Wikipages.com:About

About Wikipages

Wikipages uses the free software wiki "MediaWiki" which is developed and maintained for the Wikipedia encyclopedia. It is also one of the most popular wiki engines for online collaboration among software developers, student organizations, and many other groups needing advanced online community tools.

Conceived in 2003 and launched at the end of 2005, Wikipages is a fast-growing wiki business directory focusing initially on the New York City metropolitan area.

Wikipages content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

[edit] Press:

• Creative Commons Blog 2007-09-21
• MetroBoxTV interview part 2 2007-09-14
• MetroBoxTV video interview 2007-09-14
• Center Networks 2007-08-20
• Mad Penguin 2006-04-21

[edit] Founders

Benjamin Horst launched Wikipages in January 2006, after the idea had gestated for a long time.

Inspiration and the kick to actually do something, along with continued maintenance, design and promotion tasks are handled by co-founder Tracey Donvito.

[edit] Theory

Stale data can be a problem with directories. Paper business directories are updated once per year or less, while online digital directories have gatekeepers that can delay a small but important change like a new phone number, or a minor spelling change.

Using a self-managing wiki, Wikipages hopes to avoid data stagnation. The people who spot an error can fix it; business owners can ensure their information is correct, and if it is not, they can fix it on the spot. Frequent customers can help the businesses they like by making sure they are represented on our directory.

[edit] Future Plans

Wikipages plans to broaden and deepen its coverage of New York City businesses and then spread to other major cities in the USA. We see the Wikipedia as an inspiration for the type of community we would like to build--but we also hope that business owners will feel a strong sense of ownership over their business' representation here, and will work to keep it interesting and useful for potential customers.