1. Wikis of Locality: insights from the Open Guides Mark Gaved, Tom Heath, Marc Eisenstadt Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University

2. Locality is important in people’s lives

3. When you move somewhere…

4. you want to know what’s happening there

5. And probably other people interested in the same things as you

6. whatever you’re interested in, locality comes first, theme second

8. Wikis of Locality Primarily Locative : Secondarily thematic Supporting communities of locality Local knowledge repositories Geodata important Structure= semantic web for the rest of us Utilise third party APIs such as GoogleMaps

9. The Open Guides Wiki based online community guides Custom code based on Perl Currently 18 live Guides UK Birmingham, Chester, Cotswolds, Glasgow, Lancaster, London, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Southampton Austria Vienna Canada Victoria BC USA Boston MA, Saint Paul MN Worldwide Tourist Engineer Each guide managed by small team (often just one person) Under 100 to over 10,000 entries in each

11. “Semantic web for the rest of us” Not just free data entry; structured editing provides a framework for content “Compared with other wikis, the structured metadata is what sets OpenGuides apart”

12. Geodata is a significant element Latitude and longitude data is held where possible …

13. … enabling location based searching…

14. … and the use of third party APIs such as Google Maps

15. Structured data also gives us machine- readable metadata for free offering the potential for future re-use of data

16. So potentially allows us to do interesting things ! (TOM?) example of somebody else grabbing it … Find me the things I am interested in within 500 mtrs Mashup but 2 step inference Community not broadcast

17. Different types of contributions

18. Different types of authors Placeholders

19. Different types of authors Placeholders Completers

20. Different types of authors Placeholders Completers

21. Different types of authors Placeholders Completers Housekeepers

22. Different types of authors Placeholders Completers Housekeepers

23. Different types of authors Placeholders Completers Housekeepers Scrapers

24. Sustainability of open guides a concern LondonMilton Keynes BostonOxfordSaint Pauls Admins42111 Contributors?3789?10 Milton Keynes Boston Saint Pauls

25. Sustainability of open guides a concern LondonMilton Keynes BostonOxfordSaint Pauls Admins42111 Contributors?3789?10 Milton Keynes Boston Saint Pauls

26. ‘The Long Tail’... and now... ‘The Boston Scraper Effect’ (encouraging many small contributors)

27. Some issues raised... “Some areas of the city get much more complete coverage than others, due to having regular contributors living there. I like to think that over time this will improve” “I've wondered about 'writeability' in the interface - to what extent can non-geeks feel empowered to contribute, not scared off” “I am working to establish a tool which is usable for more than just technical users” “I think the amount of things "a bit like" the Open Guide that are now in the world, is an indicator that the project has been a real success.”

28. Future ideas… New added-value services from semantic web? Why do we get such a high search ranking? How do we evolve the interface? structure is good vs structure is a straight-jacket Wiki lifecycles: will the Guides reach critical mass? Who’s using them anyway?

29. Thank you Mark Gaved Tom Heath Marc Eisenstadt {m.b.gaved, t.heath, m.eisenstadt} @open.ac.uk http://kmi.open.ac.uk