the places I've lived that can't fit into Wikipedia's notability/verifiability
rules but is still important to me and other people who live in these places,
and it's nice to have a collaborative thing to work on that is very relaxed.

So I wrote some articles about curious bits of my neighborhood in SF
([https://localwiki.org/sf/Old_Mission_Police_Station](https://localwiki.org/sf/Old_Mission_Police_Station)
for example) and then realized I should start a LocalWiki for a place I spent
tons of time photographing and researching when I lived there, Isla Vista
(next to UC Santa Barbara):
[https://localwiki.org/islavista/](https://localwiki.org/islavista/)

Isla Vista is very interesting but doesn't have a lot of documentation of its
history available online, and a lot of residents don't know much about it.
It's been fun to use LocalWiki to start organizing and sharing what I've
learned about it, and to get other people working with me to build a
collective document that goes beyond my own perspective & interests. Also on
Metafilter a couple days ago: [http://www.metafilter.com/146431/An-
Unincorporated-Historic-...](http://www.metafilter.com/146431/An-
Unincorporated-Historic-Neighborhood-Gets-it-Place-on-the-Internet)

------
klenwell
I'd really love for this to succeed. Periodically I'll remark to a friend:
"The one thing the internet seems to be missing is a reliable place to catch
up on a bit of local scuttlebutt or legend that has caught my attention." For
example:

\- Any idea why that restaurant that opened up three months ago and seemed to
be doing fine closed up all of the sudden last week?

\- Anybody know why I heard 50 sirens at 2am last night?

\- How long has _this_ been here?

Of course, AOL made a big play in this domain and failed miserably with Patch.
I've heard of other successful sites that have have petered out for one reason
or another. And then there's the cautionary tale of sites like Topix, as
recounted in this New York Times article:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/small-town-gossip-
moves...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/small-town-gossip-moves-to-the-
web-anonymous-and-vicious.html?pagewanted=all)

I really hope you can discover the right balance of the scurrilous and the
curious, navigate the editing wars and cultural issues that have plagued
Wikipedia, and build that topical and timely local news thing I've been
waiting for.

~~~
jewbacca
Not that I don't also want this LocalWiki thing to succeed, but you should
definitely check out your local subreddit:
[https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/search](https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/search)

~~~
britta
Yess, and a local Facebook group and/or subreddit can work really nicely in
coordination with a LocalWiki. To share local knowledge you totally need that
conversation part, where the oldtimers and newcomers sit around and chat (or
comment) about what's interesting today and what happened a while ago, in a
casual and amusing and timely way. But then you also need the reference part,
where bits and pieces slowly get collected and organized and cross-linked to
tell a more comprehensive story, and to make sure individual memories don't
get lost if people move out of town (or get busy, or die) and aren't around to
tell their stories anymore.

------
rmason
LocalWiki has awesome potential but they're facing two large problems.

If you browse you're going to see that in the majority of the towns someone
signed up, started and then abandoned the effort. They need to implement rules
similar to Wikipedia and sweep the ghost towns away.

The other weakness is mobile, that's really where LocalWiki could really
shine.

~~~
jewbacca
Also a potential fragmentation problem:

"Vancouver":
[https://localwiki.org/vancouver/](https://localwiki.org/vancouver/)

"Metro Vancouver": [https://localwiki.org/van/](https://localwiki.org/van/)

There's a genuinely hard problem in trying to define discrete but sufficiently
meaningful localities. People really like clean dichotomies, but locality is
fractal.

------
erader
Great platform. Used this religiously while in college at Davis. Luckily,
there was an active community of people updating the pages, which allowed the
Wiki to essentially replace Yelp for looking up business info.

~~~
CreRecombinase
That Daviswiki allows for the accumulation of institutional knowledge from the
student's perspective is just one of the things that makes it such a valuable
resource. I learned so much more about the history and culture of the town and
the university than I ever could have using sterile/stale facebook pages or
univeristy websites.

------
numbers
I love this idea. I have had a hard time going to cities I'm unfamiliar with
and not knowing a little bit about the important and not-so-important
landmarks.

The problem I have with yelp in this regard is that it's all business focused.
Hopefully localwiki will provide a more neutral and just updates based
information.

~~~
walterbell
What do you think of [http://wikitravel.org](http://wikitravel.org)?

------
olalonde
How do you plan to differentiate from
[http://wikitravel.org](http://wikitravel.org)? Is
[http://localwiki.org](http://localwiki.org) supposed to be more localised /
higher resolution? Targeted at locals instead of tourists?

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johnmaguire2013
I live in Ann Arbor, have my whole life, and am very glad for the wiki we have
on LocalWiki. It's been extremely helpful to me a few times now. :)

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chippy
Nice use of OpenStreetMap on the map page. I wonder if the system utilises the
collection of places, buildings, pubs, shops etc that is also mapped.

Edits - looking at it in a bit more detail, it appears that it does allow
people to create new pages based on features from the map, my guess is that
these "seeds" would be from some spatial database (OSM?)

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michaelbuddy
the local wiki editor tool bar & text area I've always thought was done very
well. It's kind of a stand out, yet hidden feature that not a lot of wikis do
as well. Simple but still HTML driven. I'd like to use the back end and re-
template it for a personal site, just because I'd like to tinker with it a
little more. Somebody elses' idea about calculating that a wiki is stagnant
and having some actions / recommendations, even some auto email to existing
editors is a great idea to keep things fluid and current.

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calebm
Very nice idea. Just created the page for Milwaukee:
[https://localwiki.org/milwaukee/](https://localwiki.org/milwaukee/)

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pervycreeper
How do you plan to avoid a commercial focus/ bias?

